Profile of Musician Benjamin Clementine

“There’s always this offer of the Sydney Opera House. I would love to play there, but first I want to come in with a humble kind of approach. I don’t want to play in front of 5000 people right now in Australia; I want to play in front of 500 to 1000 people. My aim is to be intimate with people who are seeing me for the first time, so that we genuinely get to hear each other and smell each other. That’s what I’ve always done.”

This pared-back approach is also a chance to reconnect with his musical roots, having taught himself to sing, compose and play a number of instruments.

“Before all the tricks of production and frequencies and equalisation and compression, there’s just the song,” he says. “My greatest ability, from what I’ve been told, is to simply tell a story without noise. Over the years, I went from that to almost showing off through production – and sometimes you get lost in those things. I’m just tired of it. This is about going back to the fundamentals.”

It’s not hard to see why critics frequently compare Clementine, with his powerful voice that shifts between delicate vulnerability and raw intensity, to Nina Simone. Many of their songs are self-contained stories, often containing social critiques. As one reviewer observed, each sings “as if all the world depended on it”. And they share a striking physicality that underscores a powerful stage presence. Clementine, who has modelled for Abercrombie & Fitch, has high, sharp cheekbones and an angular jawline. As The Guardian memorably put it, he “resembles an art deco illustration of himself”.

Throughout his career, Clementine has amassed high-profile fans including Damon Albarn, Bjork and Paul McCartney. He met the latter after he was invited to perform on the TV music program Later... with Jools Holland.

“Normally, I’m not fazed by anything when I’m performing but I could see Paul watching while I was playing and it was all a blur,” Clementine says. “Afterwards, I went to go to the loo and someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Paul McCartney and I can’t remember exactly what he said but it was something like, ‘Oh, that was a great song’.”

Having already recorded an EP, Cornerstone, he got to work on his first studio album, At Least For Now, released to wide acclaim in 2015. His subsequent albums, I Tell a Fly and And I Have Been received similar praise – including from the father who had been so reluctant to let him play music.