London’s Will Westerman joined us for Turning Heads episode eight.
Episode eight of Beat’s Turning Heads podcast features UK musician Westerman. The 28-year-old released his debut album Your Hero Is Not Dead in early June.
Will Westerman was born, raised and continues to be based in West London. He started releasing music under the Westerman name in 2016. His first few singles were acoustic folk numbers in the vein of Nick Drake. But working with producer Bullion (aka Nathan Jenkins), Westerman started to expand his artistic horizons on the 2018 singles, ‘Edison’ and ‘Confirmation’.
The evolution continued right up until the artist’s debut album, which recalls avant-pop songwriters like Talk Talk, Arthur Russell and the Blue Nile. The music retains loose links to folk songwriting, but Westerman now tends to use his voice and lyrics to communicate in a more emotive, less literal manner.
For the podcast, Will and I spoke about his stylistic growth over the four years leading up to the album and the nature of his working relationship with Bullion. We also looked at Will’s principles when it comes to writing lyrics, melodies and using his voice, and what it’s like being based in West London.
Check out the podcast episode below:
I will be back with a new episode of Turning Heads next week. You can find the podcast on Spotify, Podbean and through Apple.
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