I wrote this with one of my best mates, Ralph Pelleymounter, who’s in a band called To Kill a King. He was my roommate at university. We sat down and wrote it one afternoon and wanted to make something that nodded to Phil Collins and epic, strings-based, midtempo with big drums. It’s about the allure of living in a virtual reality and the endless possibilities, but also the totally addictive nature of it.” Dan Smith performing with Bastille at the 2016 V festival. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Images The title is ominous. Bastille have always been the go-to band for pop-centred positivity, but Give Me The Future at title glance seems to beg for something more post-pandemic, as opposed to finding the light within it. Yet the album still manages to deliver Bastille’s signature heavy happiness, even if by abandoning the present.

Cush, Andy (14 February 2022). "Bastille: Give Me the Future Album Review". Pitchfork . Retrieved 28 May 2023. Bastille at the 2015 Grammy awards … (left to right) Will Farquarson, Dan Smith, Chris Wood and Kyle Simmons. Photograph: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Naras Cush, Andy (14 February 2022). "Bastille: Give Me the Future Album Review". Pitchfork . Retrieved 15 February 2022. The chorus is about the intimacy of human connection in the context of some science fiction, space-centred imagery. But it’s also about the idea of those amazingly thoughtful people who spend their lives trying to change the world in a positive way,” Dan explained. “I’m totally over-awed by people like that – if you’re one of them, like an inventor, activist or scientist, you have to have the ability to imagine a version of the future that’s better than what currently exists, and then have that energy to actually work to make it happen. Alongside all the other things life throws at you.”This is a love letter to Keith Haring and the ’80s New York art-party scene. If you could plug in and go anywhere and be anything, what an amazing place to potentially go and be. I think he’s such a wonderful character, such an inclusive artist who just wanted to take art to everybody, and was just so feverishly, obsessively creating all the time. This song is imagining that we are him arriving in New York with all this hope and optimism and finding this amazing art scene. It’s another hopeful, optimistic, organic party moment within this quite digital album.” He doesn’t want people to think this was a magical or aspirational transformation. “It didn’t suddenly instil me with loads of confidence,” he says. “For a long time, I still identified as a bigger guy, and still do to this day.” He added: “So, I wanted to nod to those people and the idea that before anything big happens, most of them will have had these little revolutions in their minds, a change of perspective that leads to something bigger.”

In addition to Give Me The Future + Dreams Of The Past, Bastille’s forthcoming release will feature an additional installment of their ongoing collaborative mixtape series, Other People’s Heartache, as its third chapter. This portion of the record will include six songs, including collaborations with Alok and Tyde and the band’s recently released single “Remind Me.” Austriancharts.at – Bastille – Give Me the Future" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved 15 February 2022.I guess this song is asking, ‘If you can have these amazing relationships online or all these amazing lives in a digital space, and you’re not happy with how things are outside of that, is it not incredibly tempting to just want to stay in those spaces for as long as possible, and what does that do to us?’ There’s a line about the freaks and geeks ruling the world—it’s fascinating to see the owners of these tech companies being almost more powerful than entire countries. It’s a strange time.” Give Me the Future is the fourth studio album by British indie pop band Bastille, released on 4 February 2022 through EMI Records. It was executive produced by Ryan Tedder. [16] The album was preceded by the singles "Distorted Light Beam", "Give Me the Future", and "Thelma + Louise", [17] and subsequently announced alongside the release of the fourth single "No Bad Days". [18] A fifth single titled "Shut Off the Lights" [19] launched nearly three weeks prior to album release. Following on from playing festivals such as Boardmasters, Sziget, and Reading & Leeds this weekend, they’ll take the “Give Me The Future” tour to South America, stopping in Argentina and Brazil, before continuing an enthralling trek across Europe. You’ll also hear the voice of award-winning actor, musician, writer, creator, producer, director and activist Riz Ahmed on a spell-binding and evocative spoken word piece called Promises. Riz’s piece was a response the album and brings its overarching themes into sharp focus.

Their fourth album, the masterful Give Me The Future, was hailed by many critics as their best release to date, with The Fader describing it as “a grand collection of sci-fi inspired songs attempting to make sense of the world’s fast-moving venture into dystopia.” Grice, Alisdair (3 February 2022). "Album Review: Bastille – Give Me the Future". Gigwise . Retrieved 3 February 2022.Smith has a complicated relationship with his appearance, partly, he thinks, from being overweight as a teenager. “I was big through the end of childhood and through quite a lot of university,” he says. “I’m really aware of not wanting to imply that anyone shouldn’t want to be big. But I remember being just really self-conscious and wanting to look different.”

I was thinking about Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver and all the acoustic artists who manage to write music that is both orchestral and floaty, but also a grounded in some grit,” he says. “It was very much at odds with all of the synthesizers, drum machines, and electronic instruments and the production that we were using for Give Me The Future, but I feel super proud of it.”

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I think a lot of people suffer from different versions of body dysmorphia,” he says. “We all have the version of ourselves that we see in our own heads and often that’s so different from the version of who we are through other people’s eyes.” Murray, Robin (19 October 2021). "Bastille Announce New Album 'Give Me the Future' ". Clash . Retrieved 17 November 2021. Over the course of their previous three albums, Bastille have cemented a reputation for building whole worlds around their releases, often doing so with innovative award-winning creativity. Give Me The Future is no different, this time accompanied by a fictional, but familiar tech giant called Future Inc, the creators of an invention called Futurescape – a device which allows users to live out their dreams virtually.