FINDING HIS VOICE: LEE LEWIS ON HOWL, HEARTBREAK AND HEALING

WORDS ALICE LAMBERT 

For Lee Lewis, visibility is no longer negotiable. “I’m a black, queer R&B singer, and I’m very proud of it,” he says matter-of-factly. Sitting in front of me on a bright blue sofa in an East London office, the soft-spoken LA musician projects a quiet confidence. But it’s one that has been hard-won. For years, the artist struggled to find his voice, to project his experience loudly into the world. Now, he’s making up for lost time. 

"HAVING A VOICE WAS NOT SOMETHING I FELT LIKE I HAD FOR A VERY LONG TIME."

Growing up closeted and navigating America as a Black queer man meant vulnerability was rarely an option for Lewis. “Having a voice was not something I felt like I had for a very long time, as a human being, but also as a musician. Vulnerability and trauma were things I didn’t speak about,” he notes. Classically trained in opera, his role was to interpret the words of others, rather than find his own. It wasn’t until Lewis graduated college, he started to realise that articulating this vulnerability was a necessity. “I really needed to express these things before I became this rigid, blocked-off person. If you’re trying to be an artist, and if you’re trying to be a human being, you have to tap into your experiences and emotions.” 

Lewis began to explore these parts of himself through music, transitioning out of opera and turning towards soul and R&B. Brimming with introspection, Lewis started songwriting in “a genre focused on beautiful singing and raw storytelling, but now, my own storytelling,” he explains. Storytelling is exactly what is channeled into Lewis’s latest EP, HOWL. After nearly two years of work, the artist debuted the six new tracks last month. At its core, it’s the journey of a relationship, tracking the highs and lows of falling in and out of love for the first time, in real time. “I think it took a while because I was writing [HOWL] as I was experiencing these things in a relationship,” explains Lewis. 

Musically, inspiration came from a breadth of sources. Deep dives into soul classics like Donny Hathaway, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Marlena Shaw, combined with 60s film composers such as Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone and Frances Lai. The melange of musicians had a common thread, “an honesty, a rawness”. Lewis sifted through this world, searching for a through line, found in his writing and approach to singing. 

“It was like the music was pulling out these feelings and emotions that I couldn’t express and laying it out clearly in the song.” 

Days in the studio would be spent with his songwriting team, co-writer Bijou Choder and producer co-writer Roméo transforming conversations about his relationship into a raw body of work. While communication may have been difficult for Lewis in the past, HOWL unlocked an openness inside. “It was like the music was pulling out these feelings and emotions that I couldn’t express and laying it out clearly in the song.” 

Powerful songwriting came through moments from his relationship that cut deep. As he says in one of his Instagram videos promoting his song ‘Your Love (What I’m Dying From)’: “Toxic Love = Great Music”. “When you go through these intense highs and lows, they’re always attached to a very visceral experience. There’s fighting on the street in Koreatown and the dead silence on the train ride home, but also there’s laying in bed for hours, cracking up, taking shrooms,” he remembers.

When recording, Lewis learned to draw directly from those memories. His producer would encourage him to delve back into his past, picturing vivid moments of love or anger. As a result, when singing about the deterioration of the relationship, "the toxicity feeds into the song", not because the pain is something he wants to relive, but because the intensity creates something he can channel.

Among the original writing, HOWL features a cover of Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’. Originally intending to re-interpret ‘Something About Us’ by Daft Punk, (“We tried. It wasn’t working.”), Lewis went on a search for a song he could channel his own experience through and fell upon the iconic 00s hit with a stark realisation. “I was like, I’m dating that!” he laughs. 

“I hope if [Nelly Furtado] ever hears it, she sees it as a homage to her version.

The song cover sees a perspective shift, along with a lyric change, to tell the experience of being in a relationship with the “Maneater”. The result is a slower, sultry take, oozing with groove and a subtle undercurrent of warning. The double edged sword of dating someone intoxicating; both incredibly sexy, yet veering on emotional danger - almost making you “wish you’d never met them at all”. “I hope if [Nelly Furtado] ever hears it, she sees it as a homage to her version. Like, I’m not trying to steal her story, but I connected with those lyrics in a slightly different way,” explains Lewis. A friend recently told him she heard his version play in a women’s clothing store in LA, exactly where Lewis wants his music to be. “I [want my music] played in places where women and gay men can hear it. Those are always my first two priorities.”

For HOWL, inspiration also came through films. The colour-grading of Her (2013) by Spike Jonze influenced the hazy rhythms of ‘Forever & You’ and ‘Your Love (What I’m Dying From)’ while horror flick Under the Skin (2013) with Scarlett Johansson directly connected to ‘Maneater’ (“Literallly in the movie, she eats her victims!”). French masterpiece Purple Noon (1960), the original film that The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) was adapted from, embodies his vision for the entire EP, a surface of opulence and luxury covering a dark story underneath, like HOWL, one that “is messy and toxic, and ultimately not good in many cases.”

 “I love the idea of a black man being in a suit and being in control, being badass." 

But one franchise particularly lent itself to Lewis’s work. “I love James Bond, specifically Casino Royale,” he smiles. The influence of the dramatic ballad theme songs shine through in Lewis’s swelling, cinematic vocals, no doubt developed through his operatic background. They come to a head most obviously in ‘White Flag’, but the franchise cut a deeper meaning in this track. “I love the idea of a black man being in a suit and being in control, being badass. ‘White Flag’ is about me taking control of the situation I was in,” says Lewis. 

Written on the brink of a breakup with his partner, Lewis was conflicted between wanting to stay together, while also knowing the situation wasn’t working. He was ready to “give up”, wave the White Flag. The writing process was time for Lewis to gather his feelings towards the relationship and turn them into a coherent thought. “I started writing, and I realised I had basically written a breakup. I knew I was going to see him, and we were going to have that conversation. But in the end, I felt very much like Black James Bond, in the suit, not playing games and taking control.”

The final track on the EP, ‘Bitter’, is uplifting both musically and lyrically. A discovery of self-respect, the song documents a person’s decision to walk away, rather than staying in something you know isn’t right for you. It mirrored a conversation Lewis had with his mother. Picking up on Lewis’s low mood during a phone call, he explained it was a result of the relationship not working out. “She basically went, you don’t want to be stuck on someone that’s not a good fit for you that you miss out on everything else. I didn’t even think of that when I wrote ‘Bitter’, but after I listened to it, I thought “wow, ok that is what she was talking about””.

"I'd rather go home tired and bitter / Than spend my whole life stuck waiting on you." 

"I'd rather go home tired and bitter / Than spend my whole life stuck waiting on you." is the line that soundtracks this feeling. It’s the lyric Lewis hopes listeners remember most from HOWL, and he emphatically states that the sentiment is not meant to be melancholy, rather accepting that sometimes closing the chapter can be a good thing. “I’m celebrating the end because I’m a much better, stronger person than I was going into the relationship, and going into the actual project.” 

The reaction to HOWL has been overwhelmingly positive. One fan even wrote an enthusiastic, all caps comment to the singer about how his music had trudged up forgotten feelings about his ex-wife. “I was not expecting that at all,” he laughs. “It made me a little emotional, because do you know how crazy that is for somebody random in the world to hear your song and say it made them miss their ex-wife?!”. 

Visceral it may be, but for Lewis it’s also a stark reminder of the power of music, a tool he once used himself to process feelings surrounding his sexuality when there was an absence of people to talk with. “Not everybody can afford therapy, or be able to talk about things with their family. I think [music] is extremely important as a medium for people to process what they’re going through when they can’t put a voice to it,” he poses thoughtfully. “I hope I can continue to do that for somebody”. 

“I feel very confident right now. I feel like I’m in my revenge era, which is not revenge towards people, but in a way that I feel hot, which is good!”. 

In a post-HOWL world, Lewis is already looking forward. Feeling “creatively charged up” by the positive response to his work, he’s writing already. Sonically, he’s exploring both early 80s and 90s power-ballads and late 80s and early 90s Sade, combined with a lot of Portishead - tracks that feel “sultry, and sexy, and luxurious”, a spirit Lewis is resoundly embodying. “I feel very confident right now. I feel like I’m in my revenge era, which is not revenge towards people, but in a way that I feel hot, which is good!”. 

But he’s also ready to delve into parts of himself that he’s previously left untouched, writing songs that explore the difficulties of the Black and queer experience. He recalls a recent experience he shared with several queer friends watching a movie in New York including a triggering scene involving a gay character that dredged up a strong reaction from the audience. “It made me think, if I can speak to that, and so can my friends, and so can everybody else, I should be writing about this,” he explains, citing how the writing process of HOWL has given him the tools and confidence to tackle the subject matter.

There’s another emotion that Lewis is ready to pour into his writing, one he is still learning to embrace himself. “I struggle with properly experiencing joy and not feeling guilty about it. I think that is something that happens a lot with women, minorities, it's always, do we deserve this joy? For Lewis, the answer is simple. “We do. So maybe I should write about what it feels to feel joy.”

In the days leading up to the release of HOWL, Lewis also embarked on a headline show in LA, an experience he is hungry to continue in the future. Wanting to challenge himself performing live, Lewis completed his longest set of 13 songs, alongside a full band, Spanish guitar player and an intermission. His set list, like his songwriting, told a story, transitioning from “the honeymoon phase” of love songs in the first act, to the grittier tales of heartbreak for his second act. 

“I left the crowd with the band for a little bit, and stepped off stage to change my outfit. I went from an all-cream outfit to a darker black and red fit,” he recalls, wanting to give the audience a visual representation of his journey through fashion. “My favourite thing about a lot of big artists is the experience and storytelling at a show,” he explains. “It was the first show of mine where I felt like I was Lee Lewis, the artist, not just the singer.” 

“I realised I already have the love that I’ve been looking for”.

The show ended with a performance of ‘Bitter’, a moving end to years of honing HOWL, when the entire crowd joined in, singing the lyrics back to him. The experience was a quiet epiphany for Lewis: “I realised I already have the love that I’ve been looking for. I was like, I don’t need to chase this anymore because finally, after all these years, I’ve found it within the community and myself”.

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