Home > MUSIC > Teddy Thompson

• Tweet
• Outlook
• ICAL
• PRINT
• Email
• Feedback

• RSS

• Official Website
• Buy Tickets

Teddy Thompson

Presented by Tin Angel at Tin Angel

January 21, 2012

Comment on Facebook

On previous discs, singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson always relied on one of the songs he’s written to provide him with an album title and a central concept to build the rest of his work around. This time it’s different: you won’t find a tune named "Bella” on his fourth Verve Forecast effort yet the idea of “bella” — Italian shorthand for “beautiful” — is everywhere. Says Thompson, “I like the word, the meaning of it. It spoke to the lushness and beauty I was going for.”

Thompson is a native Englishman who has adopted New York City as his home; famously the son of singer-songwriters Richard and Linda Thompson, he emigrated to the states more than a decade ago, barely out of his teens, to embark on a career of his own. Thompson began working on the material for Bella after he returned from his last tour; he structured his writing sessions by going to a Manhattan office each day where he developed these songs, honing in as a recording deadline loomed. He’d admired producer Kahne’s work and decided to contact him through a musician friend. Explains Thompson, “I was searching for someone who was quite poppy but who had a really musical sensibility. I mostly have worked with people I knew I was going to get along with, but David I just didn’t know at all. We butted heads a few times, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; he helped light a fire under me in certain ways. It definitely stretched things musically as well because it took me out of my confidence zone quite a lot. It was very different than any other record making process — an amazing, exhausting experience.”