Damien Rice's fragile new track "I Don't Want To Change You" is just one more reason why fans should be frantically awaiting the Irish singer's upcoming album.
My Favourite Faded Fantasy, due out Nov. 11, will be Rice's first studio effort in eight years, and you can listen to the next installment of the album over at NPR now. The musician released the epic title track earlier this month, and "I Don't Want To Change You" serves as more evidence that Rick Rubin's hands were at the control boards for this record. Much like the first single, "Change You" morphs from a subdued guitar ballad to a powerhouse beauty that rivals what Sam Smith's been doing lately.
In a recent interview (one of the only ones Rice has done so far) with the London Evening Standard, the singer talked about why he took a break from recording. "I was playing the biggest venues I'd ever played, and everything was quote-unquote perfect," he said. "And everything sort of crumbled and fell apart at that moment. I became really unhappy, and so that went spiralling down, down, down, where I got to this place where I had everything I thought I wanted and I still wasn't happy. That felt very, I guess, disheartening. So I kind of crashed."
Rice said he kept starting and quitting the new album before Rubin came on board. "I think he was torn. Part of him wanted to be free to express himself and part of him seemed to be stopping the process," the producer, who has worked with a laundry list of A-listers, said. "It took a series of personal breakthroughs for Damien to feel comfortable enough to want to put out new music and all the stress associated with it. He is a highly sensitive artist and man."
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