With a certain inevitability, the latest in the seemingly unending line of soft-faced-but-gruff-voiced troubadors armed with nothing but a guitar, raw emotion, and a major label marketing budget has been named the winner of the 2015 Brits Critics’ Choice award.
James Bay, a singer-songwriter from Hitchin in Hertfordshire – but now based in Brighton – is the latest to scoop a prize that has only ever been won by mainstream solo acts: he follows Adele, Florence & the Machine, Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, Emeli Sandé, Tom Odell and Sam Smith. The award, which is given to an act likely to release their first album in the following year, is not so much a predictor of success as a guarantee of it. With the title of Brits Critics’ Choice winner to slap on advertisements, record labels are commensurately more likely to invest time and effort in promoting the artist.
Bay, who is signed to Virgin, said: “I’m pretty speechless. After all the years I’ve spent watching the Brits and even after this year; watching my fanbase grow so much, I never thought I’d actually be getting an award myself. And what a huge honour to be following the incredible artists who’ve won before! I’m really chuffed, thank you to everyone who has supported me.”
Bay has released three EPs so far, with the most recent, Hold Back the River, peaking at No 18 in the charts. His celebrity admirers reportedly include Taylor Swift, who approached him after a gig in Nashville supporting Hozier. “She said I’m on her playlist of stuff that she listens to all the time. It’s nice when somebody that enormously famous gives you a little nod of the cap,” he told the London Evening Standard. He routinely sports what will doubtless come to be known as a “trademark hat”.
The other shortlisted artists this year were poet/rapper George the Poet and dance-pop group Years & Years.
