Miguel broke through in 2012 with the single “Adorn” and recently collaborated with Mariah Carey on her “Beautiful” single. As he works on new material, the singer says that fans best enjoy his music live, even though he botched a stage jump in May when he landed on a fan’s head and neck area at the Billboard Music Awards.
“I think people get to understand me best in a live setting,” Miguel says during an interview with mrporter.com. “That’s where all music, not just my own, comes alive. And the danger is that that is dying. So many artists use Auto-Tune now, even live…Your voice becomes interchangeable with the next person’s. Everyone sounds the same because they’re running from the same plug-in. There’s no personality in the music. I think people want something now that feels real. And real is imperfection, not perfection. All the great artists of the past understood that.”
“I think we’re going to hear a lot more live music in general,” Miguel adds. “I was inching towards that on [his second album, 2012’s] Kaleidoscope Dream. On the next one, you’re going to hear even more than that.”
Miguel started investing in his musical talents from a young age, writing songs at the age of 14. Now, the 27-year-old tours the world singing love songs to sold out stadiums. The singer says that his music is born out of necessity.
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“I put myself on the line creatively every day because I need to as a human being,” Miguel says during the interview. “That’s what makes me happy, what makes me feel fulfilled, what keeps me sane.”
During his teens, though, Miguel says that his early management was obstructive to his creative process. “The image they gave me was a joke,” he says in the interview. “Jeans, white tee and little hat?…The more frustrated I became trying to explain the type of music I wanted to make to producers, and them not understanding, the more I started to retreat in to my own creative space. I removed myself from trying to convince other people that this would work and just started honing my own style.”
Miguel moved on to find a better home for his talents at Jive Records. His single “Sure Thing” from his 2010 debut studio album, All I Want is You, “came from me feeling frustrated. And it’s always in those moments of frustration that I find something that changes my life.”
At the time, Miguel says that the success of Ne-Yo, Chris Brown and Usher limited what record companies wanted from in terms of male R&B acts. “This was the scene in male R&B,” he says. “There wasn’t much room for creativity. Either you fitted in with that aesthetic and sound or they didn’t know how to market you. There was no alternative sound in urban R&B.”
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