Client: Dazed
Does he ever get the fear after doing an interview or a TV appearance, wishing he hadn’t said or done something? He cackles. “Usually I don’t swear in English, but sometimes the f-word comes out naturally. It just pops out. I watch American and English movies a lot so I think that’s why,” says Key. Really, however, Key’s humour, self-awareness and the personal boundaries he values and protects are more reassuring than anything. Fame, a space he’s occupied for 13 years, has become more absurd, its participants more ambitious, and its viewers more voracious. Those years he’s clocked up protect him somewhat from the bloody Colosseum that is 21st-century celebrity, and the global music industry at large, because he has nothing left to prove to anyone but himself.
Taylor Glasby 