Singer Nick Cave has said the death of two of his sons “fundamentally changed” the way he saw the world. The 66-year-old said he was now “less precious about my own place in the world” and added that his music had become braver as a result. Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in a cliff-jumping accident in 2015, while his eldest son Jethro died aged 31 in 2022.
“This can fundamentally change the way that you perceive the world and the way you behave. “I think that happened to me to some degree, made me a little less precious about my own place in the world. The worst had happened.
It maybe made me a little braver about things.” He went on to speak about the song O Children, first released in 2007, and still his most-listened song on Spotify. Nick Cave also spoke in the interview about the UK General Election and social media (Yui Mok/PA) He added: “I wrote (O Children) 22 years ago watching my children when they were little, playing in a playground.
“I wrote about this f*****-up world we were creating and that we had no way of protecting our children from. That seemed relevant when it came out but it’s always found its theme. “From a personal level, I was not able to protect my children.
Today too, children are dying everywhere in their thousands. And it asks the same question – what kind of a world are we creating for our children?” Cave first came to public attention in the early 1980s as the lead singer of influential noise rock band The Birthday.