Jordan Rakei performs at Dingwalls during BBC Radio 6 Music Festival in London on March 7, 2020. Photo by Burak Cingi/Redferns.

Jordan Rakei acknowledges he’s a workaholic, but he says with his new album, he just wanted to make music fun again. The New-Zealand-born, Australia-raised singer and musician wanted to have five albums out by the time he was 30, and now with The Loop, he does (although if you count his electronic side project Dan Kye, he actually has six). Additionally, he’s just been named the very first artist in residence at Abbey Road. This new program will see him working at the famed studio in London for a whole year—recording, conducting songwriting workshops and collaborating with other artists.

Rakei moved to London for his music career about 10 years ago, and he says that when he arrived it was a little bit of “right place, right time,” although the fact that he was open to so many kinds of different music helped.

“Word of mouth got around that there’s this weird guy from New Zealand here now,” he says, laughing. “Then I sort of just infiltrated a couple of different circles, like the jazz scene, the dance music scene, solo music scene, the beat making scene. And then I just naturally found a place and a home. All of that happened in about a month.”

He says he owes his success in singing on hits from bands like Disclosure and Bonobo to the simple fact that electronic artists usually aren’t singers and therefore need outside vocalists. Singing on Disclosure’s “Masterpiece” in 2015 in particular moved the needle for his career. He recalls being on vacation in Ireland when he got an email from Disclosure’s manager asking if he was interested in singing on a track.

“I just remember telling all my friends on holiday, ‘Drinks are on me! This is crazy! This is going to change everything!’”

Now that he’s older and has a family, Rakei is very disciplined about his work. He says that the process has changed as he tries to navigate being present as a father, while still prolific as a writer. He recalls trying to quickly write some verses after putting his son down for a nap and being chagrined to find he’d woken up after only 20 minutes of sleep.

“It was a lot of juggling in the early stages, but it was quite fun, and in a way it really made me really efficient. As soon as he went to sleep, I was super focused,” Rakei says.

Now that his son goes to nursery school, he says he’s found a good balance of personal and work life, but he when opportunities like big tours come up, he has to weigh them against his desire to keep that balance intact.

After grinding for 10 years, a little of the fun started dissipate. So when he started recording The Loop, he wanted to have fun again. He re-listened to the music of his youth, and says that helped him fall in love with music again. Rakei felt that he was working toward feeling the freedom of childlike innocence again on The Loop, which he sings about on the song “Freedom.” He says that he tries to change his sound a little on every album.

“Otherwise, I feel like I’ve hit a bit of a plateau creatively,” he says.

Pushing himself to new sound territories helps him go in a new musical direction. With The Loop, he was in a place where he wanted to make an album that was ambitious and orchestral. Inspired by a documentary about Bill Withers, Rakei decided he wanted to take a ’70s-style approach of having everyone in a room together. He also cites albums by Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye as influences and goals for him on The Loop.

Nowadays, Rakei says, music has become more modern and computerized, and musicians don’t use studios as often as before. Rakei enjoys recording with big ensembles like he did on The Loop and collaborates often with other musicians. However, he also has a background in the kind of DIY bedroom recording that many young musicians use, making him an ideal bridge between the two types of artist as the Abbey Road artist in residence.

“I can tell young producers or musicians or singers or instrumentalists that the studio is a great instrument as well,” he says. “It really is something to be played with, and a studio can inspire you to write something new.”

At Abbey Road, Rakei says he can play a piano the Beatles played or see the room where Pink Floyd recorded “Wish You Were Here,” or maybe even see a superstar like Adele in the hallway. He’s gotten a lot of calls from friends and family lately asking about taking a tour.

“It’s inspiring to be in a place that has that much legacy, but also, it’s nice to provide a platform now to younger artists to come along with me and do some days in the studio or some writing camps,” Rakei says. “I still feel like I’m trying to make it in this industry, and here they are saying, ‘You’re gonna be the guy for us.’”

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold, Instagram.com/thousandfold, and on Bluesky at @thousandfold.bsky.social.