2009 was an exciting year for Example, releasing the free mix tape "The Credit Munch", supporting Calvin Harris on his UK tour and headlining his own Wonky Pop tour with Flamboyant Bella (who supported Kid British on the Oct 09 uLive tour.) 2010 promises to be even more impressive and what better way for Example to present himself to the nation, than on the uLive Students' Union circuit!
Example's widescreen look at life is a vision perhaps typical of a man who has immersed himself, since being a teenager, not only in street culture but also in film making, studying directing at Royal Holloway Uni at the start of the decade and combining his two passions on numerous occasions in the subsequent years. Notably Example took the opportunity, while shooting the 'What We Made' video in Chernobyl, to make a short film focusing on the area's derelict local amenities. It was a bold, moving account and in 2009 Example's still all about the big ideas. This new album comes with all the 26-year-old's energy channeled into a desire to be on big stages, and to get on the biggest stage, he reasons, you need the biggest songs.
"There's no two ways around it," he declares. "It's not about being the best singer, or the best rapper*. It's about having the biggest songs. If you've got that sorted, it's job done." Fortunately there's no questioning the size of some of this fella's new tunes. 'Inside Your Head' and 'Watch The Sun Come Up' are both the work of a serious songwriting talent, and with the pressure off he's settling comfortably into love songs and relationship anthems - that new adopted genre of, as he puts it, 'female-based chat'. "I used to have a thing - a mild insecurity - that I'd have to cover ten different subjects in an album," he admits. "And then you think, Marvin Gaye! Michael Jackson! Entire albums, just about women from different points of view." So while there's an accidental credit crunch anthem called 'The Fearless' (it was completed on the day Lehmen Brothers went down, throwing a whole new light on its lyrics) most of this new material centres on love in its many, sometimes splendid, forms.
What strikes you most as you chat with Example about his new album is his unusually infectious enthusiasm - he is, he says, "obsessed with writing songs" - and the passion he has for taking them out on the road to the people who will, he hopes, share his excitement. "