If you were around in 2008, there was no way to avoid the all-consuming success of American Boy — but singer Estelle couldn’t care less.
As she releases her first new studio album in seven years, named Stay Alta, Estelle reflects on the expectations to produce another chart topper.
She told Metro: ‘I’m not pleasing [everyone], I’m gonna live my life. I have all these records that do well in whatever space they do well in, but they do well because they’re truthful to me in that moment, and that’s all I care about.
‘When people like it, most times they do because it’s authentic.’
Estelle, 45, shares that she is all about living in the moment and being joyful, rather than looking back and overanalysing her highs and lows.
‘[American Boy] is my biggest song,’ she says with a shrug. ‘It is what it is.’
The 00s track, featuring Kanye West, has become a cultural touchstone — partly thanks to Gavin and Stacey — and remains the best-known track by the London-born singer.
While she recognises that American Boy may have ‘shone brighter’ than her other music, she’s never chased the hit as ‘lightning isn’t going to strike twice’.
Her feelings about the track’s legacy are a little mixed, but the iconic Gavin and Stacey moment let her know that she had ‘hit certain points in culture’.
Estelle shared: ‘If everyone had their way, I’d have had to make 10 more 1980s. And that’s my annoyance with people, you have short-term memories because remember when American Boy came out and you were like “Well, it’s no 1980”.’
She jokingly banged the table in frustration, and added: ‘Now everyone’s like, “Well it’s no American Boy”. I don’t care!’
Fans demanded a sequel at the time, so she caved and put out Fall In Love, which, according to Estelle, is functionally a rewrite of the smash hit single.
‘Somebody wrote that record again and said, “Here”, and you guys asked me to sing and I said, “Okay”, and you don’t want it,’ she laughed.
After 20 years in the business, the Thank You hitmaker is well aware that songs are going to be compared to each other, so she’s done trying to pander.
‘I think every other album has felt like — to a degree — I did it for everybody else, family, friends, for the expectation for a version of me that got me here,’ she shared.
‘I no longer need this version, [I am] who I am today and who I hope to be.’
The Grammy winner sees her post-pandemic self as ‘wildly different’ to the Estelle we knew in 2018 when she was last releasing a studio album.
Her transformation started when she ‘got help’ and began seeing a therapist and decided to be ‘intentionally happy’.
‘I don’t have to be anything other than who I am,’ the Conqueror singer said. ‘This album says all of that, and I feel like there are so many more people who will identify with that.’
Stay Alta has actually been in the works since 2012, but the timing was incredibly important for Estelle.
She doesn’t believe in releasing music for the sake of it, explaining that she ‘lives the music’; every song is a part of her story.
Estelle said: ‘When I put music out, I want to care about it. It’s important that this music isn’t something that’s just for the sake of like, “Oh, she’s putting out an album out”, it’s none of that.
‘It’s “I’ve made a really great album. I’m so proud of it.”’
This album in particular was one the singer felt she ‘needed’, as it is filled with ‘light’ and ‘joy’.
‘There’s a lot of joy in a way that’s not weak, but that’s vulnerable and gives people permission to do something other than what they’ve been taught,’ she explained.
This need for joy was sparked when the alum really began to take shape in 2018, when the overall sound had a ‘dark undertone’ in Estelle’s eyes.
She didn’t hear uplifting music on the radio or in the festival line-ups, instead, everything was ‘pulling us into this crucible of dark’.
‘Not to sound dramatic,’ Estelle laughed and added that now, ‘we are beyond ready to be happy.’
Reflecting on funk in the 80s or punk and R&B in the 90s, the Steven Universe actress said this is where music is about to go again.
She said: ‘The world is telling us that everything is going to s**t but we have a choice. We have a choice as to whether our emotions and our heads go to s**t as well.
‘I don’t believe that we want that. I think we want joy and happiness and to be seen, heard, affirmed, and allowed. We want to be given permission to live.’
As for the future, whether there’s another huge runaway hit in store or not, Estelle plans to take the opportunities as they come – be that on the screen, the page, or in your headphones.
Maybe even live from Worthy Farm as she joked that someone should ‘sneak her on’ for a mini set at Glastonbury 2025.
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For her bigger goals, after voicing Garnet in Steven Universe, she has her sights set on an Oscar, but is ‘just putting things in the air’ and seeing how things unfold.
‘I just want to continue being joyful and being intentionally joyful and hope that wherever I step, wherever I am, joy is there.’
Maybe ‘there’ could still be Worthy Farm this year, Estelle does have a song with Busta Rhymes after all.
Estelle’s new album Stay Alta is out now.
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