Craig David wants people to “discover” his music “walking through Tesco”.
The Garage King has just released the album ’22’ in celebration of his 22-year career, and he admits chasing hits is not on his agenda because a song doesn’t have to be number one to be timeless.
In an interview with Music Week, Craig said: “What I now see as a quote-unquote ‘hit record’ is different. Before it was like, ‘Okay, how many physical sales have you got? And where are you in the charts? And are you on ‘Top Of The Pops’?’ That’s moved into a phase of streaming and YouTube and you’ve got airplay and it’s all bundled into something that gives you a chart position. Then there’s the official chart show. And still counting sales on physical. So, what does it mean? And, over my career, I’ve seen that I will sing a song like ‘What’s Your Flava?’ and the crowd will know every single word. And that went in at No.8, so it doesn’t have the No.1 hit narrative … I still want songs to get airplay. That’s where it is for me. I can be on Radio 2 and 1Xtra and that means something. I want people to discover my song when they’re walking through Tesco.”
The album was a lockdown project and the 41-year-old singer said it was like going back to the early days of writing music in his bedroom.
Asked about working on the songs in his dressing gown, the ‘7 Days’ hitmaker said: “Yeah, proper lockdown style! But in a way it was quite similar to how I started with my first album, up in my bedroom in my shorts and T-shirt. Going out to play football with my mates and then coming back to it, flicking on the bass boost button on my headphones. Sometimes that feeling of nostalgia can be really good.”
Over the past two decades, Craig – who rose to fame in 1999, with a feature spot on ‘Re-Rewind’ by Artful Dodger – has earned 20 UK Top 40 singles, and seven UK Top 40 albums, selling over 15,000,000 records worldwide as a solo artist.