A Chat with Colm Warren (23.04.26)
Colm Warren is one of those rare artists who operates entirely on his own terms. His latest single, ‘Without You’, is a beautiful, deeply human piece of work that doesn’t just showcase his evolution as a songwriter but also his ability to connect, uplift, and give voice to stories that truly matter. We chat with Colm Warren below.
OSR: ‘Without You’ feels deeply personal. What was the first moment you knew it had to become a song rather than just a private thought?
Warren: As is often the case with me and songs like this that are being written for someone in particular to hear, I actually wrestled with that a fair bit. In reality, I’m using the song to say stuff to someone that I love that, for whatever reason (maybe it’s just part of being an Irish man!!), I would struggle to say out loud in everyday life. As much as I know how that might sound ridiculous, it just is what it is, and in my circle and orbit growing up, expressing your emotions and deeply held thoughts and feelings was not really something you did (or at least not without significant risk of an almighty slagging!!!). So, with this, I just really wanted my sister to know how proud I was of both her and Odhran and all that they had helped each other to achieve. So, for her birthday, rather than just ringing her up and telling her all that sort of mushy stuff, I decided I’d get an orchestra instead and finally record ‘Without You’!! I first sent her the fully mixed and mastered recording on her birthday as a gift…and she understood what I was doing perfectly. It’s a lovely thing, I suppose we’ll always have between us (without ever actually having to say anything nice to each other out loud!!!!).
OSR: How did writing for someone so close to you shape the emotional tone of the track compared to your earlier work?
Warren: It didn’t really change too much in terms of my overall approach, to be honest. Once I’ve written a song, I will always just aim to ensure that as we develop it, in terms of instrumentation, vocal delivery, production etc the final sound of any recorded version evokes (at least to my ears anyway) the primary emotion or emotions I’m looking to explore with the lyrical content of the particular track – and, musically, we try to stay as authentic to that aim as possible. In this case, I’m trying to capture something that reflects an initial vulnerability and doubt but ultimately resolves into a positive realisation of something unique and very special. Hopefully, we’ve achieved something reasonably close to that.
OSR: You’ve described your nephew’s presence as transformative. How do you translate something so lived and intimate into music without losing its truth?
Warren: I’m not 100% sure what the answer to that is, but it’s almost always the aim in my songs! I spend a lot of time thinking about lyrics and what I’m trying to say with them in a particular song. They’re definitely not just placeholders or random words I think will sound good with the music– even if that’s what some people might think when they hear them, ha ha!!! Everything is a very specific thought or feeling that I’m trying to express or get at. In turn, that will then drive the various musical decisions with the aim of supporting and supplementing the song’s particular theme at all junctures. And working with collaborators and musicians of massive integrity who get what I’m trying to do is also absolutely critical. Hopefully, that all ends up producing something genuinely authentic that I can stand over, even if it’s just authentic to me and never connects with another soul! Retaining that honesty in my writing is something I am totally obsessed with, to be honest.
OSR: Was there a moment during the writing process where the song surprised you emotionally?
Warren: I added the “Where would I be without you?” refrain that appears towards the end of the track quite late in the original writing process. It wasn’t in there originally, and I think I added it while doing a vocal guide on a pre-production session for the orchestra. I knew the song needed a bit more to it, and I definitely remember a tear or two forming in my eyes when I first sang that line out loud and was thinking of the people involved.
OSR: The orchestration is incredibly expansive. How did you approach balancing intimacy with that cinematic scale?
Warren: The orchestral arrangement is all the work of my good friend and key collaborator John Bynre, so I can take absolutely no credit for that! John is crucial to everything we have been doing and having worked on so many tracks together at this stage, he now just instinctively gets what I’m looking for. I remember early on being a bit obsessed about certain melody lines having to appear on the strings or whatever, but these days, I just send the song to John, maybe give him an overview in some way (or maybe not!) and then wait for the genius to come back!! Once the orchestra has done its thing, we’ll then take a lot of care during the mixing process to ensure it sits appropriately within a given track, depending on what the song requires.
OSR: Did you find it difficult to decide what not to include in the song?
Warren: No. I’m usually pretty good at making decisions, and I’ll make them based on what I think is best for a particular song at the time and move on. For example, I did drop a verse and some bridge lyrics on this because, in the end, I felt they weren’t really adding anything. I think I’ve learned and accepted over the years that it’s ok to be fairly ruthless with your ‘babies’ when it comes to knocking songs into shape for recording and performing purposes. Maybe like a lot of songwriters, in earlier days, I didn’t really like changing anything from the acoustic guitar version I’d been playing myself for years in my bedroom!! Previously playing in a punk band where we became obsessed with keeping everything as short as humanly possible really helped me in that regard actually!! Many of my personal opuses were (thankfully) torn to ribbons!!!
OSR: How has fatherhood and family proximity influenced your recent writing compared to your earlier releases like ‘Void’ or ‘Choked’?
Warren: Yeah, very significantly because it simply and unavoidably gives you a very different perspective on life and the future. In reality, it helps you – or it helped me anyway – understand what life is actually about and to find purpose and meaning in that. I wrote songs like ‘Void’ and ‘Choked’ years ago as a very young man – I just couldn’t sing or play them to anyone or even tell anyone I wrote songs at that point! It was a very different place. But I remember it. And, many, many years later, I still needed to get those songs out of me. Ultimately, that’s why I returned to making music, having once tried to bury it. It’s a very hard thing to explain, really. But, without a doubt, fatherhood played a huge role in it also – as I wanted my children to, at least some day, hear my songs and understand that I actually saw myself as a songwriter and artist first above everything else I did – even if no one else saw it that way!!!
OSR: What does emotional honesty mean to you now, after several years of evolving as a solo artist?
Warren: It’s absolutely everything and fundamental to every song I write and record. While I might have focused on angrier, frustration-filled stuff in younger days with the punk band, where I still attempted to be extremely honest and authentic in what the songs were getting at, but maybe kept the most emotionally vulnerable stuff hidden, I now have the confidence, know-how and maturity to do those sorts of songs justice and to let them ‘out there’. There would literally be no point to me making music whatsoever if it wasn’t being done to help me address and explore various emotional themes, sometimes difficult ones, that are important to me or someone in my life. That’s why I’ve always written songs – I suppose it helps me process stuff. Anything else would just be posing really, and that wouldn’t be for me.
OSR: When you listen back to ‘Without You’, what feeling do you hope people sit with afterwards?
Warren: I hope they think it’s a well-written, well-performed song with a positive, hopeful message, and they might even consider listening to it again sometime! I’m also incredibly grateful for anyone taking the time out of their lives to listen to anything I’ve written. I appreciate that music is an incredibly subjective thing, and my voice, style, instrumentation choices or whatever won’t be to all tastes, but my usual target is a general appreciation that what we’ve put out as independent musicians is “not total shite”. Normally, I’m good with that because the song, as they all will have by the time I put them out for “the world” to hear, will already have fulfilled its artistic purpose for me by that stage anyway. Anything else positive flowing from it is then just such a bonus, and it’s always extremely moving any time I ever learn that a song I have written has connected in some way with another person. That’s happened quite a bit already with “Without You” and some of the contacts and messages I have received, especially from families with experience of Down syndrome, have been overwhelming. People don’t even realise how much it means as a songwriter to hear from them like that. It makes it all worthwhile.
OSR: Did this song change the way you think about your own role as a songwriter?
Warren: As mentioned, the impact it has had has surprised me a little bit. Especially with the video and how we ensured that young creatives with Down Syndrome were at the centre of that. That meant a lot to people. I had worried about how we might get that right for a long time and whether I should even attempt it, but now I’m so glad we did. I wasn’t even that sure that I’d release this track after doing it for my sister’s birthday originally. I worried about whether it was good enough to go out, and was nearly going to leave it as a private, family thing. So I suppose it’s helped me to remember why I’m doing this and reminded me again of music’s ability to impact and connect so many people in a really positive way. As a songwriter, or for me anyway, knowing that you’ve connected with even just one other person emotionally via a song that you created from absolutely nothing is a very powerful thing. And when I remember that, it makes me want to keep on writing, recording and releasing songs.
Many thanks to Colm Warren for speaking with us. Find out more about Colm Warren on his Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube.
