Almost every Keane interview must start with some hand-wringing. The interviewer feels compelled to inform the reader that he or she finds Keane to be either a guilty pleasure or a real displeasure. There’s then the compulsory acknowledgement of the band’s socioeconomic roots (a journalistic trope since usurped by interviews with Mumford & Sons) and how this is either to the band’s discredit or an irrelevance. All the journalistic indifference or venom, however, winds up being pretty redundant and boring. And it’s done nothing to deter their trajectory which, since the release of their Brit Award-winning debut Hopes And Fears in 2004, has left the lonely, frustrated music critics behind and entered the stratosphere.
Hopes And Fears would go on to become the ninth biggest-selling album of the 21st century in the UK, with their follow-up, 2008’s Under The Iron Sea, reaching double-platinum and the Top 5 of the US Billboard charts. Songs like ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ have impressed their way into the public consciousness like few other pop bands, except perhaps Coldplay, and recent projects like the Night Train EP have also showed the band’s willingness to experiment with their style, involving collaborations with vocalists like K’naan and Tigarah.
It is timely, then, that almost a decade later and with a potential hiatus on the horizon, Keane are releasing The Best Of Keane. In a garish meeting room at the Facebook headquarters in Covent Garden ahead of the album’s release, Keane’s vocalist Tom Chaplin shines a light on his thirteen favourite albums, with the picture that emerges being one of a reflective musician who values insightful, earnest lyricism above all with his selection of well-penned classics.
The Best Of Keane is out now via Island Records. Click on his image below to begin scrolling through Tom’s choices
