Matt Cardle on Fame, Freedom & Music | From X Factor to the Truth Behind the Industry

Hi, this week I'm doing something I've not done before. I'm rerunning an episode of an interview I did with Matt Cardle. And it's intentional. Matt Cardle has always made decisions for his craft, even if it's unfashionable. He chose his artistic authenticity over the machinery. After winning The X Factor and having done his first album, he walked away from Simon Cowell's stable because it didn't fit his artistic ambitions. He wasn't interested in becoming a purely commercial product. He wanted to make music that felt true to him, even if that meant a quite a path and a longer game that takes backbone and seven years since his last album.

He now has a new new album out. The episode with him speaks directly to the kind of bravery and courage that it takes to be different, the willingness to trust your own compass when incentives are pushing you the other way. That's as relevant in business and sport as it is in music. Matt has a new album out called The Great Escape. It reflects exactly that mindset. No chasing trends, just honest work done on his terms. Whether you like the music or not, I do urge you to listen to this episode and if you have heard this episode before, listen again through a different lens.

This is a good place to start if it's your first episode listening to me. Anyway, I'll be back next week with a new episode and thank you very much as always for listening, watching and please follow on social media to show your appreciation and I will definitely appreciate that from you. Thank you at. The age of 27, I went on X Factor. An ex-girlfriend of mine has essentially sort of tricked me into the audition. The initial audition I went down and you might have heard this story when you watch me play.

The music industry is very tough and it takes no prisoners. But I've been incredibly lucky I feel to to be in the position I am in now, just about to release my fifth album and having the opportunity to work some of the incredible artists that I have. Mel C, Rihanna, Trevor Horn. Hi Mac, fabulous to have you on here. I think a lot of people will know you already if they don't rock star and. Far too kind, David. Yeah. And I've actually seen you perform live, which was really fantastic. It's just great to have you on here.

And what I'd like rather than me talk about it, is if you give us a, a small summary of kind of how your life path has gone and then we'll get into to some questions. But it's great. To have you here first and foremost, David, thank you so much for having me on. I, I really appreciate it. It's really great to be here. Yeah. So I, I was born in the Southampton 1983 and I, I lived there for a couple of years. I got very sick when I was a child. I was I. Tough about the football, Tough about the. Football team, yeah.

I wasn't much of A supporter, to be fair, but my family moved to Bristol when I was about two years old. I had Wilms tumor on my kidney, so I needed to be near the Bristol Royal Infirmary and we spent the next sort of five years, I think in Bristol while I was having treatment and I got through that and then we moved over to Essex. I was about 6 years old, which is why I consider myself an Essex boy, even though I was quite literally on the border between Suffolk and Essex. So it was, we were half a mile from the border, so it was nearly Suffolk.

I grew up around there and I went, I went to school around there and I started getting into music very early on, about 8 or 9 years old and studied it intently at school and was pretty much tunnel vision with regards to, to developing into or attempting to develop into an artist into a musician. That was the goal from from about the age of 9. I then formed bands through school and and through college and was always the the one remaining thread through all of these projects. Other band members went off and did other things.

I, I then started doing sort of covers for cash, I guess because I didn't really want to get a proper job because I felt like getting a proper job would be me giving up on my dream of becoming a musician and an artist, which led me to do hundreds and hundreds of odd jobs. We'll be here all afternoon. If I went through them. And then in the age of 27, I went on X Factor and an ex-girlfriend of mine has essentially sort of tricked me into the audition. The initial audition I went down and you might have heard this story when we when you were OK, that's a good story.

You know, David, I'm not saying that I was tricked the entire time. It was just that initial go to the audition and I obviously walked. Yes, he gave me a little shove. And yeah, I, I ended up winning X Factor in in 2010 and subsequently have gone on to release 4 albums and two EPS. It's, it's been an absolute dream. The music industry is very tough and it takes no prisoners. But I've been incredibly lucky, I feel to to be in the position I am in now, just about to release my fifth album and having the opportunity to work with some of the incredible artists that I have.

Mel C, Rihanna, Trevor Horn and all the amazing producers and writers that have gone into to the, to the four or five albums that I've done. You know, Dan McDougal, Jim Elliott, Biff Stannard, you know, the list goes on and on and on and I find myself in 2025 just about. I've just finished my 5th album, The Great Escape, and it will be coming out this October. Oh fabulous. Well, I hope everybody listening is gonna go and buy your album and I. Please do, it won't let you down. So, well, brilliant.

The format of this is I'm gonna ask you the first question, which is the two people who've influenced your life the most, and only one can be a family member, what it was that that you took from them. And I know this is kind of an evolving thing. Sometimes when we're younger, we have maybe a mentor or somebody like that. You get old and you know, somebody else influences your life. But if you look back and say what? Two people really, really influenced my life the most, and kind of. Why? OK, yeah.

So I, I won't include family members in, in the influence because they have all in equal measure influenced my life life in, in such a huge way. So I feel like it would be slightly unfair to pick one. I just, I just couldn't pick one. So the first person that really started to change the the trajectory of the way I felt about the most important thing in my life, which is music other than, you know, friends and family, was my first ever guitar teacher, Mr. Brown, Andy Brown. I will never forget that that that first lesson and the way he was so animated.

He was almost like, you know, like a praying mantis. He was just about 6 foot 4, gangly, skinny as a whippet with just the most incredible infectious enthusiasm for what he was doing. And the way he held the guitar, the way he played the guitar, the way he would, you know, get in my face was, and then he got this and he'd come at me like that. And every time I was in the room with Andy, I, it was the best hour of the day that I'd ever had. And I, I saw him, I think 2 hours every week. And, you know, he really just showed me how and how it was just a, a purely individual expression as opposed to learning chords and learning scales and, and, and what this, he really showed me what that instrument could do for a musician and for an artist.

And ever since that first lesson, I, he was only at my school, I think for about two or two years and I, I just gained so much knowledge. And it actually, it wasn't really the knowledge it I just gained so much of his enthusiasm for my instrument of choice. Well, you know, Ralph Wald Emerson said. That enthusiasm is the mother of all skills. Yes, Yeah, yeah, I, I completely, I completely hear that and without that. And you know. Yeah, without that. In my career. Sorry to interrupt. In my career, the athletes that have always been enthusiastic and kind of even when they've been knocked down or whatever, they're still happy to come and practice and, you know, and actually really enjoy playing more than anything have had the longest careers because of that enthusiasm.

Well, I think it's the furnace of the true energy that we need to produce things. If you're not enthusiastic, it's the most productive form of energy. Yeah, you have anger, big energy, but it's short lived and but enthusiasm is an energy of fuel that you can run on for forever. No, absolutely. I completely agree. And especially in well, I wasn't going to say what I was going to say. The music industry, it's in any industry because it is full of ups and downs and if you're as enthusiastic to play your instrument or swing your racket when it's bad, then you will.

That's like you said earlier, that's why you will never stop and you'll keep going because of why you did it in the first place and how it makes you feel and the drive you have to do that is necessary for for longevity. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I think Andy instilled such a huge amount of it at that time that it, that it resonates with me today. And I, I still feel that today. And I still, you know, wherever he is, you know, I wish him, you know, all the health and happiness because he, he, he really did influence me in in such a huge way.

So he's never contacted you since SO. I well, I believe he went to live in a monastery at some point. That was the last thing I heard, but I heard that in 2002, I think, as I was quizzing my music teacher about why Andy left or, you know, Martin Donald with my next guitar teacher. He was absolutely fantastic. And yeah, that's what we heard. Whether it was one of those like school yard rumours or or whatever it was Andy and it just for me, David, it kind of fed more into the the mystery of the man.

You know, he didn't get my, you know, to my recollection, move off to just teach another school. He just, he did something even more transcending and ended up, you know, enlightened. And I'm like, that's fucking brilliant. He's probably in Thailand right now, sitting on top of a. Rock. I really hope so. It's like a mandolin just being still zany. Yeah, I love it. Brilliant. And your second person? So the second person that influenced me would is Kate Bush. As I started my journey on the guitar and and singing and and songwriting, especially my dad was playing a lot of Kate Bush and when we were on holidays, we listened to it in the car in the kick inside the Hounds of Love.

It was she, she is always for me, essentially embodied everything that is music and art coming together. And, and she, I didn't realize this till I've listened back to some of my older music and some of my more recent stuff, just how much of, of an influence she she had on it. And one of the ways in which I feel is, is lyrically, because one of the things that I love about music is, is mystery. And I think that's, I think mystery is so important and so powerful within any art form. And Kate's lyrics were always a mystery to me that pretty much always.

And I loved that. And I remember Kurt Cobain said one time that he would prefer to know what somebody else took from my lyrics rather than to tell you what it was about. And, and I loved that. And I've listened to hours and hours and hours of Kate's music without really understanding what the song, you know, I know what I take from it, which is lovely. Yeah. I don't know what was going on in her mind. And I don't really want to a lot of the time. I just. I think it's so beautiful and so poetic. And I think that if you can, if you can write a song where you're not, you know, in layman's terms, explaining what you're feeling or what you're writing about and still take people on a journey and still hold people's attention, I think that's almost more powerful and more magic than, you know, for example, an Adele song where she's explained that she's her, you know, not to do Adele down at all.

She's an incredible artist. But I think those kind of songs, for me, you know, when they're spelled out that way, you either resonate with it because you're going through something or you don't. Where I think there's an art form, some of Kate Bush's lyrics really just make you question more, and I think that's what art should do. It should provoke questions where there are none. I'm pretty sure I'm remembering this correctly, but in South Africa, where I grew up, we didn't have TV until like 1978.

And then we had test programs like 4 hours a day. And I'm pretty sure in 1979 it was the first time I'd seen a music video and it was Kate Bush and I think as Weathering Heights. And it's, I don't know if you've ever seen, you have seen the video, but it just blew my mind away. It was just a very, very a different thing to experience and and I think that that music video stands the test of time. And of course, the song does so the music of Kate Bush for for a long time as well. And again, it shows the incredible longevity of of her British.

It's still going strong. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I have to. I mean, this is and I, I kind of, I feel slightly ashamed to say it, but I never fully read a book until I was 40. I just, I could not concentrate on it. I could not focus enough. I would always go back to the beginning of the line. I just read and of the bat. I don't know why, but it was just the case. And I one of my favorite songs of all time, Nights in my Saturn is my favorite song. Cloudbusting by Kate Bush comes in a close second. And I'd listened to that song so many times, and I did actually eventually last.

I wanted to know what it was about because it was just so out there. And she'd read a book called the The Little Book of Dreams, I believe. Can't. Off the top of my head, remember the author. So I read it and I and it was just so fascinating to be able to pick out the parts in the chapters and the way she had cherry, not cherry pick, but what the moments that she had chosen out of that book to to construct that song was magic. And before I'd done that, I there's a song called Scentless Apprentice by Nirvana, and I was watching one of Kurt Cobain's last interviews and he was talking about a Patrick Suskin book called Perfume, and he'd written that about that song.

So that made me read that book, and that's what got me into reading. OK, so I mean, I assume you've. Met No. Oh no. I wish. No. Wow. I'm sure you could arrange that. A boy can dream, right? Yeah. Oh, why not? I mean, I'm sure she'd be fascinated to talk to you. I think get your team to, to reach out. I think she needs to speak to you because I mean, you understand the industry, you you understand the music. So I think you having a chat with her would be very refreshing for. Her I mean, I I would find it incredibly insightful and I think David, I would just be full of thanks and praise and, you know, admiration for everything she's done and and just stayed true to herself.

I mean, people talk about, you know, being in a certain lane. Kate made her own lane. But you can't. You can't get greater than that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there are some people that can achieve very special things, and she's clearly one of them. My next question might be an obvious answer, but what event in your life changed your trajectory more than anything? Only so you, you mentioned about a perspective as well. It changed my perspective of of of of the way or just in, in general. I, I don't feel it's, this will be an obvious one really, but an event that changed my perception in the biggest way ever would have been what happened on 9/11.

I was, I think 17 at the time. And I was at college and I remember being in the in the hallway and one of the teachers running down the, down the hallway, you know, saying that a plane had just crashed into one of the twin towers. And everybody was, yeah, I think people just started leave. I think we were leaving school at that point, leaving college at that point. It was about four, 5:00 in the evening this time. And I went back to my mum's office and they were all stood around the tellies because, you know, the second plane had hit after I'd left college.

And I, you know, I would along with the rest of the world, I was absolutely, you know, initially devastated to to see what had happened. And then so quickly this narrative started to emerge about who was behind it and, and what we were going to do or America was going to do about it. And I just at the time, there were a lot of there was a lot going on with regards to a focus on terrorism. There was there was some some high profile abductions. I remember this time Ken Bigley, the.

Scouse taxi driver was abducted and killed a student, Sochi Koda, a Japanese student, Nick Berg, a photo photography journalist, I believe was was taken and and killed as well. So my attention was like quite highly focused towards this at the time. And after the the fallout from from 9:11, I just didn't stop looking into it. And I ended up watching a documentary called Loose Change that is in two parts. I think it was a YouTube documentary. It's still out and you know, it just, it slowly opened my eyes to the fact that we have been and continue to be lied to on a absolutely biblical scale about what is really going on in the world.

And from 9:11, that made me, once I'd watched that Loose Change documentary and started realizing for myself my personal opinion of what didn't or did happen that day and who and who wasn't behind it. I started looking at everything, you know, some of the big major stories and events, you know, with regards to the moon landing and JFK and Princess Diana and, you know, the war in Afghanistan and Vietnam and, and you know it, it just made me realise that we are just lied to on the most incredible scale ever.

And now we're sort of moving into the world of AI and CGI if it if things are getting out of hand, things are getting wildly out of hand. And I think it's only going to get worse with the fakery and the fuckery with regards to what we are spoon fed by, you know, by the media, you know, coronavirus being another example of one of these things that is not what it was told it was, you know. What I take from this is, and I have contemplated this is there's actually no real way to get to the truth because everybody, well, not everybody, but how do you know who hasn't and who has an agenda?

But I'd say, you know, most people have some kind of agenda and, and usually at the bottom of it, somebody's making money somewhere out of something. I'm not sure that the media's ever really told the truth, but now there's just so much of it and so much around, it's very, very, very difficult to well, I don't think there's any way you can go to. Find out the truth I I. So you just got to you got to kind of put things together and, and piece together what you believe to to be true and kind of, you know, just get on with your life with it because there there is really nothing.

You can do about it and, and, and this is the kind of end of the story that it comes to with most conversations of this nature is there is nothing you can do. There is never ever going to be the the fact out there. You can only use your eyes and your ears to, to try and decipher realistically what you think could be the reasons behind these things. Or, you know, you made a point earlier and it and it is absolutely bang on. I mean, who does it? Profit is normally the route to the, to the perpetrator of any event of this kind of who is set to gain from this?

Sometimes they're in plain sight. Sometimes they're, you know, IE Boeing, Grumman or some other weapons company or, or whether it's a big pharma, you know, Pfizer or whatever, you know, they're not hide. They're not hiding. They're in plain sight, but other events and situations, you'll never know who it benefited because it it, it is so shadowy and so dark. You have to try and you know, and David, this stuff really does get me angry on a daily basis. But I, I, the, the way I feel that I can, can, you know, can live with the nonsense is to enjoy my life and, and to, to, to do for, for, for a living at least, because it's part of the system and the system is not there to help you.

The system is there to keep you dumb, keep you down, keep you struggling, keep you I'll quite frankly. And the one thing you have to do is earn money in this, in this world, in this life. And that goes without saying, unless you want to move to Thailand or wherever and sit on a Rock, You know, with the pipe, fine. But if you can enjoy and have passion in the way you are in this system, then you've kind of beat it to a point. Yeah. And I think another thing that I always think about is if you can bring some joy and happiness to other people and maybe in doing this podcast and stuff like that, if somebody picks up a little gem that helps them with their life or is a catalyst to something for them, that's brilliant.

Because at the end of the day, you have to make your way in whatever system you live in. And I've spent quite a lot of time in China and a very fascinating country and what not many people know about China that I found out in living there for a couple of months and having an interpreter and stuff like that. Is, is alcohol's a big problem in China? I mean, a massive problem. People get smashed there all the time. But I mean, China's a very not strange, but you know, there's extremely wealthy, but the level of poverty in China is still immense.

There's a lot of people really struggling there. And the other thing is there's a lot of underground movement there to try and get freedom, but these people put their lives in danger every single day. And and my interpreter's boyfriend split up with her. She was very upset one one day and and we got talking about it because he was actually a lawyer and he split up with her because he said what I'm doing is so dangerous that if I get caught, they will take everybody. I know I do not want to put you and your family in this in this danger.

Some immensely brave people in the world. And I mean, you see it in Iran with the with all of those protests that were brutally suppressed. And there's a lot of brave people who gave their lives up to try and change things. And I have to say that I would not be that brave. I think it's phenomenal that people do these things. But but I think it's great that you bring your sense of awareness to the world. And I think it's also refreshing that I think everybody would guess that the obvious event that changed the trajectory of your life was X Factor, but you've chosen something else, which I think is is is.

Is yeah, well, I mean, you, you mentioned perception of the world and, and I mean that is, it's such a monumental thing is how you, you know, what you believe is, you know, is going on around you and, and how you view the world is what is one of the the, the most powerful perspectives that can change a person's life. And yeah, that really did. That was the one. For me, well, yeah. Well, the world you experience is very much according to your perspective of it. I learned this actually. I was probably about 20 years old and I went to an unbelievable party, really great, great party.

You know, one of those nights that just flows and it's just unbelievable. And the next day I saw a mate of mine, I said what an amazing party it was last night. And then it was shit. And I was like, but what he experienced that night, he'd kind of was after a girl, she turned her down. So his experience of that party was like light years from mine. And, and we were in the same place, but I was flawed. And and I thought, wow, really? What people see for themselves or experience for themselves determines how they see.

And yeah, absolutely. And you can be at the same event and have two totally different experiences. And and that was, that was a, a valuable lesson for me because I was like, wow, don't just assume because you've liked something or you, you dislike something that anybody else has experienced the same. Absolutely. Someone, my last question to you is what lesson message would you have liked to have given yourself to go through in life at at age 20? If you have a 20 year old kid or son or daughter at some point at at that age you might have one at.

That age. What would you like them to know at at 20 years old that that you wish that you would have known? If, for example, I was to have a child that followed in my footsteps and became a musician, I would want them to know that with regard to their output with with regard to their art in any way shape or form. They do know best. And it is quite a big, bold thing to say, but that's the only way an artist truly can express themselves if it has come from within with minimal to no exterior influence.

And that is when I think most artists make their their best work is when they is just them doing it because it's what needs or to come out of them or or what they want to express. In whichever way the industry is so full of noise and people trying to influence your or coerce you to go a certain way. Be a certain or don't say that, you know, edit yourself monitor can't be you know, and I and I think deep down for for every artist who questions themselves, questioning yourself is a brilliant thing to do.

It's it's healthy, it's natural, it's healthy. It's it's quite torturous a lot the time, you know, you question literally everything, but I think it really boils down to you do know best with regards to your artwork. You do know better than anyone else because you are the artist. You are the 1 putting either brush to to canvas or audio to tape or to interfaces nowadays in digital format. Whatever it may be, you, you do know best and, and the quicker you realise that or the, the earlier on you realise that, the, the, the sooner you will become your own individual artist.

Like I did spend many years growing up being so heavily influenced by the artist that I was listening to like Nirvana and, and Pearl Jam and things like that, that I got kind of swept away in, in, in, in believing that I wanted to follow in those footsteps where they weren't following in other, you know, they might have been influenced by other bands and, and whatnot. But at the core of it, they did their own thing. And I think the sooner I could have really had the confidence to do my own thing would have been beneficial to me or to, for example, my son or daughter if I had one.

Brilliant. So basically you're saying follow your God instinct? Yes, yeah. Yeah, I'm a huge advocate of that. I just think sometimes with all the noise in that you think you have a gut instinct but you don't. It's quite hard sometimes to and I think that's when you need to really try and get away and go for a long walk or maybe it can take days or weeks where you try and dig down and find out what you what you truly believe. Because. And I think sometimes when the enticement is there, you think, yeah, this is the right thing to do.

But something is niggling you. And I think when that is there, you need to explore it because it might short term pay off, you know, financially or whatever. But long term, it will hurt you if that niggling feeling basically says this is nice, but don't do it. And and I think that's where you have. To be brave? Yeah, absolutely. And, and one thing I, I, I also believe is if you don't do it your way and you don't believe in yourself, you are only left with other people to blame. And that is not a healthy space to be in for anyone.

And if you can set that responsibility at your own door, then you can build on it, move forward from it without resentment, without anything. You know, well, I stuck to my to my guns. I did what I believed in at that moment and it did or didn't work out. And when it does work out, my God, that's when it, that's when it's like fucking, you know, is that nothing, nothing better than that. Honestly, I'm going to highlight this little piece. I think it's gold dust what you've just said there. It's really very, very powerful.

That sense of taking responsibility and not having any excuses is again, a hard bridge to cross, but it's a very important bridge to cross. What happens to you lays of your dorm? Thank you so much for watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel. If you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform. See you in the next one.

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