Example reveals wife Erin McNaught saved him from an ‘early grave’ after too much hardcore partying
FOR years he pushed life to the extreme with drink and drugs — but now Example says his favourite hobby is weeding the garden.
The rapper says model wife Erin McNaught saved him from an early grave and helped him to become a house-proud husband.
He has repaid her by naming a track after her on his comeback album, Some Nights Last For Days, which is out Friday.
In an exclusive chat, he said: “I wrote Erin three or four years ago on our anniversary.
“I went to the studio with Johnny McDaid, who’s a good friend of mine and is in Snow Patrol. Then I came home and played it to Erin and her parents, who were visiting. We were hugging and crying because it was so personal.
“At the time I thought it’s not right to release this when I’m trying to get booked to play dance festivals. But on the back of this album it’s the perfect fit. And now everyone gets to hear it.”
In new track Eye To Eye he praises the mother of his two children, who he married in 2013 after meeting her in 2011, as his “saviour”.
He says Erin put him on the straight and narrow after he admitted doing “every drug under the sun” and “getting absolutely battered every night” when he first started out in the music scene.
Example — real name Elliot Gleave — said: “Eye To Eye is really about loads of back-stabbers and how people use you for money and fame.
“Erin saved me from an early death. I was partying too much back in the day.
“You’re burning the candle at both ends, doing 120 festivals a year, 100 flights a year and you’re partying four or five nights a week.
“I was lying to my ex and cheating on her. I wasn’t close to my mum or dad or my sister any more, so Erin coming into my life helped me mend all those things.”
Example now lives in Australia, where Erin is from, and his life is a lot calmer now he’s 37.
He said: “I get up, drop the kids at school, I go to the gym, I go mountain biking.
“I go to the cinema, I prepare dinner every day. I love cooking. When I was in London I lived in an apartment but now I’ve got a swimming pool, a sauna, a big garden and a garage so there’s always jobs for me to do around the house. I love de-weeding.
“I love my leaf blower, too. I’m a lot happier now.”
Example’s new album also marks a turning point as he had vowed never to make another album. In 2018 he fell out with his label Columbia, owned by Sony and insisted he would only bring out singles.
But with many songs left from that period, coupled with the restrictions of lockdown, he has produced a 15-track record in just nine weeks.
On the track Music Industry Experts, Example hits back at label bosses from the last 15 years of his career.
He said: “It’s a p**s-take of clueless record label people. I dealt with people like that.
“The fifth album came out. I listen to it now and I feel really bad for all the producers and people involved in it.
“I let the team down by not delivering the lyrics and the songs. It’s a bit of a mess. So I was like, ‘I’m never doing an album again.’ I’ve just been sticking to house and tech house, features with DJs, and I never thought I’d do an album again.
EXAMPLE - Some Nights Last For Days
EXAMPLE starts his seventh album with the song Paperclips and utters the words “It’s the return of the EG” – and it couldn’t be more apt.
He’s back with a record that is so good you’ll have a new favourite every time you listen to it.
Some Nights Last For Days has something for everyone, with politically charged tracks including Need To Know, a huge floor-filler with the Calvin Harris-produced title track and some old school hip-hop with Trippin’ In The Sky.
Elliot himself admitted the record is split into two – the first half being hip-hop and the latter pop – and it’ll be that second half that fans will no doubt enjoy the most.
He vowed not to release another album, but this is certainly worth going back on that promise for.
★★★★☆
‘Rapping into phone’
“I think to start an album from scratch would have been difficult but luckily I went back through loads of old demos and dug up a few old tracks. Then I wrote ten new songs in two weeks.”
Example has managed to rope in some pals to lend a hand, including Professor Green and Calvin Harris, who he collaborated with on 2012’s We’ll Be Coming Back. He said: “The last track I wrote for the album was the title track, and that’s produced by Calvin. I text him probably every week, just really random banter.
“He’s a bit of a geek like me. He loves chatting utter rubbish.
“I was nervous to ask him for a beat so I just made an off-the-cuff remark, ‘Oh you got any leftover demos from Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1?’ — his last album with Katy Perry and Pharrell.
“He was like, ‘Yeah of course.’ He dug up two random beats and one of them he was like, ‘Check this one — it’s got jazz flute on it.’ And then I’m speaking to Professor Green, who was with his girlfriend in Marrakesh, but he was like, ‘I want to do this verse for you’. And I didn’t really want to put out this track, Extra Mike, without his verse.
“So he recorded with his headphones in his laptop, rapping into his phone. He sent that rap over to my engineer in London who made it sound as good as he could.
“You can still hear that it’s not 100 per cent a studio recording but it sounds pretty f***ing good.”
Sounds like this album has done Example a world of good.
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El's blast from past
ELLA Henderson axed an album after splitting from Simon Cowell’s Syco label in 2018, but thankfully she rescued one song to be her new single.
The former X Factor star said she wrote her brilliant floor-filler Take Care Of You for the ill-fated record five years ago but recently rediscovered it and gave it a new lease of life.
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“All my family got involved, which was fun.
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