Omar Apollo

Trees are great for wellbeing. This may seem obvious, but it was actually in 2021 that Forest Research (UK) demonstrated the immense benefits of trees for humans, just by being near them. They were also an important source of inspiration for Omar Apollo’s new album, God Said No. He felt exhausted and was looking for any avenue to find joy in life again. He found it in Paris, on a beautiful family trip, thanks to a tree. Sometimes the supposed mistake of a turbulent relationship leads to growth we never expected. Like finding a beautiful tree with its leaves falling around it, letting in the light, surrounded by the people you love.

Interview taken from METAL Magazine issue 51. Adapted for the online version. Order your copy here.

Omar is one of the biggest artists in pop music today, he has gone from DIY artist to arena filler in front of 60,000 people. After making his debut with his 2018 EP “Stereo” and his 2020 EP “Apolonio”, he proved just how good he is at grooving between intimate guitar ballads and funk-laden R&B tracks.

After a break, recovering from touring the world, a job that has been widely studied as one of the main reasons for mental health issues among musicians in recent years. Now he’s back with “God Said No”, an album about grieving and coming out hopeful at the end of the process, with big, beautiful songs about acceptance, and how it may lead to forgiveness and love. There is an exceptional reflection on loss in the album in the form of an interlude read by none other than Pedro Pascal.

Born in Hobart, Indiana, Apollo was raised by working class Mexican parents who emigrated to the US from Guadalajara. Instilled with a love for traditional Mexican folk music, he was given his first guitar at the age of 12 and from then on, the rest is history. His work has earned him a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2023 Grammys, as his critically acclaimed 2022 debut album “Ivory” was also named one of the best albums of 2022 by Rolling Stone, Billboard and NME. Omar can transform his sentiments into songs that resonate with many people and their many love stories. That’s the magic of music.

And there is so much poetry within his album, and in this interview. He sounds like an avid reader and a poet himself, naturally gifted with a great imaginative, sense of humour and expressive capacity. An artist who takes what life brings and creates beautiful things with it. Shouldn’t that be what being an artist is all about? The effort of making meaning and sense.

Determination and self-belief are key to Omar’s journey over the past few years, but he does not stress it when singing; he invites you to a new approach in which acceptance might be the source of new beginnings. And most importantly, in Omar’s new album there is a silent subtlety and relief, something that makes us long and yearn for the possibility of a (more) beautiful life.

Hi Omar! How are you?

I’m good. How are you?

I’m fine. How was your day?

Pretty good. I just landed in LA yesterday, so I’m just adjusting.

Well, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. How do you feel now that your new album is released in the world, because I’ve had the privilege to listen to it, and it’s fantastic.

Thank you for saying all of that. I’m really excited. I mean, this work has been a journey, it has been putting a lot of my life into something. So, it’s cool. I’ve detached myself from it for a while now, because I feel like when you work that intensely on something you have to let go, you have to be ready for it to be presented into the world. It’s my favourite music. I feel like it represents me well where I am now.

The first line I heard in the first song, which is called “Be Careful With Me”, is “Sometimes I think we cross the line”. If I try, I can zoom out and think about it as a form of experimentation in life, that sometimes crossing a line can be a mistake, but it’s something that you must do it in order to check. The whole record is an emotional tale, but in this song, at the beginning, you’re asking someone to please take care, and maybe it’s because you’ve suffered before. What is the story behind this song?

Yeah. The second line on that song is, “You can release me. I’ll be fine”.

Yes.

So, there were moments I don’t think I had anything to do with before. I think I was very present in the situation. I have a heart, I have a soul, I’m human. But also like, be careful with me, from another point of view. Whatever you are doing to me, I can do it back.

Oh, I see. What do you consider your comfort zone that you can go back to?

I think you have to kind of give yourself grace at the end of the day. I could intellectualise it, like, you do this because of this. That’s not going to benefit the relationship in the long run, since it didn’t end up working. But you can be embarrassed by loving somebody so intensely, and it was mutual, you just accept it. And be more kind to yourself.

The whole album is you singing with your heart open about experiences of love, relationships, dating. Do you think that you have gone through a lot that has made you learn about love?

Yeah, I think that the world gives you the same situation in different forms until you learn from a lot of experiences, and now this is finally, like, ok, “God Said No” and you finally learn. I’m not going to get into this type of dynamic again.

Yes, because the title of the record, “God Said No”, implies learning from the past. Some people are religious, some other people believe in fate or destiny, but we’ve always found a way to try and understand and deal with things that happen to us, whether they’re good or unfortunate. Do you believe that everything or some things happen for a reason?

Not everything. I mean, some things are just bad. Sometimes there’s not a reason. It’s fine.

It’s been a long time since you started your career, since you left your hometown. I read somewhere that you were working at McDonald’s, and that you even had plans to go to the university, but you decided to try and pursue a music career. And that you actually had to borrow some money from a friend to upload a song to Spotify. So, when you go back to the beginning, how do you remember the first steps, were you nervous? Did you feel you were taking a big risk?

No. I mean, risks don’t exist when you don’t have anything. So, I already had like negative $150 on my account. I was just definitely focusing too far on the future. I definitely was just trying to get through each step, whether it was me releasing something or meeting someone at an event, or, the success online, or whatever it was I was just really, really present for it.

And were there any moments where you felt like maybe it wasn’t going to happen, or was there too much to deal with?

Not really, I didn’t really think there was more at that moment. And if someone there in front of me, told me they liked my music or not, it was fine. It was enough. Everything that was in front of me was enough at that time.

I understand that the most part of the writing process took place in London, and that you were inspired by the poems of Mary Oliver, Victoria Chang, and Ocean Vuong. And there’s something quite poetic in your approach to love, in your songwriting, always. But I wonder if the experience to be away from home in order to write something that is so personal for you was a challenge.

Well, being away from home isn’t hard for me anymore, anywhere where my pillow is and where I have my toiletries, my phone, and a book is home. Having my phone makes me feel like I’m anywhere. I think poetry was the catalyst for this album, it made me have more intentional writing, this time is something different. I think it made my songwriting better. And made me want to write more.

When I listened to “Spite” for the first time, I felt that it was a bit more complex in the writing, especially the lyrics, there’s a subtle sense of irony and, I might be wrong, but I get sometimes that you use a sense of humour in your music to maybe cope with things. Is it important for you when you’re trying to write about things that might be a big deal?

Yeah, I always do that. I feel like it’s important to have like a word or a phrase that lifts the mood a bit, because I know I usually write about very sad, traumatic moments in my life, but my personality is both. I feel like I’m pretty happy, it’s just my personality: this is how I feel when I look at life and I can’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, it’s too much.

When you collaborate with other artists, like Kali Uchis or Daniel Caesar, and in this album, for example, with Mustafa, there always seems to be a great connection between you and the other artists, and it translates very well. The listener understands that it’s more than a collaboration, it’s a friendship. The song with Mustafa in this record, “Plane Trees”, is so beautiful. I cannot say that enough. And there is a line that really got me: “How could we be smiling? / How could we if we’re upside down”.

Yes.

I think that makes a lot of sense, going back to the poetry, because it’s such a poetic way to describe the state of the world right now, and also the feelings of people, especially working-class people. I wanted to ask you about this song, and also your collaboration with Mustafa, with whom I understand you have a great friendship.

Yeah, he’s my best friend. My parents and I met his dad in Sudan with a bunch of our friends, but yeah, we built an amazing friendship over the years that I’ve known him. We have always talked about doing something together, but it just never felt right, until I played on that song, he was just like “Omar, this is so beautiful”. I was so exhausted with love when I wrote the song. I was looking for every avenue to find joy in life again, and not revolve all around another person. I was sick of it; I didn’t want to write about anybody. I just wanted to write about this tree. I guess I was reconnecting, you know, with myself. When I do that, I like to go outside and sit under a tree.

That sounds really nice and calm.

Yeah, and so I was in Paris, and I drove out to Versailles, and I was with my parents, and we were going to see the palace. And the palace was closed, and we really liked what we saw from the outside. It was so beautiful, with the garden and everything. So, we found this tree and the leaves dropped around it, and we were encumbered by the leaves. We went under, and the light was shining, and we were laying down and my mum sees this leaf on the ground, and she starts telling the story, which is at the end of “Glow” (the song), and that’s from us laying underneath the tree, telling the story about making gorditas in Mexico, and talking about her dad. So, it was underneath that tree where I got that audio.

Also, it is where I wrote a poem, which was “Plane Trees”, it was a poem before the song, and I was really happy with it because it made me grin. I was so exhausted from working so much and from love, and I just wanted to find the meaning to life outside of all that; I just wanted “Plane Trees” to be about the inside, that didn’t have to do with another person, and it was all about finding peace within yourself and your own mind. And the next day after we left, — we were at that tree for like two hours, until the sun came down — I was playing some chords, and I started singing the poem, and that’s exactly how it came out, the melody and everything. I just sang it.

Wow, what a story. I thought on “Glow” it was probably your mum, but I wanted to ask you first, of course. It’s very soothing. Now that you’re telling the story, it’s a gorgeous song that you took from a such a beautiful experience.

After I had all the materials for my song it sounded so beautiful, and now “Glow” and “Plane Trees” got this parallel with each other. They are both mentioning trees with subtlety. For me, I am drawn to them because it’s just like, they’re as intimidating as a baby, you know? You’re not going to be mad at a baby for doing something wrong. So, when you look at a tree, it’s the same thing. I started picturing intimidating people in my life that would cause me some type of internal turmoil as trees, and it’s something that helps me get over a lot of things I had inside of me that were, I guess, tormenting.

Well, you’re so right. I mean trees are not going to hurt us, I never thought about this in any way. It’s so cool when we treat nature right, it gives me hope.

Yeah, and that’s where the line “How could we be dying? If we’re lying down underneath this tree giving life to withered leaves.” I just thought about the exchange of life, and there is also a line where he (Mustafa) says “We’re laying on the ground until we feel the graves beneath us”. And it’s a very poetic way of wording things, it’s one of my favourite written songs. I mean, when I sing this song, I’m so happy. Those are the words that came to me. And it’s not about another person, it’s about how I was exhausted from everything.

I think that this is your best record, and it’s definitely your most emotional. It feels like you have poured yourself into it, like everything. And it’s so beautiful that it also all happened in Paris, which is such a beautiful place. I wanted to ask you about your family regarding you starting your career quite young. You know how parents sometimes have another idea for us in life, for the future. I wonder how they reacted when you were so determined to take the risk and pursue music.

Well, the timing of my career really helped the family. My dad had just had surgery on his knee, and he couldn’t work, we were about to lose the house. I was living in an attic somewhere else. And they both couldn’t work; it was a really strange time. I remember my dad calling me, and I have never heard him speak like that. I was maybe 20 years old. And his voice had this desperation, or depression that I’d never heard from him before. It’s always been, you know, work, work, work. But since he wasn’t working, he was dealing with his own brain, his own thoughts and his anxieties. There were people looking for him and we were in huge debt, and my career was just starting to move, I had around $3,000 from streaming, but I knew that in about two weeks I was going to have like $100,000. And then I remember I told my dad, look, I’m going to make $100,000 in like two weeks, and everything will be fine, I promise.

And what did he say about that?

He was like, “What? What do you mean?” And I was just like it’s going to be fine. I promise I’ll send it, I’ll borrow it over, and then it’ll be fine. He was so confused. I actually made a song about it, so I don’t want to say what was exactly said, because I’d like to present the song one day. But it was a really tough time. After that happened, they were like “Where did you get all this money?”, they were honestly worried if I was doing something crazy for money. They definitely took my career more seriously and understood that I was working, and I had this visibility, and they dealt with a lot of like “Why you? Why do people like your music?” We’re from Indiana. It’s conservative, you just go to the steel mill. That’s as far as it really goes. And so, I was out here trying to pursue art. And they’re immigrants, they have this mindset of physical labour. After, they definitely built a bigger story about what I do and would come to shows and things like that.

Getting to know about all of this is just so powerful. Your song “Empty” it’s another one of my favourites, and I think this time you were actually singing about love. And there’s a moment when you sing “Cantando en otro lenguaje pa’ que no me entiendes”. And it’s cool and fun to actually listen to you singing exactly that phrase in Spanish. It makes so much sense. And we kind of understand from that that you were actually singing to someone who doesn’t speak Spanish.

Exactly (laughs).

Do you use Spanish to express certain feelings, or is it easier for you to express certain things in any of these languages?

Honestly, there’s words in Spanish that I forget the English word for, and I have to think about a little bit. But in my everyday, English is the primary language that I’ve been educated and like, I read in English. I mean the only time I read in Spanish is for prayers that my mum gave me, and also, I talk to my parents, my family, in Mexico. If you don’t speak English I can speak in Spanish. But my Spanish is kind of performative now. When I think about my relationship to it, it’s just personal now because I speak a bit like an American. And the decision when I’m songwriting is very clear. I’m singing in the language that you don’t understand me in. I’ll sing in Spanish when it feels right and it feels like I need to. I usually don’t care about the public opinion of my Spanish. I don’t need to put myself in a position, I don’t need to explain myself in another language. They’ve got subtitles.

When listening to “Dispose of Me” I think about it like a classic Omar Apollo song, because it has this soulful flavour, this instrumentation, it’s one of your best performances of your own style of singing, and it seems to be about a relationship with a lot of history behind that deserved another chance. And sometimes, when something with so much history hasn’t worked out, it may never, and people would constantly point this out. But other times we need that second chance to see if we can succeed, and that’s the only way to know. And then if things go wrong, we may feel disappointed, but at least we tried, right? So, has the fear of suffering ever stopped you from trying to work things out?

No, I always dive at first into any emotional endeavour. But I think that for me the song is less about a second chance and more about dealing with the breakup, dealing with the grief and that thought of what if we did this thing again? But it’s over. The song is about it being over. It’s more about saying for 25 years, 25 days, it doesn’t matter the time it could be, I could fall in love with you within four days. Or I could have been with you for this long. It wouldn’t matter. What matters is that I’m always going to share my love with you. I’m always going to remember, it’s not something that’s going to leave my memory. It’s about being so intimate with somebody, having this very intimate connection. And everyone around is like, you got to stop, you know that’s not good for you, you’ll hurt yourself, you’re suffering. And for me it’s like, well, how could I be so intimate with you and not speak to you ever again? That doesn’t feel like it sits right with my soul. I always forgive. I think you should judge people on their ability to forgive, and not on their ability to generate money. I think that’s more important.

Absolutely.

So, when it comes to talking about love I can never, ever hold onto anything. It doesn’t matter what you did if I felt love for you. Because love is, you know, I’m 27 now, it’s not like this 18-year-old love where it’s purely physical and carnal. Feelings have emotional layers, and only you and the other person could understand that. There’s no one else that could really give you a perspective that you haven’t already used or tried. If you’re really in love, you’re trying everything. And I think that song was like a letter to… I will always love you no matter what, like you always have a place in my spirit, in my heart, we were once together, emotionally and spiritually, I’ll always remember what it felt like. That’s what that song really is about.

“We should judge people on their ability to forgive, not on their ability to generate money.”

I really like what you just said; we should judge people on their ability to forgive rather than other things. This is really what’s important, to be able to reconnect with someone with whom you’ve shared something so, so big and so important. And some of the things in this new album seem to be based on long distance relationships, which makes sense, because you’re an artist who travels a lot. And I wonder, how do you handle being away from people you love, not just romantically but also your friends and family, due to the logistics of your work and what have you learned from it?

My life is long distance, so most of my relationships are too. Luckily, we have phones and FaceTime, and I can bring my family if I need them. I have that ability. It’s not that money is stopping us from seeing each other, which was the case at one point. But, yes, it’s something that I’m used to now, my life is very unconventional, and I have to just accept doing unconventional things, like seeing somebody for 24 hours if I need to. So, it’s okay. I mean it’s hard, but it’s also nice to miss someone. I feel like my natural state is longing. So, when I’m there it feels comfortable, the idea of missing someone is sweet to me.

What if you suddenly see yourself in a stable relationship, living with someone every day in the same house? Would it work now that you are used to long distance?

Well, for a start I would have several houses (laughs).

(Laughs) Or a big, big house.

Actually, the thought of being in one place is sweet to me, but I know that’s not my nature. I will definitely be out, whether it’s me going to visit an exhibition or go somewhere, and the way the work brings you around and shows and everything, but it doesn’t scare me. My parents are still together. They’ve been together 31 years. So, I’ve always had that example, that you have your person. And I believe in marriage and things like that. I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of thing yet, but I definitely felt that before.

I wanted to ask you about something important, I think that sometimes challenges appear in our lives in a strange, coded way, or are brought to us already interpreted and defined. For example, being queer means that you might feel wrong at some point in our development as human beings for just being different, how we fear that disappointing other people that we love may be dangerous for us, when we are not sure of their acceptance, or even how some people have felt pressured to come out when it simply was not the time to do so. If you have ever experienced any of these feelings, has music been a way to cope with them?

I mean, yes, it’s how I came out. It wasn’t a giant secret. You had to pay attention, but I’ve been singing ‘boy’ in songs since I was 17. Maybe in interviews with some people I wasn’t ready to talk about it, because I was dealing with a lot of family stuff and coming out to them, so I didn’t feel comfortable speaking about it, they’d want me to elaborate. “Oh, you say boy in this song” and I was like ok, I don’t want to speak about this publicly. But just let it be the music, it exists within the work. When I’m ready to talk about it I will, and I would have them take down interviews. I also feel like it’s weird, because I feel everyone kind of knew that I hadn’t spoken on it, and everybody was trying to be the first one to speak about it. I thought it was just kind of annoying. People now don’t even know that I’m gay, which is crazy, I’m so loud about it. I don’t really care. I don’t really think about it. It’s not groundbreaking to be gay (laughs).

It’s not a headline anymore, it’s 2024 (laughs).

It’s boring.

I remember the TV performance of Madonna at the Brit Awards in 2015, in which she had this cape she couldn’t untie, and she fell. Playing live is also a moment in which something can go wrong in the technical side, especially, I wonder if that has ever happened to you, and how have you reacted.

Oh, I expect things to go wrong. Say, for instance that my voice was going out because we were outside and there was dust, it was cold. So, by the end, in the last two songs that I really had to sing, I knew I couldn’t hit the middle note, it just had a lower tone. So, I sing the lyrics in a different note. I’ve been doing that for so long. I don’t want to crack my voice in front of 60,000 people.

Do you worry fans might complain?

I don’t care! (Laughs). No, but things happen like 100% of the time. I started thinking, it gets hard to depend on two vocal flaps for every single night when you could get sick. I was sick when I performed on the Late Show, and I was taking medicine, trying to feel better, and I was tired. Maybe give people some credit, this is not an easy job. This is a very hard job. It’s got my control, because I’m prepared. I know if something goes wrong what to do. But no, I don’t feel bad.

Of course!

I cancel. Yes, I feel terrible. But, if I’m up I’m doing my best every time.

I don’t want to miss mentioning that I loved what you wore to the Met Gala. It was a custom-made Jonathan Anderson look. How is the process from the moment that you are invited to such an iconic event to actually finding the right outfit?

Yeah, I’m a huge fan of Jonathan Anderson. We have had a good friendship over the years. We’ve been working together. And I got invited, so I really wanted to do something. And we had looked at his Loewe Autumn/Winter 2024 womenswear show earlier in the year, and there was this look that really inspired the whole thing, that he had already made, but we just made a suit version of it. I was so excited to go. It was such a great experience, and it’s just great people. It’s a huge, iconic event. And I didn’t really realise how big, like my friend back home told me that Facebook was going crazy. Everyone from high school was talking about it, I got tagged in posts all over the world, all different languages. I mean, I was just happy to be there. I had a great time.

But was it comfortable?

Yeah, the lapel was a little heavy, so I was sweating, it was super-hot in there. But, yeah, it was fine. I felt very handsome.

Not that I found any, but are there any fashion choices that you regret?

Maybe, like in 2020 or 2021. Yeah, but not recently, no.

I am intrigued about the contribution by Pedro Pascal to the album, because the Internet went a bit crazy when you announced the album track list. And the narration that Pedro does, it serenaded me when I first listened to it. There’s something about it that’s a bit philosophical in some points of the album, like the one we were talking about before, “Plane Trees”. How the idea for this song “Pedro” come about, and what is your friendship with him like?

Pedro is the best. I mean, he’s the sweetest guy. When I first met him, I invited him to lunch, and his whole family was there, so I got to meet his family and his friends, and we just stayed in touch after that, and I’d play music to him, we’d have conversations, and I was seeing him whenever we were in the same city. So we were in London, and I played him “Glow”, which is the last song on the album, and three or four other songs. “Glow” was my favourite at that time, and he loved it. So, I brought it up to him, a little bit down the line, and I said, it’d be really beautiful if you spoke right before the song. Now he has a different favourite song. I gave him this prompt of what I thought would be great. That’s his own story, and he sent it over, like a voicemail moment and we worked it out. I sent it back and forth, so he definitely worked on it. We made sure it translated super well. And the story was paced correctly and everything. I feel like 2023 was so emotional for me. It was my biggest kind of grief that I was dealing with, even getting into 2024 and I just wanted to make an album that reflected that. And I feel like the stories and the severity of these songs and what they mean; how to get through it and see the end of it and come out differently. “Glow” is a perfect way to tie everything together.

Are you feeling better now?

Yeah, I feel great. I’m about to go to this rehearsal, so I’m just going to get ready.

And after making this new great album about love, what advice would you give people, our readers, me, anyone about dating?

I think the biggest thing for me that I’ve taken out from the album is that you need time, if you’re going through a heartbreak. When it comes to relationships, it’s so specific to people that I don’t have any advice. But the heartbreak I do have, it’s just literally, there’s nothing but time. The only thing that is going to help is to float above the grief and live above it and see it for what it is, as opposed to living inside of it. And, it’s just time.

I think there’s a lot that I learned from talking to you today. I want to thank you for taking your time to talk, and to wish you the best with this new album, which is amazing.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed the call; I hope it makes a good writing.