Blur’s Dave Rowntree unveils debut solo single “London Bridge”

MUSIC NEWS

“London Bridge” is Rowntree’s first outing as a solo artist, and is accompanied by a Cauboyz-directed video. The song was written by Rowntree and Gary Go, and production from Leo Abrahams.

Table of Contents

The star said “When I was in my early 20s, in Colchester, I would start to see the number 126 everywhere,” Rowntree explained. “I lived at a house that was 126, I’d get a bus that was 126. It felt to me that the universe was trying to alert my attention to 126 for some reason, even though the rational part of me knew that that was bollocks.”

“So, “London Bridge” was one of those,” he continued. “Things just started happening when I was near London Bridge, or going past on the bus, or on the tube going underneath London Bridge. I would just notice events occurring, and it was slightly unsettling.”

He added, “I had to confront my London Bridge demons and that’s what the song is about.”

Rowntree also said of going solo, “I’m really excited to release my first single as a solo artist. It’s from a body of work that I’ve been putting together over the last couple of years, and I’m humbled to be releasing it on the legendary Cooking Vinyl label.”

Dave Rowntree tells us about debut solo single ‘London Bridge’ – and what’s next for Blur

Admitting that the song is not representative of the rest of his solo material to come, Rowntree revealed that the sound of the song came from the same synthy place as much of his work composing scores for film and TV – with credits including Netflix series The One and the BBC technological crime thriller The Capture.

“It started as a guitar song, but I was never really happy with that so I started again and turned it into a synth song,” Rowntree told us. “It was that period of my life in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when the London Bridge memory thing happened, so it seemed like a natural route to go down to get all of my old analogue synths and drum machines out and start again that way.”

Rowntree started work on solo material around four years ago, penning songs in his home studio for himself between his “dayjob” hours as a composer. “In my downtime, I started writing songs, meeting up with other people and collaborating with them, coming up with ideas,” he said. “We did that with Blur and that part of being a musician was something I’d really been missing.

“For me, music is all about collaboration, and that’s what I’ve tried to do here with a lot of interesting people. I’ve just been trying to navigate my way around the fear of a blank page.”