I basically work all the time.
— St. Lucia
I think the job of the first single is kind of like being a diplomat for a country.
We have such an energetic live show. We have so much fun onstage. We swap instruments. We might possibly be the sweatiest band in the business.
I like confusing people and challenging myself.
St. Lucia was a place were we used to go on vacation - not every year, but we went there a couple of times. I remember the last time that I went there, I was really small, and the only memory that I have is that my dad was going swimming or fishing one day - and I really, really wanted to go - but I was too young.
When I'm making the music, the songs that I get most excited about definitely make me feel good, but often, it's a really good feeling combined with some kind of melancholy element.
The longer I lived overseas, the more I appreciated being from South Africa.
The music has a very strong escapist quality to it. In the moment where you feel like you need to escape, or when you are escaping, that's a good time to listen to 'When the Night.'
It took a while of performing and pushing the boundaries and starting to involve the audience to feel comfortable.
I will readily confess that I'm a coffee addict.
The name came about from me just closing my eyes and sticking a pen on a map of South Africa. St. Lucia was the fifth place that the pen landed on.
You can't be 100 percent selfish when you're working with somebody else.
We've always enjoyed touring, which is fortunate because we're always on the road. The most difficult part is that time passes by so quickly. It's hard to pay attention to your normal life because shows are all-encompassing.
I feel like a lot of bands have done amazing covers, but whenever we start working on it, whenever we try it in rehearsal, it never feels right for me to do the song.
A short story can be really interesting and enriching and powerful, but a novel just contains so much more information and richness and depth. That's what I strive for in my music. I want to create something that's like a longform statement.
I was born in South Africa and lived there until I was 19.
It is funny to me that people think of St. Lucia as this, like, feel-good band.
I find that when I'm under pressure, I work really well, but then you have those days where you sleep for four hours because you drive to a venue overnight and arrive there the next day, and you're cranky and not dealing with it very well.
It sounds kind of cliche, and a lot of people say it about our music, but I think a good place to hear our music for the first time is on vacation, or somewhere warm, on the beach or something like that.
I love so many songs from the '80s, but I'm obliged to the big ones.
One of my favorite things is producing other artists because, in many ways, it's a lot more freeing than working on your own music.
When you work together in a creative way, you have to be less selfish about your ideas and learn to let both parties feel valued. Of course, that's also a really great quality to have in a relationship, too.
I guess you could say it's one of the great equalizers: that it just feels good to be bad.
I like my music to transport people somewhere.
With Prince especially... he was a really great songwriter and keyboardist and singer and was so good at so many different things, you couldn't pin him down. That really inspires me.
The '80s definitely influence my music in a big way.
To me, St. Lucia isn't just purely feel-good; there are these other juxtaposed elements as well.
St. Lucia represents, for me, where I found myself musically once I stopped trying to be cool, in some way, and stopped stopping these guilty pleasure influences I had from coming through.
My favorite pieces that I've written, either for St. Lucia or for myself, have always had a transporting quality to them, where they take you out of the moment and somewhere positive that feels nostalgic and happy but sad at the same time.
The first city I ever came to in the states was Des Moines. I was 12 and was in a boys' choir.
You can hear 'Human Nature' all over our song 'Elevate.' It's an amazing song. That hooky arpeggio in the beginning is great. Unlike most Michael Jackson ballads, even though I'm a huge Michael Jackson fan, this song is kind of restrained. It's not a huge, crazy song you can dance to - it's just this beautiful piece of music.
The album that really got me interested in how to create weird sounds, and pretty much changed my life, was 'OK Computer.' Funnily enough, my parents bought it for me because it was recommended to them, and the first 2 times I heard it, I absolutely hated it.
I had to embrace just basically writing and recording on my laptop. On long drives through the Rockies, I would take my laptop and mess around with ideas and make rough sketches of songs.
