Callum Beattie's anthemic reckoning

Going to gigs became a grounding force during turbulent points of his adolescence, inspiring him to utilise songwriting as a vehicle to communicate what he was going through during that time. By fifteen years old, the Scottish singer-songwriter was busking at Edinburgh Festival, playing Monday night gigs at his local bar in Musselburgh, playing the pub circuit for eight years to follow. For Beattie, moving to London would serve as a stepping stone and offer his big break — or so he thought.

“I moved, I wrote songs for different pop artists, and I managed to get a record deal with a big label. The biggest in the world, actually,” Beattie recalls. “So, I thought everything was going to change. And then I ended up recording my first record seven or eight times. And anything that was trending on TikTok, suddenly it had to sound like that. So it was a really confusing thing for me. I was putting out songs to order, really.”

The album that Beattie is referring to, People Like Us, was released in 2020. He describes it as “a mix of different genres” that arose as a result of him trying to service the label. Although the record landed the number one spot on the Scottish Albums Chart, it wasn’t true to the music that Beattie wanted to make. While his youth was defined by live music, and he was taken by the grandeur bands such as The Who (who, after seeing live at Hyde Park, he described as “like finding God), he was pushed to sell himself as an insular commercial pop artist.

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“I tried to give the label what they wanted while holding onto my self respect,” he notes, “And none of it was working. I wasn't staying true to myself. I was pretty miserable in the whole situation, especially when you're putting out songs that you think are pretty God awful. You've got to front it like selling clothes in a shop you hate, but you want people to come in."

Although he reflects his debut as something of a facade, concealing the true nature of his artistry, Beattie did gain one important insight from its release that would work in his favour later on. He managed to convince the label to include his song “Salamander Street”, a darker track about a sex worker in Edinburgh’s red light district.

"They were like, it's never going to sell. You know? Like, it won’t stream,” he muses, reflecting on the label’s response to his pitch. “But I wanted to hit the targets without losing myself.” Much to Beattie’s surprise — and the label’s — it turned out to be the most successful song on the record, so much so that his dad called to tell him that “Salamander Street” made it to the radio.

Seeing the potential of his own songs, the original material not shaped by label influence, gave Beattie the push he needed to truly back his own work. "The pleasure I took from it was actually knowing,” he explains. “Maybe I do know more than I think I do, and maybe I'm giving too much to other people, and I need to guard myself a little bit more and believe in what I'm doing, and believe that actually, a good song will find its way."

With a newfound sense of self-confidence, Beattie allowed himself to push forward, even though his relationship with the relationship was strained. By the time he was ready to release his second album Vandals, he was met with more expectations that would effectively be a betrayal to himself to try to fulfil. “They wanted him to sound like Harry Styles, and more unfortunately, set him up to work with a vocal coach that would train him to sound more poised for a boy band.

“It was pretty demoralising, to be honest,” Beattie admits when I ask him about the experience of the vocal coaching sessions. “I was being given songs. They would tell me that if I didn’t put it on the record, it wasn’t going out. And I’d just say, ‘Well, I didn’t write it’. Then they’d say ‘You’ll be happy once it’s a hit and you’re on the stage singing it.’ And I just thought they didn’t understand me at all. I’d rather battle for twenty years and get a little bit of success, than have it all and be standing there on the stage in front of thousands of people feeling like a fraud.”

And so, Beattie decided that he would be willing to risk the long game. The situation was unsustainable, to the extent that it was affecting his mental health. But after the release of Vandals — which achieved yet another number one on the Scottish Albums Chart — Beattie was dropped by the label. “My songs didn’t stream. They still don't stream,” he shrugs, though humbly, as Vandals has received over 50 million streams since its release. “It's a dark art, you know. But I sell arenas, so it's a weird thing." However, playing to his strengths, Beattie has honed in on his ability to connect with audiences in a live setting, something that he’s nurtured over the course of twenty years.

“It’s just live storytelling, you know?” he replies, when I ask what he thinks makes his music resonate so deeply with live audiences. “People can see it and translate it on stage. They believe what you’re singing. People find common ground with it, or a connection, and think that it reminds them of themselves, or a situation that they’re going through at the time. It becomes more than just a song.”

“A lot of people comment on my social media saying my show feels like an intimate gig, even when it’s been in an arena,” he continues. “ I think that’s the best compliment anyone could give you. And it did feel like that. Even though I couldn’t see everyone’s faces, I knew they were there. And they’ve been part of the journey. Whether they’ve seen me play in the street or in a bar, there’s a reason they keep coming back. And I believe it’s because of the storytelling.”

Ultimately, Beattie being dropped from his label worked out to be a blessing in disguise, and a crucial turning point in his journey. “That’s the point I started flying,” he comments, and rightly so. He sold over 100,000 tickets for his Scotland shows last year, has announced his biggest show to date at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro, and is now returning with his new album, INDI, released this week.

Beattie’s manager David Rogers played a significant role in shifting his trajectory. Not only did he help get Beattie out of the deal, but he also affirmed his desire to make the music that he’s wanted to since he first realised his dream of becoming a songwriter at age ten. “He basically turned around and said, ‘Look, who are all of your favourite bands?’ So I told him. And he says, ‘Why don’t you sound anything like them?’ I told him that I’m not allowed to. But he’s done an unbelievable job in getting me out of the deal and making me believe in myself, reminding me that I didn’t need anyone but myself, and a batch of songs that I believe in.”

INDI arrives as that batch of songs. Under a new deal with Cooking Vinyl and inspired by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire, and the War on Drugs, Beattie has pooled his influences into a twelve track collection that finally represents his own voice. Working alongside producer Joe Cross (Courteeners, The LaFontaines, Louis Tomlinson), Beattie took a no rules approach to making the record. “I knew I needed singles for radio and stuff like that, but I knew that they would come naturally,” he tells me. “The songs come a lot faster to me when I’m not writing to order, and just writing real songs. And surely the job of the record business is to find places for these songs rather than the other way around.”

“I see a lot of TikTok artists that stream incredibly well, but it’s kind of like shaking your ass on a Saturday night,” he muses. “One step forward, two steps back. It doesn’t tell me an awful lot about your life. Which is fine, music is for everyone and it’s for different things, but the type of music that I’m good at, and helped me through life, are the types of songs that I make.”

On INDI, Beattie takes the full opportunity to tell listeners about himself, free of the constraints that previously imposed upon his authenticity. “I talk about mental health a lot, and topics like that,” he tells me, but it seems an understatement for the depth of the narratives that Beattie explores. On album opener and single “Two Pretenders”, he chronicles the story of a romantic relationship on the edge of collapse, and the fight to preserve the love that once held them together. Against a deceptively jangly instrumental backdrop, Beattie’s raspy vocals cut through the illusion, singing, “Trying to make something from nothing / Throwing our hearts in the fire / Clinging to the end, just living like two pretenders.”

Beattie comments that all of the songs on the album are personal, but some divulge experiences that go all the way back to his childhood. Lanterns, for example, pulls from Beattie’s memories of being raised by his dad when his mother left the family. Through acoustic strumming that rattles with a sense of yearning, Beattie’s repetition of “I’m coming home”, and mournful verse, “Let your lanterns go / It’s not my time yet / But I’ll let you know”, a young Beattie sitting at his window, waiting for his mother to return, envisioning a lantern that carries his troubles away is captured in just under four minutes.

Recounting those moments through song, whether it be relationships, longing, insecurity, is something that has become therapeutic for Beattie. “When I’m in a room, especially with a producer, you talk through the song, the lyric change, you talk about all of these things, and then you talk about the story which led to the song,” he explains. “Whatever you say in that room stays in the room. It’s kind of like therapy in a way, because you just get it all out there.”

Beyond production, the making of INDI saw Beattie incorporate a new collaborative element: a band. “I just love anthemic music,” he says, when I ask about what stood out about the bands that inspired his own instrumental palette. “It’s exciting. I love the energy of it. I love the sound, the big chorus. That’s what I’ve always been drawn to.”

“I never wanted it to just be Callum Beattie,” he continues. “I always wanted to be in a band, but I just couldn’t find four other people that were willing to give up everything to make it happen. I have great respect for bands like U2, Coldplay. They stick together. It’s just four guys who all had the same dream and were willing to give up everything for it. It’s a real rare thing.”

While Beattie is excited to have expanded his sound into something bigger and more powerful, he’s careful not to stray too far from his roots, ensuring that he does not alienate those who have supported him from the beginning. “I want to keep growing as an artist, but I don’t plan to reinvent myself. I feel like I’ve done too much of that in my early days,” he laughs. “I’ve exhausted myself of it. I love the music that I make, and normally if I love it, it does well because it’s believable.”

What Beattie does intend to do, however, is introduce his sound to new audiences. Being based primarily in Scotland, he has run into some obstacles with increasing his reach beyond his home country. “It’s definitely harder to build a fan base elsewhere,” he admits. “I’ve found that especially with being independent, a lot of artists will be managed by a guy that has two support acts who he also manages, who are on tour with someone from One Direction or something. So they’re getting a huge leg up, where we just don’t have that leverage. It’s hard.”

Yet, he doesn’t see this as an insurmountable barrier, recognising that his music has the ability to travel – and he’s patient. “I don’t feel like it’s impossible, I just feel like it might take a little bit longer than most,” he says. “But that’s been the story of my whole career, really. It’s nothing new to me, and kind of makes me want to rebel against it. And it’s just the way the industry is, but it’s got to do with a bit of luck as well. It can be weird going from 20,000 people a night to 300 in a room in London, because you think that there clearly is a want for the music, but it needs to find the right people.”

Somewhat begrudgingly, Beattie is even learning how to represent himself on social media, though he’s still not “shaking his ass on a Saturday night” for his TikTok viewers, as he’d call it. Even online, he’s doing his best to maintain a sense of transparency. “I’m trying to do it without looking contrived,” he asserts. “Or desperate. So, I just put an acoustic video of me singing in my bed, looking God awful, jet lagged, but I figure I’ll put it up and see what happens. But I just thought, ‘Let's put it up and see what happens.’”

Now, INDI stands for many things – a collection of songs but also a marker of freedom for Beattie. A symbol of his own conviction, and a demonstration of his commitment to creating honest music, no matter how long it takes to manifest as success, just as long as it finds its people. And a testament to just seeing what happens, and where this takes him. When we discuss what success looks like at this point, Beattie admits that he’s not completely fearless when it comes to thinking about what happens next.

Through our conversation, it feels like next to nothing can get in the way of Beattie expressing himself, now as a more empowered, independent artist. “No matter what, I had to deal with it,” he says as he reflects on his journey towards becoming a musician. “It’s in my blood. It’s what I’m seriously passionate about. It’s not a hobby, it’s my life, you know? And it all worked out in the end.”