Forever Isn't Long Enough

Forever Isn’t Long Enough is the sound of Alfie Templeman making sense of his teenage years. Eighteen years old at the release of his first mini-album, the singer-songwriter from Bedfordshire, England, makes buoyant, uplifting indie pop, but there are themes of romance, heartbreak, impending adulthood, and mental health weaving around the hooks. “It just feels like it’s the right time to say, ‘This is the final cherry on top’ before the next years begin,” Templeman tells Apple Music. “I’m being a bit more open as well; I haven’t really done that before.” The collection sees him expand his sonic palette, influenced by the pop immediacy of Billie Eilish and Fleetwood Mac as well as such cosmic explorers as Mac DeMarco and Tame Impala. “I grew up with prog rock, and this time I wanted to make something a bit more commercial,” he says. “I wanted to make really sugary pop songs.”

What’s emerged is a captivating set of songs that mix emotional fragility with anthemic swagger. Featuring production from Jungle’s Tom McFarland and Harry Styles collaborator Kid Harpoon, Forever Isn’t Long Enough was how Templeman got through the turbulence of 2020. “I used it as a way of distracting myself,” he says. “I hope people use it to help them in a way; it’s there for them.” It closes one chapter of Alfie Templeman’s life and begins another. Here, he talks us through it, track by track.

Shady
“There were bits of this that I started in 2019; I had those vocal hooks. My label, Chess Club, said, ‘Hey, Tom McFarland from Jungle would love to work with you.’ I played him that idea and he started playing this bassline, which is at the very start of the song, and I started playing some really distorted, heavy guitar sounds and layered on those lyrics, and it connected the dots. It was about making something that detailed how I was feeling at that moment, trying to take a step back and figure things out about what’s happened in my life so far.”

Forever Isn’t Long Enough
“When I was out in America, I went to see Kid Harpoon and I was in his studio, thinking to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, I’ve just left school, I’m a wee little lad, and I’m out here chasing my dreams—this is a lot to take in.’ It was the realization that forever isn't long enough to do everything you want, but here I am, at 17, making my dreams somehow come true.”

Hideaway
“I made this with my bassist, Cam Owden. I think it was the last day before lockdown actually happened. It’s about when you’re feeling so low and having panic attacks, up to the point where you just can’t function. It’s about getting away, closing the curtains, and coming down from everything. The chorus is about having someone that helps you focus and stop yourself from panicking and feeling like s**t.”

Wait, I Lied
“I’d just got out of hospital after a bit of a health scare. I was in there for a while, and I had this melody in my head when I was in the hospital bed—it just wouldn’t go away. It took 50 mixes to get right. It just felt like the chorus was never big enough. We’ve finally got it big enough now.”

Everybody’s Gonna Love Somebody
“I wrote this back in 2017. I wanted to make a really universal, simple love song that could capture that feeling of hope. I never got round to really redoing it until the pandemic hit and it felt like everyone was stuck in lockdown. I thought it would apply more than ever. It used to be a disco-pop track, but I changed it up, so it was a bit more ’80s synth-pop, like Tears for Fears. It’s very reverb-y—it was recorded through analog pedals.”

Film Scene Daydream
“This came about after listening to The 1975’s last record [Notes on a Conditional Form], and I really loved that ’80s, Bruce Springsteen-style production. I started with layering some guitars, and more and more guitars, and more and more guitars, and eventually it was just like this massive platter of guitars that I was working with. This was last summer [during lockdown], and I was in a pretty weird place at the time. I was daydreaming a lot about what I could be doing right now. I was watching a lot of films, coming-of-age, high-school films like American Pie, wishing I could be in places where these films were set—dreaming of socializing.”

To You
“‘To You’ is the Tame Impala-inspired one. I really enjoyed Tame Impala’s last record, all the sound effects. It also has a bit of The Weeknd in there, with the drums. It’s another simple love song but also talking about nostalgia, how times have changed for me and how I deal with love in different ways. How I approach people, how I approach my girlfriend to start talking to her. I was messing around with a Moog synthesizer for this. I definitely recommend it. You can play on one of those for hours and hours.”

One More Day (feat. April)
“This felt like the perfect end song. It’s one of those songs that I can imagine listening to when the sun goes down on a hill that overlooks a town. ‘One More Day’ is about anxiety, it’s about wanting to call someone to get some help, but you just keep saying to yourself, ‘Give it one more day and then I’ll do it.’ It’s about procrastinating. The songs on Forever Isn’t Long Enough say that I’m struggling, but I’m getting there. That’s the way I want it to come across.”