Remember Clean Bandit, the Cambridge graduates who mixed strings with perky pop and found a winning chart formula in the early 2010s? In a new interview with the BBC the trio have revealed how they fell out with their record company and how they’ve adopted a new approach this decade.
The falling out seems somewhat bizarre. The band were a constant presence in the UK singles chart between 2014 to 2018, scoring four Number Ones with a string of guest vocalists.
Their signature hits were the Jess Glynne-fronted Rather Be, which was a huge global hit in 2014 and Rockabye with vocalists Sean Paul and Anne Marie, which ended up as 2016’s Christmas Number One. But this, it seems, wasn’t what their record label, Atlantic, really wanted.
“There was a push for us to stop having strings in our music,” cellist Grace Chatto says.
“We were told to stop making pop music, as well,” adds her bandmate Jack Patterson. “We were sent dance music playlists on Spotify and told ‘your music has to sit on here - only Harry Styles can make pop music’.”
The problem was that being, essentially, a production trio, Clean Bandit didn’t have much of an image. Because of this Atlantic were worried that their pop success would soon dry up. “We were told ‘you don’t have a face, you need to make club music',” recalls Patterson.
In a bid to do just that they ditched the violins and made their sound ‘darker’. Result: the pop success did dry up. They haven’t had a Top Ten hit since 2020. “The music didn’t feel like our music,” says Chatto. “Our fans were feeling it. We were feeling it. In the end, we were like, what's the point in doing anything?’
They left Atlantic and moved over to the Sony-backed B1/Ministry Of Sound imprint and as they explain in the interview the trio now have a more global approach to creating music. In 2024 alone writing sessions in Miami, Jamaica and Lagos have produced ‘two entire records’ of material.
“I hate to keep coming back to it, but our previous label was based in the UK,” explains Patterson, “so their priority was always what would work over here. If it wasn’t going to be played on Capital (Radio), they weren’t interested. Now, if we work with someone in Mumbai, that’s ok. The fact that we don’t have a singer means we can be light on our feet and work anywhere in the world.”
Indeed the band recently collaborated with Colombian singer Piso 21 and released Mar Azul to Spanish markets.
Back in the UK, the band’s new single is very much a return to their early sound. But Cry Baby only entered last week’s chart at a lowly 78. Clearly Clean Bandit still have some catching up to do...
