Gallant's Decision To Subvert The Mould Was Influenced By Seal

Christopher Gallant's penchant for using music as therapy has been well-documented since his rise to prominence, not least on his debut album Ology. "If you have an issue you're trying to work through or you're trying to understand why you react a certain way to certain things it helps to leave yourself a message," advises Gallant. "This whole album is me leaving myself a message... It's cathartic because it just helps me. Like, some people go do yoga, some people go to the gym, that's what I do."

It's been part of how he has approached music since before his 2014 debut EP Zebra, and the Los Angeles-based artist "hasn't yet strayed from that initial spark". Gallant's search for comprehension isn't something turned solely within, however, the young singer-songwriter understanding that self-awareness requires a deep wealth of outer context. 

"[While studying music at New York University] I was constantly surrounded by the energy of peers who were really focused on the aesthetic of being an artist or whatever they call themselves," Gallant reflects. "They weren't really focused on the why or the process and it carried over into a lot of professors, too. Outside of the class when I was trying to be in the industry, so to speak, I was messing around with different business people left and right and it all just had that vibe, that kind of feeling of nothing really real. Just very hollow."

After moving to Sherman Oaks, tucked into LA's San Fernando Valley, Gallant soon fell into a more like-minded crowd within the music industry. "It took me back to a place not contrived, because at that point whatever I did didn't matter because I still thought you had to fit into some kind of box to make it work and I wasn't interested in making it work," he explains. "To get back to where I was when I first started making music in that diary-type way, that move solidified my decision to stick to that instead of slowly trying to morph into something that was of everyone else's kind of expectation of me."

Thankfully, Gallant found an inspiration for not being chiselled down to shape early on in British-born singer Seal, with whom he shared a session on the second episode of his collaborative video series, In The Room. An apparent mutual respect between the two was galvanised when Seal showed up for an electrifying walk-on performance his 1991 classic Crazy at Gallant's set at this year's Coachella.

Gallant has spoken highly of Seal's influence several times, expressing admiration in equal measure for both the Brit's music and his refusal to kowtow to any one label. "I got to see him completely disregard any kind of category. He just didn't exist in that world, and he defined himself as an individual person with some of the most poetic lyrics that I'd ever heard at that point. Obviously him being a black male, I just didn't know you could do that - which is really sad. So at a very early age, thankfully, it made me feel that you can exist outside of a set of categories or genres. That really solidified my love for making music because I knew how real I can be."