Kai Stephens - Musical Style

Musical Style

Hard-Fi's musical style is a mix of post-punk, indie and a Clash style of punk rock. Richard has cited their influences as dance and soul music. They also take inspiration from other genres such as ska. On Stars of CCTV, they had a very raw sound, loud guitars, and frequent use of guitar, in contrast to Once Upon a Time in the West, on which there is a lot more orchestration, the use of strings is very apparent, most notably in the song "Watch Me Fall Apart".

Upon starting out, the band felt no up-and-coming bands really connected their lyrics to their own lives. Hard-Fi wanted to change this with their own style.

Hard-Fi's lyrics are based mostly on working class life, the band themselves coming from a self sufficient suburban lifestyle in Staines. Most notable in tracks such as "Suburban Knights" ("Those bills keep dropping through my door") and "Living for the Weekend" ("I've been working all week - I'm tired"), while other songs such as "Tonight", despite still being about suburban life, focus more on ambitions. Some songs are also based on social realism, "Feltham is Singing Out" is inspired by Zahid Mubarek who was sent to the Feltham Young Offenders' Institution and was murdered by his racist cellmate.

Other songs, such as "Better Do Better" and "Move on Now", are centred around the premise of how hard romantic relationships can be. Once Hard-Fi were becoming successful, Richard's mother died and the song "Help Me Please" is about how difficult it was for him having his dreams come true after many unsuccessful bands but realises he has no parents to share the joy with. Similarly, "The King" is about Richard returning to Staines and finding everything completely different, and realising everything of which he knew and loved had disappeared. He describes "Little Angel" as Christina Aguilera having a fight with The Clash in a Northern Soul club.