Declan McKenna: 'My new music is my proudest work to date'

Declan McKenna said he was "making music in a way that I find really fun"

Singer-songwriter Declan McKenna said his first new music in two years was his "proudest work to date".

The musician, from Hertfordshire, revealed his new single Sympathy on BBC Radio 1 on Thursday night.

McKenna, who is playing at Reading and Leeds next month, has been working on new music in London, Brighton and Los Angeles since lockdown ended.

He said like his early material, the new songs have been mostly made in houses rather than studios.

"The core of every song has basically been constructed and recorded in a bedroom or a living room," he said.

"I have to show everyone what I do when I'm making music in my bedroom because that is me. That is something fans of music will really appreciate, the directness of it."

The video for Sympathy was filmed on location in Camber Sands, East Sussex

He said his new music was "a little less heady" than his last album Zeros, which released in 2020 during the pandemic.

Although currently touring across America, McKenna performed a secret gig at Wormley Community Centre in his home county of Hertfordshire in May.

"It was excellent - it was such good vibes, people were really up for it," he said.

"It made me really proud to be from Cheshunt."

McKenna is currently playing about 50 dates on a tour across the United States and Canada called The Big Return

He organised the gig himself alongside his sister Rosanna McKenna to raise funds for Mapping Broxbourne, an interactive map that supports local arts, cultural and community spaces.

Talking about the place he grew up, McKenna describes Hertfordshire as a "stronghold for music" having developed stars such as George Ezra, Charli XCX and Sam Smith.

"I'm very much a lover of British music and I think coming from somewhere like Cheshunt is so important to that because there is nowhere else in the world like it," he said.

"I like to find the kooky way of doing things, that is the British thing, which is sometimes scary for Americans."

Declan McKenna uploaded his breakthrough single, Brazil, to BBC Music Introducing in Beds, Herts and Bucks in 2014 when he was 15 years old

McKenna was 16 when Brazil had its first play on Radio 1 in 2015, a song he had submitted as part of his GCSE music coursework.

In April of this year the song was awarded platinum status, meaning it had sold 600,000 copies.

Declan McKenna's debut song, Brazil, became a trend on TikTok last year

In 2020, McKenna narrowly lost a chart battle for the number one album slot to The Rolling Stones, who had re-released Goats Head Soup.

But he insisted he "doesn't really mind" about chart positions.

"If I got a number one obviously I'd be delighted, but my focus is appealing to people who are going to love this music," he said. "Those are the people who I wanna reach."