My 20 minutes with Leon Bridges as a superfan

They say don’t meet your heroes but after interviewing my all-time favourite artist, I disagree.

I can’t exactly remember the first time I heard a Leon Bridges track. His buttery smooth voice, reminiscent of Sam Cooke, has long been on high rotation in my household, soundtracking the years of my adult life.

Perhaps he’d infiltrated my Spotify algorithm, popping up in an auto-generated queue. Maybe my partner discovered him first, and started playing his music every time he took over the speaker as we cooked dinner over a bottle of wine. 

Discover more artists and music we love at FJ’s Music section.

Slowly, I recognised his rhythms, then voice, then lyrics. It wasn’t until I was at one of his first Australian gigs, in a Melbourne club basement, that I realised I’d memorised his whole album word-for-word and that he’d become my all-time favourite artist. 

His music is like that: an earworm that creeps its way in slowly but surely, until you can’t remember life without it. His sound is smooth in a way that doesn’t demand your attention but still somehow infiltrates your psyche. It feels vaguely familiar, probably because it echoes the rhythms of music from the ’50s and ’60s, which has earned Leon comparisons to Otis Redding and yes, Sam Cooke. 

It’s also incredibly romantic without being soppy, a winning combination for someone like me who cringes at anything even slightly sentimental. Naturally, Leon Bridges’ music has become the soundtrack to my romantic life, playing at date nights, my engagement, my wedding and beyond (pardon the pun). I know I’m not alone, with several of my friends buying tickets to his upcoming performance at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl on January 23, booking dinner for two beforehand with plans to make it a date. 

So I’m somewhat rattled when I find myself on a call with the man himself, and he freezes in response to my question: “What’s romantic to you?” 

I watch Leon Bridges pause, reflect and contemplate for a full minute (an eternity in interview time), before responding with a self-awareness that makes me giggle. “I mean, this shouldn’t be, shouldn’t be a hard question,” he says self-consciously. 

For someone so undeniably suave, who’s at the pinnacle of his musical career, he has an air of nervousness I wasn’t expecting. His speech is peppered with ums, likes and kind ofs, which only make me find him more endearing.

When I first join our Zoom call, Leon is wearing sunglasses and strumming a guitar. ‘Oh my god, he’s going to serenade me,’ I think to myself as he plucks at the strings between questions. 

The image on my screen gives the undeniable impression of ‘a celebrity’, someone quietly confident with a ‘don’t care’ attitude. Leon is undoubtedly cool, anyone who has seen him perform will attest to this. But the sunglasses and guitar also read like armour, forming a physical barrier between Leon and the camera he’s speaking to, protecting him from being too vulnerable. 

I’d expected something like this, having watched and read his other interviews online (he’s shy) and from the notes sent to me in advance (he likes to be prepared). But what I found most interesting was the juxtaposition between his guardedness and the unprecedented vulnerability of his most recent release, Leon, which strikes at the core of him as an artist.  

It’s an homage to his hometown (Fort Worth, Texas) and the people who shaped him, with songs written explicitly for his father and sister. Funnily enough, they didn’t hear the tracks until the full album was released. 

“I was kind of intentional about that, wanting it to be somewhat of a surprise,” he says. “I was able to see my dad’s reaction when he heard ‘Panther City’, which is about him. And then there’s ‘Ivy’ about my sister. 

“I can tell they were blessed by those songs and you know, that’s what it’s about. For me, I love just honouring my family in the music.” 

​​The album is heavily grounded in place, detailing Leon’s hometown down to the specific street names crawling the city. His parents still live there, which made it all the sweeter when, shortly after the album’s release, he toured there. He says it was like “a big family reunion”.  

“I mean, what a significant moment to think about. I first started playing in hole-in-the-wall venues to 10 people in the room, to selling out a 14,000-capacity venue,” he says.

As you’d expect from a self-titled project, it’s a deeply personal release. At first, it sounds like a clear progression of Leon’s sound, a departure from the familiar-feeling rhythms that first drew those comparisons to Redding and Cooke. But with further play, it feels like Leon has instead peeled back his sound, stripping away the musical influences of others to showcase his music, at its core. A musical homecoming, if you will. Funny, when you consider he named his first album Coming Home.

“Yeah, I would say it’s a return to my most authentic self,” he agrees. “Every body of work I put out is the reflection of me, and it’s sincere. But when I look at my musical journey, I started out doing a ’50s and ’60s-inspired sound. And then my second album was a modern version of that. And then I set out to to do my own R&B music in my way. 

“With this [album], I felt the fans wanted me to get back to the sound of why they fell in love with me in the first place. 

He describes the album as offering “that organic feel” and “that warm feeling of music”, written over years when he was feeling nostalgic and reminiscing on simpler times. The album’s opener, ‘When a Man Cries’, written with John Mayer after the artist slid into his DMs, gives a further hint into his psyche at the time. It’s about men’s mental health, and the power in vulnerability, with lyics like “Fall apart when I try to be strong / Gotta learn how to cry / Can you hear my cry?”

I wonder if Leon’s experience with fame has him longing for a time before it all. I can tell he’s guarded so we don’t dive in deep, but I ask if this (his sparkling career, brilliant fame, procession of awards), is what he’d dreamt of when he was washing dishes and playing open mics. 

“I never really had aspirations of ‘making it’, only because I felt that was just far-fetched,” he admits. “For me, I just love the music so much. My focus was just on getting better at guitar, and writing songs and bringing those songs to open mics. My way into everything, into the music thing, was kind of fortuitous.” 

To hear Leon Bridges, one of the greatest musical talents of our time, call himself ‘lucky’ sends me reeling. But I keep my cool….sort of.

“I wanted to ask if you’re happy to get an on-screen, um, photo with me, if I can take one on my phone. Are you comfy with that? Yeah? Yeah? Love it.” 

Leon Bridges is touring Australia from Jan 17 to 26. Stream Leon here.