Getting Candid with Kai Bosch [INTERVIEW]

We’re Getting Candid in our interview with Kai Bosch.

Kai Bosch is a British alt-pop artist. His latest single “Bodybag” is a taste of his forthcoming EP which sees Kai writing about breaking up with his boyfriend while still living under the same roof in London.

We talk to Kai Bosch about how queer representation in media has changed in the last 5 years, how moving from conservative Cornwall to Berlin and London helped Kai find himself and be comfortable in his sexuality, and the importance of being honest in songwriting.

You can find a transcribed excerpt of the interview with Kai Bosch below.

Name 3 Songs: You mentioned that you have finished your second EP quite recently. And that the themes surrounding this are going to be the loss of a relationship and that you were essentially writing throughout the breakup. So for you was this writing process difficult with these emotions being so raw and real at the time?

Kai Bosch: Actually, I’d say the opposite in that the writing process was really easy because I had the source material. So the story is I was living with my first boyfriend and it was my first long-term relationship and we moved in together and about four or five months in we broke up. And over in London, we have a bit of a housing crisis. So it’s not the easiest to just pack your bags and find somewhere else, we were also stuck in a contract. It just looked like a whole lot of hoops to jump through to move out. So we had to live together for another nine months after we broke up. And then we started seeing other people and we started dating other people and it was absolutely horrendous.

But, having said that, I… not to be a little tortured artist over here, but… I really thrive off of pain. So the writing came really easy and I wrote so much in that nine-month gap. Everything on this EP I think I wrote quite quickly and really holds a lot of meaning to me. But having said that, I’m better at writing in hindsight than in writing from the center of a mess.

During those nine months, I’d write about things maybe like a month or two in the past, because I think… when I’m writing about something so painful from the eye of the storm, it very much is like, ‘oh, poor me, this makes me feel sad’. And that’s all I can write. But then if I write in kind of hindsight, I can really pick it apart and be much more poetic and romanticise that pain a bit better.

I read in another interview that you kind of had taken on this persona based off of the movie ‘Gay Best Friend’ being like, ‘oh, now that I’m gay and everyone knows I need to act and dress a certain way’. I’m curious now as a performer, if you feel like there is a new version of a persona that you need to step into and how you feel about that idea, having done the teen gay persona thing in high school to try and figure out who you were already.

I actually think that it just came naturally to me. I grew up on Stan Twitter, so I very much picked apart. It was Lana Del Rey, it was Lorde, it was Marina and the Diamonds, FKA Twigs, all the proper performer indie girlies. I think very much my day to day self and even when I’m talking between songs I’m this person and I’m very kind of outgoing and unmysterious but the minute I start singing and when it comes to all my visuals as well I just go into this kind of dark place. I wouldn’t say that it’s something that I’ve like I’ve consciously created. It just comes from the ether and it possesses me.

It’s hilarious because I’m not sure if you guys are into astrology but I’m a Leo Sun and then I’m a Cancer Moon and Scorpio rising and I’ve always been so confused about the Scorpio rising because rising is supposed to be like what people outwardly perceive you as. And I am the least mysterious, least secretive person you will meet in your life. And then the other day, someone was like, ‘oh no, but like when you perform, that’s exactly who you are’. And it makes sense. But, it’s definitely not a conscious thing, but there definitely is an artistic persona that takes over me when I sing, when I write, when I perform, and that’s kind of the thing.

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