Platforms like TikTok has repopularised your song Headlock, but how did it feel two decades back when you had to create, advertise and market the Speak For Yourself album mostly by yourself?
In those days if you were lucky you got into music or style publications. The only real coverage I got was in the techie music mags, but then the track Hide and Seek was in The OC, Headlock got on the airwaves and I started getting notice. Imagine having social media and all this complimentary marketing in that era … but if I’d received then the kind of attention I get now, I might have made alternative decisions, so I would keep everything the same.
Did you actually take out a loan on your flat to finance Speak For Yourself?
It took me four years making an album in the group Frou Frou on Island Records, but it didn’t break even so I never saw a penny. Producing a follow-up with that label would have felt like returning to a place that damaged your treasured item. Once I left that contract, no bank would offer a loan. Then I realised that my apartment in Waterloo I’d bought for £120,000 was worth significantly more a year later. I remortgaged it to make the album and never looked back. Interestingly, after all the attention on TikTok recently I’ve just received my earnings from Frou Frou after decades.
In the past, you recorded and toured with Jeff Beck. How did the collaboration come about?
We were introduced when I was nineteen at a creative retreat in Miles Copeland’s castle in the the countryside. I was much younger than everybody else and introverted so I got pretty drunk. I was sitting outside playing guitar very badly to myself and Jeff said: “Allow me to teach you.” I said: “Wow, you’re good!” Afterwards I ended up operating a golf caddy around the estate and hitting Miles’s mum’s valued ceramics. A week later I got a message from my manager asking: “You encountered Jeff Beck?” He told me he was this really famous, legendary guitarist – I had no idea – who wanted me to collaborate vocally. I sang his beautiful track Nadia as best I could and did performances with him. He was a sweet man and I admired him greatly. Numerous artists from that generation are just so appreciative to have been able to do what they loved all those years, and their modesty is evident in comparison to the amount of success they achieved.
‘Imagine having online platforms and all this free promotion 20 years ago’ … Imogen Heap, the city, that year.
The Listening Chair is a innovative composition, intended to grow periodically every a seven-year cycle. How hard was it to distill a seven-year period into 60 seconds?
It was challenging to accomplish, but I sat in a physical listening chair and asked audiences: “What’s the song that you feel still needs to be written?” There were countless different answers, but all connected to life stages. For anyone aged early childhood it was single word answers like “cat” or “cat”, from 7-14 it was fun, 14-21 was about wanting to be themselves and mature years “professional uncertainty and that maybe I personal reevaluation.” I never got around to 35-42 because my sister died in my that period and I was unable to continue, but I’m about to release the concluding work, a extended composition called that name, about who I am now. This project is all true. The line “Wonderbra thrown around the German classroom … I’ll never live it down” is about the time my best friend – who wasn’t then – took my silly undergarment out of my drawer and threw it through the German classroom window. Then everyone threw it around. I was deeply embarrassed.
How did you get the idea for The Happy Song? It always pleases my infant whenever I put it on, so gratitude.
The baby milk company Cow & Gate wanted to create a piece of music that would make children joyful, so they put me in a research setting. I iterated various bits of music depending on their responses. My little girl started some of the musical phrases. We’d taken her to the an exhibition so that’s where “those playful lyrics” comes from. The sound at the outset is her enjoying a pet. Children adore that track, but it soothes adults, too.
Were you a troublemaker in class and if so what were you rebelling against?
I regret it now for some of the things I did. The breaking point came when I told the matron to F-off and they dismissed me, but they still needed me to be the highlight for the final show, so I ended up residing temporarily and she was really kind to me. I just found residential education tedious. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and autism, which might explain why I’ve always wanted to create change and do different projects.
What different looks have you sported?
In recent times, actually, all kinds of green and stuff. When I was younger I had self-image concerns, so like I’d wear garments to make my legs not look so skinny or wear over-the-top costumes with decorations. For the longest time I’d style my hair into a huge bush because I felt my head was too tiny. It’s only in the last few years I’ve realised I actually like my hair – I just needed to change the cut.
Over a decade since your last full-length release. Will we ever get a another album?
Certainly, I did the soundtrack work [The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – in Four Contemporary Suites], and a previously I made the music to an digital production called that title with my zoologist/film-maker friend Dan O’Neill, who gave me a bunch of sounds like environmental samples, which we turned into a double album. I just got bored of the song structure, but now I’m really interested in spontaneity and making up lyrics in the moment. I’ve spent countless time isolated creatively and I’ve missed a lot of life. There will be a album eventually which will be the conclusion of that phase but I’m more excited about creating music in real time.
‘I dedicated extensive time to recording and I’ve sacrificed experiences’ … Imogen appears in LA, spring 2025.
During that period, Taylor Swift invited fans to her property to hear her new album 1989 while she plied them with cookies. It seemed a very characteristically personal thing to do. Had you discussed listener connection when you collaborated on the closing track, that title?
Not exactly. I think, like me, she just values audience feedback. I’m constantly inviting listeners going: “What do you think?” It’s touching to see if something you’ve just completed connects people. I’ve had lots of fans round to private shows and I’m sure her fans are as nice as mine.
In the past, a article about your goals to use AI to enhance your live performances. Listeners had worries. Is it still active?
A hundred percent. When people think of artificial intelligence they maybe think of this conscious brain making all the music while I’m sitting there being a figurehead. I see it as a collaboration. Say I’m in a natural setting and there’s {dog sounds
