Jonathan Higgs (Everything Everything)

Waddup? I’m joined this episode by Jonathan Higgs from the excellent Everything Everything. The band are from Manchester and formed in 2007. They’ve so far released 6 albums, 2 of which were nominated for the Mercury Music Award. They’ve also had 5 Ivor Novello nominations. Their most recent album 2022s “Raw Data Feel” saw the band experiment with the use of AI to create the album artwork as well as some of the lyrics for the album. Mark Hanslip, a researcher from the Unversity of York, helped Higgs develop an AI bot named Kevin which was fed 4 sources of information: LinkedIn’s terms and conditions, the classic poem Beowulf, 400,000 posts from controversial message board 4chan, and the sayings of the Confucius. The generated results were poured through and compiled into useable material. Jonathan has generally preferred to keep secret which lyrics are his and which were generated by AI, which accounts for about 5% of the albums lyrics. The band’s debut album 2010s “Man Alive” is about to get a deluxe reissue. It’s an album I really like, so it was a great opportunity to speak to Jonathan. Hope you enjoy it.