A-Z OF
2019
release of incendiary debut ‘Nothing Great About Britain’, he’s grown into a bona fide star. We headed to Newcastle to witness the phenomenon of Tyron
UITE A DEPRESSING YEAR FOR THE CHARTS
THE BIG
Yes yes, it’s 2019 and there’s not really any point in still moaning about how the charts aren’t what they used to be. EXCEPT ISN’T THERE JUST A BIT THOUGH??? Streaming, playlists, blah blah blah: we all know how the numbers are crunched these days and that there’s sweet FA we can do to reverse it. But does that actually make the sour taste of The Greatest Showman soundtrack (the biggest selling album of the year, for the second year in a row) any more palatable? Does it soften the blow that, despite literally dozens of incredible new records being released over the past 12 months, the Top 10 also contains a further two film soundtracks and an Ed Sheeran LP from 2017? No, Mister Official Charts. No, it does not. Hmmph.
EUNIONS
Everyone loves a good dose of nostalgia, and this year a whole batch of bands decided that 2019 was the time to put aside their differences and reunite for the greater good of the people. From the ginormous stadium tour that the Spice Girls completed earlier this summer, to the decidedly more low-key return of The Futureheads and Britpoppers Supergrass’ recent surprise gig, it was a big year for musical comebacks. We even caught up with indie sweethearts Bombay Bicycle Club in the very spot where they decided to get the gang back together!
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We were in this pub actually!” bassist Ed Nash told us earlier this year, sat in Hornsey’s Great Northern Tavern. “Doing something ‘looking back’ when everyone’s still in their twenties seemed like a really silly way of doing it, so we decided to do Bombay properly again. Do the ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’ [anniversary tour], but make new music and look forward.” Welcome back, old friends!
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LOWTHAI
hopeful. As 2019 comes to a close, following the
Q
R
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At the start of the year, slowthai was a buzzy new
Frampton. Words: Rosie Hewitson. Photos: Andrew Benge. It’s a rainy mid-October Sunday evening in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the kind of miserable day you can imagine might take its toll on an artist who’s been on the road for much of the past year, but slowthai seems pretty content. The rapper has just returned from an afternoon of paintballing with his touring crew, during which his team apparently annihilated their opponents. It’s a far cry from how touring life was in the not-too-distant past. “When you decide to do music you always dream of the big bus,” he explains. “Not even a year ago, we were travelling around in a car, then we were borrowing our friend’s rundown motorhome, and now we’ve finally worked our way up to the bus. All my boys are on it; we’ve been go-karting, paintballing, we went to the cinema last night. It’s the dream,” he grins, carefully rolling an enormous blunt while he speaks. The Pokémon evolution of his touring vehicle in many ways serves as a metaphor for the monumental success the 24-year-old has had over the course of 2019 - a year which started with him placing in the Top Five of the BBC Sound of 2019 shortlist and will end with him supporting BROCKHAMPTON in the US, having won thousands of devoted new followers off the back of his incendiary live shows and astonishing debut album. Released back in May,
the politically charged, Mercury-shortlisted ‘Nothing Great About Britain’ has garnered comparisons to Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Boy In Da Corner’ and The Streets’ ‘Original Pirate Material’, and is already being touted as an era-defining classic for its portrayal of a fractious country plunged into chaos by austerity and Brexit. Later in the evening, he’ll blow the roof off Newcastle University’s Student Union as 1,500 ecstatic young Geordies do their best to match the swaggering charisma of their hero on the stage. But despite the unwavering devotion of his fans, it’s fair to say that not everyone is enamoured with slowthai’s brand of acerbic social commentary, particularly since his headlinegenerating performance at the Mercury Prize ceremony in September. Cut short during the live broadcast after he held up Boris Johnson’s ‘severed head’ to the camera and shouted “Fuck Boris”, his performance of Mura Masa collaboration ‘Doorman’ had various tabloid newspapers branding him a terrorist and a gossip reporter turning up unannounced at his home a few days later. “I just didn’t think people would be so angry,” he says, of the reaction to what The Sun gleefully termed his ‘sick stunt’. “Loads of people were trying to report it, saying I should be in jail for hate