In Conversation With Benjamin Steer

By Sophie Kolax

Benjamin Steer, singer-songwriter and St Andrews alum, has been steadily growing his fanbase since he graduated from university in 2025. After a friend of mine saw him open for Arthur Hill, she recommended his music to me and  I have been absolutely hooked on his songs. It was an absolute honor to get to sit down for a chat about his growing music career, his time at St Andrews, and his hopes for the future before his recent gig on 20th October at Oran Mor in Glasgow on his Outrageously Confused, Internally Optimistic tour.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Hearing Aid (Sophie Kolax): How do you think your music has developed from starting in university to now? What do you think the differences are in sound and how you produce your music? 

Benjamin Steer: Well, I don't know whether this is a good thing to say for a predominantly St Andrews magazine, but I was not having a great time in my third year. I loved the rest of it, but I think my third year was not really my finest hour. I think I started writing alone in my bedroom because I was just like, “damn, this sucks.” I started with a painful period in my life, and then kind of built on that. And I would say now I write more from a position that’s a little more complex. I only picked up a guitar three years ago, so I bought it when I was in third year. I think back then I was just like, "What can I even write a song about?" And that was what I was writing about. I was so fresh to it. I was experimenting a lot, and I think as I have grown a little bit, I've ended up just being a bit more certain about what I want to write about. A lot of my songs are about uncertainty, so that seems a bit contradictory.

HA: How involved, if at all, in the music scene at St Andrews, and do you think that your time at university impacted the way your music

Ben: So bad of me to say, but actually zero. Yeah. But I think that's a good piece of encouragement because I think a lot of people think that if you want to become an artist, you need to be classically trained, or you need to play in a band when you're young. You need to buy an instrument when you're seven and be part of the scene. I came from the complete opposite world. I never, never thought music was a thing that I wanted to pursue. I liked music, but you know, and I think that's the beautiful thing about a university experience, and why St Andrews is so good is because they give you the freedom to experiment. I had a lot of time where I was like, “right, I should probably figure out something else to do apart from sitting in my room and studying.” And it was either golf or a guitar. I kind of explored, and that was the beauty of it. But I certainly went to my fair share of club nights at the union, 601 and the Vic.

HA: How does it feel coming back to Scotland on tour? 

Ben: It feels weird to come back to Scotland on tour because I genuinely only come here when I'm on tour. But I also lived here for four years. There's like a weird, dark warmth about it. But yeah, I find that Glasgow and Scottish crowds are pretty wild. So the more north you go, the more wild it gets.

HA: Where else are you most excited to visit?

Ben: I'm really excited for London because KOKO is kind of a dream venue for me, and the scale that we've had in London – we played a 100 [person] capacity venue last year, and now we're playing 1600, and it's just kind of crazy, and it's kind of my first theater show, it's really exciting. But I think Antwerp should be really fun. My mum's Belgian, and Munich is gonna be great, and the Scandinavian countries. This will be my first time [headlining] in Scandinavia. It's just wild that you put a tour on sale and you're, well, I hope people come out and buy the tickets, and then they kind of did, which is kind of crazy. I don't know how that happens, but I feel very honored.

HA: Which one of your songs is your favorite to perform live, and why?

Ben: I think my most recent single, ‘Everything Is Right Where It Needs To Be’, is my favorite song that I've ever released. And then my next single, which is probably the song called ‘Atmosphere’, is also my favorite song. I did them with this new producer I've been working with in LA. I just feel like it's a maturity progression in my music more than anything. I feel like because I only started making music three years ago, the rate of progression in my sound [is] quite clear to me. Sometimes I sing songs that I wrote three years ago, and I'm like, what was I saying?

HA: And what is your songwriting process like? What most often inspires you?

Ben: Genuinely, just life. I mean, tumultuous relationships inspire me, and complexities and confusion in life. You are in university, but I'm pretty sure a little piece of you is like, what am I doing in my life? What am I gonna do after I graduate? I still feel that. Even though I'm here and I'm so grateful to be in the position that I'm in; every day, I'm like, "What's going on?" I think that  feeling of being 20-something and being like, "Oh, I'm kind of supposed to know everything. I'm supposed to have everything figured out, and I should know what career I'm going into, and I should have a girlfriend or boyfriend and whatever.” And I think that feeling is what I try to channel in my music a lot.

HA: What was it like to get recognized for your music?

Ben: Oh, it was crazy. I mean, it was my first song I ever released called ‘Muted Colors’, which was actually written in the setting of St Andrews, and the first line is talking about Castle Sands and North Street. Then I got signed one day after that single came out, and so I was signed in university, and it was the same week that I got an internship opportunity in New York, and I was like, “what do I do?” I was like, “Well, I'm never gonna be able to be signed again, and so I'll go sign”, and I think from there, the progression has been really crazy. When you get signed, you kind of think “I've made it.” Now, I see getting signed as getting a ticket to the World Cup final, but what you really want is to be playing on the field. And when you get signed, you're in the nosebleeds. No one really cares about you. And so you’ve just got to work really hard and perfect your music and perfect your sound, and then build an audience, and then have a song that really connects. You know, I think in the last year we went from 100 to 1500 [capacity] venues, and we went from 100,000 monthly listeners to two million. Crazy.

HA: Which of your songs was the one you think people connect with the most?

Ben: I think [there’s] two. I think most recently it's been ‘Everything Is Right Where It Needs To Be’. Before that I thought ‘No One Wants To Die Alone’. That's the first song that really connected, and that kind of totally bolstered my career and got a lot of opportunities from that. And now ‘Everything Is Right Where It Needs To Be’, hopefully, is the next chapter.

HA: I saw that you do a lot of short film promotional projects. How did you get involved with that?

Ben: There's this guy I saw on Instagram called Patrick Linehan, and he's based in New York, and he was doing these short film promo videos with other artists. I was just like, “wow, this is so cool.” And I think social media is such a massive part of being an artist. A lot of times, it just feels like relentless promo. I cringe thinking about the person who's watched the same video 100 times that I am posting every day. So I was thinking, “How can we package the story of the song in a different format?" Oftentimes in promo, you’ve just got to get straight to the punchline, but I think these little short films give you the opportunity to explain the song and show your personality as an artist. I've been going to New York, and they've been really awesome, and [Patrick] is unbelievable. He's the creative genius, I am simply the vessel. Yeah, it's really exciting. Hopefully, more of those to come.

HA: If you could share a message to creatives in their 20s, at St Andrews or anywhere now, what would you say?

Ben: I would say if you love it, you should just go for it and not be afraid to put yourself out there. Because all my friends were econ students, and if I went and told them that I was writing love songs in my bedroom, they would take the piss out of me, and they did! But then you relentlessly put yourself out there, and they'll take the piss out of you forever until you start going somewhere, and then they'll be like, "Oh shit, can I have a ticket  to a show?" It's a very strange thing, and I think you just have to not care what other people think, and be proud of what you're creating. There will be people that love what you're doing and people that hate what you do, and as long as you feel proud and enjoy the process, that's what matters. I've experienced a certain amount of questioning my career, and it just comes from a position of insecurity for me and from them. I would also say a message to non-creative people, which would be: if you're not creative, who says you're not creative? I didn't. I didn't think I was creative. I wanted to work in a consulting agency. So, you do have a creative bone in your body, and if you think you're good at it, give it a try… and sell your soul to the algorithm!