Tom Odell and Alice Merton are music's latest unlikely duo

In sync: Tom Odell has released a duet with Alice Merton
Sophie Green of Odell, Lester Cohen / Getty Images of Merton
David Smyth24 August 2018

Who sings your favourite male/female duet? Sonny and Cher? Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl? Renée and Renato? It’s a special sub-genre where a song becomes a conversation, where the right two voices can create something greater than the sum of its parts.

London-based singer-songwriter Tom Odell and German-born newcomer Alice Merton are the latest pair to share song space with a new single, Half as Good as You. It’s a world away from the Somebody feat. Somebody plus Somebody Else team-ups currently dominating the pop charts — doomed romance piano ballads in which a former couple realise they’ll never do any better than each other, but have no choice but to carry on the search.

Odell, 27, names Islands in the Stream performed by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers (written by the Bee Gees) as his favourite duet. Merton, 24, is a bit more hip, picking Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. The two singers befriended each other at a music festival in Munich, Tollwood, last summer, had a drink backstage while their respective bands mingled. Odell had already written the song just for him to sing, but as he finished recording his third album he realised that it could work differently.

“It was as simple as changing a verse from ‘he’ to ‘she’. When I did that, it made even more sense as a duet,” he tells me. “It suddenly occurred to me that it could be two singers talking about one another.”

“I have to admit I was a fan of his ever since his first EP. I loved his music. So when I found out he wanted me to be on a song I couldn’t really believe it,” says Merton, who is less well known over here but whose powerful pop-rock song, No Roots, has been number one in France, number two in Germany and topped America’s Alternative Songs chart.

“It’s so refreshing when you hear her voice in the middle of the album,” Odell adds, continuing the mutual admiration.

“She’s a phenomenal singer. I wish she’d sung my whole album and I’d just written the songs.”

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The problem with adding more talent to the mix, however, is getting two packed diaries to sync.

Merton was in London in January to spend a day recording the song, which was the last one to be finished for Odell’s album, Jubilee Road. It’s released in October. When it comes to touring in the autumn, he’s in the US when she’s in the UK and vice-versa. They hope to join each other on stage in November.

I have to meet them in Hamburg separately — she’s there to perform at the city’s waterfront festival, MS Dockville, and has to leave for her home in Berlin just before he arrives from the Netherlands Lowlands festival. They spoke to each other the day before on Skype but that will have to do for now.

It feels strange for Merton to be singing such an intimate song, especially one with its roots in reality. Odell, who put a photo of an ex-girlfriend on the cover of his biggest hit, Another Love, has broken up again, selling the home he set up near Victoria Park with his last girlfriend and moving a mile and a half away. “I don’t know if I can relate to the song, because I’ve never been in a very long relationship where I could say that this person has meant so much to me, but I still love the music,” says Merton, who is single.

Odell’s former home and the surrounding area are the main inspirations for Jubilee Road, which is a pseudonym for the real street. You know you’re a bad neighbour when it’s the students who can’t stand you and not the other way around. “Four girls moved in next door and at first thought it was kind of cool to be living next to a professional musician,” he says. “The novelty very quickly wore off. They were banging on my door at two in the morning yelling at me to shut up.”

With his piano by the front window, he could watch the goings on outside and capture them in song. It sounds like he was very happy there. “It was the first house I bought. There was this moment when it really felt like I was part of this community. It was a nice sense of belonging and I don’t think I’d felt like that for a long time. Ever since I was 15 I’ve constantly been trying to leave, to get away.”

Growing up in Tangmere, just outside Chichester, his dreams weren’t that gigantic. As a teenager he was lugging his keyboard to open-mic nights and hoping to move to Brighton, which he did at 18. When he was 22, he became the first man to win the Brits Critics’ Choice award, following Adele and Florence + the Machine to take the prize for the next big thing. Then he released the album, Long Way Down, which went to number one and became a platinum seller. Even now, his ambitions seem relatively restrained.

“I feel like expectation has slightly been removed from my shoulders,” he says. “There was a moment where the carrot of ‘Do you want to be a massive pop star?’ was dangled in front of me but I realised it’s not something I would ever want. I love writing songs and that’s what I want to be able to do forever.”

Merton, in contrast, didn’t have a settled upbringing which she could dream of escaping. Her song No Roots is about moving home 12 different times when her father’s job as a consultant for mining companies took her family between Canada, Germany and the UK. Her parents now live in Bournemouth. “It was a big struggle for me. I don’t think my parents realised what effect it had on me, my brother and my sister,” she says. “I felt this anger for such a long time, and this Verzweiflung — what’s the word in English?” She looks it up on her phone — it means “despair”.

She sings in English, and doesn’t talk German when working in the Berlin studio with her producer Nicolas Rebscher. “Music is something I can control. I can do whatever I want, and I’m not going to let anyone tell me what language I should speak in,” she says in her Canadian accent.

Half as Good as You by Tom Odell feat. Alice Merton is released today on Columbia. Alice Merton plays The Garage, N5 1RD (thegarage.london) on September 10. Tom Odell plays Eventim Apollo, W6 9QH (eventimapollo.com) on October 23

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