Generally, when I come to festivals, I just wander freely and see what happens.
St. Lucia
We love the idea of having a really great lighting production.
St. Lucia
It’s important to let things go.
St. Lucia
One of the secrets of having a long-term relationship is realizing that even if you think the other person’s great, at some point, they’re going to mess up and annoy you.
St. Lucia
I basically work all the time.
St. Lucia
We don’t put limits on ourselves.
St. Lucia
On the first recording, I wasn’t singing out that much; I was shy with my singing.
St. Lucia
Images and music are very connected.
St. Lucia
I will readily confess that I’m a coffee addict.
St. Lucia
I like confusing people and challenging myself.
St. Lucia
I was always very ambitious from a young age.
St. Lucia
We’ve always enjoyed touring, which is fortunate because we’re always on the road. The most difficult part is that time passes by so quickly. It’s hard to pay attention to your normal life because shows are all-encompassing.
St. Lucia
At a festival, some people are just there because they’re waiting for, like, Calvin Harris to come on later.
St. Lucia
You can’t be 100 percent selfish when you’re working with somebody else.
St. Lucia
When I start working on an idea, I immediately record without judging it.
St. Lucia
I feel like Hawaiian shirts have definitely made a comeback.
St. Lucia
Everyone knows Earth, Wind & Fire. We know ‘September,’ all the big sort of hits from going out and dancing and stuff. When I was developing St. Lucia, I really started listening a little bit deeper, listening back to their stuff from the ’70s and ’80s, and really dug into it.
St. Lucia
The longer I lived overseas, the more I appreciated being from South Africa.
St. Lucia
St. Lucia in South Africa is this exotic place where you might go on vacation, and it evokes this nostalgic, hazy vibe.
St. Lucia
I like to make bombueti, which is basically the South African national dish. It’s basically a South African curry shepherd’s pie kind of thing.
St. Lucia
When I was a teenager, I never knew anything about art. I think in South Africa at that stage, no one was really exposed to it. There were no museums that had great artists in them.
St. Lucia
I had to embrace just basically writing and recording on my laptop. On long drives through the Rockies, I would take my laptop and mess around with ideas and make rough sketches of songs.
St. Lucia
When you work together in a creative way, you have to be less selfish about your ideas and learn to let both parties feel valued. Of course, that’s also a really great quality to have in a relationship, too.
St. Lucia
The name came about from me just closing my eyes and sticking a pen on a map of South Africa. St. Lucia was the fifth place that the pen landed on.
St. Lucia
The album that really got me interested in how to create weird sounds, and pretty much changed my life, was ‘OK Computer.’ Funnily enough, my parents bought it for me because it was recommended to them, and the first 2 times I heard it, I absolutely hated it.
St. Lucia
One of my favorite things is producing other artists because, in many ways, it’s a lot more freeing than working on your own music.
St. Lucia
The album that really got me interested in how to create weird sounds, and pretty much changed my life, was ‘OK Computer.’ Funnily enough, my parents bought it for me because it was recommended to them, and the first 2 times I heard it, I absolutely hated it.
St. Lucia
One of my favorite things is producing other artists because, in many ways, it’s a lot more freeing than working on your own music.
St. Lucia
You can hear ‘Human Nature’ all over our song ‘Elevate.’ It’s an amazing song. That hooky arpeggio in the beginning is great. Unlike most Michael Jackson ballads, even though I’m a huge Michael Jackson fan, this song is kind of restrained. It’s not a huge, crazy song you can dance to – it’s just this beautiful piece of music.
St. Lucia
I love so many songs from the ’80s, but I’m obliged to the big ones.
St. Lucia
It took a while of performing and pushing the boundaries and starting to involve the audience to feel comfortable.
St. Lucia
The first city I ever came to in the states was Des Moines. I was 12 and was in a boys’ choir.
St. Lucia
It sounds kind of cliche, and a lot of people say it about our music, but I think a good place to hear our music for the first time is on vacation, or somewhere warm, on the beach or something like that.
St. Lucia
The music has a very strong escapist quality to it. In the moment where you feel like you need to escape, or when you are escaping, that’s a good time to listen to ‘When the Night.’
St. Lucia
My favorite pieces that I’ve written, either for St. Lucia or for myself, have always had a transporting quality to them, where they take you out of the moment and somewhere positive that feels nostalgic and happy but sad at the same time.
St. Lucia
I find that when I’m under pressure, I work really well, but then you have those days where you sleep for four hours because you drive to a venue overnight and arrive there the next day, and you’re cranky and not dealing with it very well.
St. Lucia
St. Lucia represents, for me, where I found myself musically once I stopped trying to be cool, in some way, and stopped stopping these guilty pleasure influences I had from coming through.
St. Lucia
It is funny to me that people think of St. Lucia as this, like, feel-good band.
St. Lucia
When I’m making the music, the songs that I get most excited about definitely make me feel good, but often, it’s a really good feeling combined with some kind of melancholy element.
St. Lucia
To me, St. Lucia isn’t just purely feel-good; there are these other juxtaposed elements as well.
St. Lucia
I was born in South Africa and lived there until I was 19.
St. Lucia
St. Lucia was a place were we used to go on vacation – not every year, but we went there a couple of times. I remember the last time that I went there, I was really small, and the only memory that I have is that my dad was going swimming or fishing one day – and I really, really wanted to go – but I was too young.
St. Lucia
The ’80s definitely influence my music in a big way.
St. Lucia
A short story can be really interesting and enriching and powerful, but a novel just contains so much more information and richness and depth. That’s what I strive for in my music. I want to create something that’s like a longform statement.
St. Lucia
With Prince especially… he was a really great songwriter and keyboardist and singer and was so good at so many different things, you couldn’t pin him down. That really inspires me.
St. Lucia
I feel like a lot of bands have done amazing covers, but whenever we start working on it, whenever we try it in rehearsal, it never feels right for me to do the song.
St. Lucia
We have such an energetic live show. We have so much fun onstage. We swap instruments. We might possibly be the sweatiest band in the business.
St. Lucia
I like my music to transport people somewhere.
St. Lucia
I think the job of the first single is kind of like being a diplomat for a country.
St. Lucia
I guess you could say it’s one of the great equalizers: that it just feels good to be bad.
St. Lucia
I really believe in albums, even though some people believe the year of the album has passed. I love singular pop songs or tracks, but what really affects me most deeply is if there’s an hour of music or 45 minutes of music that flows really well and tells a story.
St. Lucia
I feel like, for me as an artist, it takes me a while of living with the tracks and living with the body of work to realize what it’s all about.
St. Lucia