Feature: Alfie Templeman
Words and Photos by: Tatiana Whybrow-Price
Taking the indie scene by storm in the last few years, 18 year old singer songwriter Alfie Templeman is already in the process of releasing a new mini-album Forever Isn’t Long Enough after 3 previously well-received EPs. Based in Bedfordshire, “one of the most unflattering places in the world” according to Alfie, he writes his music in his bedroom out of pure boredom, and more importantly an inherent love for writing and creating music. Even before Templeman started to see success within releases online, he tells us he’s always liked listening to music, and realised “making music was just next level for me, it was something I always enjoyed doing.” Combining his love of music and creating it himself, Alfie decided it was worth putting out there for other people to enjoy whether it be for just one person, or a million. With making albums being “the cherry on top” when it comes to creating things.
At only age 15, Alfie’s musical career picked up after EP release ‘Like An Animal’, with Alfie telling us it just felt “surreal, but I guess that feeling of surrealism has never really disappeared.” Jumping from a few thousand monthly listeners to a hundred thousand within a few days, Templeman tells us it was en eye-opener that he was actually capable of doing this as a career: “Once that happened it was like I can literally do anything, considering a few months ago I had basically no listeners and all of a sudden I was hitting around 100k.” Being so young the quick success was enjoyable, but now that he’s older he tells us he “wants to hide away a little bit more.”
With Alfie writing so much of his music from a young age, he has accumulated quite the backlog of un-released songs and tells us that ‘Wait, I Lied’ is one of the many older songs that is finally being released to the world on his new record. As it was originally written 2 years ago, it was first planned to be part of the Happiness In Liquid Form EP but due to feeling unhappy with how the mix of the track sounded after 15 attempts perfecting it, Templeman decided to hold it back. With over 200 other songs kept away in Alfie’s “vault”, he says he intends to release more but doesn’t quite know when that will be: “when my debut album comes out, after that maybe it will come to a 5 or 10 year anniversary to one of my EPs where I could extend it with some unreleased songs but I like the idea of not releasing too much as I’m quite neat with releasing songs.” It’s important to Alfie that all his albums work nicely together, and pointed out that DGWT and Happiness In Liquid Form both fit together coherently while still having their differences.
The new mini-album ‘Forever Isn’t Long Enough’ due to release May 7th, features title track and first single prior to the album release ‘Forever Isn’t Long Enough.’ We questioned what inspired him to share this track first, and Alfie let us in on a little secret: “I normally do this thing where I release the title of the record first and people don’t seem to guess that it’ll be album title too so I keep doing it… I did it with DGWT and Like An Animal too.” As well as being a regular occurrence for him to release the title track as it’s the name of the new project, he also feels it’s a step up for him as an artist, especially with Happiness in Liquid Form being the end of an era and this opening the next chapter. We have also heard two other singles from the new album, ‘Shady’ and ‘Everybody’s Gonna Love Somebody’, with Templeman telling us “they [the first two singles] came out so long ago and now all of a sudden ‘Everybody’s Gonna Love Somebody’ came out of the blue so it almost doesn’t feel like they’re part-and-parcel but they are.”
Digging a little more into the new release, Alfie tells us the new album follows no particular concept but tells a loose story of him growing up and leaving school to focus on his music. “It still has more of a concept than any of my previous releases, there’s still something that ties it all together which is just me and how I’ve grown up.” After previously teasing ‘Wait, I Lied’ from the new album through VEVO Discovery when they made the rare exception of allowing him to play an unreleased song, Alfie tells us it’s now the track he’s most excited for people to properly hear. Joking about how desperately fans were begging for it on Spotify, he tells us he’s thrilled to finally be putting it out and hopes it will be as well-received as the VEVO release was a few months ago.
Asking Alfie whether to expect any differences or new sounds on the new release, he tells us “yes, I’ve been messing around with a MOOG synthesiser which is an analog synth that you can play around with without recording it through a computer… so that’s cool. And also almost the way I record guitar straight through a pedalboard rather than an interface is a lot more real.” The new record still feels authentic and encompasses parts of Alfie’s earlier releases in it while still taking a new direction that leans more towards pop, in the hopes that it should allow more people to enjoy it.
Just like with many other musicians, the pandemic has been a bit of a challenge for Alfie when it comes to putting together new songs or finding inspiration to write new ones, with him more often forgetting ideas and writing less songs than usual. But thankfully with a 2022 tour in the books, Alfie is looking forward to having something to do and look forward to as well as go back to the unimaginable feeling of playing shows: “I’m just looking forward to seeing my fans meet new friends in the audience, and the fact that I haven’t played a show in over a year means there are new fans who haven’t heard my songs live… and now they’ll hear some of their favourite songs in real life.” When asked what he missed the most from touring, Alfie tells us that he misses the feeling of coming outside of his body whilst on stage and stepping into that other person as well as connecting with his fellow band-mates through their funny on-stage facial expressions and overall just enjoying the feeling of playing live.
To conclude our interview, Templeman says:
“I would like to actually mention that mental health wise if you need to reach out to someone you should. What’s the worst that could happen? If you’re having a bad day, you’re feeling down, it’s a good idea to get out there. Even knowing things will open up again can be just as scary as not doing anything… so it’s okay to not be okay. Just take your time, things will get better, get the help that you need. Trust me, it’s worth it.”
Find Alfie on his socials at @AlfieTempleman and pre-save or purchase his new mini-album Forever Isn’t Long Enough releasing May 7th here!
