Craig David says "the crowd, the energy, the love" at Radio 2 in the Park Preston was "amazing"

Radio 2 in the Park 2024 took place at Moor Park in Preston over the weekend and amongst it’s star studded line up was the British music icon Craig David.

The 43-year-old wowed audiences attending the Saturday events with a half hour set featuring his classic tunes Flava/Fill Me In, Ain’t Giving Up, Walking Away, Rise & Fall, Rendezvous/Rewind, Nothing Like This and of course 7 Days, as well as a brand new song called In Your Hands.

After his show, Craig sat down for an interview with our celebrity reporter where he opened up about what he made of Preston and the festival, revealed his pre-show rituals, what he really thinks of 7 days and what’s next for him.

You can read Craig’s full interview below but to hear what Rylan, Owain Wyn Evans, Travis and Shaznay Lewis had to say about Radio 2 in the Park Preston, click here.

Q) Did you enjoy it?

Craig: “It was brilliant. I’ve been really excited about doing this one anyway because I knew the collective artists that were gonna be on the bill and even the fact of Sting actually. 

“Talking of Sting, as I came off the stage, I got a memo from the lady driving us back on the buggy who was like ‘there’s a gentlemen waiting for you outside your dressing room’. I was like ‘who is it?’ - ‘oh yeah, Sting’s waiting outside.’ ‘Waiting! The word waiting! No no no no Sting waits for nobody. We got to put our foot down!’

“Then Sting’s out there and he’s talking to my whole band, telling them how well they’d done and he waited for me… because look, we hadn’t seen each other since 2002 when we did Rise and Fall together so performing that song on stage was a real moment. I was just in awe…he’s a legend but also a very gracious man to allow me to sing that song using ‘Shape of my heart’, for him to perform on that song, for him to appear in the video, it was amazing. 

“But back to Preston - it was amazing! The crowd, the energy, the love, [people] singing every word.”

Q) Do you still get starstruck?

“Yeah I do and I feel like I don’t want that to change, where you get too comfortable. I talk to Sting and it’s like you’re mates, he showed me how to do a crossword properly when we did the video together but then I stop and go ‘This is Sting! Woah!’ You get this moment of [being] in awe and I guess that’s what music does, it’s like the magnitude of the music but again you meet someone who’s so humble and gracious and is like Benjamin Button - he just keeps getting younger and younger.”

Q) You’re one to talk!

“Well… when he was teaching me about the crossword, he said ‘make sure you drink water yeah, it’s the fountain of youth, just keep drinking water’. But yeah it’s so lovely to meet  people who you haven't seen for a long time and he instilled in me something that I’d like to think I’ve been able to give to other people which is, he gave me words of advice, he even gave me publishing on Rise and Fall which a lot of people wouldn’t have. Shape of my Heart is such a big sample, he could’ve been like ‘okay, who’s this kid?’ but to come and do all that stuff and give it to me [publishing rights], you’ve shown me how to bestow the same things on other artists who come through, you may be at a different part of your career but show them the same respect.”

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Q) You said the Preston crowd was amazing, was this your first time in Preston?

“I’ve been to Preston before you know but I’m sure we’ve done things in the outskirts and around so to actually be in the heart of it, actually performing, I just felt - ah I don’t know.  I mean we did CBBC before, I was telling a story called ‘Love is in the Little Things’… and the juxtaposition of being there and then literally 25 minutes later I’m actually on stage and taking in the magnitude of Preston, it was huge. I saw it from a different position and the crowd - it just landed. For a songwriter or a recording artist, nothing gets better than seeing what your songs mean to people, it’s the best thing ever.”

Q) Do you find it different performing in front of a festival crowd to an arena tour?

“Yeah because you’ve got so many people coming to see so many different acts. It kind of reminded me of, to be honest, when I did Glastonbury … there are only a pocket of people who have come to see me so trying to land the songs properly… you kind of have to perform out of your skin, it’s not like a given, like you’ve got this. You pull out some tunes, you got to drop a few things, you got have a couple of things up your sleeve but I love it.”

Q) How was it debuting you’re new single ‘In Your Hands’?

“Performing that to a crowd who’ve never heard it before and having them sing the words back - which is why I kind of touched on it at the start that there’s a familiar melody to this and everyone just landed it by the time we got to the second chorus- for me it was like wow, I was happy that I was the guy who had the courage to drop that song because I’d be holding on to it for a while because it’s sacrilegious that chorus, it’s something that lives in a lot of people’s hearts already and when you go there, I was like, I have to land the verses, I need to have other melodies, like the whistle, that land in their own space, but by changing he to you in that chorus, for me was like an extension of the original. You can make it whatever you want it to be now and if that’s doing the work then it’s doing it without taking anything away from the original.”

Q) Why did you choose to debut it at Radio 2 in the Park?

“Go big or go home right! Let’s not tease this one out, the song doesn’t come out until September 27th so it’s a bit of an unorthodox way but it’s more how I remember putting records out where you could have something for six months with promo and it’d build and then you’d have that moment where it’s released. Whereas now, it’s almost like you’re trying to lock it in, the first play is on that station, and there's streaming at the same time - the algorithm needs to be locked in. Here it’s like we can do it live!

“I used to test out Rewind on a club of 100 people in Southampton, now I can test in front of thousands of people… Yyu learn quickly if people like it or not so when I heard the second chorus I was like ‘yeah yeah, we’re in the game, we’re cool’.”

Q) You’re band worked together on stage, it was like a party atmosphere wasn’t it?

“Thank you, I appreciate that. I love live music, I live with it and I think the longer I’ve been in this business, I realise just have fun. Like sometimes when you’re starting off, you’re sweating all the small stuff and you want to hit all these different markers, it might be numbers you want to sell, venues you want to play or whatever.

“Now for me, and I’m grateful for this, it’s been such a beautiful journey that I can just go out there. As long as I learn the songs, that’s the most important thing firstly- let’s not get caught up in the sauce and start doing ad-libs and stuff and changing the melodies and everyone’s like ‘bro, nobody wants this, just give us 7 days we know it, we don’t want an extended  version, just sing the song’. Okay, let me just sing the song and I’ll have a good time, that’s something over the years that is a tricky one for artists sometimes because you sing the song so many times but you’ve also got to remember when something works and people are familiar with it. Like you don’t want your favourite chocolate bar to change all of a sudden, just give us the thing - maybe change the rapping but don’t change the recipe, no no no no no. I try and honour that when I do the songs.”

Do you ever get sick of playing 7 days?

“You know what it is actually the gift that keeps giving, i’ve got to say because it starts to weave its way into cultural places. I see so many things on Twitter where it’s just like some football signing got signed on the Monday and then he was duh on the Tuesday- I’m like wow, this place it’s got to. You never know, or even imagine, that you would ever have one of those songs and then I can only imagine [getting to the level of] Nile Rodgers ‘We are family’. It doesn’t matter where you are, that song is going to played for generations and generations, at every wedding, every party, but to know that when someone says ‘on Monday I’, you’re like ‘oh it’s seven days’- you’re already in- or you hear the word ‘seven days’ and you're in. It’s like how can someone claim ownership of the week? It’s crazy.”

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Q) How do you prepare for events like Radio 2 in the Park?

“I would say having a little me time, just to get quiet in the mix of things [is important], because, especially when there’s lots of promo and a lot of energy is being required in different places, to remember why you’re here or what the real purpose is - as I said, to land the songs - and not to be ungrounded before you get onstage. 

“For 5 or 10 minutes, I’m always in my room with a little candle, a little bit of incense burning, I just take my breaths and ground myself because when you go on stage, if you’re already up here then the crowd are going to take you through, you’re going to be coming out the top of the elevator like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I’m swimming and then the vocals… I pride myself on my vocals and the tuning and we've got to land the moments so when you’re hyped and.. Then you listen back in the comfort of your own home, you’re like ‘mate, you need a little zen’.”

Q) You’re going on tour again next year, DJ set and live set, that’s some combination isn't it?

“Yeah I wanted to put the two together. We came from Ibiza… where I was doing my DJ TS5 sets, then my full band show here [at Radio 2 in the Park] and I’ve always wanted to try amalgamate the two because I feel like they both work in different contexts like at a pool party you don't want a full band… but for something like this you want to land it with TVs, have the guitarist do a solo, so to bring the two together where I can play a record at my deck and then it goes from that into a guitar instrumental, and then I can do a little acapella over that and then I get back [on the deck] and throw a little garage beat, it will be vibes. It will be kind of experimental which I kind of like, it will put the band on like ‘you need to be ready, we need to be in sync because I’m going, let’s go!”