“I’M SHIT AT NOT HAVING A PLAN” the opposite reason that somebody would think,” details George. “It’s so odd because you just feel so detached from it. Someone can say your album was the third biggest selling album of the year in the UK and that’s just…” He pauses, still taking in that fact. “When it’s happening you’re caught right in the middle of it. You’re the wrong person to talk about it because you’re the least aware of it. I kinda feel like I’ll have more of an opinion and view on it all in 30 years time when you can really appreciate it in hindsight and go, ‘Fuck, that was insane’. It’s not that I take it for granted, it’s just so hard to make sense of it all.” That perspective on the tidal wave that came with ‘Wanted On Voyage’ may be one that comes in decades to come for George, but it also got rid of a fear that he harboured when stepping into the spotlight. Life changes when you became a household name and that worry of losing touch with the life he had was one that truly resonated with him. As primetime TV show appearances clocked up like days in a diary, the last thing George wanted was to be taken out of the day to day life he enjoyed so much, and for fame to became an overbearing shift in the way he lived his life. “It was the thing I was worried about the most, coming off tour to find my life completely changed - whether that’s my social life or my personal life. I just didn’t know what was going to come and how to cope with that. In school, you have lessons on Maths, on English but you don’t have a lesson on how to deal with being recognised in the street. Thankfully it didn’t happen that much, and my life didn’t change at all - it’s kinda made me relax about going into this album and the touring to come because well, you’re in control. The last thing I ever wanted to be was a ‘celebrity’, and I think that worry came from the uncertainty of it all.” George finished up the worldwide run around ‘Wanting On Voyage’ in America on 14th December. The year that followed proved to be an eye-opening one, bringing its own challenges that George had to face head-on - but when opened up, have laid out a path to a new way of seeing the world, and the sheer importance of embracing the good. STRUCTURE IS AN IMPORTANT THING. It’s what keeps the boundaries around our lives, what points people in the directions they need to go to and above all else, is a motivation to get up out of the seat being sat in for way too long. Back at home, after two years of schedules and dates in the diary, George found himself at odds for what to do, with a clean slate completely. There were no alreadypenned down hits there and no demos, just the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. “When I came off tour, the one thing I didn’t want
to do is fly anywhere for a while,” recollects George. “People were like, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I just went to places like Norfolk, did the Cotswolds way, but it took me a while to leave England. You don’t really capitalise on time off; I started thinking that I shouldn’t take a trip somewhere because what if that was the day that I wrote THE song. Other people must be so much better at it than I am, I just sit there looking at the guitar and spurring myself on to pick it up and see what comes out.” There’s that thing you hear about with musicians who spend years on tour, and that’s a feeling of being locked away from everything. To change from that way of life back into a surrounding where you’re suddenly fixed right back into the swing of things is a daunting one, and for George, that feeling was one that affected him greatly. There were no crowds around, no timetable in place, just George and his thoughts. “Yeah, I mean, when I came off tour, and for the first time in my life I became quite an anxious person,” details George, sitting forward on the sofa. “At first I couldn’t put my finger on it and didn’t know that it was anxiety. These are names that you give to things that aren’t tangible, you can break your leg, and it’s pretty clear what’s wrong, but if there’s something going on in your head, then you need to work it out. “I didn’t realise what was going on, so I booked a trip to Barcelona to get away from things as I was getting quite overwhelmed by it. It was then that I realised what it was. A lot of people around me were experiencing it as well, and 2016 was such a weird year for a variety of different reasons where everything that could go wrong did. For the first time in my life, I had spent time in this bubble of touring, and I had gone from that to waking up every day with breaking news notifications on my phone of things happening on the other side of the world. When that would happen two or three times a day, it became something that would make me worry, and it just built and built.” George decamped to Barcelona, a place which already had weaved its way into his very being on his debut album, where he would spend his days walking its shining streets and bustling corridors taking in life once again. He didn’t write any songs, simply soaking in the very vibrations and essence
that filled the city’s streets and it led to an epiphany that flows through his as-yet-untitled second album.” “It really was that trip that helped me realised and learn that it’s okay to switch off - and I don’t think any of us do,” details George. “It’s just a habit we have, like all of us have smartphones right now and each smartphone is connected to the world and what’s going on in it. There’s almost no escape from it, and there’s also this demand for when something does happen that everyone needs to have an opinion on it or a response straight away. And if you don’t have one, then get off the track because that’s not how the world works. “You need to be seen to have recognised what’s happened, whereas actually, it’s okay to say, ‘Yeah, I’m aware of what’s happened, and I’m just trying to compute it’. I think what it did over the past 12 months, is that it stopped people from being able to take in the good that there is out there - without sounding too soft about it.” It’s a feeling that resonates and brims through ‘Don’t Matter Now’, the only taste so far out there from George’s second album and a track that throws away any fears and worries in one triumphant blast for carefree and jubilant vibes. If there was a way George wanted to return, with the lessons of the past twelve months behind him, then that’s exactly what ‘Don’t Matter Now’ encapsulates - a progression from the pulls of ‘Wanted On Voyage’ that’s beaming with that message of the good times - and more importantly, that enjoying them doesn’t make you a fantasist or out of touch with the world around you. Sometimes, savouring the best in people can be the hardest thing to do, but it’s more important now that ever before. “If you look at it in a really simple way,” continues George. “I leave my front door every day and can
DOWN WITH BORING
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