IN CONVERSATION WITH KING CURIOUS

King Curious, the musical persona of acclaimed actor and songwriter Jim Sturgess, has emerged as a bold and experimental force in the UK music scene. His debut album, Common Sense For The Animal, showcases an eclectic blend of British culture with electronic, indie, and alternative influences. With a sound defined by raw vulnerability, King Curious delves deeply into themes of love, mental health, and societal issues. Through his compelling storytelling, he draws listeners into his world, navigating the complexities of the human experience with an innovative and genre-defying record.

In this revealing interview, King Curious reflects on how his emotional journey, from personal experiences to societal observations, shaped his debut album, and explores the intricate themes that inspire his unique sound and poignant lyrics.

First of all, congratulations on your debut album! How has the rollout been for you so far?

Thank you! It’s been a really interesting journey. Working so hard on something that takes up such a big part of your headspace while you're making it just consumes your brain. So, finally putting it out—transforming something that’s been swirling around in your head into holding a piece of vinyl and giving it to someone, or passing it on and letting it become theirs—it’s a great feeling. Physically and emotionally, you feel it passing through you. You experience that final stage where it’s finished, released, and out in the world. You genuinely feel uplifted from just the weight of it leaving you, your brain, and your shoulders. It’s nice, it feels good.

What inspired the title of the album, Common Sense For The Animal? How did you come up with it, and how does it relate to the themes explored in the album?

I didn’t really know what to call the record while I was making it, which often happens. I have notebooks full of scribbles—words, phrases, lyrics, bits of poetry, and diary entries. When I started thinking about a title for the record, I began flipping through these notebooks. The phrase Common Sense For The Animal kept appearing. I had used it in lyrics for different songs, and though I didn’t really know what it meant, I liked the phrase. It just kept coming up, and I kept returning to it. As I began to consider the themes of the record, it somehow made sense. It was all very subconscious; I didn’t fully understand why at the time.

Now, I can process and digest it a bit more. The record is very much about two things: my personal human experience—everything I’ve gone through personally and emotionally—and the collective experience of us in the time we live in. There are other songs that are broader and less personal, with a more collective perspective. So, I started to feel that the record was, in some way, about the human experience—whatever that may be: all the good, the bad, the difficult, the complications, the hopes, the fears, and the dreams.

The phrase Common Sense For The Animal kept jumping out at me, so I thought, Yeah, I’ll use that for the title of the record. I think it comments on humans and our place in the world—how incredible we can be, all the things we’ve created, and how ridiculous we can be at the same time. Despite being the most advanced species ever to have existed, we also lack a significant amount of basic common sense.

In your album, you explore personal themes like love, mental health, and suicidal issues, all stemming from the human experience you mentioned. How do these themes reflect your own personal experiences?

The three particularly personal tracks on the record, which are very, very personal, are about a specific painful chapter in my life. I think when you're writing music, you often reach for the piano or the guitar, or engage in the cathartic exercise of writing a song. It's rare to write a song when you're in a good mood because then you just want to stay in that good mood. You're not necessarily reflecting on it—you're just living in the moment and enjoying it. But when you're feeling sad or when things are complicated or difficult, for some reason, it feels much more necessary to process that through writing a song. So, yeah, there are some songs that are painfully personal, and I wanted to include them. There's a song on the album called The Makeshift Numbers, which is a stripped-back piano ballad. It was the first song I wrote for the record and the first song I had written in quite a few years, actually. When I wrote it, all these emotions came out at that moment. It was an important song for me, and it ignited a lot of other things that became part of the album.

Your song Another World is described as a provocative standout. Can you elaborate on the message behind that track?

Another World is about more than one thing. If you listen to the lyrics, they're quick-fire and touch on a whole spectrum of issues. Ultimately, I think Another World is about escapism and leaving the world we live in—whether that's escaping into space, the cosmos, other planets, or the digital space where we all disappear into some meta-universe. It's kind of a commentary on how wild and crazy the world can be here on this planet. So, it’s both physical, about the universe, and digital, in terms of the metaverse—just cosmic escapism.

This reminds me of your song Think Of Planets, where you also explore cosmic themes, right?

Yeah, I'm always amazed that we don't learn more about planets and the universe in school. To me, that stuff is fascinating, and it gives you a very real perspective on the world we live in. When things get difficult in life, I try to step back and gain a much bigger, deeper perspective. A planet in an entire universe that's able to support life—that's extraordinary when you really think about it. So, yeah, it can give you some much-needed perspective at times. When you're having a hard time, or you're nervous about something, you often can't see the wood for the trees.

Then there's also Sorry, I'm A Man. That song touches on masculinity and vulnerability, right? How do you navigate this complex topic in your music?

I think there was a moment when I was really interested in what it meant to be a man. There was a lot of backlash about masculinity and men in general, and I found that interesting. Often, you write these things without really knowing where it's coming from, and later you figure out why you did it. At the time, there was a lot in the press and a lot I was reading about masculinity—about what it means to be a man, or what it can mean—and it's so varied, you know? There's so much vulnerability in being masculine, and it's complicated.

But I put it at the end of the record, after a track like Think Of Planets, because it suddenly took on a new life. It was very personal, very much about being a man. But when I placed it after Think Of Planets, it sort of became about being human as well. It felt more like an apology to the planet, so it ended up with two meanings, which I liked. It summed up the record for me. Some of it is very personal, and some of it deals with much bigger themes. Putting that song at the end of the record gave it a duality that I liked.

Then there's one more track I’d like to delve into: Fears Of London, which seems to capture a gritty aspect of the city. How has London influenced your music, both lyrically and sonically?

That's a great question, because I really wanted to write a song about London. And for the reason you just mentioned—it plays such a huge part in my life. I spend a big chunk of my time on this planet in the city of London, and it shapes who I am as a person and how I see the rest of the world. So, I was very eager to see if I could write a song about my experience in London. But it’s quite difficult to write a song about a city without it feeling cheesy or obvious.

There are some great songs that have been written about the city, and I love it when I hear a song that mentions the place you come from—there’s a sense of pride in that. So, I thought about how I could find my own way to write a song about London. The first thing I did was sit on a London night bus. I travelled through the city on a busy Friday night with my notebook, just by myself, staring out the window, seeing if anything would come to me—whether lyrically or melodically. That's why the song has that motion to it, especially in the drums. It’s really about weaving through the city, just watching the madness unfold in front of you.

It's one of my favourite tracks on the record. I sort of took on the persona of a character, like Hunter S. Thompson or someone like that—just a crazy writer, and it's quite psychedelic, weird, scary, and exciting all at the same time. So lyrically, it weaves through those feelings.

Your music is described as blending British culture with electronic, alternative, and indie influences. What are your musical inspirations? Are there any artists or things that really inspire you musically?

I think all the music that passes through your ears inspires you in some way, even the stuff you don't like. But when I was making the record, I wasn’t thinking about influence or trying to create something specific. I was just trying to serve each song based on what I believed the themes were and how to best enhance and represent them sonically. So, influence didn’t cross my mind at all during the recording process. But once the album was finished—since the songs are quite eclectic and no two sound alike—I started to wonder what the influences were.

I realised that all kinds of influences had passed through me into the record, because I hear so many things. I mean, I can hear Elvis in there. I can hear Scott Walker, The Chemical Brothers, 90s hip hop bands, and The Stone Roses. I can hear all of that. I hear The Clash too, but I don’t think it sounds like any of those bands. To me, it’s more like, Oh, that bassline sounds a bit like Massive Attack, or That vocal pattern feels a bit like Scott Walker, or That little thing I did there definitely has an Elvis inspiration. So, when you put it all together, it becomes its own animal. I don’t think it sounds like any of those artists, but it definitely has hints of all of them.

How has your background as an actor influenced your approach to music and storytelling?

I actually don’t know. I've always had both music and acting in my life—whether one was taking the forefront while the other was in the background, I've always been doing both at the same time. I think when I write a song, it's quite similar to when I'm making a film or playing a character, I have this visual world of them in my head. As I’m writing the lyrics and creating the sounds, there’s something kind of cinematic about it, I suppose.

But yeah, once I’ve written a song, when I move on to the next one, I often want it to feel like a completely different film, a totally different thing, you know? I think that comes from my background in filmmaking and acting, playing different characters. But it’s very different in the sense that these songs are my thoughts, my feelings, and my perspective on the world, which makes it much more exposing. Whereas, when you’re acting, you’re using your experiences and emotions to pretend to be someone else. So there’s definitely something opposing about the two, but at the same time, there's also something quite unifying about them.

Looking ahead beyond the album release, what’s next for you as King Curious? Do you have any new projects in the works?

I created this whole world, and it was a really interesting journey—emotional and rewarding. Now, it's coming to an end as I release it into the world. At the moment, I can only think as far as that, but I've always written music. I've been doing it since I was about 15 years old. So, I feel like I've now created a space where I can do it again if I want to. And if I do write another collection of songs, I can put it into this concurrent avatar, I guess—this journey that another part of my brain is having.

That’s why I wanted to call the project something other than my own name, to give it its own personality, its own space, and make it a safe, creative place for me to explore other things. I’m definitely interested in revisiting it again.

Listen to King Curious’ debut album Common Sense For The Animal here.