Next month the legends that are Desire head out on the road on their upcoming European tour in preparation for the release of third album, Games People Play. When Loverboy witnessed Megan Louise & Johnny Jewel take to the stage at this year’s Primavera Sound a la Ciutat show we were transfixed….

Seeing Desire play in 2019 in Copenhagen was an intimate, seductive affair but this summer’s show featured lasers, skulls, costume changes; it was a full on Studio 54 disco moment dancing until 4am. The pair had never looked more in their element, a full-on final evolution…although let’s be real, with Desire there are always more suprises in store.

Games People Play proves just that with the album delving into the world of deceit and who can be trusted in love? The album has been preceded by a carefully curated selection of singles including the smash, ‘Dark Side’, our favourite ‘Dangerous Drug’ plus today’s new release, ‘In A Manner Of Speaking’ with Guy Gerber.

When she’s not fronting Desire, or managing the coolest label in existence, Italians Do It Better, Megan Louise can be found in her bathroom, curling her eyelashes, listening to the sounds of Mariah’s 90s magnum opus ‘Fantasy’ awaiting a Zoom call from yours truly…

Megan Louise, so great to see you. We are still thinking about your Primavera Sound show…
Desire & The Dare. Such a great show. We were all sharing a dressing room and I remember backstage being very hot, very sexy. We love Harrison. Optimo DJed after, so we ended up dancing until four in the morning, going straight to the airport and flying to New York for Johnny’s 50th.

My God. How do you combat the jetlag in those situations?
It’s going to sound a little witchy, but I’ve started to dabble in meditation. I’m able to close my eyes, access moments in time and just hang out with people there. I can spend hours in these fantasy worlds, otherwise you just end up waiting in airports for delayed flights.

I hear that. I’ve started taking field recordings of being in the mountains or in the woods and keeping them with me.
That’s cool. We’re maybe over-saturated with images and Voice Memos are like the new way of taking photos. I record all my demos as Voice Memos. I’ll be walking, be like, ‘Oh my God,’ grab my phone and start recording a bit. Then when it’s time to work on a song I’ll go revisit my twenty-five voice demos! I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and written down a few sentences before. If I didn’t do that, by the next day I would have forgotten them.

Before Primavera Sound, the last time I saw you was Copenhagen with an 8pm show as opposed to 2am! The crowd’s vibe was so different…but also the show was so different!
I know! It’s so fun to play club nights. I also feel like we’ve really developed the show into more of a disco night. We’re adding an intermission for this tour too where Johnny does a spooky score while I’m backstage doing a full costume change. I’m really going for the diva black widow on this tour…

When we spoke in 2019 it was all about the latex so expectations are high!
I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that the latex is just too hot. I get so sweaty on stage. So now I am going for corsets and costumes.

I imagine they allow you to be more mobile than latex.
Exactly. I am dancing non-stop. Imagine doing cardio for 1h15 minutes wearing head-to-toe latex. It’s so good for the figure! When I’m done with the tour, I have abs and I’m just like, ‘Wow.’ But I’ve definitely sweated out every ounce of water in my body. There are just puddles of myself left in The Pink Room in Manchester. That was a sweaty sweaty night.

When we spoke in 2019 it was definitely a new dawn for Desire and since then I see you’re out on the road all the time. How has all this touring changed the show?
I think for me it’s just been getting comfortable with the theatre performance aspect of taking over the stage, really embracing my props, having more fun. In 2019 we were maybe a little less sure of where we were going. Now we are definitely like, ‘OK I want to do a big show and do the pop star diva takeover.’ I want to be Mariah Carey. I’m doing all the styling, all the make up myself too. It’s just Johnny and I putting together our own fantasy world. Then fans can come see it and hang out with us.

The Italians Do It Better fans are die-hard. I love it.
Yes and it’s been like that since Day One. They’re the reason we make music. For them to come to the shows and for us all to share that experience.

I would imagine some people might think that Desire could be more of a studio act. Do you enjoy playing with those misconceptions?
I think people are surprised by how dynamic the live show is and how much we have developed that. The studio is really sacred. We spend a lot of time developing all the tracks. One track can take years. Then we’ll try out a lot of songs on the road, onstage and see how people react to them. A hit is a hit. People connect with it immediately.

I was just looking at the streaming numbers for ‘Dark Side’. That is absolutely a hit.
‘Dark Side’ was definitely a Wow moment. We filmed the visuals for the whole campaign in Tokyo last year. At the end of every night, after shooting, we would watch all the footage back to ‘Dark Side’. Whatever we shot, the track always matched perfectly. That’s when I realised ‘Dark Side’ was a hit.
When you are writing a song the most important thing is that people can relate to it. It’s already hard expressing yourself as a human, who will be the first to say, ‘I love you.’ Having songs that can say those kinds of messages…that’s the magic of writing a really good song.

I’ve never really thought about how a song is a monologue of someone just being open and vulnerable.
Yes, so many times I am travelling, listening to a song on repeat and repeat, obsessively and just getting lost in it. I think it’s awesome to still have the ability to get lost in that narration of a full album.

So tell me, what is the narrative for Games People Play then?!
So the first album, self-titled, Desire, is the falling in love album. Then there’s Escape which is going into the fantasy world. Now we have Games People Play which is realising that people have two sides and that there are also two sides to love, there’s love and loss. We’re diving into that in the third chapter.

How easy was it selecting songs from what you had written to work within the narrative?
We have this system where we have playlists of where we’re at. We start with like sixty demos, get down to thirty tracks. Then like a month later we’re in a different mood and we’re like, ‘No, these are making the cut.’
Then during that process people we highly respect and would dream of collaborating with are writing to us like, ‘Hey, do you want to come to the studio and work with us?’ So we’re like, ‘Yes! Here’s some of our best stuff because if you sing it, that would be crazy.’ So those moments get into the mix.
At the end of the day it comes down to, really listening to the demos, thinking about it and what you come back with. The story and the sequence is very important. This album is more mature. Maybe more like the first album but with some Dance stuff coming in. There’s also a cool cover in there that I think you’ll really enjoy. Giving good 80s vibes.

I have to say that ‘Dangerous Drug’ is my favourite so far from the singles. It has that real Raffaella Cara vibe and 70’s/80s Euro-disco vocals.
That was our Giorgio Moroder-esque song where we really wanted to introduce that Disco, Donna Summer vibe. We wanted a long track as well to go on a journey on the dancefloor. When Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ originally came out it was just three minutes. It flopped! They called the recording studio and said, ‘Make me an eight minute long version.’ They did and people were just able to really lose themselves on the dancefloor. We wanted a Desire track that would be that moment.

It definitely has that Euro vibe to it.
Exactly. There’s this other track on the album. I actually just pitched it to someone. I won’t name them but you will freak when you find out. The song is really sexy, like, ‘Touch! My Bodyyyy…’ It’s an anthem so I presented it to one of the ultimate queens. We’ll see if she wants it for her album. It’s always an honour to collab with people. We love it.

One of the things I love most on ‘Dangerous Drug’ are all those backing vocals you are recording. All those harmonies. Tell me about that process.
Right and we record to tape so we don’t even have a computer in the studio! I layer all of my vocals. I have to lay down everything, where it has to be on the tape and then repeat on top of that. The mood has to be right and you have to get all the vocals done in one take. It can take two days for one song. It’s all quite a process but it’s worth it.

And then with ‘I Know’ we get a proper music video. What a treat!
Yes! Malta! Oh my God, right?

Absolutely. You look so gorgeous in it and the way I cackled when you were sitting on the bench with those boys…
That was an actual thing because everything we do is spontaneous. Those boys were like, ‘Come on, photo, photo!’ So I was like, ‘OK.’ I whispered in his ear after, ‘You can tell her that I’m your new girlfriend.’ Haha…

In the last twelve months we’ve seen Chappell Roan blow up and everytime I hear the beginning to ‘Femininomenon’ I always think of you, Johnny, Glasscandy. You must feel really proud to hear your influence in these young artists like Chappell coming out now.
I love her. She’s so great. Yes, I am super proud. Like I said, now the people that are at the top of my list to be working with are DMing me like, ‘I was a teenager when ‘Under Your Spell’ came out. It changed my life. Let’s collab.’ ‘Collab’ sometimes means writing on songs that you don’t know we’re behind. But we’re there!

Can you give us any names of who you are writing for now?
Um…I would say that she is a German pop icon. And we love her!

Hold up. What?!! Amazing! We spoke about her in 2019…
Didn’t we?! I manifest these things. So yes, it works!

Now our last question is always Mariah-related….
You know what I did? It’s early over here so before we spoke I took my bath, did my lashes and everything, listening to Daydream. That girl really went through it. She has the fantasy, then she’s a prisoner and plans her escape. There’s a lot going on there.

Do you have a favourite look of Mariah?
It has to be that iconic gold dress she wore on the front cover of The Emancipation of Mimi. Imagine. You are Mariah Carey and wearing this dress. How dare you?! You just own it. You are Mariah Carey.

Games People Play coming soon.
For Games People Play Tour dates see www.primitivedesire.com