Gregory Porter

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2021

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How good are you at getting quiet and sitting with yourself? Jazz singer Gregory Porter feels that this is the place your most authentic, distinctive creativity will come from.

In this chat with Fearne, Gregory explains why you don’t need to be an overnight success. It’s ok to take your time, indeed you’ll benefit from taking that time to learn, and hone your craft. He also talks through the false starts his career has seen, and why it was his vivacious mother who encouraged him to keep persevering.

Gregory’s new album, Still Rising, is out now, and he’ll be on tour in the UK in May 2022.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show where we take any potential
0:06.4	negative energy and channel it into something more constructive. Today I'm meeting
0:11.6	Gregory Porter. Sometimes if you have something to say, sometimes being quiet
0:17.8	with yourself and being alone can be the point at which you connect to the
0:24.9	right move. The crowd may not influence you, you may be the influencer but you
0:31.3	got to get quiet and alone in order to do that. That can be scary and an original
0:36.7	idea is lonely. Gregory is an absolutely stunning jazz singer. That doesn't
0:43.5	really do him justice though. His album Liquid Spirit won a Grammy for Best Jazz
0:48.1	Vocal Album and it's had over 20 million streams. He didn't necessarily have
0:53.7	the overnight success society can sometimes blind us into thinking we have a
0:58.2	right to. Music is something that's been innate within him since childhood but
1:03.7	his career is a phenomenal lesson in the importance of perseverance, dedication
1:09.1	and self-belief. California born Gregory was in London when we spoke last
1:15.5	month and I loved hearing his thoughts about how taking our time and getting
1:20.1	to know ourselves in those quieter moments can elicit the most authentic
1:25.0	creativity. I also really like talking to him about food. Right laptop I'm
1:32.4	ready to finish this thesis. What thesis? The one I've spent two years working on.
1:36.2	Don't have it. What's the last version you saved? Got final version, final final
1:40.6	version and no I'm actually serious now this is the last version I will never
1:43.7	save another version I promise version two. Surely that one. No. Why? It's corrupted.
1:50.7	Swap. Swap. When you upgrade to an Acer Chromebook they come with Google Drive
1:56.0	built in so you'll never lose a file again and save. Already saved. Oh thanks.
	...

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