Artemas On The 'Spectacle' Of His Live Shows: 'My Music Has Always Been Super Melodramatic'

Artemas Diamandis has his quirks. Probe the mysterious British alt-pop libertine, who goes by the mononym Artemas for an obscure fact, and he shares something incongruous. "Okay, so I detest mashed potato," Diamandis declares. "I'm really not a very fussy eater, but I can't stand it!" Indeed, he serves bangers without mash.

The enigmatic musician behind the viral hits if u think i'm pretty and i like the way you kiss me (which reached #3 on the ARIA Top 50 Singles chart) is chatting from London over Zoom as he rolls out his new mixtape yustyna – its official 'lead single' the plaintive dirty little secret. Incognito in a black baseball cap, Diamandis is roving around corridors with his phone. Witty, bashful and keyed up, he speaks in stop-start sentences.

Come November, Diamandis will head to Australia on the white-hot you're really early… the tour. He's already sold out East Coast shows with extra dates added due to demand.

As it happens, Diamandis has an Aussie connection. Recently he performed i like the way you kiss me – his rhythmic, guitar-charged bop inspired by The Cure with pitch-altered vocals – alongside The Kid LAROI at North London's Alexandra Palace.

@thekidlaroiuk
Laroi brings out Artemas to do “i like the way you kiss me “ in London 🤩 #thekidlaroi #artemas #london #tfttour
♬ original sound - TheKidLaroiUK🇬🇧

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"Funnily enough, that was the first time I ever played the song live – and, to be honest, it kind of sounded like it," Diamandis laughs. "I couldn't hear myself through my in-ears at the start of the song. So, at the start, I was finding the key for the first five or six seconds, but then the rest of it went well. But that was really cool. He's a lovely guy."

The Brit is also a "massive" fan of the Australian comedy ensemble Aunty Donna. "I'm trying to just connect with them when I go to Melbourne."

Diamandis was born into a bicultural family; his father Greek Cypriot. Growing up in rural Oxfordshire, South East England, he felt like an outsider. "My dad was an immigrant—I don't think many people around me had immigrant parents."

Diamandis was likewise a maverick at school – his career goals unconventional. "The idea of being a musician or pursuing something creatively just wasn't something that was on people's minds," he says. "I definitely remember, 'Everyone else wants to do this normal go-to-university, get-a-job kind of life' – and I was just super against that. I think I was also just a bit of an attention-seeker as well. Before I got into music at around 16, I wanted to be an actor."

An enthralled Diamandis embarked on his "musical journey" after viewing the 2015 Kurt Cobain (and Nirvana) documentary Montage Of Heck, "at the age where you're kinda desperately searching for an identity," he relates archly. "Then I just made that my whole personality."

Resourceful, Diamandis taught himself to play instruments and to produce using Ableton [Live] – and experimented stylistically. "I used to get just very, very into like one specific artist," he recollects. "I always have phases. But the problem with doing that now is that that will feed into my music creation. You don't wanna be copying other people; you kind of just wanna be taking bits."

In 2020, amid the pandemic, Diamandis released the single High 4 U (a since disregarded mixtape, I'm Sorry I'm Like This, co-produced by Jessie Ware associate Two Inch Punch, remains on Bandcamp).

Diamandis' formative work was confessional singer/songwriter fare, but he soon discovered his rascally groove, breaking out last October with if u think i'm pretty and then airing the buzz mixtape pretty. In March he dropped i like the way you kiss me. The rising star has currently accrued over 1.5 billion streams. The 24-year-old exists out of space and time with his synthesis of goth, grunge, chillwave R&B, cloud rap and pop.

Following pretty, yustyna again chronicles toxic relationships – Diamandis modelling himself as an endearing reprobate, unafraid to pose as a bad boy or be sexually explicit. He has songs with titles that are either dramatic – like the frenetic I always kinda knew you'd be the death of me, which recalls Ladyhawke's electro-pop – or impish, such as the falsetto-led ride me darling. Diamandis' favourite is caroline – salacious '80s Prince with a White Stripes stomp, the singer seducing the protagonist away from her girlfriend.

Diamandis stresses that 'Artemas' is a character. "The perspective I'm writing from at the moment is like an alter ego or larger than myself."

Did he feel it necessary to generate that distance so listeners don't excessively scrutinise or literalise his more roguish songs? "I think so," Diamandis replies. "[But] honestly, it comes down to my tastes and the kind of music that I've always loved."

Diamandis has a practical consideration, too: he lacks scenarios to write about. "I've put out, I think it will be 27 tracks this year," he explains. "And, in order to maintain such a high output of music creation, I've spent a lot of time in a studio. So I'm not living this, like, crazy, hedonistic rock star lifestyle – as much as I'd love to! So I just kind of have to exaggerate… My music has always just been super melodramatic."

Potential sensationalism aside, Diamandis is giving Artemas "an arc". "He's not the nicest guy in the world," he muses. "He's quite cold."

Above all, Diamandis' material is risqué. In a Dazed piece on London's fresh wave of acts, he stated, "I enjoy writing about the worst or most embarrassing parts of myself." Today, Diamandis notes that i like the way you kiss me is "quite an offensive song," as he sings, "Not tryna be romantic, I'll hit it from the back."

"I think a lot of people would comment, 'These lyrics, they're vulgar; they're grotesque.' And I know this sounds pretentious, but it's meant to be like that. It's almost a bit of a satire – and satirising this terrible dude that no one should aspire to be like."

Still, Diamandis agrees that "it's not necessarily that plain and obvious." Initially, he worried about that. "Before I really found my feet as an artist, I would be constantly editing my lyrics," he admits. "I was always like, 'Oh God, are people gonna like this? Is this lyric weird?'"

Yet Diamandis resolved to not over-analyse the process. "Something switched in me where I stopped caring about that." It helped that he was validated. "I was getting kind of rewarded for it by building this audience that were really into these horny lyrics – and quite bait lyrics."

And yustyna is the product of that confidence. "This project, I've just naturally, subconsciously doubled down," Diamandis says. "I actually find it quite freeing just saying these messed up things to a catchy melody. I guess, if I do have a secret formula, that's what I've been running off. I genuinely think there's magic in saying something really crass that people wanna say – and it's been working for me."

On yustyna, Diamandis formally introduces another "fictional character" in his world-building – Yustyna, a foil as much as a love interest. "I realised there was this theme of this character that just kept popping up. It's meant to be intentionally a bit vague and confusing. So people can attach meaning to it."

In later years, female artists have dominated pop, but now, on subreddits, fans are asking where the boys are. Is Artemas the male brat? Diamandis, a Charli XCX admirer, is thrilled by the suggestion.

"That means a lot to me!" he bursts out. "I think we need to take inspiration from the girls. They're absolutely killing it at the moment. For a while, they've been more fearless than us – and in these kind of things like lyrics. We shouldn't be afraid to say zany and more embarrassing things in our lyrics." Diamandis even has a signature colour in mind. "I think the theme for [yustyna] is actually dark blue."

Coincidentally, Diamandis just caught Charli at Poland's Open'er Festival – heralding her as "amazing". "You could really feel it in the audience the other day – and just around the festival – that no one was gonna miss that show. That was really cool. I hope to have some moment like that in the future."

This month, Diamandis will launch a world tour. He's "upgrading" his set to be less reliant on playbacks, bringing in a fourth member for the band. "It's just gonna be a completely different experience," he enthuses. Live, Diamandis is about the energy. "My songs are all quite short, snappy, to the point… I think it's just gonna be like, if you're an Artemas fan, relentless bangers." The aim is to be theatrical. "This one is gonna be a bit more of a spectacle – and I'm very excited."

Ironically, Diamandis' previous European gigs were booked prior to his blowing up, so he performed in small spaces, which was surprisingly exposing, he laughs. "It's quite awkward singing these massive-sounding, dark alternative songs when you can see every audience member and their reaction to when you're saying some of these lines!"