Passenger’s Mike Rosenberg joins me via Zoom prior to a 1,200-capacity Athens show at Gagarin 205. With a couple of European shows at the tail end of October, the singer-songwriter is preparing for a UK tour of his fifth album ‘All The Little Lights’. But this tour marks a milestone for the artist – the tenth anniversary of the multi-platinum album that sparked a global career. With a return to the UK shores imminent for a record store tour and a sold-out date at the Union Chapel in London, we sit down to discuss the landmark re-working of ‘All The Little Lights’ and the special collaborations it holds within. A huge line-up including Nina Nesbitt, Gabrielle Aplin, Foy Vance and Ed Sheeran join Mike for four of the eleven tracks on the new release, bringing a new dynamic to the much loved album.
Taking us back ten years to the recording of the original album, Mike notes that the tracks emerged at a crucial time for the artist. “I was busking around Australia, recording at the same time. I remember busking in the morning and then going to the studio and paying the musicians with the money that I made that day busking; a very different life for sure. I remember it being quite a tricky album to make one way and another. An interesting point in my career where I’d been busking for a long time, it’d been slowly building steadily for a long time but I was definitely starting to feel frustrated by the lack of tangible growth. So I was just coming up to that point of breaking. It was an interesting time for sure.” However since the album came out in 2012, it has cemented Passenger as one of the biggest singer-songwriters of a generation and ‘All The Little Lights’ has since become a multi-platinum selling album. Its lead single ‘Let Her Go’ has received 6 billion global streams to date and has become a staple in the singer’s live shows. Mike remains humble ten years on, noting the importance of the tracks on his fanbase. “The songs have had a life already and some of these songs I’ve been playing in every single live show since I wrote them. They’re fan favourites and they mean so much to so many people. I think at the time they were just new songs and even with ‘Let Her Go’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, I think it’s good – I don’t know. Put it on an album and see how it does.’ ”
Returning to the tracks was similar to reopening a diary after many years, Mike tells me – but equally by delving back into the songs for a complete re-recording has been an emotional journey. “You have to be quite hard on yourself I think, just so the level of quality remains at a good point. [If] you were to look back at a diary that you wrote 12 years ago, they’d be pages where you’d be like, “Oh my god, cringe-fest.” So yeah it is a bit like that, but equally, there are moments where I’m like, ‘fuck man, I’m proud of that – I stand by this song, I still love it.’ It’s a fascinating project; I’ve actually found it really emotional as well. Every week I’m writing a blog, I’m writing about a different song every week – I’m writing about where I was, who I was and why I wrote it. It’s kind of an emotive thing to delve back into those memories – some of them are uncomfortable, some of them aren’t pleasant, you know. It’s quite therapeutic.” As he writes in his blog series ‘Song Stories’, most of the album was written in Australia – but taking on the re-working, Passenger and his long-time producer Chris Vallejo were at Mike’s home studio in Brighton. “We just made it in my little home studio in Brighton. Me and Chris, my producer, we’re building a bigger studio at the moment but it’s been taking years so the last four or five records we’ve made have been in my little project studio. [We’ve] made nine in the years since [‘All The Little Lights’]. I think together we’ve learnt so much about what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it. Hopefully, it’s kept that line – hopefully, it’s the songs that everyone fell in love with and everything that they like about it, but hopefully pushing it into a new era as well.”
Bringing ‘All The Little Lights’ into 2023 was a huge undertaking, Mike recalls. With all the tracks holding a place in the heart of the fanbase, there had to be sensitivity towards the integrity of the original recordings. “It’s a really interesting thing because when we first approached it, it was like, ‘let’s just play everything as it was, all the parts as they were but just better; record it better.’ But as the project went along, it was actually like, ‘You know what? I wouldn’t have that xylophone line there nowadays in 2023 as a 39-year-old, I don’t love it – let’s change it. Let’s subtly change the bits that aren’t feeling like they should be there.’ It was a really interesting process as to what to keep: what’s important, what do people who love this song and listened to it for 12 years – what are they going to be upset about if we don’t have it in there? It’s a really interesting mindset because when you’re making new albums you’re not trying to prove anything, no one’s heard these songs before. [The] most challenging thing about making this album was making sure you’re not upsetting people who already like the original and that can get into your head, you know.” With that added self-pressure, Passenger set out to inject a new bolder feel to the tracks – from deeper cuts such as ‘Patient Love’, ‘Keep on Walking’, ‘The Wrong Direction’ and ‘Holes’ to collaborations with Nina Nesbitt on ‘Feather on the Clyde’, Foy Vance on ‘Life’s for the Living’, Gabrielle Aplin on ‘Circles’ and Ed Sheeran on ‘Let Her Go’. Not forgetting album opener ‘Things That Stop You Dreaming’, title track ‘All The Little Lights’ and banjo-driven ‘Staring at the Stars’, bring the full album to completion.
With all tracks receiving brand new treatments and a push in production quality, it’s listening to the details where you can appreciate the level of detail and dedication Passenger and his team have injected. From a new extended outro on ‘Patient Love’, to new, fuller arrangements on ‘Holes’, the album showcases the determination to withhold the magic of the originals, but make the sound bigger and keep Passenger’s notable passion. When approaching the collaborative process, Mike adds that it’s an essential part of the solo artist’s work. “You’ve got to have a bit of variety, working with other people. It always teaches you something. It gives you an insight into how other people work, whether it’s writing or recording together or gigging together. [It’s] essential to work especially as solo artists. I think if you’re in a band you’re naturally around your bandmates, and you’ve got different people’s ideas constantly churning around and percolating. I think like me I’m a musical dictator in Passenger – it’s just me on my own and you can get very complacent. You can get too comfortable and I think working with people stops that. It really kind of makes you open your eyes to another way of different things which is super healthy I think.” Approaching the collaborations, Mike felt that the pieces had to feel genuine rather than inserted, giving the four tracks an authenticity that is honest and elevates each piece. “It took a long time to figure out who to ask. The four that we’ve gone to are four people that I met around that time, who I was touring with at that time and whose music meant a lot to me and inspired me. I think it feels genuine – I know Ed Sheeran is part of it and he’s obviously a massive megastar. He’s also one of my best mates and a guy who had such a massive role in making ‘Let Her Go’ big in the first place. Yeah of course duetting with Ed Sheeran is never going to do the song any harm, you know – commercially. For me it’s much more about how cool is this – ten years on, here’s the guy that gave me the platform to allow ‘Let Her Go’ to do what it’s done and now we’re duetting on it. And all four of the collaborations have that full circle feeling about them so it’s a really emotionally genuine set of collaborations I think.”
Each of the collaborations has a video attached and some behind-the-scenes content to match, giving some insight into the making of the video and their feelings on the work. The first to release was a trip to the Scottish highlands to Foy Vance’s home of Aberfeldy for the video ‘Life’s for the Living’. The interview touches on the process of helping “up” Mike’s performance with the help of Foy, who adds his unique twang to the duet. His raspy vocals mesh with Mike’s softness to add a nostalgic twist on the original, honing in on a rooted motto for life. “The videos have been a real joy,” Mike adds. “We’ve been up to where Foy lives in Scotland to shoot that one which is nice. I’ve been wanting to get to Aberfeldy for years, Ed wrote a song about Aberfeldy as well – I’ve heard great things about it and it’s really beautiful. So it was a nice excuse to get up there really – potter about and film a video, it was nice. Equally with Gabby, just a nice day in London. It makes videos way more interesting just having one of your mates there to collaborate with.” Gabrielle’s appearance on ‘Circles’ sees the duo come together to play side-by-side in a single room as the camera spins. Their harmonised vocals intertwine like an embrace with a friend. Gabrielle’s soft vocals add that air of storytelling the track strives on but adds perspective to the original. “I think it would’ve been harder if it was all complete strangers and you’re meeting for the first time and somehow in a six-hour session you’ve got to get to know each other as people as well as coming up with this track that’s going to sound believable and cohesive. I think Passenger for me whether it’s good or not, or [whether] people like it or not, it’s always honest. I’m always trying to be honest with it, I’m always trying to be sincere. I didn’t want this set of collaborations to feel like it’s been stuck on at the last minute, it’s like these are people who I’ve known for a decade, I’ve worked with before, I love their music so the collaborations hopefully feel sincere and genuine. I think that’s the important thing for me.”
The anniversary edition of ‘All The Little Lights’ maintains the integrity and talents of the original whilst adding the warmth of collaborations, giving it a new layer of magic. The artwork has even been reimagined to evoke that warmth and a sense of new beginnings. “I guess that’s representative of how I think and hope the sound has been improved, you know. The original to me [feels] darker and more muted and I think this new version is brighter. It’s a celebration of these songs – it’s richer, it’s bolder, it’s shinier. [I’ve] been surprised at how challenging it’s been because there’s a real fine line with some of this where you don’t want to belittle the original. This album means a lot to a lot of people so you’ve got to be sensitive with it. You’ve got to try and keep all the stuff that was kind of magic about it in the first place that people fell in love with but also make it bigger and richer, stronger and whatever else. It’s taken a lot: it’s taken a lot of energy, it’s taken a lot of time, effort and love to create it and put it out in the right way. [There] was a worry as well – you’ve put all of this time, work and effort into it and it’s like, “god, are people even going to notice that we’ve done this again?” Because unless you kind of A and B the original and the new one – I hope people can hear the difference. I think that’s where the collaborations help as well, you know what I mean. Having those four special guests on it celebrates the whole thing in a cool way. These songs are real personalities now, they’re real characters and I understand them. They’re like friends that I’ve known for that long. I get who these people are, or who these songs are. So hopefully with that in mind, we can produce them and present them in a much truer way that we weren’t able to before.”
