New album as Julia Fordham plays Portsmouth and Brighton

Julia plays Portsmouth Guildhall on November 15 and The Old Market, Hove on November 16. She makes the point that both are sold out, but tickets are still available for the Union Chapel in London on November 19.

“The new album was a long time coming but really it was just something I discovered on my iPhone,” Julia says. “I record all my demos and my songs in progress on my phone. I sing them into voice memo and I've been singing and writing all these songs for the last ten years so I just thought let's see what is in there. And I found that the songs that I had recorded were a lot of them strong partnership songs about the relationship that I had with the father of my child and I just started really thinking about that. It started to seem to me that there was a strong concept here. My kid is now 19 and at college and we did our best.”

“That's the idea. You hear so many people saying ‘Oh, the relationship didn't work out and I should have seen the red flags’, and you think how many people on their wedding day think that they're marrying their soul mates and yes they do give it their best shot but they just don't make it. But when they look at the people that they've brought into the world, then they always say that they're glad that they were together, and I just really leaned into that thought. It's so positive even if the relationship doesn't well end well. You might not get your soul mate but what if the soul is the soul of the unborn child that is actually on the other side manipulating the two of you to come together to give them life. I just really loved that idea. We think we are running everything and we think we are in charge of everything but what if we are just being manipulated by the soul of this unborn child from the other side?”

The album release is just as exciting as ever but very much in a different world these days “I remember in the early days when I recorded, there would be vinyl and CD. In fact CDs were just coming in when I had my first album and there were so many discussions about the packaging. That was the thing. And there was the thrill of those days of record labels and Top Of The Pops and that whole thing about how you moved in the world to be relevant. At the time it was all about hearing yourself in the top 40. But now an album is just about seeping into the algorithm. There's no fun in that. For me there was something exhilarating and exciting in the beginning. Now it is more about continuing the focus on the work that you are making and trying to bring it to people out there.”

But Julia is absolutely accepting of the changing world: “The only thing you can guarantee is that things will change and you have got to radically embrace them, embrace what is before you. And that means releasing the album digitally and then doing limited CD and vinyl sales to sell at gigs. I don't lament it. It's just the way it is. I think the phone and immediate access have changed people's attention span. And you just have to accept that. I don't want to hear just one song. I want to hear ten songs by the same person. I want to hear a body of work. And I want to hear the running order. But now the frequency is that everyone is moving in a different way and attention spans are very small. Now the world is inundated with music and people prefer smaller and faster and shorter and brighter and you just have to accept that. But I want to still share a body of work in the traditional way.”