Dean Lewis: ‘We Don't Actually Get To Decide What A Hit Is Anymore’

Despite the ups and downs of his music career to date, self-described “sad boi” Dean Lewis – also a top TikToker – still believes great art “finds a way”.

With his third LP, The Epilogue, about to drop (not his last, despite its title’s implications), Dean Lewis is in the midst of pre-tour rehearsals at the time of our Zoom chat. Perched on a structure outside the rehearsal space, AirPods in place and occasionally squinting in the sun, he talks rapidly throughout the course of our chat – caffeine-fuelled, perhaps?

“I do love getting up in the morning on my own, going for a run wherever I am in the world and just sitting [in a café] with an ice americano and writing in my notebook,” the self-confessed coffee connoisseur confesses.

“I think it's really important for artists – and people – to just write down what you're worried about in your life, what you want, where you wanna be – you know, work through issues, work through things you're doing wrong, things you're doing right and sort of have goals and plan your life. I'm really big into that. In the morning, it's my peace, and it gives me a bit of routine in my life, which is really necessary when you're touring so much.”

He’s bringing Daniel Seavey – an American multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter – along as main support for The Epilogue world tour. The pair recently recorded a cover of Coldplay’s Fix You, so ticket-holders can look forward to experiencing their biblical vocal blend live.

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Of their choice of cover, Lewis enthuses, “I love that song. The songwriting that Chris Martin's done – it's insane. You know, there are these freak talents in the world, like Chris Martin and Ed Sheeran – I just don't know how they do it. It's, like, every song [they write] is insane! I mean, if Fix You came out today – even with the competition of the world, the craziness – it would still be huge, ‘cause it is genuinely great. And that's really, really reassuring. If you actually make something that good, it will find its way.”

Even Lewis himself has gotta admit his “hit rate” is pretty enviable. “I think out of all the songs I write, I'm lucky to get one [hit] every kinda three years,” Lewis observes before adding with a chuckle, “I'm not the star NBA player, but I'm in the league – on the bench, you know?

“You've gotta just keep going, keep writing the best songs you can write and every now and then you write something great. And those great ones, they do stream and they stay.

“I have a song called Hurtless I put out on my second album [2022’s The Hardest Love] that just kinda came out, faded away and then slowly started coming back. There's a few of those songs that I have and so that is the other reassuring thing: if you write something great, there's a lot more competition now – it might not get heard, the gatekeepers might not play it – but the great ones find a little way through the storm. There might be 50 million, 100 million [streams] – they slowly grow, for sure.”

Lewis was welcomed into the Spotify Billions Club thanks to his 2019 hit song, Be Alright. Since then, both his debut single Waves and 2022’s How Do I Say Goodbye have surpassed half a billion Spotify streams.

Of his super-impressive current streaming stats, Lewis extols, “It's bloody amazing. To have a song that streams that much in this modern music world, with TikTok and everything, is outrageous. I really appreciate it now. It's a very different climate and so I feel very mind-blown that I managed to do it.”

How Do I Say Goodbye is “a genuine song about my dad”, according to Lewis. In 2019, his father was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and didn’t think he was going to make it. But Mister Lewis went into remission, so thankfully no goodbye was necessary. Sometimes Lewis even invites his dad to perform this song live with him, so be warned. Ouch, our heart hurts just thinking about that! Don’t forget to pack some tissues.

“I'm thankful that the song has done so well and helped a lot of people,” Lewis continues, “so that's been really cool. I mean, before [How Do I Say Goodbye], it was like things were over – you know, the phone's not ringing – and then that song gave me another chance, really.

“Everything was genuinely over after my first album [2019’s A Place We Knew]. I put out three songs and I stopped getting calls back from people that were very involved in my [music career]. And then after How Do I Say Goodbye blew up, those calls started happening again. But before How Do I Say Goodbye blew up I'd felt like, ‘Oh, damn, it's sorta done,’ like, ‘I guess this is it’. And none of us knew that song was a hit, although I knew it was the best song that I'd done in a long time.

“So I find it really interesting, the peaks and troughs of life. It taught me an important lesson, which is: you don't stay on top forever and that just as certain as there is the summer, there is the winter and, yeah! Sometimes you can have a hit song and then you're gonna have nothing, and then it's gonna be chill and then – when you least expect it – you'll write something and that will blow up again. I've seen it happen, up and down.

“But the thing that's been really great for me is realising, okay, I don't have a hit at the moment, but my tour's selling out and I'm doing arenas. And that's been a really cool realisation.

“You start to realise that judging your self-worth based off the ups and downs of someone liking your music, and playing you or not, isn't really healthy. And also noticing the last eight years of playing show after show after show, and going outside after and playing to the fans for an hour after every show – you know, seeing them come back and going, ‘Okay, I don't even have a hit and we're selling these out!’ That's cool, that's a good place to come from.

“And then, also, I genuinely don't know if virality means a hit anymore. I mean, honestly, [for the] last six months I've really deeply thought about, ‘What do I wanna do?’ – in terms of my posting. TikTok has been very good to me. I think in 2022 I was number one most viewed in Australia and then last year we were, like, top five. And TikTok has given me a second chance in my career – like, genuinely – but it's about the way that you do it.

“And I've had real thoughts about a choice that I've made recently for this album [The Epilogue], for my future: I've given up virality to tell the story of the songs. Because I realised I don't need more of stuff, I don't need another hit. And I would like a song to connect in a big way, you know? It's realising that short-form virality is sorta like McDonald’s and desperate.

“And it's a bit different for me, I can say that, ‘cause I have a bit of a catalog behind me now. But I think the world is going back to authenticity, so I think it's good. But in terms of what a hit is now, well, is something going viral on TikTok?

“I've been very lucky with that, but it doesn't happen the way you think. Genuinely, no one can decide if a song is a hit. This is the thing that's blown my mind and I find it so interesting that I swear I say this – and a lotta people realise this, but I feel like a lotta people haven't: we don't actually get to decide what a hit is anymore. Like, no record label around the world, no artist can go, ‘This song is a hit’ – unless you're in the top of the top echelons, right?

“We don't get to decide what a hit is, all we get to do now is to go, ‘Here's a song,’ and then you post about the song – that's it! And you can't control the trend, you can't make people like it; the people decide if it's gonna go viral, if it's a trend, if it's great.

“You go, ‘This is the art that I wanna release,’ and that's it; you can't control it. But the big change has been realising that eight years ago when I put out Waves, and when we put out Be Alright five years ago, maybe I hit a lucky moment and there were no other singer-songwriters putting out [those kinds of] songs at that time. And I got picked up – a record deal in America – and all the stars aligned where everyone pushed it, and there was maybe ten other songs in that category. Now there's 50,000 songs you're competing with – it's changed that much!

“So it's a really freeing realisation that I've had that I don't get to decide if it's a hit, so what am I doing stressing about it? Why would I even worry about it? So all I'm doing now is I write the best songs that are the most authentic to me in the two years that I write an album – albums to me are like, I'd say, two, three years of my life – and then I put it out and talk about it. And that's it! You can't do anything else; no one can. And that's a really freeing thought. It's cool.”

This scribe’s favourite song on The Epilogue at present is the softly strummed, penultimate track: Clélia's Song. Is Lewis able to please share a bit more about the inspo behind this broken masterpiece? “Yeah, so Clélia's Song is about this girl Clélia who was basically like a sister to me and my brothers – she'd call herself our fifth [sibling]. She was always very sick and she passed away, and I wrote the song for her – for her family and my family – to keep her name out there and let her know we're thinking about her.

“I didn't think too much about the song in terms of, ‘Is it perfect?’ I just wrote it and was like, ‘I wanna send a little message to her’. She was a great person.”

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Clélia is such a beautiful name. Perhaps it will become a new baby-name trend once people hear his song? Lewis smiles, visibly touched by this sentiment: “That’s a really cool point, actually. That's really sweet that you said that and I hope that happens.”

When asked whether he’s always felt comfortable being vulnerable and transparent in his songwriting, Lewis shares, “Well, there was a moment where I had a song called Half A Man. There’s a line in there which is, ‘How am I supposed to love you when I don't love who I am?’ And I remember being so embarrassed about singing it.

“When I played to people, I was like, ‘Oh, what are people gonna say? Can I be that vulnerable and honest?’ And then when I played it at a couple of little showcases or whatever, some people were crying, or they came up and they were like, ‘That's so powerful, that song’. And I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ And I think that flicked a switch in my brain in terms of going, ‘Okay, the more vulnerable and honest you are about your life, the more it seems to connect with people.’ So I think it's always been very easy for me to be honest, ‘cause I know that's really where the connection is: being vulnerable.”

Half A Man enjoyed a belated moment in the sun two-and-a-half years after initially appearing on A Place We Knew. “[Half A Man] did nothing, then got played on [Danish] X Factor two years ago and went to number one in Denmark,” he marvels. “It’s one of my most-streamed songs – I think it has almost a billion streams across everything – and that was not even a single!”

Lewis timestamped Half A Man becoming the most-streamed song in Belgium with a hilarious post on his socials: his Danish fanbase had christened him ‘Dane’ Lewis.

As a songwriter, Lewis sure knows how to set the scene. Although rich in specific, personal detail, his songs are extremely relatable, too. When asked what kinda voodoo magic he channels to do so, Lewis laughs heartily before acknowledging, “That's a really good point! Thank you for saying that. No one's ever said that before and I really put a lot of effort into creating those little scenes. I do it through real specific details and I learnt that from Bruce Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark; really, it's one song that taught me everything I needed to know about songwriting.

“He sings, ‘Radio’s on, and I’m moving ‘round my place/ I check my look in the mirror/ Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face…’ – I love that! I'm like, ‘Oh, you just described the scene,’ and it's as simple as saying that.

“You know, [quotes How Do I Say Goodbye’s lyrics], ‘Early mornin’ there's a message on my phone…’ – it's naturally what comes out of me, because I like that style of songwriting… I think the verses are better for the scenes, but the choruses – I try to hit the core of the vulnerability, the core thing that you're trying to say; I think [chorus lyrics] should still be really personal, but less specific – that's the way that I try to view the structures of the songs that I write.”

It occurs to me that the Springsteen lyrics Lewis referenced (“I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face…”) are not dissimilar to his own self-loathing Half A Man bit (“How am I supposed to love you when I don't love who I am?”), which he earlier admitted he initially felt “so embarrassed” to sing.

“That's true,” he allows. “I mean, it's just hard in general when you start putting out songs, ‘cause you don't know if you're good. Honestly, I didn't know if I sucked so I used to watch people who try out on those Idol shows. There were a couple of people that weren't great, but I wasn't watching them for fun I was watching them thinking, ‘Wait, am I like this?’ I was like, ‘Do I suck?’ And, you know, I think everyone has that at the start… It takes a long time to know if you're good.”

The Epilogue will be released on Friday, 18 October, via Island Records Australia/UMA. You can pre-order/pre-save the album here. Dean Lewis hits the road this month on The Epilogue Australian tour.