We had the pleasure of interviewing Citizen Cope over Zoom video!
The title of Citizen Cope’s new record is The Victory March—a phrase that might seem curious considering the chaotic state of the world. But for the singer/songwriter/producer, that’s exactly why this concept represented the message he sought to express right now.
For Citizen Cope, born Clarence Greenwood, the songs on The Victory March mark a new sense of accomplishment and ambition, both personally and creatively. Musically, this material—co-produced by Alex Elena (Alice Smith, Lily Allen)—adds more expansive arrangements, with horns and strings, to Cope’s signature blend of hip-hop-based beats with blues, soul, folk, and rock. “Give Love a Try (Dancing Lullaby)” offers a vision of romantic bliss atop a percolating dub reggae track, while “Time Comes Around” goes from sparse chords to surging strings, matching the theme of perseverance and conviction.
The grander approach began when Cope was asked to write for a film, and while the project didn’t end up using his music, he got the song “Close to You” out of it. It's evident in the appropriately sweeping, dramatic feel of the title track, its aspirational lyric (“I fought a winless battle / With the judges that carry the news / I found a place where the planets move / To get close to you”) delivered over a neck-snapping beat.
Maybe, though, this sense of confidence and purpose comes from the lessons of patience that Cope has learned from his own extraordinary career. Victory March is being released as his 2004 album The Clarence Greenwood Recordings approaches platinum status, despite never actually appearing on the charts.
Although “Let the Drummer Kick,” from his self-titled 2002 debut, went gold, and his compositions have been recorded by such artists such as Carlos Santana, Sheryl Crow, Richie Havens, and Dido, as well as appearing in numerous films and TV shows, for years Cope couldn’t find his place in the music industry.
In 2010, Cope tried a new path, founding his own record label, Rainwater Recordings. He released The Rainwater LP later that year, followed in 2012 by One Lovely Day. But then came seven years in which he didn’t put out any new music.
Cope returned with Heroin and Helicopters in 2019 and The Pull of Niagara Falls in 2021. When he started working on the new record, though, he found that he was having problems with his voice.
With The Victory March, Citizen Cope feels he has nothing left to prove. Twenty years in, he’s found that there’s really no choice other than to pursue his own sound and speak his own truth—which has proven to be about survival and hope rather than despair, a message the world desperately needs to hear.
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