Ain’t The Same Girl: Clean Bandit Interviewed

CLASH caught up with Jack Patterson and Grace Chatto (two members of electronic pop trio, Clean Bandit) to learn all about their new single, ‘Cry Baby’ with Anne-Marie and David Guetta and their passion for directing and editing their own music videos. 

‘Cry Baby’ is another great-sounding collab for Clean Bandit. Their previous collaborations with artists such as Zara Larsson, Anne-Marie and Sean Paul have earned them ten Top 10 singles in the UK and billions of streams globally, on services such as Spotify.

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On ‘Cry Baby’, they have once again teamed up long-time friend Anne-Marie, as they had so much fun working with her on their previous hit, ‘Rockabye’ (featuring Sean Paul). Clean Bandit have had an amazing time working with both Anne-Marie and David Guetta on the single and the music video recently, which they directed and edited themselves. The ’Cry Baby’ music video sees the Clean Bandit trio also making cameos aboard the ‘Cry Baby’ express. A train on which Anne-Marie is a heartbroken, yet newly single and empowered, passenger on. 

Realising his mistake, Anne-Marie’s cheating ex-lover (played by Nigerian singer-songwriter, Ruger) borrows a horse from none other than David Guetta to try and catch-up with her on this high-speed train and beg for forgiveness. However, Anne-Marie’s not in a forgiving mood. As she sings on the track, she “don’t want no cry baby!” She also sings: “Baby, I ain’t the same girl I was before.”

When we speak to Grace, she had been very busy with working on their latest music video. “I just landed from Ibiza where we dashed to capture the final shot for our new music video – of Mr Guetta!”

The music video has taken a few months to put together, partly due to everyone’s busy schedules and was filmed over “seven shoot days”, which is quite a lot more than an average music video would take. “The final piece of the puzzle was getting David in there,” Jack adds. “He’s quite a busy guy, quite hard to pin down,” Jack laughs. 

On working with Anne-Marie and David Guetta, Grace says: “⁠They are both so clever and talented and inspirational. It’s been a very uplifting, joyful experience and we are in awe of both. So much fun making the music video too. We haven’t made one ourselves for a while, so producing, directing and editing it this time has been a very creatively freeing moment for us. Can’t wait for people to see it because – like all of our favourite works – the song and video really are one thing.”

Jack also loved working with Anne-Marie again. They go way back, it seems. “We’ve known Anne-Marie for so long. She toured with Rudimental for years. And our first record label was Black Butter [Records], who Rudimental were signed to as well. Back in the early days, we were constantly bumping into Rudimental and Anne-Marie on the touring circuit… Her voice has just always blown me away, such an amazing singer. She’s the best!”

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Clean Bandit had this song, ‘Cry Baby’, “knocking about” for years, but it wasn’t until they sent it to David Guetta, for him to add his “sonic touch”, that it became the single that it is today (according to Jack). “[David Guetta] has taken it to the next level with his production.” 

“It’s a bittersweet song. It’s positive in a way, but it’s got quite a devastating story,” he adds. It is also a very emotional song and Grace feels very connected to the lyrics too. “⁠It means so much to me, it’s hard to put in words! I hate being lied to, it’s so pointless. I feel the lyrics are very resonant when one has been lied to before or lied to anyone else. Furthermore, the song is very symbolic for me because of the journey that we’ve been on with its creation. It’s been the longest time we’ve spent on one song, ever! Coming back together with Anne-Marie is beautiful. And our new relationship with David Guetta is also beautiful.” 

Jack speaks about working with people he knows and trusts with their work. “We actually wrote ‘Cry Baby’ quite a few years ago with some of our long-term collaborators, Camille Purcell and Steve Mac. (And Anne-Marie, of course. And David Guetta)… These are big, big songwriters. Really good collaborators of ours, who we love very much.”

Earlier this year, Clean Bandit joined acts such as Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and One Direction to have their music become one of Spotify’s Billion Club, which represents one billion streams, however Clean Bandit have gone and done it four times with ‘Solo’, ‘Rather Be’, ‘Rockabye’ and ‘Symphony’. Reflecting on this, Grace says: “⁠It feels amazing! And weird! I can’t comprehend that number. I also saw that our music video for ‘Rockabye’ is about to hit 3 billion views on YouTube!!” (At the time of writing, it’s at 2.9 billion views).  

Jack explains that after the Covid-19 pandemic, the band struggled to “find their feet” but now they feel re-energised. “After [the Covid-19 pandemic], we’d been through this reflective time. We’ve changed a lot in our teams and our systems. Now, over the last couple of years, we’ve been doing loads and loads of writing. And we’re back into this really creative flow.”

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Words: Narzra Ahme
Photography: Olivia Anderson + Elliott Morgan

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