This is the second part of a two-part interview with German singer-songwriter Tim Kamrad, who rose to fame in 2017 with his hit single Changes. Known for his pop-driven hits like I Believe, Feel Alive, and I Hope You End Up Alone (With Me), the 27-year-old took on a new role in 2024 as a coach on The Voice of Germany.
Our expert A&R guru, Richard Rogers, leads the conversation.
Richard Roger: I did think there might be the opportunity there to do both of those. Please both sets of fans.
Kamrad: I think if you make an album of like 12 singles it gets boring. You need two great ones and maybe 10 okay ones and I think there’s nothing worse than just an okay single. You need a really great pop song or an indie song. Do you know we do a blues song live? It has a long guitar solo. This is really unexpected for people, it has a long guitar solo and people that hear my songs on the radio would not expect that. It’s a really cool moment in the set.
RR: the line ‘I’d rather fall asleep than fall in love’ will I believe (excuse the pun) go down as one of the iconic song lyrics of the 2020s decade. When you were growing up, what were the sort of lyrics and artists that you were really into, those that really inspired you?
K: well, you wouldn’t expect it but in fact, I grew up with the Beatles so the Beatles. That was the first thing that was music for me maybe for like 5, maybe 10 years of me growing up.
RR: through your parents?
K: yeah through my dad. So I know every lyric and every song but as time moved on, I got more into the current pop music, so I feel that someone like Ed Sheeran was an artist that really inspired me to go on stage even if I didn’t have a band and just play. Also to focus more on lyrics because I was not coming from a native speaking context, it’s quite different listening to English music. You rather listen to the things that stick to your head rather than the clever ‘I’d rather fall asleep than fall in love’ line. I feel in Germany most people that know this song on the radio don’t know this line but they know the ‘I believe’ line. But I think this line is one of the main reasons why it got big on TikTok so I think you need the combination of something easy to sing and a deeper meaning.
RR: which is I suppose the same as your latest six track EP whereby you have the latest single ‘Friends’ that includes in the song, the line which is the EP title.
K: yes it’s the same thing. I’ve always loved the album titles where they are actually buried somewhere in the biggest single and you listen to that single and you hear that title in there and you go ‘oh yeah I know so and so’. So you’ve got an EP and the song ‘I Hope You End Up Alone (With Me which was a single and the line that is the album EP title ‘Not Good At Playing Love Songs’ is in that song.
RR: I’m currently writing a book on Taylor Swift.
K: oh really?
RR: yes it’s my 10th book. It’s my third book on A&R. The first was on Depeche Mode and the second one on ABBA. I just wondered what your thoughts were on Taylor Swift the artist, because pop can be described as a dirty word but personally I love it. Everything from growing up in the 80s listening to bands such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode which really was pop and later a darker pop which they took slightly avant garde. So for you, how do you feel about somebody like Taylor Swift? Have you heard the whole of the new album?
K: I don’t listen to it every day
RR: there are 31 tracks on there
K: it’s a bit too many tracks for me
RR: that’s the problem. It’s a little bit wishy-washy, all a little bit watered down. But there are three tracks towards the end of the album and they just blow the rest away. It’s incredible for me that they leave them so late. Not great A&R in my estimation but it will still sell loads.
RR: do you go to big studios or not or do you record at your studio and then the record company takes it and get it mixed and mastered? How does it work?
K: we’re mixing it at the studio where we are and we send it to a mastering place in New York to a guy called Tutsijo who masters it. He is one of the greatest mastering engineers that I know. He gets our music and he gets our style, I say ‘our’ because it’s the producers and it’s me and we’re working very closely together. Tutsijo really gets the style and he finishes it off really nicely I think and if we’re going to LA to write songs or to London or whatever I always try not to go to studios I always try to be in a living room or something. I feel it seems so relaxed when you’re not forced to be in a room where music is created, better like a bed or a couch and your brainstorming and something comes across. The best songs come unconsciously I mean the sentence ‘I believe I rather fall asleep than fall in love’ was really like a stupid sentence that we said in the room and we thought we can use that. It wasn’t like we booked the biggest studio that we knew and made the biggest beat. That was an unconscious moment and let the unconscious happen and I think that you can do (something special) rather on a couch in a great living room with a cool view rather than in a really expensive studio for two days.
RR: I agree. There’s a place in Italy called Erice, it’s a fantastic place if you just wanna get away in Sicily and write then just get a hotel there, sit there with a guitar or whatever and just write. I really recommend it. I wrote a minor hit and 3 other album tracks in just a week for an artist there once.
K: I love those places. It does something to your mind in a way that you can’t describe to people and I always have to explain to my publisher yeah, like I’m not going to LA on a paid vacation that I have to pay for it’s rather more like getting my head into a different space. Because you know Bochum is nice but it’s not the city that you want to write the biggest summer song in. It makes me want to write a depressed one. Laughs
So if I want to write a happy song, I need to go to a different place. it is brilliant.
RR: what I will say is that your drum patterns are phenomenal.
K: thank you so much.
RR: and I don’t know if it’s you or your producer or it’s you and your producer together but I do think they are excellent. As an A&R man, producer and songwriter, I personally believe that you are the best German artist in the country currently. I’m not saying that to suck up either.
K: Wow, thank you so so much. It is an honour.
Kamrad’s latest EP ‘Wanna Be Friends’ was released in November 2024 and he is currently supporting this release on the ‘Friends Tour’ in Germany, Switzerland and Austria for a number of months from January 2025 with more tours planned going into Winter 2026 across Europe. In addition he is now one of the judges on ‘The Voice Of Germany’.
Richard Rogers new book ‘Taylor Swift – ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ the Ultimate A&R Companion Guide’ will be released in April 2025 with contributions from Kamrad and Midge Ure. It will be available to Music2deal members for a heavily discounted once only price.
Links:
https://music2deal.com/gb/richardrogers
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