Bastille‘s Dan Smith spent time in the BandLab NME Awards 2022 winners’ room last night (March 2) to talk about his favourite music of the year and the band’s upcoming arena plans. Watch our full video interview above.
Despite spending a career picking up awards and attending shows, Smith told us he still feels like “a competition winner” during ceremonies, joking: “I’m just staring at everyone, which is probably why I don’t have any famous friends.”
After he and Natalie Imbruglia took the stage at London’s O2 Brixton Academy to present this year’s Best Song In The World trophy to Lorde, he told us how his night had gone so far, noting that Sam Fender kicking off the awards was a “pretty banging way to start.”
Smith also joked about how even though Lorde wasn’t present to receive her gong for ‘Solar Power’ she still made a splash at music’s wildest night.
“[She] was in a pool, of course,” he quipped. “She’s like, stay in New Zealand in a pool or rainy South London?”
When asked about his personal choice for song of the year, he doubled down on NME’s winner, calling “‘Solar Power’ by Lorde” the clear victor, before shouting out some of his other favourites.
“[Olivia Rodrigo’s] ‘Good 4 U’ is such a massive tune,” he said. “The opening track off [‘Solar Power’, ‘The Path’] is really beautiful too and really grows and develops.”
Smith added: “It’s brilliant how it starts as one thing and by the end there’s hook after hook. It’s kind of ‘Pure Shores’ [by All Saints] era or actually, Natalie Imbruglia era. Which is why I’m sure she presented that award.”
The Bastille leader also gave NME a sneak peek at the band’s massive arena tour plans in support of their recently released fourth album.
“We are just expanding on the world of ‘Give Me The Future’ and using the ideas of futurescape and the innerverse and all these weird mad ideas we’ve been hammering on about for the last six months,” he told us.
Smith also said fans can expect new songs, a tour of their latest record, at the upcoming shows, adding that it will be hard to get the band’s four mixtapes and four albums “down to an hour and a half with some flashing lights. Fucking hell it’s a challenge.”
The ‘Give Me The Future’ tour kicks off next month (April 3) in Brussels.
The BandLab NME Awards 2022 also saw an opening performance from Sam Fender, as well as live appearances from Rina Sawayama, Griff and Sigrid, Godlike Genius winner FKA twigs, an historic collaborative set from Chvrches and Robert Smith, and an epic five-song closer from Bring Me The Horizon.
Check back for all the news, interviews, winners, photos and more from the BandLab NME Awards 2022.