Dan Smith has long been a storyteller. The London-based singer-songwriter has spent the years since founding Bastille in 2010, originally as a solo project, writing moving, anthemic songs about a cast of characters traversing everything from the people killed in the volcanic ruins of “Pompeii” to the tragic fall of “Icarus”. On Bastille’s fifth album, &, Smith reaches the apex of his storytelling songwriting, composing 14 tracks entirely about historical figures. “I’ve always used someone else’s story to write about the themes I want to address in my music,” he tells Apple Music. “Now, I’ve collected these story songs to celebrate a group of people who pushed against the times they lived in and who displayed all the complexities of being human.” From softly picked guitar-led folk on “Emily & Her Penthouse in the Sky”, celebrating the poet Emily Dickinson, to the cinematic strings of “Essie & Paul”, honouring the lives of civil rights activists Paul and Essie Robeson, and the anthemic thump of Leonard Cohen tribute “Leonard & Marianne”, & is Bastille at their most imaginative and expansive. “I wanted to show these historical figures as real people and encourage listeners to find out more about them,” Smith says. “It’s been a beautiful world to inhabit.” Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. “Intros & Narrators” “I always find it’s helpful to introduce people to the world of a record by writing a song that sets the scene and my intentions at the beginning of it. I felt unworthy writing about a lot of the people I’m singing about on this album, and I wanted to tackle that feeling head-on in this track. It’s about how much trust we put into the people narrating the story we’re hearing, which is me in this case!” “Eve & Paradise Lost” “I was really interested in imagining this epic story of Adam and Eve that’s been echoed through so much culture and forcing it into a normalised domestic situation on this song. I was imagining how crazy it must have been to be the first woman with no one around to help or give you advice. It was challenging to write as a man but I’m really pleased with it. ” “Emily & Her Penthouse in the Sky” “Most of what is written about Emily Dickinson assumes that she’s this tortured, isolated poet but, after researching her life, I realised a lot of it isn’t true. She was hilarious and sociable and wrote fantastic correspondences. This song is written from the perspective of her sister, describing who Emily really is, and it explores people’s perception of someone and how it relates to their real life.” “Blue Sky & the Painter” “The painter Edvard Munch wrote a lot about his relationship with depression and spoke eloquently on how he wouldn’t create his art without the way his mind worked. I became fascinated with that tension between minds that are difficult but that also allow us to create. Musically, this track reflects that feeling by sucking you into thinking it’s quiet and acoustic and then pulling the rug out with blaring distortion.” “Leonard & Marianne” “I watched this amazing documentary on Leonard Cohen by Nick Broomfield and was inspired to write this song about his complex relationship with Marianne Ihlen. I’m imagining Leonard living in New York, being famous and thinking back to being with Marianne on the Greek island of Hydra where they met. It’s about the duality of wanting to be with someone but also betraying them.” “Marie & Polonium” “Marie Curie is another person I wanted to write about because she was constantly pushing against the society that she lived in by finding a way to be educated as a woman and ultimately inventing radiotherapy, which has saved so many lives. It’s easy to see historical characters as caricatures but I wanted to humanise these people through these songs.” “Red Wine & Wilde” “I was reading about Oscar Wilde’s life and his relationship with Bosie Douglas, his on-off partner in his later years, which became quite toxic. Wilde was a leading force for being who he was in a time when it was illegal to be gay, he refused to bow down to regressive societal pressures but he was also complicated because he had a family and children and lived an artist’s life. It’s a big story, and I wanted to zoom in on a night between Wilde and Bosie to capture the complexity of their relationship in a snapshot.” “Seasons & Narcissus” “The Narcissus myth has been retold in so many ways because it’s so relevant to the way we live our lives now, constantly being confronted by our own image on phones or Zoom calls. I wanted to tackle that obsession by writing an earnest love song that we come to realise is between Narcissus and his own reflection, producing a pretty morbid ending. ” “Drawbridge & the Baroness” “This is one of the oddest and most unique songs on the record but I love it. It’s based on a philosophical dilemma called the drawbridge exercise, which is all about power and people’s world-views. I chased the idea while sitting at my kitchen table, layering up hundreds of tracks of my own voice harmonising with itself. I’m really proud of it.” “The Soprano & Midnight Wonderings” (feat. BIM) “I thought people could do with a break from my voice for a minute on the record, so this track features BIM, who is a fantastic vocalist that has toured with us for many years. It’s a story from her life that we wrote together on tour and then finished at my house. It felt really important for her to sing it since she’s such a beautiful artist.” “Essie & Paul” “I wanted to write about Paul and Eslanda Robeson, who were husband and wife and civil rights activists. They had a complex relationship and I wanted to capture the compromises of long-term love on this song, as well as giving a musical nod to ‘Eleanor Rigby’ with the track being only strings and vocals. I love Sufjan Stevens and artists that bring in orchestral elements to their songs, so this one is a dream for me.” “Mademoiselle & the Nunnery Blaze” “Halfway through writing the album, I got in touch with the historian Emma Nagouse to put me onto unusual stories I could explore. She told me about this incredible French opera singer from the 17th century, Julie d’Aubigny, who had an amazing life and once broke her girlfriend out of a nunnery by burning it down. I wanted to write about that sweeping love story and the two of them not caring about the constraints of her time. It also features me trying my hand at singing in French!” “Zheng Yi Sao & Questions for Her” “Another figure that Emma directed me towards was Zheng Yi Sao, who ran a piracy empire that was so big it challenged the Chinese empire in the early 19th century. It’s crazy to me that she isn’t more well-known and this song looks back at her with awe from the present day, asking how she managed to achieve it all. It’s definitely the most bombastic song on the album.” “Telegraph Road 1977 & 2024” “When I was 13, my dad gave me a book of poems he wrote when he was travelling across America with my mum, and in it was a verse about homelessness in San Francisco that I decided to turn into a song. It’s always been something I’ve wanted to pick up again and this album felt like the perfect opportunity to do that. I added a verse from my perspective in 2024, addressing my dad’s words and ending the record from my voice, just as I started it. It also features my mum singing backing vocals, which was very special.”