John Newman: Ego, inner children, and bin men

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

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

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ask your inner child what brings them most joy: that’s how we can start to find happiness and purpose as adults. DJ, producer, singer, and songwriter John Newman has recently pivoted his career in order to better serve his inner child.

In this chat with Fearne, John talks about how rejection in his childhood, coupled with the intoxicating feeling of being wanted by everyone as a famous artist, led him down a volatile path. Fame, he says, is a drug that was having an impact on those around him as well as himself.

They also chat about what happens when you’re fearful of letting anything ‘negative’ touch you, as well as what impact being aware of death from a young age can have.Through doing the inner work, inviting practices such as manifestation into his life, and reconnecting with his innate passion for music, John is entering his most exciting chapter yet.

John’s smash hit single Call Your Name, with DJ/producer Alesso, is out now.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to a happy place with me Fern Cotton.
0:04.8	This is the show that asks how we can gently nudge ourselves
0:08.7	towards more contentment each day.
0:11.0	Today I'm chatting to John Newman. I was so depressed and so angry and I had a
0:17.4	mixture of ego like bullied kid syndrome like I had all these things coming
0:22.2	through at once that wanted to show that I had this and do this and nail it and it just felt like in a dream where you're reaching for something and it's slipping further away and I just completely took it out on the people around me. I became so angry at the whole situation that relationships that have been going on a while just couldn't function anymore.
0:41.0	I think I'm back at somewhere that's pleasing me as a kid and a child.
0:45.8	John grew up on a council estate in Northern England, DJing on borrowed gear.
0:51.2	He went on to become one of the country's biggest artists.
0:54.8	Feel the love, a collaboration with Rudimental, went straight to number one in 2012.
1:00.1	His own debut single, Love Me Again, went to number one a year later.
1:05.0	And in 2014 he teamed up with Calvin Harris on Blame, which broke the world record for the most streamed song in one day.
1:14.4	Now after a lot of soul searching,
1:17.0	John's carved a path back to his roots,
1:19.6	curating hybrid sets that combine his signature live vocals with
1:23.8	DJing. I loved getting to chat to John about what's brought in full circle
1:29.6	back to where he started and we talked a lot about the idea of pleasing and serving our inner child.
1:37.2	We should be asking them what we want to do because they understand our joy best.
1:41.8	I also really appreciated John's honesty in this chat. He calls
1:45.6	fame a drug and it was one that was particularly potent for him. There's also some great insight in here into how those horrible salacious headlines work.
1:57.0	I think you're going to really enjoy this chat. Rolling Stone Raves, Maestro is an absolute marvel and one of the finest films of the year.
2:07.0	He can be the first great American conductor.
	...

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