![]() ![]() ‘Half A Man’, the quiet piano ballad that closes the album, was originally intended for another artist and dates back to Dean’s short stint working as a songwriter-for-hire. The chorus works with the verses and the bridge works… let me know that I could pursue this as a career.” A watershed moment because he could “listen back and go ‘If I heard that from someone else… Oh! that’s a good song’. The lilting ‘For The Last Time’ is “actually the first song that I ever wrote that I was proud of,” he explains. ![]() Some of Dean’s earliest material comprises the back-end of A Place We Knew. ![]() (Claim to fame: holding the boom mic for The Footy Show.) His father, a cameraman, got him steady work as a sound recorder for television while he chased his songwriting dreams. Definitely Maybe is his favourite album and, as a teen, he’d spend hours studiously watching videos of Noel Gallagher on YouTube.īefore he began writing songs at age 18, he was the nation’s reigning Halo 2 champ, representing Australia at the 2005 World Cyber Games in Singapore alongside his younger brother, Sean, who now acts as Dean’s content creator and occasional tour manager.įamily remains important Mum is a stalwart fan and regular star on Dean’s Instagram. With his knack for reassuring words and melodies, Dean is a fan of the classics – The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, and Oasis. “Especially with ‘Be Alright’ that’s about a bunch of relationships and some people that I’d never even met, there was some stories friend and family had told me over the years, that I put into the song.” Listen to the chat below. “They’re all real songs and all come from a real place for me but they’re all about different relationships over six or seven years,” Dean explained to Ben & Liam. It's ironic then that the troubadour is in a much happier place now than his music would suggest. ![]() That’s where Dean Lewis comes in: a trusty form of catharsis, re-enacting those raw feelings over and over again into sweeping musical gestures. We’ve all been there, knowing we should do what’s best for us but unable to let go. ‘ Nothing heals the past like time’ sighs the guy told to put his phone away and get on with his life. His yearning, searching music suggests that even when you’re feeling your worst, things can always get better. The hooks are instantly accessible and catchy, and while the lyrical platitudes are broad and familiar – with umpteen references to holding on/letting go, waking up/falling asleep, and earnest lines like ‘ your heart is my home’ – it all adds to the comforting universal appeal. The music is equally consistent, typically growing from acoustic pluck to stirring sing-alongs that’ll win over fans of Vance Joy or Mumford and Sons.īeyond the proven successes ( ‘7 Minutes’, ‘ Be Alright’) and previously released songs (EP cuts ‘Waves’ and ‘Chemicals’ were added in a bid to re-introduce older material to a newer global fanbase), nearly every song on A Place We Knew has the strength and potential to become Dean’s next inescapable hit glowing with airplay potential and calculated to fit snugly into playlists for falling in and out of love. Instead of deviating from this heartbroken theme, Dean offers variations on bittersweet romance. ‘Straight Back Down’ dwells in the uncomfortable quiet after an argument but balances that turmoil with a big chorus, brass riffs, and a yearning vocal that pleads ‘I can’t live with you/I can’t live without you’ (a sentiment borrowed from one of U2’s biggest US-busting singles) The title track reminisces about a love lost while Dean was “living in hotel rooms for a year-and-a-half”, on tour pursuing his music career. ‘Stay Awake’ is an acoustic stomper reckoning with the inevitable end of a fading relationship. Jokes aside, A Place We Knew sticks to the strengths that have made the shaggy-haired Sydneysider so popular: first-person storytelling, raw emotion, and male vulnerability in the wake of busted romance. The album doesn’t just mine the sad-guy-with-a-guitar shtick of ‘Be Alright’, there’s also sad-guy-at-the-piano, and relatively less-sad-guy-backed-by-horns-and-marching-drums. “There’s three versions of me on this album, how I felt back then to how I feel now and all the things in-between.” “The oldest song on there is probably five years old and the newest is probably eight months old,” Dean told Ben & Liam on triple j Breakfast. That’s a lot of pressure, but Dean’s been ready for this moment for a long time – much of the album was written before he’d even released ‘Waves’. So, it’s not just Australians who’ve been keenly anticipating his debut album A Place We Knew, but fans all over the globe. He’s played to packed-out crowds in Europe and has been slaying it Stateside, nabbing US TV spots on Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen, and TODAY after being named the most Shazamed artist in America. ![]()
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