I'm very interested in how visual artists think because I think the way that I think about music is similar. I'm very inspired by aesthetics and space.
— St. Lucia
Images and music are very connected.
We love the idea of having a really great lighting production.
I always like to push the extremes of what anybody thinks St. Lucia is.
In the past, I never wrote any love songs. That was not my thing.
When I was a kid, pre-1994 was still apartheid, so we didn't get a lot the subversive music from the States or from the U.K. A lot of the music we would get was the poppiest pop music, so I've never really had a bad association it.
One of the secrets of having a long-term relationship is realizing that even if you think the other person's great, at some point, they're going to mess up and annoy you.
At a festival, some people are just there because they're waiting for, like, Calvin Harris to come on later.
My secret talent is doing the chipmunk voice.
With my own stuff, I've always held to the belief that it should take as long as it takes until it feels right.
The music I used to make was a lot more rock, so I come from this background of head banging a lot, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it in the context of our music.
Generally, when I come to festivals, I just wander freely and see what happens.
We don't put limits on ourselves.
It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.
I was always very ambitious from a young age.
I think there's no way of avoiding the South African or African influence from coming into my music, just because I spent 19 years of my life there. Being a kid, my early musical experiences were there.
When I start working on an idea, I immediately record without judging it.
When I was a teenager, I never knew anything about art. I think in South Africa at that stage, no one was really exposed to it. There were no museums that had great artists in them.
We love the idea of really putting on a show. It's not just a band playing on the stage. There's a theatrical element to what's going on.
I feel like when you're in your late teens and early 20s, you just don't think about certain things in your life, and as you get older, you think about your parents getting older.
On the first recording, I wasn't singing out that much; I was shy with my singing.
I feel like Hawaiian shirts have definitely made a comeback.
I was really into Radiohead and Live.
It's easy when you're working together to let work things overtake your life, when all you're talking about is work, and you never leave that space.
St. Lucia in South Africa is this exotic place where you might go on vacation, and it evokes this nostalgic, hazy vibe.
I like to make bombueti, which is basically the South African national dish. It's basically a South African curry shepherd's pie kind of thing.
The upside to doing commercials is you have to work in a lot of different genres and make stuff that you never thought you'd be making.
My lyrics are quite train of thought, and they are all over the place, but they evoke something.
The reason I decided to become a solo artist in the first place was because I always felt that the results that I got from working as a team where everyone had equal say... ended up with compromised, watered-down results.
I'm kind of a little allergic to that whole, 'Let's go to L.A. and write a bunch of hits.'
I went through all these different phases. But it always felt like I was impersonating something, so I went back to some of the music I grew up with, like music from South Africa and the '80s stuff. I stopped suppressing it, and I stopped trying to be cool.
Nothing beats looking out to a sweaty, packed house full of fans.
I feel like, for me as an artist, it takes me a while of living with the tracks and living with the body of work to realize what it's all about.
I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process. I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.
Hearing about a visual artist's approach can change the way you think about songwriting.
Even though we're really, really happy with what we do, sometimes I think - as an adult, you think, 'Should I be more responsible with my life choices?'
We like to try doing new things in the shows and doing things that we haven't done before.
Everyone knows Earth, Wind & Fire. We know 'September,' all the big sort of hits from going out and dancing and stuff. When I was developing St. Lucia, I really started listening a little bit deeper, listening back to their stuff from the '70s and '80s, and really dug into it.
I feel like people associate us with the tropical Hawaiian print because, for a long time, we were wearing a lot of bright colors to exert our personality.
It's important to let things go.
I just believe that you have to allow each other to grow in the way you're meant to grow and not be afraid of losing that person, because if you grow apart, then you grow apart, and that's the way it was meant to be.
I used to do this huge jump off the drum riser. I had a good way of landing so I wouldn't hurt myself, but then one time, I landed on my elbow.
When I left the country to study in the U.K., I suddenly realized, and I'm still realizing, how much other stuff is out there - like My Bloody Valentine, who millions of people are passionate about, but they're still considered an 'underground' band.
When 'OK Computer' came out, that was so crazily different from anything that I'd ever heard; it was just amazing.
I don't think I necessarily write about dark things.
You can only absorb when you look back at photos: like when we played Coachella, and there are thousands of people in the audience, and you just walk on stage.
I'm always very cautious, because I don't want St. Lucia to turn out like everything else. I want to have a personality and be unique in some way that maybe limits our appeal to everyone in the world but makes us more special in some way.
I was always into things like Boyz II Men and boy bands, and then I got into Radiohead and alt-rock.
I was in this boys' choir for five years, when I was 10 until 15.
I really believe in albums, even though some people believe the year of the album has passed. I love singular pop songs or tracks, but what really affects me most deeply is if there's an hour of music or 45 minutes of music that flows really well and tells a story.
