It’s been ten years since Tame Impala dropped his second album, ‘Lonerism’, and he has taken to social media to share some fond memories of the record’s creation.
Following up ‘Innerspeaker’, the album was an exploratory venture that produced some of Tame Impala’s biggest hits ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ and ‘Elephant’.
Looking back a whole decade, Kevin Parker admits that it’s, “difficult to sum up what the album means to me at this point. It was a pretty special time for me making the music. In a way, it’s when I truly discovered myself as an artist. Coming off the back of ‘Innerspeaker’, I had this new sense of purpose…calling… whatever you want to call it. I had finally given myself permission to let the music take over my being completely… to become totally immersed in my own world of recording music. So I had this new sense of creative freedom.”
“I felt free to be ambitious, weird, pop, experimental, whatever, and didn’t feel judged because I was finally just doing it for myself and believed in myself,” he continues. “For the most part anyway… of course, the day came to release it and it all came crashing down and I thought the album sucked and couldn’t even imagine people enjoying it. As it turns out I was wrong… the album dropped and exceeded all my expectations and my life changed massively again.”
Parker shared the original and unedited album cover, a photo he took in Paris, but states that, “there’s really not much footage or photos of me recording ‘Lonerism’. I wasn’t exactly dying to get in front of a camera back then. My friend and photographer Sav came round a couple of times to take some photos and film me messing around in the studio, and that’s basically all there is.”
He then goes on to reveal that the album was actually about to be released under a different name before he had a last-minute lightbulb moment. “‘Lonerism’ was actually called Loner Pop all up until after it had been mastered and sent off for production,” he recalls. “I was happy it was done but not completely satisfied as I didn’t think I got the title quite right. Suddenly the word lonerism popped into my head and it was obvious that was the one. So I immediately called Glen my A&R and begged him to stop the press and have it changed.”
You can read the full statements from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker below:
Tame Impala recently concluded his EU tour dates, and has had a busy summer playing festivals like All Points East and Sziget amongst others, as well as working with Gorillaz on their recent collaboration, ‘New Gold’.
