- The Telegraph
Singer D4vd Charged With Murder Of Teenage Girl, 14, After Body Parts Discovered In Tesla
Singer D4vd, formally 21 year old David Anthony Burke, guilty of the murder and continuous sexual abuse of 14 year old Celeste – with possible death penalty case since 2006.
David Anthony Burke 'D4vd' in court / Credits: ABC7On 8th September 2025, a Tesla model Y was towed from a Hollywood Hills neighbourhood to a Hollywood tow yard, after appearing to be abandoned. The vehicle was found to be registered to singer D4vd and his Texan address.
LAPD investigators found a cadaver bag in the trunk of the vehicle and documented it being covered with insects and emitting a strong odour of decay.
Inside, they found a decomposed head and torso, and a secondary bag underneath containing additional dismembered body parts.
Medical examiners identified the victim, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, through dental records as the body was heavily decomposed.
Celeste Rivas Hernandez / Credits: ABC7Prosecutors reported that D4vd and Celeste met when she was 11 and he was 18, stating that they had been having a sexual relationship since the victim was 13.
In February 2024, after being reported as missing, Celeste returned home and reportedly had her phone confiscated. D4vd reportedly gained this information and paid a high school student $1000 to deliver Celeste a new phone he had bought for her.
On 23rd April 2025, D4vd allegedly ordered Celeste an Uber from her Lake Elsinore home to his Hollywood address.
Prosecutors say this is likely the evening of Celeste’s murder. At 10:30pm (Los Angeles time), D4vd reportedly texted Celeste asking for her whereabouts, this was believed by prosecutors to be a premeditated plan to cover up her murder.
D4vd was eventually arrested in connection of the murder on 16th April 2026. On 23rd April 2026, D4vd returned to court for a hearing where prosecutors claimed to have found significant amounts of child pornography in his phone, and 40 terabytes of data, although unclear what type.
The preliminary hearing of the case was carried out on 1st May 2026. LA County DA Nathan Hochman said a decision on the death penalty will be made at a later date.
2. The Telegraph
Singer D4vd Must Face The Music
Being in the spotlight means never going unnoticed, and neither should your crimes.
Since the car of singer D4vd (David Anthony Burke) was towed and investigated In September 2025, it brought forward allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, aggravated assault, murder, and dismemberment of a young girl. The 14 year old girl’s body was discovered in the trunk of D4vd’s car which appeared to be abandoned on a Hollywood Hills neighbourhood.
D4vds first big hit in the music industry came in 2022 from a song named “Romantic Homicide”. In the music video, D4vd can be seen holding a sharp blood stained knife as he sings:
“In the back of my mind I killed you / And I didn’t even regret it”
showing the darkness and violence in his mind. This song reemerged as a result of this case, with fans dissecting his lyrics and realising this individual is very sinister.
Social media expressed their intense outrage and horror of the murder of 14 year old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, with a reddit thread comment quoting “That poor girl was failed by everyone in her life”. In 2024, at the age of 11, Celeste had been reported as missing by her family, which led investigators to find that 18 year old D4vd and herself were involved with each other however, when questioned by Los Angeles County Sheriffs Deputies, D4vd told them that he was not aware of her being a minor and that he had only met her in person once in November 2023. Following her murder, social media has investigated a link between the pair, firstly reporting that they allegedly had matching “shhh” tattoos written on their right index fingers in red ink. Court documents also allege that Celeste had a tattoo of D4vd’s name on her ring finger which had been mutilated and not found. Secondly, fans found an unreleased song titled ‘Celeste’ with the bridge reading
“Oh Celeste / The girl with my name tattooed on her chest”.
We have learned through this case that although Deputies, her family and everyone else in Celeste’s life, had a responsibility to protect her, they disregarded her safety and ignored what had really been going on over the years in their relationship.
Whether D4vd is guilty of the murder of Celeste is not the question, the question we should be asking is should this be the case to bring back the punishment of the death penalty since 2006?
I do not have any legal right to decide this, nor do I have the power, however with a case this gruesome and violent, I believe it is right to question if this warrants the death penalty.
3. The Independent
Keith Ayling: “Im doing it because I’m born to do it”
Award Winning Singer-Songwriter Speaks To Emilia Boanson about The Past, Present, and Future of his Career.
Keith’s Story
Keith Ayling started his music journey as a 10 year old drummer, after being told by his father to choose a musical instrument. 5 years later, at the age of 15, Keith realised that there was something missing, and that being at the back of the stage wasn’t enough. He wanted to tell his story and he couldn’t do that from the shadows. This revelation pushed him to begin writing his own songs. At the age of 16 Keith received an acoustic guitar from a friend and he never looked back.
Since then, he has received a masters degree in Songwriting from Bath Spa University, written and released 14 albums over a 32 year career, received second place in National Association Awards for Magazine on Music Education in 2017, and was appointed as Chair of Education for IVORS Academy in 2025. He has also collaborated with Simon Rex and Joe Clegg, working on songs for Kaiser Chiefs and Ellie Goulding. The mentioned accomplishments are not even half of the success Keith has achieved throughout his career.
In 2018, Keith was invited to speak for TEDx, where he spoke to an audience on the power of creativity and songwriting which gained praise and positive feedback. Keith is frequently invited as a speaker to provide insight to aspiring songwriters all over the world – with the history of running workshops and courses in Slovakia, India, Switzerland, and national organisations in the United Kingdom.
Keith is currently a professor in Songwriting at Leeds Conservatoire, helping creatives reach their potentials and develop their talent, as well as mentoring 16 artists.
The Interview
“I think the strand of creativity and music is- it remains in family line to some extent”, Keith tells me in an interview. Looking at his family’s generational line of music, Keith believes music was always going to be a part of his life through the genetics from his musical grandad and his musical dad. And so, even when his friends went to University, instead of joining them, he stuck with music trying to get a record deal, which he successfully achieved with his 2nd band after wanting someone to invest in his music as much as he did.
Keith recalls himself at 16/17 years old seeing the band ‘Adam Again’ on a stage at Green Belt Festival, thinking “I want to be like them” and “This is what I want to do”.
When asked to look back on which of his albums were his favourite to work on, Keith was unable to answer. He expressed that each album experience was different and because of that he couldn’t choose a specific album, later quoting “15 years later, when I was doing my masters degree, I recorded an album, which included an orchestra and a brass band and all sorts, and that was incredible.” further adding “That experience was amazing just to do something that was so different with different musicians that I’d never worked with before, that was beautiful”. Unable to put the albums against each other, Keith adds that each of the album writing experiences are as valuable as each other.
Keith seems to have the writing process perfectly figured out, by surrounding himself with the culture of it, reading about it and watching videos about it to keep himself informed and spark creativity. Just like many songwriters, Keith used to run on inspiration in his 20s until he realised “we actually have to manufacture these processes in our brain and in our thoughts and in our spirit… we actually have to find them and actively go after them.”
After the 9/11 attacks, Keith received an email from New York Radio about his bands song ‘Heaven Help’ telling him that people resonated with his work and people requested the song because it helped them during the hardship of devastation and grief. When asked how he felt receiving this news, Keith told me “You can’t describe that. You can’t replace that kind of feeling with anything else”. Keith later recalls feeling proud the moment his father told him that this song was his favourite, and a year later performing it at his father’s funeral.
Even after such accomplishment, Keith realised that he would never “consider doing anything else” but occasionally had moments where he thought “why am I doing this” before realising “Im doing it because I’m born to do it”. Hence, Keith’s offers are still coming in, with a recent offer of a venue that seats 3000 people.
Keith leave aspiring songwriters with a bit of advice: Find a way to make songwriting a habit, make it regular and find a niche.
4. NME
Noah Kahan – ‘The Great Divide: The Last of The Bugs’ Review
Noah Kahan returns with an Album after 2 years, leaving listeners feeling dark and reminiscent months before the summer sunshine.
As we all know, Noah Kahan has returned with a new album following ‘Stick Season’, the album which saw him skyrocket to fame in 2023. The vulnerability in his lyricism captures the feelings that arise with growing up, and the shift between seasons in his home town of Vermont, pulling at our individual heart strings. Noah Kahan has been very open about his mental health struggles, allowing old and new listeners to sit in feelings of loneliness and self reflection with him. The Hollywood Reporter, states that the release of ‘The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs’ earned Noah his first number 1 album, physical sales of around 175,00, and also 212,000 streaming units – marking his largest streaming week.
The album starts off strong with the track ‘End of August’, which creates a scene that feels just like “late summer in Vermont […] where there’s just that total quiet and you can almost hear music in the air”. But just like his previous work, songs like ‘Doors’ and ‘Deny Deny Deny’ allow us to feel energetic, even though the lyrics behind the beat make us feel deflated. Classic Noah listening experience.
Songs such as ‘Willing and Able’ and ’23’ explore feelings of grief and a yearning for reconnection, which everyone experiences in life. Noah isn’t scared to expose the feelings surrounding these topics, with his lyrics also being self aware. Aside from all the heartbreak and misery, Noah dedicated a song to his wife, ‘A Few Of Our Own’ exploring feelings of self-sabotage but having someone show you that not everyone leaves. This leaves us with a sense of relief and hope for the future. As a whole this album was very well executed and managed to draw a range of emotions in just 1 hour and 36 minutes.
Although this album has unleashed my inner bugs, critics like ‘theneedledrop’ state that “the whole album is too bloated and washed for its own good”. Critic ‘Sophie isn’t home’ agrees, expressing that her only real issue with The Great Divide is that “it feels somewhat bloated”.
The amazing thing about music is, what works for some people won’t for others, and that is okay. Art is subjective.
Appendix
Transcript:
Interviewer: So, do you want to tell me about yourself a little bit just to start?
Keith Ayling: Yeah, I can. I um… I guess I was 10 years old when I started drumming. I was a drummer, ’cause my dad said you could choose a musical instrument and I chose the drums. And I did that for about 5 years till I was 15 and I loved it, really enjoyed playing the drums. But there was something inside me that said, I didn’t want to be sat at the back of the stage, and I had a story to tell, and you can’t tell a story when you’re playing the drums. You just hold it together, but you know, so I wanted to be a songwriter. A friend of mine bought me an acoustic guitar when I was 16, and I never looked back, started writing songs, started finding stages that I could sing on, knew that when I left school at 18, that was what I wanted to do, but my friends went to university, I didn’t, because there were no courses at that point that I wanted to do. So, I just carried on some writing, tried to get a record deal, and grew a band for about 6 years, split that one up when we didn’t get a record deal, started another one, did that one for 3 years, and then got a record deal. So, for my 20s, most- all of my 20s, in fact, were the sole thing was, I want to get somebody to invest in my music. And I kept going until I did, really.
Interviewer: Nice.
Keith Ayling: So that’s how I started, yeah.
Interviewer: Right. So you said you started at 10? But where did the love for music start from?
Keith Ayling: I think I have to say it came from my dad. My dad was a music teacher, and before that, he was an army bandsman. So, he was in the army as a tuber player, and then as a bandmaster. So again, he was at the front of the band leading, and even though I didn’t see when he was in the army, I wasn’t alive, really. He left when I was born and became a teacher. But when he was at school, he led the band. There was a band that he grew and developed like a, you call it a concert band, so I guess Brass and Woodwind and I used to watch him lead that at concerts as a child and then I used to drum for them because they didn’t have a drummer. So, he said you’d come along and fill the hole and be the drummer for it. So, I did that for a couple of years and therefore I was watching my dad leading things. And that gave me the bug, I think, for music and for leading, you know, being at the front of a band. I think that’s where it comes from. But also, I think music is partly genetic. I think these things travel through generations
Interviewer: Yeah
Keith Ayling: and sometimes they become bigger within a certain generation. For example, yours and mine. And then maybe your children or our grandparents or whatever, it’s a little bit smaller in theirs, isn’t it? And they sometimes skip a generation. But I think the strand of creativity and music is it remains in family lines to some extent, you know?
Interviewer: Right. So do you think if your dad never did music, you wouldn’t have gone into it yourself? Or do you think of some point you would have?
Keith Ayling: Um, You could say that. That could be well answered that maybe I wouldn’t have, but I also know that my grandad was involved in music. So even if my dad had not done it, maybe it would have come from my grandad. I think it’s in the line of my family that, A, teaching, because I was, I’m the only non-teacher in my family until I started this job. So, my brother, my sister, and my dad were all teachers. And I was the one that adamantly said, I’m not gonna do it. I don’t want to teach. But here I am. So, yeah, so I think music and certain skills of creativity, they stay within a line of your generation. So I think part of its genetic and part of it is your environment.
Interviewer: Right.
Keith Ayling: and how you grow up and what you’re exposed to and the people that you grew up with. I think it’s a mixture of both of those. We call it nature and nurture, and that comes from the Shakespeare play, The Tempest, where it talks a lot about how you were brought up, and what’s actually in your burden, in your genes. Yeah.
Interviewer: So apart from your dad, is there any other influences? Like who did you listen to growing up?
Keith Ayling: when I was growing up. I grew up in the 80s, so pretty much, here’s the weird thing about the decade of the 80s. We listen to it as pop music, like most kids do, they just grew up with the pop music of the time, but now that I look back on the 80s as a songwriter, I realise how clever a lot of the music was, much more intricate than the music of the 90s, let’s say, when I was in my 20s. So, it was- now that I look back and analyse it, it’s much more complex. They’re changing key all the time, they’re changing time signatures. The songs go, a lot of them go all over the place of the iconic acts that we remember from that decade. So I think I grew up with that, and that probably gave me a fascination with songwriting. As to, as to the fact it, it wasn’t as simple as it perhaps looks, and until you dive right in and start looking at these songs, then you go, oh, wow. It’s like a library or a museum. you go, oh, how did they do that? Um, And so it was curious. It made me curious, the 80s, yeah, for sure. And then the 90s was just, it just sounded so simple in comparison. I like, yeah, I could do this. Yeah, it’s great. So that’s where it comes from, I think.
Interviewer: Right, so just going off of that, was there like a specific moment where you were listening to music either live or an album? And you thought this is how I want my life to look?
Keith Ayling: Yeah? Yeah. There was. It was a band called Adam Again, American Band. Um, I saw them on a stage at Green Belt Festival in the late 80s, uh, and they were incredible. They fused rock, bit of funk, some great songwriting, like very character full, energetic performance. All the musicians were great, and I stood watching them when I was about 17, 16, at this festival, going, I want to be like them. They are cool. And then, unfortunately, I think about 5 years later, the lead singer of that band died quite suddenly, and they stopped, obviously, then stopped making music. But for a couple of years there, I started writing songs in my late teens, early 20s, maybe late teens. I was trying to write songs like them. I was trying to emulate them going, how can we do this? And I think one or 2 songs succeeded, but on the whole, it was a short period of time when I just saw somebody and went, that is what I want to do. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. So just gonna go on to your personal career now. So you’ve got over 30 years of experience within music with 14 album releases. And you also gained the biggest selling CCM album in 2001, which album was your favourite to work on and why?
Keith Ayling: Wow. Which of my albums was my favourite to work on? I don’t think anybody’s asked me that before. They might have asked me what my favourite song is, but I don’t think anybody asked me which album was my favourite. Um Oh, I don’t know if I could answer that with one answer. Because they’re all different. I think when you go into an album, recording, that the group of songs you’ve got are obviously different every time and the environment, the feeling is different. You’re at a different place in your life. So I guess when we did the one you mentioned there, which sold really, really well, that was high pressure, because we’d just been signed to a record deal, and it was all on me. I was the songwriter. I was the singer. I was directing what was happening, and if it didn’t go well, we would have lost the record deal. So the pressure was all on me and I enjoyed that. I do like having that kind of pressure. But then, the next album we did after that, I had to write it within one month, because the first album we’d written over two years, let’s say, we’d sign the record deal, the songs were ready, we knew they were ready. We did it. Then we toured, and then we had to go back in and do another one, and I had one month to write the album and then go in studio and record it. And that was pressure I’d never known before, because we hadn’t rehearsed the songs, we hadn’t toured them, literally had to write them and trust that they were the right ones. We didn’t tested them. So that was pressure, which I love. And then I did one, I guess, 15 years later, when I was doing my master’s degree, I recorded an album, which included an orchestra and a brass band and all sorts, and that was incredible. That experience was amazing just to do something that was so different with different musicians that I’d never worked with before that was beautiful. But I don’t think I could choose a single one.
Interviewer: Right.
Keith Ayling: Yeah. I think all of those experiences are as valuable as each. Yeah. Interviewer: Right. So could you explain your writing process and what you’ve changed since the start of your career? If anything.
Keith Ayling: Oh, right. Well, 1st my writing process is pretty simple now. You know, if we’re talking about the last couple of months, the way I write songs now, I go for a walk as simple as that. I immerse myself in the genre that I’m in, which is, again, is a new genre that I’m working in now, and I happen to live by the sea. I’m writing songs about the sea. So I live right there. I walk by the sea. That’s what I do. I go for half an hour walk, I come home, and at the end of half an hour, there’s always one line of lyric, maybe with a melody that I’ve sung whilst I’m walking, and I come back with that line and I start writing around that line. So I try and find a hook line and a melody straight away, within half an hour walk, and generally I always find one somewhere. There’s always a line. I think it’s partly to do with the rhythm of walking. It’s the rhythm of physical exercise, and your brain locks into that. I’m surrounding myself with the culture of it and reading about it and watching videos about it. And all of that jumbles up into my head and the physical action of walking tends to clear that into one single line. So that’s how I write now. I used to write in a similar way, but for example, the 2 albums that I just mentioned before that I had to write fairly quickly, I read a book. I would literally spend a week or 2 choosing a particular book and go, this is the one I would for a week read that book and then try and base a lot of the songs around what I’d read in the book. So I’d use other texts to inspire my lyrics. I used to do it that way. I’d say those are the two main ways that I’ve done. I mean, prior to that, prior to that, I did what everyone else does. I mean, when I was 20, I was just running on inspiration and I’d go, oh, there’s no songs there this week. I have to wait and just keep playing the guitar and wait for one to pop out of nowhere. I think most people, when they’re teens and 20s, use that method. They wait for the inspiration, and then it’s only when a few years go by that, we go, oh, we actually have to manufacture these processes in our brain and in our thoughts and in our spirit, but there’s something there to write about. We actually have to find them and actively go after them. Now, that was the first part of the question. What was the 2nd part?
Interviewer: It was what’s your writing process and what’s changed?
Keith Ayling: What’s changed? I’m definitely much more in the side now of being actively um, actively trying to make the song arrive. I used to just wait for it and now I know, you know, loads of techniques and ways of making a song appear. rather than having to wait. I think, and I think that’s the thing, as you get older, you not only discover new ways of doing it, and you search for new ways of doing it. But you realise that I don’t have a month to sit around and wait for a song. I need it right now. I have to have one. So I have to find a way and use everything in my memory to find what the next one is gonna be about. So I find ways to generate the idea.
Interviewer: Yeah. Nice. So, I read in an article that you received an email from New York radio. About your bands song, Heaven help. Could you just explain the feeling you felt from the response from the audience?
Keith Ayling: Well, that’s a really interesting story because I, for a period in my life, I worked from home, I mean, I do a bit now as well, I guess, but around the time of the 911 attack, I was working from home that morning. I think I’d had my breakfast, I’d put breakfast news on. This was about 8 o’clock in the morning. And so the telly was on in the house. I think I went into another room, I came back, suddenly, something has happened, and there was a news flash. And they were filming, there were cameras in New York. And so I saw the second plane live on television, hit the tower. And that’s just, like, those kind of things you remember, you know, global events, if you’re there or you’re, you’re around that situation, or you’re actually experiencing on the television, however it is. You don’t forget those. And it was only, I mean, I think we’d already recorded the song, so the song wasn’t written specifically about that day, but coincidentally, the album had come out with that song on it a month or 2 before, I think. And a month or 2 after that day. We got an email, and a radio station said, We’ve heard this song, and it just, for us in New York, it resonates. So we’re gonna start playing it. And then every month they would send me an update on the playlist to give me the figures of how many times it had been played and every show at the radio station was playing it every day. And they kept playing it for 9 months. So for the next 9 months after they played this song. So for them, it became one of the songs they used to play to the audience to help them. And I used to get emails from people that had heard it from New York and America and other places around the world that just said how it had helped them. And as a songwriter, you can’t describe that. You can’t replace that kind of feeling with anything else. That is, and it’s not about, you know, when you play to an audience and you get around of applause, that’s appreciation in the moment for what you’ve done. But when you get people emailing you weeks and weeks later and saying, I’m still listening to this song, because it still has an effect on me. That is something you can never, you can’t create that yourself. There’s a once in a lifetime moment. And if you’re fortunate enough to have that, it’s as a songwriter, it’s incredible. For any piece of art, you create, if people want to live with it, rather than have it as a one off experience, if they want to live with that song and keep it, or if you paint a picture or make a film and they live with that film and it’s still watched years later, that’s your dream. That’s what you want as a creator, that people appreciate what you do, and keep appreciating it is probably the best feeling in the world.
Interviewer: Nice. So there have been changes in the industry now since the start of your career. Do you find any major positives or major negatives to the way things have changed over time?
Keith Ayling: Um, there’s some really obvious ones. Obviously, now, it costs very little to put an album out in some respects. You know, I could buy this Apple Mac here and an interface, record an album, and that would cost me, I mean, that machine costs £2000, doesn’t it? Probably something like that. And you can record an album with that. I think that the gate to recording has become a lot cheaper, but on the other side, the price of recording a top quality album is about the same as it ever was. That hasn’t changed. The studios are still there and the producers are still there and they charge the same money based on inflation, of course, as to what they always have. So I think, for a lot of people, in this building, for example, at least conservative to our, we can have a mini studio in many, many rooms and lots of people can do it at once. And that’s never really, that’s only very recently in terms of recording history that that’s happened. That’s a good thing. I think, I think there’s, I think technology has brought massive changes within the music industry, but essentially a lot of it hasn’t changed. So I think if we look at it on the face of it, yeah, it looks like everything has changed with streaming. Not many people buying product. Um, venues work differently now than they used to, things cost more, there’s less money for musicians. In some ways, but in reality, the job of a musician is exactly the same as it always was. Record a song and find people to listen to it. If they like it, they’ll come and see you play it live. That’s exactly the same as it always has been. When I was growing up and all through my career, you need to find a way to find an audience. In whatever genre you’re in, classical jazz, folk, you just need to find your niche. And I think for most of my career, I’ve worked in niches and I’ve tried to just grow within that niche rather than, you know, I’ve never been the kind of person who would go and write a Justin Bieber pop song or a, you know, a Taylor Swift pop song and hope the world is going to listen. I’d always write a song and go, now where can I find 200 people that are going to absolutely love this and find my niche within and then just grow it from there? So that’s the same as ever. yeah.
Interviewer: Right. So, one of the questions was, actually, how do you navigate between what you want to express and what you think other people?
Keith Ayling: Oh wow, that’s a question. I’m audience driven so whilst I, yeah, I do talk about the things I want to talk about within a song. I have my own language. But I am audience driven. So, So within each of the niches that I’ve worked in, probably 4 niches throughout my career, one every decade, I’ve probably switched niche, and I think about what that audience wants to hear, and is that in line with the kind of things I’m feeling? If it is, then brilliant. I can write about that. I have to, I do think about how the particular audience is going to receive it. So for example, here’s a good example. When I started out, we were just a rock band. We were just playing rock songs to whoever would listen. And then when we got turned down by major labels, I stopped and I split the band up and I took a month off and I said, what am I doing? And what do I want to do? And I came back and said, I’m gonna work specifically with young audiences. We were going to play in schools. So rather than going to clubs in London, showcase gigs, and trying to get the record companies to turn out, which we’d done. I stopped and said, actually, these, this is hard work. As a performer, it kills you to do that year after year and not get somewhere. So I was like, I want to go places where they actually want to hear me. And high schools were the places to go, lunchtime concerts in high schools. We got 100s of them, and the whole school turned up, and the whole school went crazy. I was like, these are the people I want to hear my music. Great. I will concentrate for the next 2 or 3 years on high school. We built up a massive fan base and as a result got a record deal. Because I very specifically looked at a niche that a lot of people weren’t doing, they were ignoring them, and they were playing clubs, hoping that, let’s say, 17, 18, 19, and older would go to the club and watch the band. Well, I was like, let’s take the music to where they know they are in a high school hall and play the gig there. And so for us, at that point, it worked. And so I’ve always worked on what did that audience want to hear? What do they want to know about? And so I was, at that point, I was changing my songs to be relevant to those people. and to talk about things that they wanted to hear, that I could talk about. And in the same way, you know, later on, as I did other things, I was always writing focussed on the audience.
Interviewer: Right.
Keith Ayling: The kind of people I want to play to. So we did a thing, you know, and when I was doing my master’s degree, I invented this thing called Victorian Pop, which was like Sherlock Holmes music. It was like Victorian murder, poison, you know, London, Paris, Victorian kind of images, and we made an album, which was beautiful, and then I was like, who’s going to listen to this? And I had to find people. So we started playing very small villages where we knew there would just be people of a certain age who would come and listen to this music and they loved it. We were like, great, let’s do another 100 of those. So we did. And we had 5 years of great touring, these small little theatres, or halls, or out of the way places where people would show up to you, this stuff. So for me, finding the audience that are going to connect is really, really important.
Interviewer: Right. So during your career, was there any doubt where you thought to yourself, I’m not doing this anymore? I feel like I need to move on to something else.
Keith Ayling: Yes and no. I think the real answer to that is no. I’m never going to consider doing anything else. I didn’t really consider something else. But yeah, you have moments when you When you go, I could go and run a cafe. I could go and be a painter, I could go and do- why am I doing this? And then you always, an hour later, you go, well, I’m doing it because I’m born to do it. That’s why I’m doing it. And I’ve got to get up and start again tomorrow. So, yeah, I do, I think I’m the kind of person that regularly considers other things because they look exciting. And that’s generally when you’re doing the mundane stuff of your job that you have to do. But that’s music. It’s not all on stage. You know, part of it’s on stage. Part of it’s in studio, the fun bits, but then there’s other parts where you fill it in a database and you’re learning how to use a piece of software and you’re talking to people who perhaps are being rude to you, you know, at a venue or something, I don’t know, where you think, what am I doing this for? And then you get on stage and you go, oh, this is what I’m doing it. I’m not going to give up because I love this. So, um, so yes, the answer would be yes and no. Yeah, there are big moments and then I wake up and go, this is the only thing I’m meant to be doing. Yeah. Interviewer: So, um, what would you say are your proudest moments and if any, what regrets do you have throughout your career?
Keith Ayling: Wow. How long have you got? Um, I think we’ve mentioned some. So I think signing the record deal, very proud moment. The song on the New York radio, very power moment. The moment when my dad told me that that particular song was his favourite song, the one that was on the New York radio, he told me that about a year before he died, that that was his favourite song that I’d written. And so we played that at his funeral. That was incredibly meaningful when somebody says that’s my favourite ever song to you and it’s one of your own. Um, I think um, recording the Victorian pop album was a proud moment because I tied that into my family. I got my cousin to play on it and my cousin was leading a brass band and he brought the brass band in. So in a way that tied it, my cousin lives where my dad was born and that tied into my family history. That was a really proud moment. I think. Starting work here, it was a proud moment. I was really pleased about that. Um, I think moments when you, proud moments are generally when you look back on your life and go, oh, this is where it was leading to. Um, So, you look at all the things you’ve done and whether they’re struggles or, um, you know, mountaintop moments, and then you reach a point where you go, oh, that’s what it was all for. That was the reason that I, because I got to this point. Um, and I think each of those moments I’ve mentioned would be an indication of that in the- a proud moment is when you go, oh, there’s some realisation of that’s what life is. That’s what it means, right? I get it. Regrets. Try not to have regrets. Because they’re always about looking backwards. So try not to regret things. I guess there were some mistakes, things I’ve said to people, things where I’ve been angry, things where I’ve, you know, the usual things. But um, The biggest regret, probably not working harder, not pushing harder for things. Yeah. I think I did push hard, but I could have pushed harder. I could have I could have been more ruthless. Somebody said to me once, um, When I was talking to them, it was a meaningful conversation, and we were talking about, um, life, some things hadn’t worked out or why, you know, do I have any regrets on those kind of things? And they said to me, you know, sir, you’re too nice. You needed to be more ruthless. That’s why you didn’t get that role, or that’s why you didn’t get that thing there. It’s because you weren’t ruthless enough, which I thought was a very interesting um A very interesting observation. Because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not being too ruthless. But maybe that’s the regret. Yeah, maybe I could have been more ruthless. It’s a cutthroat world in the music industry and maybe I could have been meaner. Maybe I was too nice to people. But I’ve achieved everything I wanted to achieve, so I don’t have a regret in terms of we didn’t do it because I think we did. And I’m really proud of, I’m still friends with the people that were in the band that I’ve recorded with. I still see them, I still work with them, you know, 34 years, some of them I went to school with, and I’m still working with them, and it’s, it’s great. So no, don’t have any regrets like that, and we pretty much did what we wanted to do.
Interviewer: Nice. Yeah. So just to finish it off, what are some goals that you have for the future?
Keith Ayling: Um… Some goals. Uh, I’m currently working in the genre of shanty music. Um, which I never expected to work in, and we want to be the biggest chanty group in the country. There you go. We’re currently not doing too bad. We’re the biggest shanty group in the north, with the third biggest in the UK, but we’re some way behind the biggest, who have made two movies about themselves. So I don’t think we’re quite going to reach that height. But it doesn’t mean we can’t try. So yeah, I’d like to be the biggest shanty group. We’re going quite well. We’ve had some great offers. We’ve just been offered a venue that sees 3000. So I’m really excited. But um, I want to keep making great songs.
Interviewer: You think there’s maybe a movie in the future?
Keith Ayling: A movie? Who knows? Yeah, there could be. I have no idea. I, yeah, I wanna, I wanna write some great. I still want to write some great songs. There’s still songs in there that I want to write. So if we can make sure they’re popular and heard and listen to, then somebody’s favourite song, then we’ll do it. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, that’s nice. So, just one more question. What advice would you give to an aspiring artist?
Keith Ayling: Um, find a way to make songwriting a habit, make it regular, and, uh, and find a niche. Find a niche. Don’t… I mean, put your songs out into the world, but don’t expect the world to respond. Expect a small part of the world to respond. And that’s the part you want to target. So, and you can create your own niche, even if you don’t, if there’s wisdom on out there, We created Victorian pop that didn’t exist before we did it. But I just had this idea. You know, I was watching Sherlock Holmes and I was watching other films, Victorian films, and I was like, I want to write pop songs that would be on this film. You know, what were the pop songs they were listening to? Now, we didn’t end up writing Victorian classical music, but the idea was, let’s write a pop song that Sherlock Holmes would be listening to, you know. So we created a sound and created our own genre. And if you can do that, and it can be, it can either be based on sound, it can be based on your interests, it can be based on the people, the community in which you live, find a niche, create music for them, and just see what happens. It’s that plant, you plant the seed into that community and grow it and see what happens. And that niche generally, when you nurture it, will grow outside of itself and become a bigger audience, and you just keep going. Yeah.
Interviewer: So rather than going into a comfort space, go into your own space and bring in more people into that.
Keith Ayling: Yeah, partly. I mean, it… wouldn’t say going to your own space because, um, it’s possible you’ll create music that actually nobody wants to listen to. Depending on how weird and wonderful it could be. And that’s okay. I mean you could do that. But for me, I needed people to stand and clap. Interviewer: Right.
Keith Ayling: So I think it does depend to some extent on your own needs as an artist, and I needed to have people clapping at the end of the song. So I therefore had to create something that I thought a small group of people would like. That was important. So it was partly about examining what I wanted to do, but partly examining, is there an audience who could listen to this and will clap? And if I think the answer is yes, I need to go find them and play that music to them and hope that they love it. So, for example, we got invited to Switzerland in 1998. And we said, yes, of course. Went and played a gig there, and from the moment we arrived in Switzerland, played that 1st gig, I was like, I wanna do as much as I possibly can in Switzerland. These people love who I am and they love the music. And so we’ve been back every year since ’98. And they’ve become friends, and when we have an audience, it’s still in Switzerland. So, you, if you can identify a niche, you jump on it, stick with it, and it will feed you forever.
Interviewer: Right, well, thank you. Thank you for your time.
Keith Ayling: That’s OK. I appreciate that. Thank you for that.
