Interview: Lour – Remember Me

Lour is a 18 year old singer-songwriter that describes himself as a young kid with old thoughts. Those who hear him, and the delicacy and intensity in his vocals, understand that immediately. His old thoughts are the purest too. Almost ever about love, in its more diverse forms, Lour builds gorgeous indie songs infused with soft electronics, surprising hooks, beautiful lyrics and delicate melodies that easily turn into intense intimate songs when played live.

Discovered via SubmitHub.com

Hi Lour, where are you based and how does this affect your writing?

I was born in Lisbon and I still live here. I feel like the city I live affects my writing but not in a direct way. I mean I don’t write about Lisbon, but I write about my life that happens to be lived here. So it affects every aspect of it. I can write about my feelings or about someone or something because I live here and I know this or that person, u get what I’m saying? I feel like if I moved to a different place it would affect me the same way. I would not write about that place directly in my songs but I would be only experiencing certain things because of that place. Was it confusing? hahaha.

What inspires you the most right now?

Everything inspires me. Not only music but art in general. I’m taking a degree in Graphic Design so I’m always doing research and seeing beautiful art pieces. But also life, in general, inspires me a lot. Simple conversations or just random episodes that happen to me usually are the key for me to write about them. So I can’t tell u something specific. But for example this other day I did a show in Porto and after that, I stayed there for a couple of days, so one of the nights that I was alone in my hotel room I wrote a song about being alone in a hotel room hahaha.

Where did the idea for ‘Remember Me’ come from?

It is a sad story, I always explain this song at my concerts. So, I had this neighbor that I loved (she was this old lady that used to bake cakes for my family) and there was this time that she was having trouble doing something and asked me to help. And when I was about to help her I saw that the task she wanted me to do was already done. I found that really weird but I thought it was like “oh she must have forgotten, it’s an age thing”. But that episode happened more than once, and it was really weird. After a few months, my family and I found out that she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and it broke my heart. So the day I discovered that was the day I wrote Remember Me.

What’s your writing methodology?

I feel like it changes from song to song, but it usually starts with me making random chords on my guitar and trying to find a melody that fits the notes. And then the lyrics come naturally if I have something I want to say. If not I might just record the melody on my phone and write the lyrics when I feel like it.

Who are you listening to at the moment?

So there’s a lot of artists I’m obsessed with right now. Clairo has to be my favorite at the moment, Immunity is such a beautiful and important album to me (I’m actually considering tattooing the Immunity logo on my arm). But I’m also addicted to Núria Graham’s new album, Bennee’s EPs and an album called N by my favorite Brazilian duo called Anavitória.

If you could curate a music festival, who would the three-weekend headliners be?

That’s a hard one. But it would have to be M.I.A, Kacey Musgraves and Ariana Grande. I feel like u can tell by my choices that my music taste is all over the place haha 🙂 (and I would love to play in this festival haha)