BeatRoute Magazine AB Edition - January 2020

R
ex Orange County
doesn’t mind
putting himself
under the magnifying
glass. E arly
on, he realized he
wasn’t the band
type, finding it
creatively nourishing to do it all himself. From
writing deeply insular lyrics, to producing synthy,
sunshine-soaked melodies to accompany them,
it’s been the prerogative of the multi-instrumentalist
to be the sole narrator of his own story.
While the reflective, insular nature of his work
has worked in his favour—he boasts more than
8.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify and 1.1
million followers on Instagram—his artistry is an
argument for the benefits of thriving in solitude.
The only person Rex follows back on Instagram
is his girlfriend of four years, Thea.
Rex Orange County hails a long way from his
sunny west coast namesake. Born Alexander
O’Connor in the Surrey village of Grayshott,
England, the singer-songwriter spent his formative
years in the suburbs, dreaming of escaping
the school system and taking control of his life.
At 16, O’Connor moved to London to attend
The BRIT School, a highly selective performing
arts institution notable for renowned alumni
like Adele, Amy Winehouse, FKA Twigs, and
Leona Lewis.
“I was dying to go, so I worked a little
harder,” he says over the phone from
the UK. Though notoriously difficult
to get into for anyone outside of
London, O’Connor managed to secure
his spot at the school by committing
himself to mastering the
drums, his instrument of choice
since his elementary school choir
days. He turned out to be one of only
four drummers in the class of 2016, which
enabled him to work with a wide range of peers
and genres – after all, everyone needs percussion.
The variety exposed him to possibilities
he hadn’t considered for his own music before,
like taking up guitar, honing his singing skills and
learning music production software.
“Everything I do to this day is thanks to [The
BRIT school]. My friends there were doing all
these different things, and I had nothing other
than drums. I was like, ‘I should probably do
something other than this.’” Of the school’s
impressive roster, he was inspired by the level of
ambition the school normalized. “I just think people
are driven there,” he muses. “If I’m honest, I
think they had a good run with a few people in
the beginning, and that inspired others to go. I’m
not going to lie, I think ultimately it’s the people
who went there that made it for themselves, not
necessarily the school itself.”
“I only have good things to say about my time
there,” he continues. Some highlights? “Simon
Cowell came in one time. He was giving a
speech about music, but it didn’t last very long.
I think he had somewhere else to be. And Ne-Yo
came in! Do you know Ne-Yo? Of course you do;
I just had to make sure.”
In 2015, before he had even graduated,
O’Connor released his debut album, bcos u will
never b free, an entirely self-produced, quintessential
bedroom pop album. Tyler, the Creator
found the mixtape on SoundCloud and, impressed,
reached out to compliment O’Connor’s
style. Then he flew him out to L.A. in late 2016
to collaborate on Flower Boy which resulted in
O’Connor featuring on “Foreword,” and earning
a writing credit for “Boredom,” with a writing
credit for the former.
“I thought it was somebody else,” O’Connor
remembers about receiving that first email from
Tyler. “He had an email address that sounded
like it would be him, but I thought it wasn’t. I was
like, ‘Why on earth would he reach out to me
right now, at this point in my life?’”
At the time, O’Connor had not completed
Apricot Princess, his ultra-personal sophomore
effort, but his work on Flower Boy had been
revelatory. Wanting a similarly well-rounded
portfolio of his own material, he continued working.
Hard. And ended up releasing 2017’s Apricot
Princess before Flower Boy had even come out.
That’s one of the benefits of operating solo: you
maintain total control not only of production, but
also of when your work is released.
“On Apricot Princess, I produced pretty much
all of it myself, other than a couple helping
hands,” explains O’Connor. “The mixing was
done by Ben Baptie,” who went on to play a
heavy hand in not only the mixing but also the
production, composition and lyrics for 2019’s
Pony.“This time around, [on Pony], Ben and I
actually got deeper. [He’s on] pretty much all the
songs from the ground up. There were a couple
other musicians as well, but no feature artists
listed or anything like that.”
His introverted method of making music
makes sense, considering the personal nature of
each of his projects – he revels in getting to the
core of universal experiences, which often feel
lonely and isolating from the inside. Whereas
Apricot Princess was an upbeat, rose-tinted
ode to Thea, the subsequent two years of
O’Connor’s life took him to parts of his soul that
were previously unknown. On Pony, O’Connor
delves even deeper into his own psyche through
themes of love, longing, and growing distant
from old friends.
On the first lines of the opening track, “10/10,”
he muses, “I had a think about my oldest friends
/ Now I no longer hang with them.” The rest
of the album takes its listeners on a journey
through the poignant ups and downs of this
period in O’Connor’s life – a sort of in-between
phase, when he’s achieved what he’s always
wanted and it came with some downsides he
didn’t expect. When O’Connor turns inward, he
wears his vulnerability on his sleeve. His lyrics
are delivered with a confident cognizance of
who he is, and what he stands for, and that
self-assurance seems to stem from the ability to
admit when he’s unsure.
“I still wanted to be the only one telling the
story, and not relying on anyone else to make
the song better. It’s a blessing and a curse:
you’re the one that makes all the decisions, so
you’re happy with it, but at the same time that’s a
burden to take on.”
CONTINUED ON PG. 22 k
ALEX WAESPI
JANUARY 2020 BEATROUTE 21