Declan McKenna, indie pop star and musical prodigy, released his third studio album What Happened To The Beach? in February 2024. This album is my personal favourite of his, having found a balance between the bouncy naivety of his instrumentation and the more reflective and humbled lyrics. In March, I had the opportunity to interview McKenna, where we took a deep dive into his thought process surrounding the album, uncovering the blanket of anxieties surrounding the responsibilities of being a musician.
Following the perspective of McKenna, this album addresses the complexities of being a prominent figure in the music industry and finds the joy in music as a singularity and reflection of oneself, rather than a plant of an institution. Ditching the drizzles of the gloomy UK, McKenna took to the skies in search of influence, constructing this album in LA, giving him the utmost separation from his English familiarities to truly unlock that reflective side of himself. With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Gianluca Buccellati, McKenna found trust and friendship through their collaboration. As a homage to this, Declan and Luca came up with ‘Elevator Hum’, the third single on this album. With a playfully uplifting instrumentation, and a relatively transparent chorus hook, McKenna reflects on the collaboration between him and Buccellati in defining the meaning of the song: “It was just this nostalgic story of a friendship… It was just us kind of jamming and bouncing off each other in the studio. He would do one thing and I would follow. It’s like the lyrics and simplicity and the just sort of euphoric feeling… I think, for me, looking back, connects to the development of friendship over the course of making this album.”
With this collaboration, a diving point of the album, long conceptualised tracks finally came to fruition. One of these tracks was the first single of the project ‘Sympathy’, a bubbly and summery track about lowering expectations of himself and making peace with the world around him: “Sympathy won’t come around, so make peace and discover.” In McKenna’s words, ‘Sympathy’ became “a bit of a benchmark for the album… it definitely felt very new and different. So that was kind of it, really. It was one of the first things that inspired and informed the actual album itself, so it being the first single just made a lot of sense and the intro is just a bit of a slap in the face.” With a playful yet orchestral opening and a disjointed melodic hook for the chorus, ‘Sympathy’ really sets the tone for the rest of the album.
The thematic consistencies of freedom and peace are cast aside in the second single ‘Nothing Works’, my favourite track. It is rowdy, raucous and clever in combining the distinct naivety in the instrumentation with a profound maturity in his lyricism, actively calling out the music industry for its hold against younger artists; “I sing the song, and you didn’t like the words, I try to fix myself but nothing works.” This was a love/hate song for McKenna, as he tried to accept a life attached to an institution and be grateful for that, whilst fighting for the right to take his music in his own new direction. “The thing that’s damaging to music generally,” McKenna told me, “is that people are so scared to, like, actually do anything. It’s like, ‘Oh, we can just make the record that we made a few years ago that worked so well?’ And it’s just like, well, yeah, because that was the first time it happened. We need to move on now… If you play it safe, then it’s just not likely to have an impact. I think the music industry can’t work through fear.” Of course, McKenna is known for not paling from difficult topics. Fan favourite ‘British Bombs’ is as political and poignant as a song can get, to the point he recounted reconsidering its release. “I almost didn’t release that song,” McKenna revealed. “I really loved it when I wrote it, and then, for whatever reason… I just start to feel like, Oh, is this really cool? Is this really going to work? Is it a bit much?” As we can see from the song’s success, it speaks to a wider censorship of music, and how the industry needs to be hearing songs like these more than ever.
When addressing the album as a whole, I wondered what did actually happen to the beach (metaphorically speaking, of course)? Through a web of themes and stories, the album’s centre is based around a change, both on a personal and external level. In his own words, McKenna describes the album as “a broad look at change… it’s kind of looking at my life-changing, looking at the world changing, the landscape changing, and kind of just posing this question, which leads to more questions, really.” At the core of this album, Declan McKenna has transcribed these anxieties around change into a joyous and refined album that excels in all that makes music special, individuality.
There is a lot more of this interview to cover. For the full, uncut interview, be sure to check out our official Badger YouTube channel.
