James Smith: “I felt like a bit of an outsider”

James Smith is in a good place. Sat in his North London local with a pint in front of him, musing on his journey through the music industry. Some journey it’s been: from schoolboy gigs at East London working men’s clubs to reaching the final of Britain’s Got Talent as a fresh-faced 15-year-old to finally releasing his debut album Common People last summer at the ripe old age of 25. (The face is still looking fresh, though.) Overnight fame, hit singles, record label struggles, identity crisis, musical resurgence – dude has crammed an entire career into a decade and his own career has barely begun. 

Yet Smith is anything but jaded. He fizzes with enthusiasm for his new music and upcoming tour. There’s something endearingly old-school about him, with his bakerboy hat, roll-up cigarettes and willingness to get the round in. He has a voice for soul music and tunes that would fit into the Britpop era, anthems and ballads that encourage the audience to sing along. I imagine his gigs are a bit of a knees-up; Smith seems the knees-up type, both in terms of mentality and as someone who’d use the phrase ‘knees-up’.   

“It’s been a good year, man,” he reflects. “I’ve done some really cool shit and more exciting things are happening.” The week after our interview, he will perform his song ‘Sunshine’ on Strictly Come Dancing to an audience of millions across the country. In February he’ll tour Europe, his first as a headliner (the Manchester date is already sold out). Much more music is in the offing. Yes, James Smith is in a good place. But he had to fight damn hard to get there. 

He recorded Common People several years ago but delayed its release due to contractual disputes with Virgin EMI. The label wasn’t supporting him but still owned the rights to much of his discography; Smith wanted those rights back and he had no intention of putting out further music while the dispute was ongoing. I compare his situation to Taylor Swift, famously in the process of rerecording her first six albums after a masters dispute with her former label. Smith nods. “Similar vibes, yeah.” 

He signed with Virgin aged 18. He had taken a break from music and planned to go to drama school but the offer seemed too good to turn down. He released a single ‘Tell Me That You Love Me’ in 2018. It was an online hit; 55m views on YouTube, 145m streams on Spotify at the time of writing. However he occupied a similar niche to other artists at the label and found himself being squeezed out. 

“They had Lewis Capaldi who was popping off at the same time. For them it was like, ‘who do we push? We shelve one and we push the other.’ They pushed Lewis and fucking hell, I think they done the right thing there because Lewis smashed it!” Smith laughs. “He’s great. I’ve met him a couple of times, had a night out with him. He’s a lovely bloke.” 

Jonathan Tomlinson 

I would apply a similar description to Smith. He is one of those rare people who takes their craft seriously and the world lightly; his stories are told with a smile and punctuated by laughter, often directed at himself. We start off inside but the occasional clanging from the kitchen isn’t ideal for his ADHD and so we migrate to the smoking area, a little chilly in November but much less clangy, and with the further perk of being able to smoke. 

(He favours roll-ups, another mark of a good egg: you will inevitably be required to share your tobacco, sometimes even do the rolling for certain non-smokers whose second pint makes them hanker for a trip to flavour country. See a man with a packet of tobacco and know his character is one of generosity and patience.) 

Patience has been a virtue frequently required of Smith over his career. He signed his first record deal with Sony on the back of Britain’s Got Talent. “When you’re 16, you’re like, ‘fucking hell, amazing!’ We didn’t grow up with loads of money so when you see a big number, you’re just like, ‘a hundred percent, I’m going to sign it! I was stuck in that deal for ages but it was a bit of a blessing because I learned the industry by signing so young.” 

He lasted six months before realising the label’s ambitions for him were incompatible with his own desires. “They tried to make me do all these cringy pop tunes,” says Smith. “They were going to make me the English Justin Bieber. The old Justin Bieber. Not the new Justin Bieber. Like, the ‘Baby’ shit.” (He’s referencing Bieber’s 2010 single, a winsome number whose chorus contained six repetitions of the line, “Baby, baby, baby, oh”.)   

He left Sony and enrolled at ArtsEd, a performing arts school in Chiswick. He planned to audition for one of the major drama schools such as Rada or LAMDA until Virgin EMI came calling. What could go wrong? It must be stressed that Smith displays no bitterness towards his former representation. “I don’t have anything against major labels,” he says. “They work for loads of people. But if I was to go back to a major one, I would really know what I was signing away.” 

A caravan park in Clacton-on-Sea might seem an unlikely spot for a star to be born but it was here that a young James Smith first performed at karaoke competitions on the family holiday. He sang Elvis – he was obsessed with Elvis as a kid, although he has no idea why as neither of his parents are great fans of the King or music in general. “They’re mental but they’re not really into music.” His mum Della is a drama teacher – “she’s dramatic as fuck!” – and his dad Eddie works as a market school trader. “Eddie Eyebrow, we call him,” grins Smith. “He only has one eyebrow. I have to pluck mine!” 

Whatever the source of his talent, it was apparent enough for Della to buy her son a guitar. His formative gigs were played at East Ham Working Men’s Club to Eddie’s trader mates. “What it taught me was my stage chat. I always used to sing slower songs, and if I did do upbeat songs, it’s just me and a guitar. It’s not like you’re seeing a band and everyone’s dancing. Because I was younger and I was playing to a lot of older blokes, they’d usually all be pissed and chatting. So to get their attention I’d chat between my songs.

What did he say? “It was like a bit of a standup set I used to do, it’s really weird. And it’s continued into my shows now. My shows are a bit of a standup set, which is very odd.” (The club has since closed down, and the interview takes a tangent to bemoan the loss of such venues across the country. “It’s heartbreaking, man,” sighs Smith. “It’s heartbreaking.”)

He’s proud of his working class, East London roots – hence the name of his debut album. “I like stories about the common person and I’d say I’m a bit of a commoner.” He went to school in Essex and didn’t quite fit in with his classmates, who tended to come from wealthier backgrounds. “I felt like a bit of an outsider,” says Smith. “Not that they’re dissimilar people, but there’s definitely a more working class vibe where I come from.” 

Like many teenagers unsure of their niche, he resorted to playing the joker. “I was a fucker,” says Smith cheerfully. “Naughty but nice. All the teachers actually loved me. I really got on with them. I was always polite and kind, but I was just naughty. Anyone dared me to do anything, I’d do it. I was fighting and stuff. The final straw was when I ran around the classroom naked for a dare.” 

The “front moony”, as a 15-year-old James would later describe the incident to the Sun, earned him a suspension from school and he ended up transferring. In the interim, he made a useful discovery about the traditional working grind – namely, it wasn’t for him. “I went to work with my dad for a couple months on the stall. I couldn’t get into another school for ages. I was getting up at 4am every day, loading the van and working the market shifts. It was awful. I hated it! So when I went back to school, I was a straight-A student. Really good.” 

Another benefit: he started taking music seriously during this period. “I’d listen to music in the mornings and think about how I felt. When I’d get back from work, I’d sit with my guitar. I felt quite isolated because I wasn’t seeing my mates every day. So music was my escape, almost. That’s when I really fell in love with soul music, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, all these people. That was a really good period actually.” 

If caravan parks and working men’s clubs provided an evocatively timeless musical gestation, Smith’s big break came via the very 21st century environs of a televised talent show. Della met a scout for Britain’s Got Talent on a night out and signed her son up to audition. The son’s response? “Oh fuck off, mum, you joking! I don’t want to do it!” His mum insisted and James duly finished sixth. He performed Nina Simone for his audition and Otis Redding in the live final.  

In 2014, BGT was close to its zenith: an estimated 12m viewers watched the final. (Barely five million watched the final last year.) You wake one morning and twenty percent of the country knows your name. It sounds quite overwhelming, especially for a teenager. “Yeah,” says Smith. “It was great though. All the girls that I fancied started to fancy me back!” 

Peak recognition lasted for roughly a year, only to vanish almost as abruptly as it arrived. “In my area, I was, like, the famous one and then all of a sudden I wasn’t. And my grinding came back – I was like, ‘I really want to fucking crack it now.’ That’s when it started building again. But it’s not towards fame, it’s not like I’m trying to be famous. I’m just trying to do good music that people love.” 

Like many artists, he views social media as a necessary evil. Perhaps evil is too strong a word but it’s definitely a necessary annoyance, especially now he has a tour to promote. “Usually I spend five, six days a week in the studio. But recently I’ve been doing three days in the studio, three days admin.” Smith notes with characteristic frankness: “It’s not what I’ve got into music to do but I want to have a career as an artist and make loads of money. Therefore you have to sell yourself.”  

If you want to break big in modern music, “you can’t just be a really good musician anymore. You have to be a business person. I genuinely think someone like Bob Dylan wouldn’t work in today’s society.” I agree it’s hard to imagine Dylan posting a thirty-second clip of Desolation Row on TikTok, complete with a filter that gives him ears like a cat. 

The year ahead should be a big one for Smith. There’s the tour, obviously, but also his sophomore album – the delayed release of Common People means he has a vast array of new music to release. He is still a young man and young men evolve quickly – even a couple of years still comprise a significant percentage of his adult life. “Common People is definitely me as a person but me as a 20, 21 year old. Whereas the next stuff I’m working on, it’s me as a proper adult and it feels exciting.” 

He hopes to eventually play arenas, even stadiums, while maintaining a connection to his fanbase. In the years ahead, says Smith, “I’m going to create some form of community with music. I look at artists like Yungblud and these people who have created a real solid fan base where everyone’s a diehard for the music. I’d like to create that world for my kind of people.”  

He has no bigger fan than his girlfriend, the actress Nadia Parkes. In a strange quirk of coincidence, or kismet, the pair arrived to their first date wearing the exact same piece of jewellery (a ring). I interviewed Nadia last year; she told me the story after I asked why she wore a ring around her neck. “It’s around my neck on a chain because I think it looks nice,” she noted. “Not because I’m holding it close to my heart or anything.”  

And Smith? I forgot to ask him on the day but rectified the mistake via Whatsapp. “I do have my ring yes!” he replied. “Mines a bit rotten now because it was only a cheap ring but I wear it a lot (on my pinky finger).” 

He recently moved in with Nadia and her sister Michaella, a living arrangement that has remained harmonious despite the occasional disagreement on how best to renovate the bathroom. Smith shakes his head in mock despair when describing regular couple’s jogs with Nadia round Hampstead Heath. At least they don’t wear matching gymwear (yet).  

Theirs is a formidable household that covers multiple creative bases: Michaella is a brilliant writer who frequently contributes to square mile. (Nadia introduced us.) She joins us at the end of the interview for a glass of wine. “Have you been getting drunk with James?” she inquires. Technically I’ve been working, I insist, clutching my fourth pint of the afternoon. Smith grins like a mischievous schoolboy and reaches for his tobacco. 

Despite the hangover bequeathed by our interview, I count myself as yet another member of the James Smith fanclub. His sound may stretch across the generations but his spirit isn’t far removed from the fearless kid who charmed the market traders with soul tunes and standup at East Ham Working Man’s Club. Good for him. Life is too short to lose a sense of mischief. May he play the big stadiums, win the awards – and never entirely grow up. 

For more information on James’s tour, see jamessmithofficial.com