VV Brown

There is a key moment when talking to VV Brown about her new album, Samson &

Delilah, that tells you exactly where VV is coming from, and precisely what she is intent on

achieving. The first lyric she wrote after stepping back into the studio to work on the new

record sum it up. “Take me as I am,” she sings on Warrior (which appears as an acoustic

track on the deluxe edition) “No one does it better / All I want to do is lie here in the sand /

And learn the art of patience / The freedom to believe it / Take me as I am / My master of

my plan.”

It proves a prophetic manifesto. Over the course of Samson & Delilah’s 11 tracks, the

artist once synonymous with bright colours – and equally bright pop – comprehensively

confounds our perceptions and expectations of her. Sit down with VV, listen to her

account of the past few years, hear her describe her highs and her lows, the revelations

she experienced, the brave and characteristically determined decisions she made, and

it’s clear at once that VV’s second album was always going to involve a major change of

gear. Because VV’s life changed, her music had to change, too. Take the small matter of VV

starting her own record label, YOY Records. She answers only to herself now. “I had a label

meeting the other day,” she laughs. “That was fun. I gave myself a really hard time.”

The freedom that founding YOY gave her, the room for artistic manoeuvre, is audible

throughout Samson & Delilah. Now, you and I might well have come off promoting and

touring a debut album – 2009’s Travelling Like the Light – which spawned half a million-
selling singles in America and topped the charts in France, and resolved to repeat the

magic formula. But you and I aren’t VV Brown. Even a few minutes in her company are

enough to tell you that VV doesn’t do repeat. A multifaceted, fiercely determined artist,

she was faced with a dilemma, and – as if there could ever have been any doubt about the

outcome – chose the option that liberated and empowered her. YOY Records is one result

of that choice. Samson & Delilah is another. But VV has previous when it comes to evading

easy pigeonholing. Her online fashion store, VVVintage, not only gave her an outlet for

her enduring interest in image and design, it provided her with an invaluable grounding in

running a business, too. “It taught me so much about business,” she says. “I know all about

spread sheets, tax, budgets, everything. Running your own record label is empowering. I

want to sign and help other musicians; this is just the beginning. I hope it shows other artists

that you can do it this way. It’s liberating. And there is no compromise.”

“No compromise” is a phrase that occurs repeatedly when you talk to VV, a mission

statement that informs her approach to pretty much everything in life. It led her to abandon

Travelling Like the Light’s mooted follow-up, Lollipops and Politics, and walk away from her

major-label deal. It gave her the courage to step away from writing and recording altogether

for six months, and instead immerse herself in culture in all its forms, reconnecting with

the artistic multiplicity – music, of course, but art, photography, film and fashion as well –

she was drawn to and engrossed in as a teenager. One of the many thrilling things about

Samson & Delilah is the way it reflects that multiplicity – visually, vocally, musically, lyrically.

“My boyfriend is an art director,” says VV, “and the world he’s involved in is pure art, no

compromise. There’s no questioning, it just is what it is. And he opened up my eyes and ears

to culture viewed from a completely different perspective. I started to listen to music in a

new way, where sound is more like landscaping. When I was writing the first album I was

naive, I was still learning; it was all about song, melody, lyric, track. I suddenly started seeing

music in a different way – that an album could be like an opera, a story from beginning to

end, and that you can tell that story sonically.”

Substitute for Love, the album’s opening track, sets down a marker for what follows. VV’s

extraordinarily operatic vocal is the first surprise; but so, too, is the sound world the song

creates, where VV’s voice is just one texture among many, all working in the service of a rich

and complex – and incredibly dark – sonic palette. “I’ve almost had to relearn how to sing,”

VV continues. “I grew up in the church, where it is natural to sing soulfully, and that came

quite naturally on the first record. But this time, I wanted every part, every nook and cranny

of the album, to be conceptual. And that’s quite scary, because I was really challenging

myself as a writer. I said to the mixing engineer, ‘This is not about me as a singer, this is

about my voice sitting in alongside the music’ – almost like it’s another instrument. And that

approach has informed everything – I’m not even on the front cover of the album. I really

wanted it to be about the project, the music, rather than ‘Ta-DA! I’m singing a song!’. I’m

not even in the new video.”

Her involvement in every single aspect of the album – its writing, recording, production

and mixing, the short films she commissioned to accompany the record, the artwork, the

budget, A&R and distribution – is testament to VV’s determination to create a piece of work

that documents the journey she has taken in the past few years, and the lessons she has

learnt. Working with Dave Okumu of The Invisible, the French producer and musician Pierre-
Marie Maulini (aka STAL) and her long-time friend engineer & producer Laurence Aldridge,

VV came to the project after a period of deep immersion in the music of determinedly

experimental artists such as Bjork, Fever Ray, Kraftwerk and Little Dragon. “I’ve always

looked up to artists such as Bjork and The Knife, and music that comes from a place of art

rather than this aggressive commercial approach. Like them, I want control over my art, and

I don’t see that as negative. I want to get it right.”

Writing Warrior was the catalyst for a burst of creativity after that long, six-month pause

for thought. “I was so excited that I went and bought a ton of recording equipment, kitted

out a room, bought an old Moog, put Bjork and Grace Jones posters on the wall. I just

thought: ‘Do you know what? I’m ready’.

A natural risk-taker and a self-confessed obsessive compulsive personality, an artist whose

“silent success” has continued to build through syncs, writing for others, film and television

work, modelling and advertising campaigns, VV resolved to make an album that stretched

her boundaries. “What I value in life, how I judge success, has completely changed. If you

are proud of what you do, that’s where it all begins. If my music doesn’t move me, then

it isn’t right. You can make music by committee, with dozens of opinions shaping the

outcome, or you can just do it yourself. I said to my boyfriend, ‘If this is the last piece of

music I ever do, if I just go away after this, I want people to know the truth about me – this

has to be the purest record I ever make. Every aspect of it has to be me, no compromise, the

pure truth.’”

Listening to the dark-as-night electronica of songs such as the sinister, sepulchral Knife,

the shimmering, LCD Soundsystem-like Faith, to the defiant, propulsive The Apple, the

ghostly, haunting I Can Give You More (with its tribal drums and cut-up-and-sampled

vocals), to Igneous’s pounding, rap-driven polemics, and you know that Samson & Delilah

is the pure truth. “Don’t patronise me,” VV sings on The Apple, “I’m not your clown.” Too

right she isn’t. VV Brown is in control, in charge of her destiny, and making music inspired

by art rather than commerce. It suits her. “I’m like a bulldozer about this,” she laughs. “I’m

addicted to music and art – I can’t live without them. I’ve never been attracted to the idea

of fame. Music for me is like being in a relationship. That passion, that love and craving, is

always there, but you have to feed it, or it won’t bubble up and explode.” Take her as she is

– because she’s right: no one does it better. The master of her plan.

http://vvbrown.com/