Mike Rosenberg: The Barefoot Bearded Busker from Brighton

The Stories Behind the Songs

Any clever line I come up with sounds cheesy. "Buckle up, you're about to be a 'Passenger' on a roller-coaster of emotions" or "Get ready, Passengers, this will make you take flight!" Wow, someone remind me to never pursue a job in copy writing.

Mike Rosenberg, also known as Passenger, has had quite an eventful life these past few years. He's been busking around the UK and Australia for over 10 years now, and even though he has achieved international success--going from 200 audience members to 2,000 and is well on his way to becoming a household name-- he still busks simply because he wants to. Now, of course he draws considerably large crowds and these impromptu acoustic sets get broken up by police quite often. But his reasons and the messages he sends through his music are beautiful, really. Most, if not all of his venue concerts feature only him and his guitar--no band (save for Stu Larson and The Once, artists he tours with frequently). His music and its arrangement is simple, yet it pulls at the very core of what makes us human: emotions. Without excessive background instrumentals, people can better understand the music; the listener's focus is on the story...and there are so many of them. Most of his songs are written about people he randomly meets on the street, in hostels, on tour, in bars, and so on. I'd be willing to wager that most of these people have no idea there is a song written about them.

Cheers, mate.

So, this is quite a first for me. I've been working on this feature for awhile now and I've had a hard time narrowing down which songs to talk about because they're all so beautiful. So what you're going to find in this post are several videos to choose from. Watch at least one of them and I promise you'll like it; I've even included some lyric excerpts to go along with the stories behind the songs. I know it's a heavy loaded statement to say that this musician is, in my personal opinion, one of the best songwriters in music today. It's because he keeps the ideas simple, therefore easy to relate to. With Mike's music, the well of emotions run deep, and as an emotionally driven individual, it makes my heart happy to see raw reality put into music. Every day we're told that it's okay to be heartbroken, but it isn't okay to display it. No one wants to see it. Mike doesn't agree, and neither do I.

The widespread success of the album "All the Little Lights" and the accompanying single "Let Her Go" was followed by the album "Whispers." He has stated in several interviews that the quick fame stemming from the success of "Let Her Go" was overwhelming, to say the least. The title track gives us a glimpse into how disconcerting overnight fame can be for a musician who has been busking in the UK and Australia for the last ten years and hasn't had a permanent home for eight. Suddenly, he had interviews, promos, signings, photo shoots, and barely a minute to himself. But this song can be related to by anyone struggling with well, being human and not knowing where the road in front of you leads.

 "Whispers" Official video  

Rosenberg doesn't shy away from exposing the ugly truth of the current state of society and why should he? We're all glued to our mobile devices. Hell, I bet you're reading this on an iPhone (but don't stop reading, just maybe go outside and read it..) Common themes in his music reflect how technology has changed the way we function in every day life, how there's little to no moderation and how phones and computers affect our sense of closeness with others and takes us away from nature. "Scare Away the Dark" is the biggest reflection of his thoughts on technology, social media, and what it means to live life outside of a screen: 

"We want something more not just nasty and bitter
We want something real not just hashtags and Twitter
It's the meaning of life and it's streamed live on YouTube
But I bet Gangnam Style will still get more views
We're scared of drowning, flying and shooters
But we're all slowly dying in front of f----ing computers"

 Mike needs to show up at my work and sing to me.

A continuation of his discontent with people and society in general is in the song "I Hate" which pokes some fun at random annoyances. 

 
"Well I hate them fussy eaters, you cook them fajitas but they only eat pizza and chips" 
Some would argue he wrote this line about me...(I DO eat fajitas, though.)  

On his most recent album, Whispers II, the track "Traveling Alone" would make the hardest of hearts cry. Here are the stories behind it:

Mike was busking in Copenhagen on a very cold, windy and rainy day, with hardly anyone stopping to listen and the police telling him he had to leave. This old man from Australia, who had been sitting for about two hours, listening to every word, later told the most heartbreaking story. He and his wife had never really traveled outside of Australia, so they decided that once they retired they would take the trip of a lifetime around the world for a few years. When the time came, they purchased their tickets for their last adventure together. Sadly, two months later, she passed away. What's amazing is this grieving widow decided to conquer the world with his wife no longer by his side:

"It was my wife's idea but she's no longer here
She left me traveling alone
  Well I never heard silence
Ring out like a bell
I never heard silence like last night in my expensive hotel
  Well I'm loving a shadow, I'm trying to catch the rain
But I never heard silence, 'til I heard it today"

While busking in Zurich outside of his hotel a few weeks later, a woman came running out with a flood of tears running down her face. She sat down next to him and explained that her significant other of ten years had just left her for a younger woman.

"See 10 years with this man, and a lifetime of plans
  You know, I loved him to his bones
But now I've lines on my skin and he's traded me in
And left me traveling alone"

Official Video of "Travelling Alone"

While playing a festival in Australia, his accommodations fell through and he was invited to stay with a friend of a friend's dad. Awkward...There's a film called "Wolf Creek" and it's about an Australian man who stabs English backpackers to death. So when this man came wobbling out of his house out in the sticks, Rosenberg thought: "Wolf Creek: Live." To make matters worse, while chatting later, the man told him that he had been collecting bullets since he was a child. Seriously? Nowhere else was available? I'd stay at the Overlook Hotel before staying at the I'm Going to Shoot You in Your Sleep B&B. But, the chances of him being shot to death were slim since the man had been robbed one day while he was out a few years previously, and the thieves took every bullet because hey, anything in a museum display case has to be worth a few hundred thousand, right? Wrong, the bullets were worthless, except the emotional value they had to him. So being a sensitive songwriter with a beard, Rosenberg wrote "Bullets" and even went back to play the song for the old man, which may have been a mistake since halfway through the song Mike opened his eyes to see that he was no longer in the room.

Yea, he's barefoot quite often.

The last story I'll pass on is the inspiration to the song "Riding to New York." He was touring the United States and stopped in Minnesota. Unable to sleep one night and craving a cigarette, he walked to a convenient store at 3 am to buy some. With no one around except an elderly man on a motorbike who mumbled as he walked by, "This is the best cigarette I've ever had." They started chatting, and it turned out he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and decided to buy a bike and drive from Los Angeles to New York to live out the rest of his days with his children. Rosenberg said, "Needless to say, I didn't buy cigarettes that night. I went back and wrote this song." He also said that he has no idea if the man is even still alive or not or whether he lived to hear the song.

Rosenberg digs up the struggles of relationships, with others and with oneself, and pastes them into lyrics that are hard to shake off once you've heard them. The frustrations that come with having a closed heart when all you want to do is open the door to others, elusive lovers who manage to flirt with the line of being committed and uncommitted to you, the internal struggle with yourself and what it means to be brave and free with your heart, or when the one you love is still in love with another...it's all here in his music, and it's all very real human emotions and situations. Raw, real, and so right. 

 I'll leave you all with this beautiful love song: "Hearts on Fire"

Happy Listening!


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