The Dare: ‘People want to return to an era that was dirtier and less fashionable’

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “There’s plenty of different reasons why, but I think the character, my personality and the kind of music that I make is so masculine and over the top in your face – that people are either excited by it or feel like it’s f***ing annoying and uncool.” While Smith is hardly a household name, mention The Dare in certain circles and the response is feverish – and polarising. “Then there’s the panopticon of social media; people want to return to an era that was dirtier and less fashionable when we didn’t care so much about being sweaty.” Lastly, he adds, “The dominating style of indie music has been this smooth, introverted bedroom pop – some of it very, very good – but I think people miss the extroverted nature of other styles of music.” He exhales, “That’s my theory on it.” Smith knows a thing or two about what’s happening in the scene. “It’s like if you were to call The Beatles a British pop band, that would be wildly misleading as to what The Beatles are in the world,” Smith says. “At that point, I didn’t even like music like that but there was something culturally where it felt like I should sing about this or do that, and it wasn’t really authentic to me.” Smith is, he clarifies, “politically passionate” but “the more I thought about what music I wanted to make and the better I got at it, the less interested I became in saying overtly political things in my songs”.