{"id":470534,"date":"2026-02-10T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/470534\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T11:59:09","slug":"when-some-people-try-to-treat-me-like-a-pop-star-that-makes-me-uncomfortable-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/470534\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018When some people try to treat me like a pop star, that makes me uncomfortable\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the greatest moments in Danny Harle\u2019s life have involved stumbling on a new pop song and being transported to another dimension. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when I first heard Blue, by Eiffel 65. It inspired this otherworldly feeling in me. It sounds as if that voice is coming from another planet. It\u2019s got an alien beauty. It sends my imagination wild. \u2018Where is this? It isn\u2019t from this place. It\u2019s escapist\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a producer, Harle has worked with some of the biggest talents in pop, including Charli XCX<\/a>, PinkPantheress, Caroline Polachek<\/a> and Dua Lipa<\/a>. Now the musician credited with helping to create the voguish \u201chyperpop\u201d sound is stepping from behind the curtains and releasing an album of his own, the brilliantly otherworldly Cerulean. It is, he says, a whole new experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so overwhelming,\u201d says Harle, who has spent the morning taping personalised messages for the venues around the world that will host global screening events of the record (technically his second long-player, after the rave-infused Harlecore, from 2021, but one that he regards as his first album proper). \u201cThere\u2019s so much \u2013 so many things that are always extra, that take so much time that I forget about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A conversation with Harle is a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Speaking from his home in London, he waxes at length about his collaborators \u2013 he\u2019s especially thrilled his old pal Charli XCX has finally become a megastar \u2013 and lays out his thesis about why the video game Bloodborne is one of the greatest works of art of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

Above all, he fizzles with enthusiasm for Cerulean, a collection of bangers and blistering soundscapes that will appeal to fans of Brat summers and grimdark PlayStation classics alike. He hopes it will find its audience, but he\u2019s equally adamant about not wanting to become a pop star himself. There can only be one Charli XCX.<\/p>\n

Cliched though it may sound, he wants the focus to be on his songs, not on him as an individual. \u201cWhen some people try to treat me like a pop star, that makes me uncomfortable, because that\u2019s not what I\u2019m aiming to be,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the album itself that is a musical statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cerulean is a fascinating album that leans into the high-tempo sound for which Harle is famous \u2013 a more-is-more vibe the music press christened \u201chyperpop\u201d in the early 2010s. <\/p>\n

Back then he was best known for his association with the label PC Music and its founder, AG Cook \u2013 a fellow pioneer, who likewise embraced a maximalist aesthetic that blended the yammering energy of hard-core rave with the sonorous bass of grime and the sheer, jaws-on-the-floor ecstasy of eurodance.<\/p>\n

\"DannyDanny Harle performs on stage in Turin, Italy. Photograph: Filippo Alfero\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

How does Harle feel about the \u201chyperpop\u201d label today? He shrugs. It isn\u2019t something he thinks about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m unfortunately kind of unaware of the associations people have with my music \u2013 always have been. Terms like hyperpop … I\u2019m really happy and interested in the way that things get understood and digested by listeners and journalists. But I don\u2019t let it influence what I do whatsoever,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t actually read journalism about music \u2013 although I do think journalism is unbelievably important and undervalued, especially these days, and I think it\u2019s in a state of crisis, and journalists should be properly paid. There needs to be some model built for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most striking tracks on the record is Starlight, a study in sonic excess that features vocals from PinkPantheress<\/a>, the young London singer whose in-your-face music has made her a face of hyperpop (even if her influences run more towards garage and jungle). <\/p>\n

As with many of the artists Harle loves, she is both a traditional pop star \u2013 her songs come with catchy melodies as standard \u2013 and unapologetically avant-garde. Many of her tunes clock in at less than two minutes; sometimes she doesn\u2019t even bother with a chorus or hook \u2013 though that\u2019s not the case on the fantastically twinkling Starlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I heard her music I knew that we aligned in the way that we see things. She\u2019s always checked in on me. She had me listen to her album when it was in production, and has talked about me as a sort of mentor figure for her. We\u2019ve got on and had a similar sort of outlook on things,\u201d Harle says.<\/p>\n

He respects the way \u201cshe can make an album which is very clearly a pop album\u201d while refusing to compromise as a musician. \u201cThere is no sense of cynically going to LA, getting a hit written for her, or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid the dazzling collaborations with A-list friends such as Polachek, Lipa and Clairo, Cerulean carves out space for quieter numbers \u2013 haunting instrumentals inspired, according to the album press release, by the punishingly difficult video game Dark Souls. <\/p>\n

How do they connect? Harle gushes about the game\u2019s maverick creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki \u2013 not to be confused with the Studio Ghibli animator Hayao Miyazaki \u2013 and the way the sadistic difficulty of Miyazaki classics such as Elden Ring and Bloodborne is an extension of its creator\u2019s worldview. Some things in life require hard work and buy-in from the audience \u2013 and it\u2019s okay if occasionally those include video games.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funny thing is that these games are referred to as \u2018too hard\u2019. That\u2019s how they are digested. Imagine if somebody said that about an art-house film or a Tarkovsky film. Imagine: I tried to watch that film and it was \u2018too hard\u2019. With music and films there is a sense that if it\u2019s a more challenging film, you can sort of engage with it. But there\u2019s no sense of engagement with a video game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sense that it\u2019s got to be entertaining and easy, otherwise what\u2019s the point? But if something is a work of art, sometimes you have to engage with it a bit more. The way in which that was sort of integrated into my album … I guess I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a thing that\u2019s on my mind all the time. I think games are so fantastic. It is maybe a shared thing. You could say that is a principle that\u2019s very important to Miyazaki with the way he makes games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harle was born in London. The son of the saxophonist John Harle, he had a privileged upbringing, attending the \u00a330,000 a year King Alfred School in Hampstead, and went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music and then Goldsmiths, part of the University of London, where he began to make music with Cook, an old friend from his school days.<\/p>\n

This led to PC Music, a giddy, gaudy aberration at a time when the British recording industry was still sweating the last vestiges of the landfill-indie scene out of its system. Among those with whom he worked during the label\u2019s early days was a young Charli XCX, then an obscure songwriter and producer from Essex. <\/p>\n

He is not surprised that she has become a global star. Nor is he shocked that the LP to bring her that success was the in-your-face Brat, arguably her first completely unfiltered release, on which she made no apologies for being Charli XCX.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer personality is so infectious and it\u2019s so relatable, even when she\u2019s talking about doing something wrong or messy. She\u2019s so articulate. [Brat] expresses such a combination of ideas that are emotionally intelligent and also just really satisfying. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the rawness of it. It is a truly holistic product. She was as much a part of the album doing well \u2013 in interviews she was embodying the project. It was a funny combination of her stopping trying to make pop hits and being the pop hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is under no illusion about Cerulean kicking off a Brat-style Danny Harle summer. It isn\u2019t that sort of record. Quite the opposite: it is a beautifully immersive listen, an album that expands horizons and takes the audience to strange new places. In a best-case scenario, he would like listeners to feel as if they\u2019ve been packed into a rocket ship and blasted to a parallel universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cEscapism, alien beauty: these words come up a lot in terms of what I\u2019m trying to sort of cast with my music,\u201d he says, coming back around to his love of Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you listen to the first track on the album, Noctilucence, it\u2019s one minute long. But, for me, it illuminates a landscape in my head, and I hope it does for other people as well. The thing that I find cool about that is that for each individual it will be different. It\u2019s meant to set your imagination on fire and light up this world inside your head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cerulean is released on Friday, February 13th. Danny Harle plays Button Factory<\/a>, Dublin, on Friday, February 20th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the greatest moments in Danny Harle\u2019s life have involved stumbling on a new pop song and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,240323,71538,31178,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-470534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-caroline-polachek","11":"tag-charli-xcx","12":"tag-dua-lipa","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}