Meet Sebastian Schub, the folk troubadour primed for global greatness

Ask rising singer Sebastian Schub about his leading influences and he’ll immediately tell you how Irish singer Glen Hansard, the mind behind the Oscar winning musical drama Once, is his “north star of artistry”.

Schub’s admiration of Hansard is clear in the classic folk-flecked tunes that make up his upcoming debut EP, Sing Like Madonna, but there’s parallels with the story of that film too – which lend a Hollywood quality to Schub’s own journey.

He moved to London at the age of 17 and spent years busking around the capital before his hard yards began to get him noticed in all the right places. The title track of his EP is a haunting epic that shows off Schub’s rich baritone and – in just seven months – boasts near two million views on YouTube. Having signed to Island EMI/Capitol Records, it seems only a matter of time before Schub’s talents – honed on the streets of London – go truly global.

You can read our full Q&A with Sebastian Schub and listen to him via our PlayNext Spotify playlist below.

We’re speaking just a week before the release of your Sing Like Madonna EP. How excited are you to have it out in the world and what does it mean to you?

I’m really thrilled. I think having a body of work is so important as an artist and I think nowadays there’s such pressure to express yourself in like 2 minutes, isn’t there? Everyone is hunting for that one song and that’s the relationship I ended up having with ‘Sing Like Madonna’. It felt like me on a plate, but it’s been so nice to curate these songs. It’s a seven track EP, which is pretty long.

It is quite long for an EP – what was the reason for putting so many songs on there?

Well, the last year’s been pretty life changing. I’ve gone from playing gigs, busking and doing wedding functions where I’d play ‘Billie Jean’ 100 times to being in a position where my music could become a job. I’ve gone on tour, I’m flying to America in two days and I’m doing interviews like this. I think the EP is very much about the journey that it’s taken, so I wanted to get it all in there.

If ‘Sing Like Madonna’ the song is just one side of you, where else does the EP go sonically and where does it sit within the modern music world?

It’s a great question and if only I had a great answer. The truth is that it’s this big Frankenstein of different influences. You can listen to the music and point towards indie folk people like Hozier and Jeff Buckley and Angie McMahon who have been my most listened to artists at the moment and have been for the past 2 years straight.

But I produced this with a guy called Dann Hume and he’s a real music head and for us it was about getting lost in sonics, figuring out that the EP is setting different cornerstones and I think in a way it is a testament to the different tastes I have.

There’s a lot of rich storytelling on this EP and I know you’re a massive fan of Glen Hansard, who is famously great at telling stories in his music. How does he inspire you?

Glen Hansard is, for me, the north star of artistry, you know. He’s the reason I played music in the first place. I watched ‘Once’ as a kid and it blew my mind. I learned guitar afterwards and his commitment to emotion and truth is so amazing. What I love about him is that he really encapsulates all of life He doesn’t just write love songs, or doesn’t just write political songs, he captures everything that he stands for in life.

Everything that he experiences, all of his friends, all of his family, it’s all in there. And when you see him live, you kind of realise that.We could talk about Glenn Hansard for an hour.

What are the cornerstone songs on the EP for you?

There’s two that I have an odd relationship with, and I think one is obviously ‘Sing Like Madonna’, because I remember writing it and going, ‘OK, this is the song, I’ve got it now’. Being right on that hunch was really rewarding. And in a really bizarre full circle moment, Steve Fitzmaurice who produced the song told me one day that he mixed the soundtrack album for Once. So there was a full circle moment where a man that mixed he music that made me want to do music was now recording the music that allowed me to continue to do music.

‘Scared of Screaming’ holds a special place in my heart too. I’ve always been really lucky to be very healthy but I’ve been surrounded by people that have been less lucky and the song was a recollection of my experiences with them and their experiences. I find that song upsetting and it’s a form of therapy for me. Glen Hansard actually said, you know, that writing a song is a bit like trying to lure a bird through a window into a cage, which is an accurate description of how weird it is.

I think every song is a kind of compromise of what it’s supposed to be and every now and then you kind of hit it on the head. ‘Scared of Screaming’ was one of those songs for me.