Rag’n’Bone Man wanted his third album to bring the joy. The Sussex-born singer-songwriter, aka Rory Charles Graham, came into the writing process in a good place and wanted to share that sense of jubilation. “I thought, ‘I need to make something that makes people smile’,” he tells Apple Music. “Even if I’ve got some deep and strong things to say on this record, I still want the backdrop to be something that’s uplifting.” It’s an approach that has resulted in Graham’s most euphoric collection of songs yet, blending soulful pop, stirring R&B and stark ballads—with his rich, aching croon lifting these tracks to exhilarating heights. The sense of celebration, he says, is a reflection of how he’s feeling. “I’m not a very introspective writer,” he says. “I give it to you on a plate, it’s always very representative of where I’m at in life at the time.” Let Rag’n’Bone Man take you deeper into What Do You Believe In? with his track-by-track guide. “The Right Way” “I wrote this four years ago with my keys player, Ben Jackson-Cook, and [UK-born, Nashville based singer-songwriter] Jamie Lidell on a random studio day before we played Bonnaroo Festival. It was a really good starting point, a bit neo-soul, a little bit of ’90s hip-hop, but also the feel of ’60s soul music samples, and I felt like that’s what I wanted to carry on through this record. It’s a song about people trying to tell you what it’s like to raise children. When you’ve got small kids, you sometimes have stressful scenarios, and you might ask for advice—but, like this song says, there’s no such thing as the right way to raise your kid. It’s got to be the way that you do it.” “Pocket” “This was basically a freestyle over a beat that [writer/producer] Jonny Coffer made. I used the metaphor of ‘Put me in your pocket and run’ as knowing someone that well that they know when you’re in an uncomfortable situation. If me and my missus go out somewhere, all I have to do is give her the look to say, ‘It’s time to leave.’ I’m not really into parties, but especially ones where I don’t feel comfortable. I’m in my thirties, I shouldn’t feel like I’ve got to stay if I don’t like it. But if you’re forced into these situations, it’s good to have somebody there that knows and goes, ‘Come on, let’s just go. You don’t have to be here.’” “What Do You Believe In?” “I was midway through writing the record and, up until then, everything was very positive. Then my mum got really ill and I knew that she wasn’t going to live much longer. This song was about me figuring out what you say when someone dies if you don’t believe in God or a heaven-and-hell situation. Does it matter if you tell your kids that someone’s gone to heaven even if you don’t believe that they have? Writing that song made me figure out that the most important thing in that situation is our collective love for each other, and it doesn’t matter what anyone believes in. You can tell the kids that someone’s gone to heaven, that’s just a nice way of saying it.” “Iron” “I love the idea that my children might see me as some kind of superhero. I don’t know if that’s true. It probably isn’t. They probably just think I’m a fairly uncool, middle-aged dad now. But there are points in my life where I think, ‘In whatever situation and whatever scenario, if they need me, then I’ll always be there for them, no matter what.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s what we’re going to write a song about today…And if it makes it on an Iron Man soundtrack, then fantastic.’” “Hideaway” “This is probably my favourite song on the record just because Simon Aldred [Cherry Ghost founder] is probably my favourite songwriter I’ve ever worked with. We jammed for a long time, and then just figured out we could do something that was very nostalgic of that era of neo-soul music. It comes back to that ‘I don’t want to go out today, I’m happy just where I am and with the people I’m with.’ I prefer being at home with my family, and sometimes people try to draw you out of that and it’s like, ‘Actually, it’s all right, I’m perfectly fine at home, we’re good.’ That’s what the song represents in a very sunny and warm fashion.” “All I Know” “I always go for lyrics first and with a couple of tunes on this record, I was like, ‘I want a specific vibe.’ This song was all about the backdrop before the lyrics. The song is about thinking that you’re being wise when you’re really not and trying to say that you figured everything out in life when you actually haven’t. I get to this age, and you feel like you should know what life’s about, like you should have everything figured out, but sometimes you have to be like, ‘I don’t know, I’m just winging it the whole time.’” “Rush of Blood” “This was written later on in the day of a writing session for something else and I was like, ‘I’m fed up of trying to write a ballad today. Let’s do something that feels a bit like ’70s funk music and has that disco feel to it.’ Lyrically, I’ll explain it like this: When I was 18, I used to work on a building site and I fucking hated it. I would literally live for Friday night. That moment that I got to whatever rave I was going to that weekend, when the music started and everything that I’d been stressing about during the week has gone, and whatever vehicle that I was on would kick in, and I would feel that rush of blood—that’s what I wanted to tune to feel like.” “Feeding All These Fires” “This the only song on the record that I didn’t write. I didn’t write the lyrics. I wrote all the melodies. This song was written by a guy called Barney [Keen] that me and [London songwriter] Mark Crew had been friends with for a long time. He sent me a demo of this in 2012, and you know when something just lives in the back of your mind for a long time? I was in a studio one day, and I started singing it. We dug [the demo] out and reworked the whole thing, came up with new melodies. Sometimes I’m precious about lyrics, but other times I just love a song so much that I’m willing to do that.” “Put a Little Hurt on Me” “I’m always thinking about how I do stuff live and I never really think about that whilst I’m making the music. I think, this time around, I was really thinking about that. Every time we got to the point of producing a song, I’m thinking about how it’s going to go down live, because of the nature of the record and I wanted it to be something that, when an audience hears it and sees me playing it, that I try and make them feel like they’re in the same headspace.” “Chokehold” “This was basically the song that I wrote and thought, ‘If I was to ever get a song on a movie like Fifty Shades of Grey, this would be it.’ I’ve never thought, ‘I’m going to make a song that’s sexy,’ but because I’m a blues head, I was like, ‘Let’s try from that angle—something that feels sexy, but is also just a straight-up blues song.’ I didn’t decide to put it on the record straight away. I played it live a few times just to see how people would react. You know when you can see people at a rave do a stink face when the bass comes in? That’s what I feel like it made people do, so I was like, ‘It’s definitely going on the record.’” “Wreckage” “‘Wreckage’ is about my missus, Zoe, and it’s about trauma. She and I both had past relationships that weren’t so great, but she’s lived through very, very abusive relationships. And I wrote about that because she’s the best thing in my life at the moment, aside from my children, and she’s done a lot for me. But she always says to me that somebody must have sent you to me because I obviously needed you, and I always think, ‘That was really nice.’ I wanted to talk about that.” “Hope You Felt Loved at the End” “We nearly got to the end of the record, and I was like, ‘I’ve got one more song to write,’ because my mother passed away. I worked with this guy called David Sneddon [songwriter and winner of the first series of BBC’s Fame Academy]. I told him what the song was roughly about and I was like, ‘I’ve got some lyrics but I just need something for it to go with.’ I was looking for that melody. He started playing some chords and it just came out. I obviously needed to write it. It’s the only sad song on the record. It’s helped me with the process of grieving, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it live.” “Bleed the Same” “Everybody is the same. Everybody has those moments where they feel uncontrollably anxious or uncomfortable with life in general, and you need something to take you away from that. Music is always that thing for me. When I was writing this, I was like, ‘I would really like it if that’s what this song was for other people.’” “Sorry for My Broken Heart” “I was in a studio with Oak Felder and Sebastian Kole [US-based songwriters]. I was referencing some really great male-harmony groups from that ’60s era of soul music. And I was like, ‘I would really like something that evokes the feeling of hip-hop in a 3/4 way, but also let’s try and create those samples again. Let’s try to go in, all of us, and sing some harmonies and sample those harmonies, then try and create this track that feels like that. Then we’ll just try and put some cool words in.’ So it’s not always the way that the song has a deep meaning. It’s all about the feel of the song, taking that listener back to an era, but hopefully not being too much of a pastiche.” “Ghosts” “I can’t remember what I was thinking when I wrote this, I think I just really wanted a massive banger, something that really kicked off. I think we were halfway through [the album], and I was thinking that we didn’t have one that was heavy. Me and [Snow Patrol’s] Johnny McDaid and Jonny Coffer, sat together in my studio, playing around with a load of synths and stuff, and drums, just being like, ‘I need something that feels like it kicks off and is going to make a really great drum ’n’ bass remix as well.’” “Lovers in a Past Life (Acoustic)” (with Calvin Harris) “The acoustic version is more like the original demo. I had this song as a piano ballad for a long time. I spoke to my missus and I said, ‘I know we’ve only known each other for three or four years, but when you have that intense connection with somebody, it’s like we must have met before in some past life.’ Then I basically went away and wrote that song with a good friend of mine, Jon Green, and it just lived as a ballad for ages.” “Lovers in a Past Life” (with Calvin Harris) “I played the ballad version to loads of people and everyone loved it, and it got to the point where I was like, ‘I think maybe we could put a bit of a house situation with this tune.’ I sent it to Calvin, he loved it and was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ Being as it was with just the piano background, it was easy for him to create something of his own, production-wise. I’m glad that we put both versions on because it’s nice for people to hear that.”