“I’m generally a fairly shy, withheld person,” Anderson says. “But when I get onstage, I get a bit mad.”
Bristol, England-born Anderson, a self-described music nerd, started off as a kid making beats on basic software and spending his lunch periods crafting songs instead of playing video games. When he was 17, Anderson began pursuing music full-time in London, while auditioning for TV roles. By the time he snagged the gig on the hit HBO show, he was well into his work as the soul-pop-R&B hybrid artist Raleigh Ritchie. His first full album, 2016’s You’re a Man Now, Boy, garnered warm reviews — before he jumped back into filming the final season of Thrones.
While on a visit to New York, Anderson sat down with TIME to talk about his development as an artist, the meaning behind the meditative, singsong new song “Time in a Tree,” his love for the Spice Girls and David Bowie — and the one Thrones costar he’d want to feature on an album.
Listen to the Raleigh Ritchie song “Time in a Tree” below.
TIME: Growing up, were you a theater kid, or was it all about the music for you?
More than anything, acting was more like a confidence thing. I love words, I love English, but I don’t have a hugely academic brain, so I enjoyed it because it was a bit of a respite. I don’t think I really had a sense I would actually be a musician or an actor; I just wanted to be around that. I wanted to make stuff.
Do you remember your first CD?
This is not going to be a cool answer. I think it was probably the Spice Girls. [Laughs.]
What changed that helped you made the jump to actually becoming a musician?
I think it was when I learned I was a control freak. I would write songs and say [to my friend], ‘Sing it like this!’ and she wouldn’t. I’d get really frustrated, really controlling about it. So at one point she just said, ‘Do it yourself.’ No one ever told me I had a good voice or anything; no one ever told me I could sing. They just let me get on with it.
Then you moved to London when you were 17. Did you have a plan?
Not really, no! I just knew I wanted to be involved in making things, whether it was for other people or myself. I met my manager by then and we’d drive up to London a couple times a week and go do sessions. At the same time, I auditioned for a TV show in Bristol and didn’t get the part, but the casting director said, ‘Why don’t I get you an agent?’ I wanted to write or direct more than I wanted to be in front of the camera. I still occasionally feel completely uncomfortable being looked at.
When did you adopt the stage name of Raleigh Ritchie?
Basically, my old artist name was really rubbish. Raleigh Ritchie, I have pretty shallow reasons for it. I’m a massive Bill Murray fan, and a massive film nerd. So I wanted to marry those things together. Raleigh Ritchie is literally just Bill Murray’s character’s first name and Luke Wilson’s character’s first name from The Royal Tenenbaums. I liked the way it sounded, and I liked those characters; I related to them.
Is there a certain persona that goes along with the stage name?
No [laughs]. In the beginning, I was thinking about, how am I going to present myself? What kind of tea does Raleigh Ritchie like? But it didn’t make any sense because I was writing really personal, confessional songs. And then I thought playing a character would be weird; there would be a disconnect.
Talk to me about this song, “Time in a Tree.”
I’m an over-thinker. I don’t relax very much, even when something’s going well for me, even when I’m excited about something — I can always think of a reason why it’s not going to work out. “Time in a Tree” is about needing just a bit of peace. It doesn’t have to be that you’re literally sitting in a tree [laughs]. It’s just about finding some inner peace.
Has it been difficult to balance the music and acting sides of your career?
It’s easier to put me in a box, saying ‘Oh you do this thing, you do that thing, and something has to take priority.’ But I’ve never found it difficult; I just want to do the things I love.
And now you’ve wrapped the final season of Thrones.
And now I’ve got all the time in the world! It does feel weird. I think I’d managed to tell myself for a few years that I love doing that show, it’s great, but ultimately I’ve got lots of stuff to do. And then it ended and I was like, ‘I’m going to miss you all so much!’ I got really swept up.
If you had to choose any of your costars as a featured artist, who would you tap?
I feel like I would like to get a skit from Rory McCann, who plays The Hound. I’d get a skit of just Rory swearing. [Laughs.]
Did everyone on set know about your music?
I’m definitely not the kind of person who would play stuff out loud; I didn’t walk around singing or anything, so I didn’t have a sense of whether or not people were listening. But David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], who are the showrunners, came to my show in L.A. last year, which was really nice. They didn’t tell me they were coming! I ran around the crowd high-fiving and I saw them, and was like, ‘What?!’ I think maybe because it’s the last year, more people have come up to me and been like, ‘By the way, I like what you’re doing.’
If you were to write an album for the final season of Thrones, how would you approach it and what would the mood be?
That’s a clever question [laughs]. It would be basically a really secret album, where there was no details about anything to do with it [laughs].
You tend to have a more soulful sound; do you see yourself as a foil to hip-hop artists?
Yeah, but I feel like I owe just as much to pop — to the Spice Girls [laughs] — as I do to hip hop.
What’s been your most memorable experience in music so far?
This may be a gross way to talk about it, but when you write a song it feels like you’re purging all the bad bits in your soul. And then going and doing a show and having people sing that really personal thing back at you, and you know they feel that way too, that’s a unique thing. So really any of my own shows where I can feel that is when I feel I’m at my peak.
Write to Raisa Bruner at [email protected].