Sebastian Schub

Having grown up in Germany and lived in London and Dublin, singer songwriter Sebastian Schub is a good example of the benefits of freedom of movement. Moving to London initially to pursue his dream of becoming an actor, his musical upbringing and tutelage at Hamburg’s Youth Opera Academy, which he attended from the age of five and was viewed as a future star in the making, sustained him financially and creatively.

“I didn’t want to be a singer, I wanted to be an actor,” reflects Schub over Zoom from his Dublin hotel room. “I moved to London to become an actor, but I could play all these instruments and sing so I started busking in London to make money. It became quite evident that I was good at it… two years passed and I’d done no acting, but I was playing music every day.”

During his busking years, Sebastian Schub became a fixture on Grafton Street and can be seen duetting with Allie Sherlock on YouTube. He also immersed himself in the singer songwriter circuit, regularly appearing at the Song Cycle in Whelan’s and The Zodiac Sessions in Bruxelles.

“I look at Ireland as very much my musical north star. Whenever I feel lost as an artist I come back to Dublin,” reflects Schub, who claims that watching Once aged 13 changed his life.

“It blew me away and I’ve been a diehard Glen and The Frame’s fan ever since. If somebody asked me who’s your favourite artist to watch live, I’ll go Glen or The Frames, whatever form he’s choosing to perform in at the time.”

“There’s something melancholic and magical about Dublin, the community here is so warming and supportive. You can feel that everyone just loves to play music.” adds Schub before recalling one of his favourite memories of Ireland.

“I was at The Zodiac Sessions years ago and I’d just come back from the toilet, and I looked to my left and it was Post Malone on a fucking banjo,” he says laughing.

“I find Dublin more so than anywhere in the world, there’s a feeling that everyone is kind of on the same level there’s no ‘Oh, you’re famous’. You get an old guy that busks on Grafton Street sitting next to one of the biggest popstars in the world singing songs, there’s none of the elitism that you can get in London. It’s pure here.”

However, Schub has clearly benefited from being exposed to the laid back nature of Dublin and the all-action, all-or-nothing aspects of the London music scene; learning how to sell a song in Dublin and learning how to write one in London.

“There’s this bar in London called Spiritual and you can’t play covers there. The owner’s like ‘No, you have to play your own songs,’ explains Schub. “So, I went away and wrote six songs and came back and he was like ‘The last one is good, but the others are a bit shit’, but he took a chance on me. I played there about 4 nights a week for 7 years.”

“Those songs still exist, some of them I still play,” including ‘Paradise’ which would go on to be Schub’s ill-fated debut single in 2020. Covid followed close behind and it would be four years until the world saw another taste of Sebastian Schub’s considerable talents.

“Covid really wrecked me,” recalls Schub, but once the world re-opened, he decided it was now or never for his musical career and things slowly but surely started to fall into place.

“I started to take it really, really, seriously about two years ago. I was like right, I have to get my shit together and I went into an intense phase of writing, and I learned production.”

“I was really struggling at the time because I was getting older and the fun was wearing off,” adds Schub.

In a bid to gain more traction, Schub started uploading on TikTok and it changed his life almost overnight. “I got really lucky, the first video I posted went viral… Sing Like Madonna also went viral which was nuts.”

“It’s really wonderful now because I get to do this and travel around, I don’t have this sword above my head going: Can I live from it? Which is wonderful.”

However, Sebastian Schub is aware that his musical dreams could have easily petered out, noting the toll that the journey has taken on him and so many other artists he knows as they bare their creative souls to a world that often seems cold and unmoved.

“I don’t want to complain about it anymore because I signed a record deal and I’m doing really well, but it really is like this canyon of despair you’re in. You’re throwing your heart into the world and no one cares. It’s horrible.”

“You pursue this thing because you think it will bring you joy but then the thing you are pursuing is actually keeping you from being joyous. The dream is the thing which causes you the most suffering which is where it twists in adulthood – now it’s like I’ve been healed from a long chronic pain.”

His major label debut ‘Sing Like Mardonna’ bottles his frustrations of having his inner performer and creative soul stifled by the downtime of Covid and seeing his hopes for a career in music vanishing.

“Sing Like Madonna is the anthem of that (feeling)” reflects Schub of his breakout single produced by Grammy-winning Irish producer Steven Fitzmaurice who is no stranger to big voices having worked with the likes of U2, Sam Smith, Seal and The Frames.

“I didn’t write it with that in mind but then halfway through you find the nucleus of the emotion, it takes a while sometimes. Sing Like Madonna took me 3 months. There’s a line “you stupid boy” – when I got to that line suddenly, I was sobbing.”

Sebastian Schub would work with fellow Irish producer Rob Kirwin on follow-up single ‘Ruin Me’, which was inspired by an Irish girl, “It’s nobody you’d know,” he assures us. The track drew instant comparisons to Hozier.

“I think the Hozier reference is fair. I was listening to Be Alone quite a lot at the time, I was listening to a lot of Gary Clarke Junior at the time. My mum played bass in a punk band so I kind of grew up with heavy rock music and I played in blues bars for years so I’m kind of used to it.”

“Rob did Hozier’s first record. I think the parallel’s fine. I embraced it because I’m a huge Hozier fan… I think wearing your influences on your sleeve is fine.”    

One of the most impressive things about Sebastian’s Schub’s recent run of material apart from his monstrous vocal and guitar playing is the variety of styles he operates so comfortably within. The maudlin ‘I Can’t Believe We Never Went Out Dancing’ showcases a daintier side of his songwriting.

“That was me in bed in the middle of the night being really sad about a girl. I pretty much wrote the entire song on my phone and then sat by the piano a few days later, but I couldn’t finish it. I showed it to a friend a few months later and we finished it together in Berlin.”

Schub notes that “There’s a lot of fuck you, you don’t deserve me” in a lot of modern love songs and he wanted to take the high road and grieve for all the things they didn’t get to do together instead.

“Every relationship I’ve ever been in, no matter how it’s ended, I loved that person. It’s not ended because they’re a bad person, it’s ended because it wasn’t right. I find everyone is still really dear to me, so I’m happy the songs reflect that.”

Despite his viral success on TikTok and impressive streaming numbers, Sebastian Schub doesn’t appear to be taking his eye off the ball.

“I think what’s way more important (than stats) is making something that lasts. You could have 60 million streams in 3 months, but are people gonna listen to it in 50 years? And for me that’s the goal. I wanna make stuff that lasts.”

Sebastian Schub will realise a lifelong ambition by releasing his debut EP ‘Sing Like Madonna’ this Friday featuring all of Schub’s material from 2024 onwards and two new songs ‘Blisters & Sunburn’ and ‘April 15th, The End’, which will be followed up by an album produced by New Zealand’s Dan Hume, who has been at the helm for recent singles ‘Scared of Screaming’ and ‘Be Still’. Sebastian Schub opens for Noah Kahan in London’s Hyde Park on July 4th.