“How do I still hate myself when I’m a narcissist?” Good line, eh. That’s the poser alt-pop provocateur Michael Aldag put to himself on recent single ‘Apathy’.
You’ll have heard of Michael if you’re on TikTok. Or you’re under 21 and from Wirral. But a whole lot more of us would have heard from him if thrilling new music still swam the mainstream like it used to do.
Art exists everywhere, but these days only really lives and thrives in social media spaces. Renaissance man Aldag - he writes, sings and produces most of his own material - knows these spaces well: “She’s got her Only Fans but I’m not gonna’ judge her for that / Maybe she could be my girlfriend,” he sings on this year’s synth-heavy John Hughes-y-sounding ‘Girlfriends’.
“I downloaded and joined TikTok when the lockdown hit and started making videos to promote my music,” he tells us over Zoom, with background drizzle blurring the reality behind both our screens on a supposedly late summer’s morning.
“But I wasn’t very good at it! So I started doing comedy sketches and trying to be funny on my couch. To make myself laugh, really! But it started getting traction, so I’d then go live on the app and play music to people from my laptop. That’s what got me an audience and a record contract.”
Easier than waiting years for a big break, travelling in a van ‘cross country and singing to disinterested audiences, perhaps.
But Aldag has paid his dues: “I’d been singing in choirs since I was a kid, up until I was about 14, but I was bored of singing Benjamin Britten songs so started to write my own,” he laughs. “I got a guitar, started writing and gigging straight away and went to open mic nights to cut my teeth. I was just dying to play my own tunes.”
They are tunes, too. It’s a brave new wordsmith who reaches for melodies beyond most modern grasps to mix straight lines with abstract breakbeats and sounds.
The Wirral songwriter bends the arc between Bleachers, Arctic Monkeys and Sleaford Mods with wobbly synths that hum of, or with, the sounds of the late 80s/early 90s, while the tales Aldag tells take the kitchen sink from the Woodchurch Estate to West Kirby.
“You’ve got to get out of your own way where I come from,” he says. “It’s hard, but my best work comes to me when I come back home after spending time in London or wherever. I’ll come home from wherever I’ve been recording and ideas will come to me when I’m running.
“I love running and lots of my songs have arrived at the end of a run. I’ll run to Red Rocks Marsh, past Hoylake or through West Kirby and something will always arrive.”
There is perpetual motion to Aldag’s best songs. Not everything he’s released is a classic, we get the feeling a proper, concise LP will be the thing to put the synth amongst the algorithms for him, but singles such as the moving ‘Apathy’ and the Sam Fender-fronts-The War On Drugs-go pop of the driving ‘Bleak’ suggest something special.
“I’ve recently had a songwriting epiphany,” he shouts at us with the infectious enthusiasm that has turned TikTok on. “I’m driving my label mad by re-recording stuff that I wanna’ peel back.
“Hopefully I’ll be playing these songs for years to come and I really want to be proud of them. Don’t get me wrong, nobody has made me do anything I’d recoil from, but I’ve noticed that the things that have done the best for me are the things I really love and not the things people have asked me to do.
“These days, promo on just one song is so full on - you’ll be talking about your tune every day for six weeks! - so you’re going to end up hating your own work eventually! But I want to like what I’ve done enough that you only start to hate it further down the line…”
Wise words from a wise head who retains wonder for the poetic surroundings of where he’s from. Where is he going? That’ll be up to what light Aldag lets into the cracks that might appear as the artist in him opens up the vein
“I love a one word song title,” he smiles as the summer rain brightens up into the sun that should shine when you’re talking about music in August. “Honestly I do… There's nothing I love more than a one word name for a song.
“Two words will be the furthest I go, you’ll see. One word… so you can pick the song up like a sweet, move it around in your mouth and then you’re done with it.”
Find out more about Michael Aldag’s music, his tour dates, merch and more on his website
