Interview: Calum Scott is On the Rise

metroweekly.com:

Bridges was shaping up to get slapped with a “Warning: Explicit Content” label.The trigger was “Last Tears,” arguably the most distinctive-sounding song on the album, one that, as Scott puts it, “It’s kind of got a different style to where I would normally go, but it’s cool and it explores a different side of me.”The explicit issue, however, had nothing to do with the song’s particular style or sound. “I’m messed up, can’t sleep now,” Scott sings early on in the song.

Originally, Scott says, “there was a particular swear word in there. And when I spoke to the label, I was like, ‘I really want to have that in there because it really describes where I’m at.'” But to leave the swear word in would force the issue of a warning sticker, his label managers told him.Ultimately, Scott decided against swearing. “It was a very easy fix, and it still gives the wealth of strength to the song,” he explains.

When asked the particular swear word, Scott replies in as wholesome a way as you’d expect, “I don’t know if I can say it. It’s the ‘f word.'”Toward the end of “Last Tears,” Scott sings, “You’re messed up, I see that now.” Originally, he sang “fucked” in place of “messed.”“It’s nice sometimes to get that frustration out in songwriting, but I’m not an artist that’s explicit,” he says. “I thought it’s probably not going to do me any favors, so we might as well [change it].

Live, I might sneak that word back in. Let’s see.”It’s been seven years now since Scott first came to attention as a finalist on Britain’s Got Talent, where he introduced to the world his remarkable and astonishing, slowed-down, same-gendered take on Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own.” That cover would go on to become a worldwide hit for Scott, which he followed up with a.