CloudKid Presents Silent Child - Interview

Rodney – aka Silent Child – joins us for an insightful talk on his journey so far; including previously scrapped artist names, his ideal superpowers and the process of writing his latest single Normal. How far back does Silent Child go? How did it begin and how did it get to where it is now?

It’s been a while actually. Silent Child only started doing something probably about 7 months ago, but the whole project has gone through about 4 different names before reaching this one. The first one I had went on for about a year without even putting anything out. Can you remember the names? Oh man, the first one was ‘TRVPSIS’ (pronounced Trapsis)… really ‘great’ name there. After that I went by ‘Klouded’. In between those two I’m sure I had tons of other garbage names I used for like a split second.

Can you give us an insight into your writing process? How did normal come about for example? I don’t think I’ve ever written a track like Normal. When I was writing it I was like “this sounds weiiird”. It’s not a track which I’d usually write because I put it together in an arrangement which I was unfamiliar with, so I didn’t know what to think of it at first.

Do you usually start songs off with a beat, lyrics, melodies?

Nowadays it’s with guitar. If I have the guitar down I can usually make a full track out of it from that. It’s funny cause I have 3 guitars and I got some of them from friends who don’t even do music; they’re lying around and they’re like “yo you can take this”… sure I’ll take a guitar.

»I don't think I've ever written a track like Normal. When I was writing it I was like "this sounds weiiird"«

The new single touches on the topic of being ‘normal’ in the sense of sharing the same life experiences and hardships as many people out there. If you could be different, choose one superpower and overcome these hardships – what would it be? That’s tough. I’ve always been a fan of superspeed… like Flash and stuff. It’s kinda my thing because I just like running really fast. Maybe there’s some symbolism in there y’know… some really depressing backstory or something.

So you’re a runner yourself? Yeah, I mean I’m fast. I deffinitely think of myself as athletic and I was a kid that could always pick up a sport and be good.

Could you give us an insight into a track or artist that inspired the writing of normal?

A big song that’d I’d compare ‘Normal’ to the most would be ‘Latch’ by Disclosure and Sam Smith. I dunno why but it has some similarities in my head. That also helped me rationalise whether my song was good or not in a way, and thinking that maybe it wasn’t too weird. But for the most part there was not a huge amount of outside inspiration, but rather that something that just came out by wanting to talk about how tough life can be for us all.

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