JAMIE CULLUM
Jazz-pop maestro Jamie Cullum has long suffered tedious barbs about his stature, but his latest record Taller reaches new heights. Sophie Williams hears him out.
Jamie Cullum knows that he has always been the butt of a running joke. Standing proudly at around 5’4”, the 40-year-old jazz-pop singer and pianist has been gently teased about his height since childhood. And throughout an illustrious career spanning two decades, tabloids, fans and the like haven’t been particularly shy when discussing his physical stature.
But now, he wants the whole world to know that he has always been in on the gag, too. When it came to beginning work on his eighth studio album, Cullum decided to put it all upfront by naming the LP – you guessed it – Taller. “There is the obvious joke of the album in that it is called Taller,” he explains over the phone. “But there is also a deeper side to it – Taller is so much about this feeling of looking within, introspection. Making Taller helped me to develop a greater sense of emotional maturity as I began to think more about my feelings and ways to open up properly. I knew that I was trying to grow in some way as a person.”
And grown up he has done. Taller is a confident step forward for an artist once heralded as the revivalist of jazz on a mainstream level, an appellation that came to life via his platinum-selling third album Twentysomething. That record helped him to finish 2003 as the UK’s biggest selling jazz artist of all time. But to Cullum nowadays, the artist behind Twentysomething sounds “quite innocent”, as he sees his former self as “someone that was simply trying to find his own voice.”
The aura of Taller is, in contrast, one of sublime confidence that translates to a musician wholly self-assured with a recent foray into respective avenues of bluesy pop, R&B and soul. “When I hear the music that I am making now, I feel like this is where I want to be,” he says. “I want to be making this music that feels personal, and as a songwriter, I feel like things are improving, which is great! You can always get better, but I am finally happy, really, really happy with where I am. For now, the interest is just in writing songs that move me. When you start to think more about songwriting, you think less about the things that are prominent in the case of jazz – improvisation, focusing on musicianship, et cetera.”
He is quick to theorise that Taller works tirelessly to position him at these musical crossroads, but that doesn’t necessarily mark a departure from his flourishes of big band swing that millions once fell in love with. “As a songwriter, you think more about the lyrics and how they intersect with the music, which is a process that may lead you to other genres. If people have stayed with me for this long, it is because I am still following my own nose.”
Billed as a “love letter” to his wife, author and model Sophie Dahl, it also is on Taller where some of the macro-troubles of Cullum’s world – Brexit, masculinity and anxiety – are refracted through the micro lens of a deeply personal relationship. Across 12 eloquent, expressive and open tracks, he reconsiders the ways in which one can grow via intimacy and closeness, just as marriage can do.
“I think that my relationship has really shaped who I am in many ways. It is a really interesting situation, and that is what this exploration is all about,” he muses. “What did I see once I saw myself reflected back? For me, it feels like when you commit to someone and things go correctly, you can see a much clearer picture of yourself.”
Still growing in all ways but physical, Jamie Cullum in 2020 is an artist renewed and matured. It’s as if he always knew that he would have the last laugh.
Jamie Cullum’s Cardiff concert has now been postponed to later in the year.