Conor Maynard on His Highly Awaited Comeback and ‘Therapuetic’ New Mini-Album, +11 Hours

Conor Maynard was one of the very first artists who found massive mainstream success after posting his music to YouTube, topping the charts with his 2012 debut album Contrast. As longtime fans, it's hard to believe it's been nearly 11 years since it dropped.

And today, after more than a decade, Conor has finally released its follow-up in the form of his new mini-album, +11 Hours—his first full-length project of original music since Contrast. Of course, Conor has grown massively as an artist in that time, with +11 Hours feeling a hundred times more personal and soul-baring as he explores every emotional facet of a painful breakup, and his finely tuned voice has never been stronger. We knew it was something special from the very first notes, and we had the honor of hopping on a Zoom call with Conor to discuss what it means to be back, and the incredible story behind +11 Hours. Keep scrolling to read our full interview with Conor, and to hear everything the mini-album has to offer.

Sweety High: It's been more than a decade since your last album. Why was now the right time to return, and how do you think that time away has impacted you and your music?

Conor Maynard: It almost happened by accident. I went through a really difficult breakup at the end of last year, and I took that time to pour my feelings into music and write about what I was going through, because it felt like the most therapeutic and comforting thing I could do at the time. It was the best way to process it, instead of just going out all the time. It made more sense to try to be productive with the whole thing. And it wasn't my first rodeo. I knew what worked last time. I knew what didn't work last time. Rather than spiraling out of control, I wanted to utilize this in the best way that I could. That was music.

So I started writing a bunch of songs, and because it was coming from such a raw place and a real set of emotions, I wound up loving so many of the songs. I really wanted people to hear them. But if I was going to release them all as singles, one by one, it would take the best part of a year to get them all out because you want to give each song its own breathing space as a single. That didn't really work for me because I wanted to release this story, this period of my life that was important and personal to me, when it still mattered in my mind. If the 10th single came over a year later, I might not really be in that headspace anymore. I don't want to put it out if I'm over it and on to new things. I don't want to be promoting a new song about something I felt a year ago.

My solution was putting them all together as a project at the same time. Why don't we do this as an EP or a mini-album? And believe me, the conversation in terms of what to call it—EP vs. mini-album—took so long. It's a bit too long to be an EP, but it's quite short for an album. It's in the middle, so mini-album it was.

(Photo credit: Lee Malone)

 

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SH: What does the title +11 Hours mean to you? Why did it feel like the best way to sum up the story you're telling with these songs?

CM: I've always felt that every little choice I make, whether it be a lyric or music video or artwork or the album title, should mean something personal to me. There are subliminal messages in there for a lot of reasons. When the fans try to work everything out and piece everything together, it's another activity they get to do, on top of listening to the music itself. It's fun to put bits of information out there that are extremely personal to me.

+11 Hours was the time difference between me and her when we were dating long distance. The artwork also has all kinds of hidden information. There's a picture of a passport with a ticket inside it, and all the numbers on the ticket are secret, significant information. I've been very particular with how I've chosen to present everything within the album.

(Photo credit: Lee Malone)

 

SH: How did you explore the different aspects of a breakup over the course of the mini-album?

CM: What's kind of funny is that when I play the mini-album to people,
they always ask, how can these songs all be about the same breakup? On one, you're saying, I love you, I'll never forget you and I want to be with you again, and in the next, you're saying I hate you, how could you do this to me? Each song is a different mindset I was in during that breakup. That's what a lot of people experience. They go through stages of grief over a breakup, and their headspace constantly changes. That's what this album is— the different headspaces I was in whilst processing the entire thing. It's a nod to each feeling and emotion I had.

I've got this note in my phone that you could scroll and scroll and scroll, because I was basically writing down every single little thought I had that hurt. Writing it down was useful to use later for concepts or whatever, but also it helped me to let it go a little bit. Putting it into words made it feel a bit more real. When it's just in your head and it's hurting you, it's a horrible feeling because it's not a real thing in front of you that's causing so much pain, and writing it in my notes was a way of putting it out and making it real. That was how I processed it.

(Photo credit: Lee Malone)

 

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SH: Do you have a favorite song on the mini-album?

CM: I don't know, because each one covers a different area of what I was feeling, and each is so important in what I dealt with. Though the next focus single, which goes out the same day as the album, is called "How Am I," which I absolutely love. It's a very different vibe—kind of an '80s vibe—from the other three that have come out so far. I'm excited for people to hear that. There's another song called "Enemies," which is really different. I half-sing, half-rap in the second verse. That was different for me, also. One thing I'm really happy about with this mini-album is that not only does it cover different headspaces, but it covers different genres I like. The album is definitely very eclectic and varied in its sound choices between each song.

 

SH: Was there anything that surprised you about the process of creating your first album in such a long time?

CM: There were quite a few things we didn't see coming. One thing was just the identity of the whole album. Pretty much all of the album is produced by a close of mine named Brendan Buckley. It's the first time we've ever sat down and properly worked on something together, and the first hurdle was finding the identity of the sound and figuring out what we wanted the whole thing to sound like, since, as I said, everything sounds very different. What would be the thing that ties it all together? That was actually really hard.

We always believed that once we'd found the first one that felt right, everything would become so much easier, because then we would know we could do it and that we were capable, and just hit the ground running at that point. That's exactly what happened. I think "Dark Side" was the first song to get written, and once we had that song, everything else just kind of poured out straight away. It just made sense at that point, whereas leading up to "Dark Side," we were just basically shooting in the dark. We had no idea what we were making and what kind of vibe we wanted to put together. It was really tricky at the beginning.

(Photo credit: Lee Malone)

 

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SH: How are you feeling about releasing something this big for the first time in a very long time?

CM: Mixed emotions, really. On one hand, I'm really excited for people to hear the first original body of work that I've released since Contrast, which was 2012—so 11 years ago. It's quite funny that it ended up being 11 years, considering the album is called +11 Hours. That was completely by accident, but it works! But along with that excitement, there's definitely a lot of pressure. My first album, at least in the U.K., went to No. 1, and there's only one way from that—and that's down. I can either match it or not quite reach the same levels.

That's another one of the reasons why we named it a mini-album, because we didn't feel like it was long enough to be a full album. If I was going to write an entire album, I probably wouldn't want to make it all about the same thing. It should be a little bit more varied. I'd want to have happy songs in there, sad songs, songs that are a bit more about myself, etc., whereas this whole project is all about one person and one thing in particular. The pressure from the first album also played into why we decided not to go all out just yet. Instead, let's put a bit of a trial run out, and then go from there.

 

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