David Lucius King on Metropolis, plugins and working with The Script

Songwriter, producer, artist and multi-instrumentalist David Lucius King talks to Headliner about working out of London’s iconic Metropolis Studios, his extensive production and songwriting collaboration with Danny O’Donoghue and The Script, and reveals how oeksound plugins help to enhance his creative process in the studio.

Joining Headliner on a call from his studio apartment in the heart of South London, with its glass wall providing panoramic views of the capital, David Lucius King was keen to discuss his musical endeavours of late. Like many producers of his calibre, he started doing Zoom sessions during the UK lockdown, which opened up a completely new aspect of the songwriting world.

While King jokes that this may have “turned him into a bit of a hermit”, it was in fact at London’s iconic Metropolis Studios where he cut his teeth in production, and where he first became acquainted with some of his now long-time collaborators with whom he has cultivated rock-solid musical relationships.

“It’s incredible – it’s like Hogwarts for music,” King says of Metropolis. “It truly is the most magical musical place you could ever visit. You’ll see anybody and everybody there; I was walking back from the cafeteria one time with another producer friend of mine, and this older guy walks past us and goes ‘You alright?’, and we’re like ‘Yeah, we’re good.’ Then my friend goes ‘Do you know who that was Dave? That was Roger from The Who.’”

King admits that music was always the one thing he was good at growing up, picking up a guitar and writing songs from a young age. After starting a band with his four older siblings, they signed a multi-album deal with EMI Records Germany. At 14 years old, King already had experience working with major labels, and subsequently fell in love with writing and producing the group’s records.

When he was 16, King moved to L.A. to pursue a publishing deal with Universal, and soon found himself spending studio time and writing songs with the likes of Toby Gad: “It was an incredible experience, and I think I just got lucky with some cool opportunities along the way,” he recalls. “Next thing I knew I was doing it full time – it was all a bit of a blur.”

Six years later he decided it was time to move to London, and not long after that, he started working with popular Irish rock trio The Script on their sixth studio album Sunsets & Full Moons, which charted at Number 1 in the UK and Ireland in November 2019. He quickly developed a long-standing relationship with the band and their lead singer Danny O’Donoghue, going on to write and produce singles Run Through Walls, Hurt People Hurt People and Love Yourself. And he’s still working closely with The Script on their forthcoming releases.

“They’re on tour at the minute, and when they’re back we’re going to fully dive into the next record,” King reveals. “We’ve got a few songs on the boil at the minute that I’m quite excited about.

“We just became inseparable really,” he continues. “I’ve probably spent more time in a room with Danny O’Donoghue than I have with anybody! We’re always making music together, and honestly, it all started from a cold call.”

For King, when it comes to his creative process in the studio, it’s always the song that comes first:

“You could have the most banging production ever, but if your songwriting isn’t great, and the song doesn’t flow, it’s totally useless,” he says. “For me, if the song sounds good on a piano or on a guitar, it’s a good song, because it’s not hiding behind any production or sonic trickery.” A self-proclaimed super fan of Roland synths – which he often picks up to inspire creativity – King mostly operates in the box with a simple yet effective digital setup. One pair of tools that he often finds himself relying on these days is soothe2 and spiff from oeksound, which he says have revolutionised his workflow no end.

“Soothe is just such a problem solver in so many different ways,” he says. “I’ll use it to tame the tops of guitars to make it sound more friendly to the ear, or I might use it as a de-esser sometimes. I feel like instead of crushing the esses, it just kind of soothes them, hence the name! It’s got so many different uses – I’ve used it on drums and snares, and spiff is also really great for that. I might use a little bit of spiff on the drum buss sometimes just to give it a little push. Soothe is essentially a smart EQ, but the way it works is just great. Every session I do either has soothe or spiff on there, or a combination of both.

“When the boys are back from tour I just go underground – we’re constantly writing and producing and punching out tunes together. In January my good friend and Taiwanese-American artist Vanness Wu is also coming over to the UK, so I’m really looking forward to working with him again too.”

You can listen to the full interview with David Lucius King on Headliner Radio, here: