20 YEARS ON FROM HER SOLO DEBUT, SHAZNAY LEWIS IS BACK WITH BELATED SOPHOMORE ALBUM PAGES. WE SPOKE TO HER ABOUT GOING IT ALONE AND WHETHER ALL SAINTS REALLY ARE NO MORE...
STEVE O’BRIEN
Q+A
As the primary songwriter in All Saints, Shaznay Lewis was one of the defining artists of the late 90s. After the group split – for the first time – in 2001, the Islington-born singer-songwriter released her debut album, the No.22-charting Open, a kickstarter on a solo career that was soon to be paused when All Saints reunited in 2006. Now, six years on from the seemingly final All Saints record, Shaznay’s back with Pages, a new 12-track album, boasting guest spots from, among others, Self-Esteem, Shola Ama and General Levy. “I do feel as though I’m starting again,” Lewis explains, “and making this record with some special people has been an exhilarating experience.”
It’s been 20 years since Open and six years since the last All Saints album, Testament. So why now?
I don’t really know. I never had any intention of doing my own project before. It literally all stemmed from one song I’d done. I’d done this session with Moyses Dos Santos and Charlie Stacey and by the end, I knew I loved the melody and really wanted to write something good to it. So I left it for a little while and then one day wrote a song over it, and that one track – Missiles – basically inspired me to go off and do my own project.
How would you describe the differences between Open and this latest solo album?
This record was definitely written without any sort of stress. If I think about how I felt when I wrote Open, I’d just come out of a band. Also, the label at the time had been taken over by EMI so I had no real point of contact in terms of A&R, as lots of people were leaving. I spent four years trying to put that record together. I just wanted to keep going, but there were so many other factors which just made that situation be quite drawn out. So by the end of the four years, when I finally did release Open, I was quite frazzled. And by that point I felt a little bit... unsure. But with this, with Pages, you’re talking about 20 years later, so there’s a lot of growth there, there’s a lot of cemented understanding of what I do and how I do it.
How do you think you’ve matured as a songwriter in these past two decades?
It’s about not trying to conform and implement things that, as a songwriter, shouldn’t necessarily really matter. It was just about making sure I wrote a really good song, instead of thinking about anything else that sort of gets factored into being an
