British music duo Honne captures love, nostalgia in new album

Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do? is the title of the third album of British electronic music duo Andy Clutterbuck and James Hatcher, known as Honne, launched recently.

The 11-track album which was penned throughout the course of 2020, reflects the artists’ “limitless full bloom as songwriters, producers and collaborators.”

Honne (also stylized as HONNE) is into soul with synths, R&B and a bit of dance-pop.

“In the past, we’ve limited ourselves,” said the duo in a press statement. “We might get to a section of a song and things are getting really exciting, but we then pull ourselves back and say, ‘Can we really do that?’ Now, we’ve sidestepped the rules and done whatever we wanted to do.”

The music album also features bold collaborations with other artists such as Khalid in Three Strikes, Pink Sweat$ in What Would You Do, Griff in Back on Top, NIKI in Coming Home and with Sam Smith and MNEK who co-wrote the tracks Back On Top and Easy On Me, respectively.

Their first track IDGAF About Pain is basically about loving someone unconditionally, “When you’re with that one person who you love so much and want to be with until the end of time, you’d do anything, sacrifice anything and you’d take any amount of pain just to make sure the person you love is happy,” shared Honne. By the way, IDGAF is spelled out as “I don’t give a f**k.”

Andy’s personal favorite track of the album is Coming Home, a song that will make you nostalgic when you’re away from home.

“We were in LA when we wrote this song and by this point we’d toured extensively on and off for the previous four years. It’s fun, exhilarating job and we wouldn’t change it for the world but it doesn’t come without its huge sacrifices,” recalled Honne.

The hardest part of what they do as musicians is saying goodbyes to their loved ones back home. “We can feel it throughout the whole touring party — each member has a period of time when they’re really homesick and as a group we help each other through. Thankfully, we do always end up back together with our partners after a tour and that’s really what this song is all about.”

What Would You Do? was “written out of a completely hypothetical situation.” The duo “wanted to pose the question to get people thinking about what they might choose to do if the world was to end. Little did we know that just two months later the whole world would share in such a challenging time our lives,” referring to the pandemic situation.

Dancing On A Cloud was penned shortly after Andy got married, hence the lyrics, “I do, I do, I do, take you, take you, take you.”

Now I’m Alone featuring Sofia Valdes presents the different perspectives of a girl and a guy about their breakup. From the girl’s standpoint, “it sucks but she has moved on. The guy, however, hasn’t moved on, he has already got involved with someone else but wishes he could go back and regrets his decisions entirely.”

What they consider as the “more reflective songs” on the album is Three Strikes, which is “about those moments in life when you just don’t feel yourself and all you can think about is retreating into yourself.”

Talk To Me encourages everyone to open up and express themselves while Back On Top is “a powerful love song that gives you a pick me up.”

On the other hand, Easy On Me is about extending help to someone. The duo admitted, “It did sound a bit like Black Eyed Peas song at the start but we overhauled the production and ended up with this very cool pitched down guitar sound.”

Andy’s mood in love transcends in I?m The Lucky One, “You hear at the start a snippet of my wedding speech. I feel so lucky to be with my wife I just had to write a song about just how lucky I am.”

Referred to as one of the duo’s “most euphoric songs” is the last track, Heartsong, it’s “about feeling fragile and delicate and is a plea to the person you love to look after you.” It’s “got a bit of a José Gonzalez/Sigur Rós/Ry X feel” to it.

Overall, the entire album makes us feel loved and nostalgic at the same time. My top picks are Coming Home, Easy On Me and Heartsong — these tracks encapsulate that heartwarming, cozy and light feeling we have for the ones we love and vice-versa.

The rest of the tracks pretty much sends out chill vibes, induces a blissful state with romantic lyrics you can sing along to.

Honne debuted via the studio album Warm on a Cold Night in 2016 followed by Love Me / Love Me Not in 2018. They released their 14-track mixtape no song without you last year.

According to the press release, the duo has over 150 sold-out shows outside of United Kingdom and has collaborated with various artists notably Tom Misch and BTS’ RM. They reached almost two billion streams worldwide and their international hits include Day 1 and no song without you.

In 2018, they played a sold-out Brixton Academy for the first time, embarked on an extensive, 26-date United States headline tour and their debut album was officially certified as nine-times Platinum in South Korea.