Newton Faulkner is best known for his 2007 hit song Dream Catch Me, but he’s now admitted he didn’t even want the track to appear on his debut album.
Dream Catch Me was a total bop of the noughties that smashed into the worldwide charts and spent three weeks in the top 10 and 48 weeks in the top 100 singles in the UK upon its release.
The tune was from Faulkner’s 2007 debut album, Hand Built by Robots, and kickstarted the singer’s career which has now spanned 17 years and seven albums.
Despite the tune’s epic success, the singer has admitted that he wasn’t keen on including the hit in his album because he found it ‘too normal’.
‘I actually put up a bit of a barrier in terms of it being on the first album,’ he told with a laugh.
He recalls telling music execs: ‘”I’m not sure about that one. It seems a bit, that’s a bit normal”. I remember at the time, I was a bit like, “I’m not sure” and they’re like, “No, we really, we really think that should be on the album. In fact, we think it should probably be the second single.”
‘I was like: “Yeah, maybe. But let’s see how it goes.”‘
The singer explained that he was being ‘sold as an interesting guitar player’ so felt that the song did nothing to highlight this.
‘It felt very strange to me to release as a single that didn’t have any of my playing on it,’ he added. ‘It had me doing the song, but in the song, I didn’t branch out into any of the other stuff I can do, and that felt strange to me at the time, and it felt slightly alien.’
He added that even over a decade on from the song’s release, he still finds the success bizarre.
‘Dream Catch Me came out, and obviously did what it did, which is unfathomably strange still. And the fact that it had a massive resurgence on TikTok over the last few years, it just keeps coming back around,’ he said.
While some artists shun their greatest hits, the vocalist admitted that it’s still a pleasure to perform this song live.
‘I love performing it, although it’s not fancy in Guitar terms, it just creates its own space.’
He added: ‘When I play it live, you really, you can really feel this whole love for that one. It’s so beautiful and the way people sing along to it, and, yeah, it just tapped into something.’
Faulkner has found a huge audience for his live music, and while none of his singles have reached the popularity of Dream Catch Me, the artist explained that he’s not trying to recreate the success he once had.
‘What happened with Dream Catch Me was totally out of my control and I could spend my entire life writing things that are really similar trying to recreate that.
Modestly, he explains that the success had little to do with him and more to do with several things that just ‘made something click’.
‘It was the right combination of probably about 50 to 100 people working at the right time that made that thing that thing. And I was a part of that, but there are other things that are just as important, like little business connections which just made something click, which meant it ended up in the right place at the right time, being heard by the person who could make the decision, and I can’t recreate that.’
Faulkner explained that he will never compromise his music for mainstream success.
‘What happened with Dream Catch Me isn’t why I make music. What I’m really motivated by is making the best work I can, and making stuff that I love.’
The singer added: ‘There’s a degree of kind of game-playing to getting things moving but if you have compromised and it doesn’t work it’s awful, but if you’ve made something that you genuinely love, you kind of don’t care what happens to it after that.
After nearly two decades in the music industry, the artist reflected that the game has changed and it’s a ‘challenging time’ to be an artist.
‘I do think if we just keep pushing people to release stuff relentlessly all the time while also being on social media every single day. I think you’re really narrowing the window for genuine inspiration.
‘Also it’s harder to make a living, and harder to get into in the first place. So that combined, it’s just, it’s such like a weird, murky picture, and it is a really, it’s a really challenging time,’ he said.
The artist is set to release new music soon and is going on a UK which kicks off on Saturday, November 16.
‘I think the longer I do it, the less, like, I take it for granted,’ he said about performing live to his fans.
‘I think, to begin with, you don’t really understand what it means, and you’re kind of just spat out and like, “Go and do this now. Okay, what country is it”.
‘I think, the level of actual back and forth between me and the audience is so open now, in a way that it’s not when you first start, because you don’t really have the balls to do it!’