Kovic Is More Than A FIFA Artist
Rocking crazy jackets. Learning to sing underwater. Making music with fans.
British singer-songwriter & producer Mark Kovic burst onto the UK music scene thanks to his 2017 smash-hit Drown following its appearance on the FIFA 18 soundtrack. Yet, Mark is much more than just a "FIFA artist."
Hailing from Brentwood, Essex, UK, he spent his early years performing at open mic nights across London and Brighton. Before his more recent solo efforts, he was the frontman of beloved British Alternative Rock group "New City Kings."
Now having released two full-length solo albums and a third soon on the way, Kovic has made a name for his powerful vocal performances, impressive catalogue of unique music videos, and collection of iconic, stylish jackets.
“If you know one thing that you're gonna get from me, it's gonna be crazy jackets, that's for sure,” he quipped.
An independent artist through and through, his “A&R” team, consisting of fans who’ve followed him for years, sets Kovic apart as an artist. They’ve played a key role in the creation of his solo projects, and will continue to do so as he looks ahead to his upcoming third album.
“I'm trying to keep the barriers of where I'm going creatively ‘down,’ and listen to these people on this team, because they’re incredibly well-versed. They know what they like, and I know what works musically, and I'll just listen to them. I love working with them. That's the plan for the third record.”
I had the chance to sit down with Kovic, discussing everything from his early days at open mic nights, to the impact of New City Kings on his more recent solo works, the sentimentality behind his appearance on FIFA 18, the incredible creative process behind his Running Underwater music video, and much more…
Ethan: We'll start off with a gimme. How would you describe the type of music that you make?
Mark Kovic: I would say it's pop, and kind of the umbrella that comes under that. I love soul records, I love old school rock, but I also kind of love modern-production pop too. I would just say it’s pop music really, straight up. Sounds boring, but it’s true.
Looking at your catalog, it’s seen a blend of a lot of sounds, alternative pop and electronic pop seeming to be the mainstays.
Your 2018 full-length debut Running Underwater was described as “boundary-hopping,” whereas your most recent LP Playing With Fire saw more ballads, smoother vocals, and a rather soulful and sincere sound throughout.
To someone who’s never listened to you, what’s a good starting point in your discography?
For someone who’s never listened, I would start with a song called If You Don’t Love Me. When I look at Spotify and see just how huge the demographic on that song, it seems to be one that’s just so widely applicable. If someone had never heard my music, I would start with If You Don’t Love Me for that reason alone.
You were born and raised in Brentwood, Essex, UK. Essex is a county in the UK that’s seen artists like Blur, Depeche Mode, and The Prodigy rise to fame. You also bounced between London and Brighton early on in your career.
How much influence did these areas have on your music?
I spent a lot of time in Brighton and I consider that my musical home. I think it’s such a beautiful city with really beautiful people in the community. There is something that has always kind of driven me to want to live there. I love Brighton and I love the people there.
That’s what really opened my imagination and my boundaries to not feeling like, narrowly trapped into one genre. You know what I mean? I think it was such a free, exploratory place socially. With the music scene down there—very much like open mic nights—you could almost do anything you could do almost anything, create and share it with people and they were really open to it, and I just love that.
Essex—definitely. Like you said, Prodigy were huge. I was a huge fan of them from a very young age, went to a lot of shows. I think you just see how that live element is so important. When you see a band like The Prodigy, you realize that of course the music’s incredible, but they have such an atmosphere at their shows and they really bring the bridge of that idea of like, “yeah, they make records, but they bring a whole community in them, too.” So, you know, that was different.
London taught me just how fierce, in a good way, the competition is. It’s similar to a New York or an LA, such a melting pot where the biggest artists in the world are coming in every day. It brings you up to a certain level of awareness, you really need to graft and work it and have those songs that are going to compete on an international stage. London feels like one of those central hubs.
Are there any lesser known artists you looked up to, coming out of those areas? Those not as big as Blur, Prodigy, but still had an impact on your music?
Yeah, literally countless. My upbringing, musically, was open mic nights. There are so many. So many people, I think I’ll be here for half an hour just going through names of people who maybe don’t even make music anymore. But, they were really, really inspiring to me. I mean, if you really want to go…
Gimme a few that stick out.
There was a singer-songwriter called Hadley Ford, who was just a guy that I used to be in awe of for his vocals and his performances were just amazing. He used to do open mic nights a lot at O’Neills, Brentwood High Street. I just, I loved that guy. He was very talented, not sure what he’s doing nowadays.
Then, there was this band called Mates of Mine that I came up under down in Brighton, who were this like Scandinavian group of lads who were just amazing songwriters. Like, they just had amazing songs. There’s a lot of these artists and people that do actually go on to maybe not be in the limelight as a performer, but instead an incredible vocal coach, or they’ve gone on to write songs for other people. Like, just so many. The open mic nights in Brighton was almost a masterclass of bubbling talent. A lot of these people went on to do really, really amazing things.
As you said, you often performed at open mic nights early on in your career. As the 2010s waged on, you began to play larger and larger venues.
Is there a single show that sticks out to you as the one where you walked onstage, looked into the crowd and thought to yourself, wow, maybe I'm the ‘real deal’?
[laughs] I’ve never walked into a crowd and thought, wow, I’m the ‘real deal.’
The funny thing about that is, I think something very common with artists is we are always second-guessing ourselves. I would love that confidence to walk out and be like, “I’m the sh*t now.” But, you’re always wondering whether people were going to show up, whether the show is going to go right, or at least I am.
I’m sure maybe a Harry Styles or a Lizzo is going to rock up on stage and be like, “I am the sh*t,” because they are, and they’re incredible.
I have to say, I was really lucky to play the main stage of South by Southwest in Austin. That was just a real, magical moment. I think I’ve always idolized that festival as a pioneering thing in music, and to go over and play on that stage was really amazing. A beautiful venue, I’ve always wanted to play ACL Live.
I also got to be on stage at the O2 Arena in London, that was always a bucket list thing for me. I’d say really just probably those two. They were really big things where I thought, “yeah, I can probably be a bit closer to dying happy.”
South by is great. I feel like a lot of music fans don’t know about the history and importance of it. You’ve got artists like The 1975, who played it all the way back in 2013. Big impact on the rap game, too. You’ve got guys like A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott, playing there early on in the 2010s as well.
You mentioned that performance at the O2 Arena in London. That ties into my next question: New City Kings. Before Kovic, you were their frontman and lead vocalist.
NCK’s discography consisted of multiple singles in addition to the 2014 EP, Change. With headlining tours in both 2014 and 2015, you also offered support across other tours, including the aforementioned performance at the O2 Arena.
Can you tell us about how your experience with that group influenced your current sound and style as more of a solo artist?
The days when I was in New City Kings were like, really beautiful, beautiful times in my life. The group of guys I was with, in particular, were just like the best one. We had such a great fit. What I think what tends to happen, especially in that sort of genre, when you get to a certain age and stage in life, and people have kind of other interests and other things coming out—families and you know, people getting married and stuff like that—it actually gets very, very difficult to keep so many moving parts and so many personalities content with with what was going on. All of us are still in touch today and it was just a brilliant, brilliant time in life.
The transition was mostly about understanding of going how do we now with everything I'd learned from New City Kings and you know, putting records together. We got badly treated in the industry, like, just got knocked around as everyone does. Sadly, it's a really common thing. Basically got to come out of that and go, right: I could kind of construct a project now with like, minimal points of failure. It really was a was a cool moment of being able to go, right, let's, let's rethink this, let's build this in a way where, when minimal things could go wrong.
It was a big part of my inspiration to decide to not undertake a deal early on, to do things independently, to try and figure out how to have as much security as possible. A career, which for me, was a gamble. It's like, you know, major record label, take a shot at being Ed Sheeran, super low chance of success. But if you do succeed, it's gonna be like, huge worldwide success.
Or, it was like, don't not have the resources and the gamble to do things on such a large scale, but maybe instead build a more secure, smaller, and much more stable thing. As the years have gone on, I'm just so content about that. New City Kings was a huge college for me in understanding what one was going to pick. So yeah, really big, really big kind of developmental years for me, and I just love those guys.
You all had a really passionate following. I mean, especially for a band that like I said, had less than a dozen releases on streaming platforms.
Even in recent years, there’s still people tweeting things like: “When's new music coming out?” or “where’d you guys go?”
Can you speak a little bit to that fandom and what it meant to you as a band that was being “bounced around” in the industry, as you said?
It means everything. Every artist in the world, the one thing that you can never appreciate enough is people that actually care and listen to music. It's literally why we do what we do. So, you know, “can I speak to that?” It's like, “yes, it's the best thing ever.”
I'm so lucky that, you know, the majority of those people are still with me today. For example, I speak to them all the time. We have these little “A&R” sessions through Patreon where we make records together, and a lot of those early supporters are still with me today. In another life, I’d clone myself and run both projects.
Let’s talk about FIFA.
I think for a lot of us, like the FIFA music playlists, all the way back to Chumbawamba in ‘98, or whatever it was, you just can’t beat the FIFA playlists.
Exactly. Let’s talk about your smash hit Drown, featured on FIFA 18.
How'd it feel having your music featured in such a widely played game, especially as a Brit, like yourself growing up in a country obsessed with football?
It was such a moment. Best thing in the world. It sounds weird, but like, out of all the things and all the accolades, that one always felt like home to me. Because as a kid, you know, me and my brother, we'd get like the Nintendo, or in fact, it wasn't on Nintendo, was it? I'm trying to think FIFA was on...
PlayStation? Xbox?
Yeah, it was the very first one on PlayStation. I just remember, you know, putting that CD in, me and Ben playing FIFA. I always think of Chumbawamba, “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” [from the band’s alt-pop hit Tubthumping].
That's the first thing I hear when I have all the memories and nostalgia of playing FIFA. Just like, the way that those songs connect so deeply because they're just always on repeat, they're part of good times. There was nothing better than getting that placement.
To me, it felt like I was gonna become part of history in some small way, to so many younger kids out there just playing FIFA and having a laugh at their mates, with that song being part of it. It's different than a radio placement or getting it on a film. Having a song on FIFA was just the best.
Exactly. I like what you said, how it sticks with you and sticks with this group of youth that are never going to forget it.
Being someone who’s played FIFA for over a decade straight, there’s plenty of tunes I still listen to regularly. Even songs from 2011, 2012, that I’ve listened to over a decade straight, every week, and they never get old.
I’ll always cherish the sounds of Drown, MGMT’s Kids, The 1975’s The City, and so on. Have you ever considered the impact that your songs can have upon listeners memories and nostalgia?
Yes. I do think about the impact that songs have on people. Every now and again, I'm very fortunate to run across someone in the street or in town who will come up to me.
There's a song of mine called Ropes that I wrote about people, kind of written about my brother, but more widely when people have tough moments in their relationship, or they're struggling a little bit with mental health. You know, there's songs like that, where someone says, “this song really helped me,” or “it helped me or my missus connect,” or something else, you know what I mean?
I realized that, when you're in a studio, you're creating a song. It's a process of carving away this mass of ideas down to something that kind of stamps something and says something.
You can never ever beat the feeling when someone comes up, and they're totally a total stranger. Then, they come up, and they're like, here's a personal thing, that bettered my situation, because of how this how I connected with the song. That is, as far as I'm concerned, as a creator, that's it.
All the money in the world can never balance the feeling where you go, “Wow.” The fact that you created something, and it did some ounce of positivity, it’s magic.
Is there a song that will forever stick with you because of the moment that you heard it in?
So many, and I think anyone listening, whether they're listening to this conversation, or whether you know, you're thinking about it now, your mind always goes back.
Maybe it was that heartbreak, when you had a really shit time. Then, that song comes on the radio that you've probably heard 100 times before, but then you hear it for the first time, amd you understand what the songwriter meant, you know what I mean? It hits that emotion or it could be, you know, something you'd like when you're playing FIFA. You remember those good times. There's certain albums and records that almost transport you back into that moment or that time ago. I'm sure everyone would agree that that that's the case.
Backing off of that, which song of yours that stands above the rest in terms of the sentimentality behind the record?
Yeah, that would that would be Ropes. I wrote that song in a particularly tumultuous time. The acoustic version was definitely one, I would say. There's a song called Talk, as well, which is quite similar. So, I'll pick those two.
Besides FIFA, you more recently had another song make an appearance on a pretty well known platform in the UK. You know your song Strong, with Sigma?
Yes!
It was on Season 8, Episode 38, of Love Island.
[laughs] I didn’t even know that. That’s amazing. That’s quite a thing in the UK.
I know! Even my friends love watching the UK version of the show. How's it feel making it on?
You know what? Whenever my music is shared, it's an incredible thing. I mean, I know that Love Island is an amazingly popular thing, its huge here. I don't watch it myself. But, I'm super happy that the people who connect with that show heard that song. Amazing news. I actually didn't know that, so thank you for sharing that with me.
I mean, it's incredible. You pretty much made the two most popular platforms in the UK for music, you could argue, with Love Island and FIFA. Something you can forever tell your your grandchildren, if you have any.
[laughs] Exactly.
Moving more on to the sound of your music. It's been often described as cinematic and epic. You have a lot of songs with ballads, as I said, featuring powerful vocal performances and a wide-ranging kind of orchestral production.
Are there any specific films or soundtracks that have inspired your sound at all? If so, how do you incorporate them into your music?
That's a great question. That's a really good question. I mean, I definitely find myself inspired by film scores. There are those films that we can all connect with, whether that is The Dark Knight, or Interstellar, you know, I'm just trying to think of those like really big, cinematic, motion-evoking, bone-rumbling kind of scores.
As you cross that line from cinematic scoring into pop, I would pick out Imagine Dragons as an interesting one. You think about Radioactive, or you think about another song they did not too long ago, I can't think what is this.
That sentiment of big tribal drums, big pop choruses, those kind of big, more epic tracks, I definitely like that. When I was creating Playing With Fire, I knew that for the opening I wanted to have that fear of a big sound, but then to not detract and make a whole record with those kind of bangers. Instead, to have more variation as people were listening through an album. Like I said, I love soul music and those more emotionally-evoking vocals. I don't want everything just to be ‘big and slam.’ But yeah, I definitely take influence from films and the music synchronization in them for sure.
Ever think about making a shoegaze pop record? Artists like M83—mixing together such grandiose and otherworldly production with impressive vocal performances—come to mind.
One of the things I have genuinely thought about comes from my love of a good Lo-Fi beats playlist. You know, that sort of thing that you want to put in the background when you concentrate and whatever. I've always loved the idea of taking the vocal as more of an instrumental addition, so something really chill. I’ve been approached by a couple of producers that I really rate as well in that in that world.
So, not necessarily shoegaze, but that'd be that would be cool as well. But, I do like the idea of putting together like a Lo-Fi or like jazz-esque kind of modern, modern sort of chill lounge thing. I'd like to do something like that. I think I'd just find that fun as a creator. I think that'd be a really fun project to do.
Talking about your live shows, you've often performed acoustic and more stripped-down versions of your songs before, which lets you showcase your live vocals and emotive songwriting.
Can you talk about any specific vocal techniques or exercises that you use to maintain your voice during both touring and recording?
Yeah, that's another good question. I mean, firstly, I wouldn't put myself as any source of like reliable content when it comes to like vocal techniques, because I don't think I'm necessarily ‘technically’ that good with vocals. But, there's something that I found that really, really helped me one time.
That's the idea that when you're singing, and when you're going on tour, there is a difference between the amount of air coming out your vocal cords at any one time. What I mean by that is, you and me can have a conversation now. But, you stick yourself in a loud pub, or you put yourself in a situation where you have some adrenaline going through your body, and all of a sudden, your muscles and your diaphragm in your body, they start pushing the air out and it's all a bit like louder. All of a sudden, your vocal cords start getting getting slammed, and they kind of get inflamed and they feel blood. Before you know it, you can't sing as well, and before you know it, you blow your voice.
So much very early on, I would go on tour and I would blow my voice like two, three days in, voice blown. It was much more to do with myself reflection of how I'm handling my diaphragm. Am I relaxed? You know, am I stressed out? Am I drinking?
Sometimes, just thinking about doing the same vocal warmup each time, knowing how that breath control is coming out, how you're approaching those notes, how you're approaching those songs, just get yourself psychologically more enlightened, not necessarily worrying just about the physical stuff. The big lesson for me when I learned how to try and keep my vocal consistency up was more mental than it was physical; it was controlling that level of adrenaline and muscle control, if that makes sense.
Was there ever a show where you went all out, belting every song? By the end of it, you're like, “Man, I gotta take a break.” You know, like Adele in 2011.
Yeah, early on. Early on, and I can't necessarily name shows, but very early on, I just went full on 200, and that's that. Sometimes I think, when I’m watching performers and isolate that same thing, whether someone's really young, or whether they're just really excited, and they're just right on 100. Sometimes it's it's not hitting all the points on an entertainment factor, do you know what I mean?
Sometimes, you want someone to be gunning it, like 80-90%, but being in control. When you're just 100 you're a bit out of control. It's erratic. Even when you watch someone like YUNGBLUD, who's just like an absolute like nutcase on stage, he's still 90, still keeping things in control. He's still screaming, but he can do that whole thing.
Early on in my career, I'd go 100. I’d blow out my voice and the performances weren’t really on point. But yeah, , a lot of early club shows, whenever I'd go up north, Manchester, Birmingham, where the crowds were a bit more hyped, and you feed off that and everything goes out the window, you're jumping in the crowd and stage diving, it's good. It's a lot of fun. But…
You gotta take the breaks where you pass the mic to the crowd to sing the hook for you, right?
I've had shows where the crowds have to sing the whole song, [laughs] not great.
An underrated part of your live shows: your fashion game, your go-to look featuring uniquely patterned blazers and jackets.
You’ve worn them in many concerts, shows, as well as music videos. Was it your idea from the start? When did it really begin to ‘stick’?
I think it's because secretly, I live a double life. Half of me as an artist, I'm performing and creating records. The other half of me is kind of like entrepreneurially-based. I have a couple of businesses and they’re mostly involved in music, but what I found myself was trying to figure out where I sat psychologically.
You need to be embroiled in a certain element of like, not giving a f*ck about anything when you're truly creating something decent. Then, there's the other side, where I have to present myself and be trusted by people and important people, you know what I mean?
The idea of trying to mix the two, I didn't want to go out there. You know, like just wearing the standard, like, I know, it sounds silly, because I'm wearing it right now [laughs], a black T-shirt, like rock'n'roll.
I like the idea of presenting myself as best I could to the world, as a performer. I was inspired by some really amazing creatives in that space. There's a guy called Joshua Kane in London, who creates these beautiful pieces, and as a designer is incredibly talented.
There's another company that actually sponsored some tours and stuff early on, called Twisted Tailor, who do something really similar. I just really liked that element where you can keep a look relatively standardized in a way, but still express something new each show, in a different color, or a different pattern, wherever so.
Well, before I ask you some more questions, I have a little show and tell. I found a picture from the NME Awards in 2015.
Just want to know your thoughts on this outfit…
[laughs] I love this picture. This is the first time I did a red carpet, and I was just sh*tting myself. You can see like my eyes, like deers, deer in headlights. Look at me. Yeah, and you know what? That's, that was my fashion sense. Terrible. It was just leather jacket, black shirt and jeans. There's not much thought that went into it. I was just scared sh*tless.
Your music videos. Another aspect of your work that sticks you out as an artist. You've got a variety, some with more narrative-centric stories, a few emotional solo cuts, as well as visually stunners like Running Underwater, where you literally perform the ballad submerged, or it was some next-level CGI.
What’s it like attempting to transform a song of yours into a work of visual art?
Great question. Running Underwater is where my mind goes to straightaway when you say that. Expressing art visually, as well as through audio is an interesting game, right? Sometimes you don't know whether you're taking away from something or adding to it, in a weird way.
Running Underwater is an example of something that was three months of training. You know, “I don't know whether it was CGI or whatever.” It wasn't CGI. That was that was three months of training. It was a lot of learning the song backwards, because you kind of play the vocal, you reverse the vocal, and then you sit and you listen to it and it sounds like nonsense, right?
But, you sit and you listen to the nonsense hours on end, and you learn how to sort of shake your mouth in the same way. So, when you reverse the footage, it looks like I'm singing things normally. But, also doing that underwater with underwater speakers. Every time you breathe and bubbles are coming up, it's loud, you’ve got to try and figure everything out.
I did that with my partner as well, Karina, who actually had the tough part because she had to figure out how to do an inverted surface walk. For anyone next time you’re in the pool, try and hold your breath and go upside down. Then, pretend that you're walking on the surface, it's one of the hardest things to get right. She's not even trained in that field, and so for the two of us, it was just weeks and weeks of training.
That music video, for those listening to this, when you go and watch it on YouTube, there's no trickery. It was in a huge, 20 meter tank. We had cameramen underwater. We had safety divers come down with us through the whole shoot. The worst thing about it is the shots of me, when you sort of see the camera panning out, and I just looked like I'm floating around its mass in this massive abyss of water. I had a translucent hook on my on my feet. So, I was tied to the bottom and couldn't swim up. Basically, the game was you get brought down by the divers, you can't see sh*t because you haven't got goggles, or anything. They put the oxygen in, and all the bubbles, it's really loud. You can't really hear the music. Then, they basically tap you on the shoulder and swim off. You’re just tied to the bottom of the tank of water, singing. They give you a sign to do when you're ready to have more air, you hope that someone comes and sticks a tube in.
I look back at that video, and I'm like, yeah, that was it. Like, that was what I want to do, and that's what I think it takes to make something that's going to be visually on point. It did alright on YouTube, and it still continues to be viewed by a lot of people. I definitely take that very seriously, and I love that question.
I love that people actually look at that stuff. And they're like, Oh, that's interesting. Was it CGI? Was it real? You know?
That's incredible. I feel like music videos are a dying breed nowadays. I used to turn on the TV, and they would have them playing almost nonstop. Nowadays, I couldn’t tell you the last time someone told me, “you have to watch this one!”
Those days that you throwback to, I remember them very well. The main distribution of music was like radio and TV. You'd sit there on a Saturday morning, eating your Cheerios watching, you know, MTV or whatever. But now, it's Spotify algorithm. So music videos in themselves as a utility to sell records don't have the same ability as they did before. It's a distribution thing.
Better that you make 100 TikToks and fire them out on social media then spend three months training for a underwater music video that like 1% of those people are gonna see. So it's like, you can look at it both ways: Yeah, that is a dying breed, and maybe it's worth spending some time to do it, to put that effort into making visuals. But then the other side is like, what if you want more records from the artists that you like, and you want more music?
You don't want them spending tons of time creating music videos, you want them getting those records out and putting a lyric video on YouTube that takes 30 seconds, you know, so? I still like them, though. I think they're cool.
I’ve got to ask you about what you're working on right now, your upcoming third album. Following 2021’s Playing With Fire, what can we expect in terms of the sounds and lyrical themes of this upcoming project?
That’ll be very dependent on my new “A&R” team. I call them an “A&R” team in in quotation marks because they're not the typical A&R team that would be sitting in a record label somewhere in a city. They’re fans.
I do something through Patreon, where I invite people to come in and listen to my demos. It's actually how we made Playing With Fire. So, I do my best to write and create rough demos, piano, acoustic setups, co-writing sessions, and then I bank them basically in a big folder. Then I invite people who come in on Patreon to listen and vote on songs that they like, and those they don't like.
I've really found this process fascinating in so many more ways than one because it's almost like getting to live split test songs in front of real music fans, and see what comes out. I'm going to assume that album number three is going to be more of the same, but in the sense that the first three records are wildly different.
Like the first two records, you've got a soul ballad, then an acoustic, singer-songwriter-y song there, and then you've got like a big rock-y tune next. Then, there's a bit more of an electronic pop tune after that. So, I'm trying to keep the barriers of where I'm going creatively down and listen to these people on this team, because they are actually incredibly well versed. They know what they like, and I know what works musically, and I'll just listen to them. I love working with them. That's the plan for the third record.
You don't hear that stuff a lot in the industry these days. So many times with songs leaking or snippets coming out, artists first reactions are usually to shelve the music altogether—in rap especially.
Whereas you're given supporters a chance to listen to all these cuts that you've produced. I respect that, you know, because you're giving the fans everything, and letting them build the projects they want.
At the end of the day, it's the fan reception that matters most, no?
Yeah, 100%. Also, what's quite cool is that something that I might be doing every day, someone might drop a message, and then go, “you know, what, I'd love to know how this works.”
For example, someone went, “how do you get stuff on Spotify?” Something that I wouldn't even think of, because I'd been doing it for years. Just being able to get on the computer, do a screenshot and be like, right, so this is how music distribution works. This is how we upload it. This is how we treat the lyrics. This is what an ISRC code is, this is, you know, to be able to peel behind the veneer of the music industry, to go, “I want to know how this works.”
Because my project is fully independent, with exception for an amazing management team out in Nashville that I've been working with for the last couple of years, there is not one part of my career that I don't do myself or understand how it works. It's cool to share that to people who are interested. Love it, it’s great.
Gotta ask this. A new album rollout. More iconic patterned jackets?
Always. If you know one thing that you're gonna get from me, it's gonna be crazy jackets, that's for sure.
One last question to wrap this up for you.
Your firstborn child is on the way! An amazing milestone in life that I'm sure you and your partner are super excited for.
So, what’s on the “crib playlist,”—aside from your entire discography?
[laughs] Can you imagine that? Just bringing up your kid, blasting them with your own music. I think the first couple of years is probably going to be nursery rhymes and baby music, hoping that we can get some good night's sleep.
But, you know, it's the first time I've thought of a baby playlist, I’ll have to come back to you on that one. For sure, it's a very, very strange, new, scary, and very beautiful feeling to have a little one on the way in July. So yeah, I'm, I'm a very happy man at the moment. I’ll get thinking on that playlist for you.
Maybe throw a little Skepta, some BBK on there?
Yeah, yeah, maybe a bit of Stormzy. I’m in.
We got that new Slowthai album.
I’m into it. Let’s do it.
That’s pretty much it from me. Next time you’re in the States, I’ll have to track you down and take you to a proper American BBQ restaurant.
Love it, dude. A pleasure to speak to you.
You can listen to the full Kovic interview on Spotify or Apple Podcasts here ⬇️
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