Loyle Carner for Frieze Music London 2023: ‘Music Is Something I Do to Stay Sane’
The Mercury Prize and Brit Award-nominated London artist and CALM advocate gave an exclusive gig and interview for Frieze Music at Frieze London 2023
The Mercury Prize and Brit Award-nominated London artist and CALM advocate gave an exclusive gig and interview for Frieze Music at Frieze London 2023
‘A lot of the people I make music with would do it even if they made no money from it,’ says Loyle Carner in this interview which took place alongside his exclusive one-off gig at Camden Town’s KOKO for Frieze Music London 2023 in partnership with BMW.
The London-born artist, who has been nominated for the Mercury Prize and three Brit Awards since he released his 2017 debut album, played his set to a typically ecstatic reception, but in his interview was more reflective. Since 2018, Carner has been an advocate for the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a charity that raises awareness about male suicide. As he says, ‘Music is something I do to stay sane.’
Carner’s Frieze Music performance is not his first tie-in with the visual arts. In 2020, he curated an exhibition for CALM that invited artists to respond to tracks off his second album: ‘It was nice for me to open up the conversation to visual artists and let them express what individual songs would mean to them.’
Watch the film for more of Carner’s ‘message of hope’.
