Album Premiere: ‘Voice’ Star Luke Wade Returns With ‘Only Ghosts’
Soulful singer-songwriter Luke Wade was a standout on The Voice Season 7 — and the Team Pharrell finalist has since maintained his momentum as an indie artist, touring and performing alongside Voice veterans like Matt McAndrew and Mia Zanotti as well as with national acts like Train, Andy Grammer, Daughtry, and David Cook. Now Wade is set to release Only Ghosts on Jan. 13 —, and Yahoo Music’s Reality Rocks is excited to premiere the entire album today, right here.
“This album is dedicated to the people who give us the bravery to be ourselves,” Wade tells Yahoo Music, quoting the album’s title track: “Face to face with what you fear the most/I can show you that they’re only ghosts.” He adds, “The things we have the most in common are the often the things we least want to show, and the beauty of our future as a world depends on our ability to find and share those things. The walls that stand between us and that future are only ghosts.”
Wade is accustomed to facing his fears and the future head-on. In a frank 2015 Yahoo interview conducted shortly after his run on The Voice (which he described as “like being in the eye of the hurricane”), he discussed his post-television career, warning his fellow contestants and TV hopefuls: “If you think that The Voice is going to make you something, then you’ve already lost the battle… I think the challenge has nothing to do with publicity or exposure or following or fanbase. It has to do with taking a voice, and turning that person with the voice into an artist.
“When you get off this show, you have the notoriety of an A-list artist — but you’re not one,” he continued. “And immediately once you’re off, you have your eye on the easiest, fastest way to get back to where you were, because you get addicted to the spotlight, and you think, ‘God, I have to get back there! I have to do something bigger and better than The Voice!’ The hardest — and most important — thing is to just get rid of that, and get back to the place where you’re focused on what you’re doing. Like, ‘How am I going to make great songs?’”
Nowadays, Wade is as willing to put in the work as ever — album by album, city by city. “As a conscientious observer of the way artists stay and don’t stay, you can’t be a song, or a show. You’ve got to be an artist,” he says. “And in order for that to happen, you can’t take a turbo-jet to wherever you’re going. You have to take the Greyhound, and meet all the people on the bus and in all the towns and stops along the way — so that people aren’t just buying your song, they’re buying you. And that way, you can just be honest and make records that tell people about who you are and who you want to be… So I accept and appreciate the fact that there’s no shortcut.”
Listen to all of Luke Wade’s Only Ghosts above, and check out his very candid post-Voice interview below.
Follow Lyndsey on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Amazon, Tumblr, Spotify
