A smooth-faced young man with a gruff voice, a politically minded hip-hop performance poet and a dance-pop group fronted by a former actor in television drama Skins have been anointed as the new acts in contention to become household names in 2015.
James Bay, George the Poet and Years & Years are the three shortlisted acts for next year’s Brits Critics’ Choice award. In previous years, winning the prize has proved one of the most accurate predictors of commercial success: the first winner, in 2008, was Adele, who has been followed by Florence & the Machine, Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, Emeli Sandé, Tom Odell and Sam Smith.
The outside contender is George the Poet – real name George Mpanga – a Cambridge graduate who has gained grassroots popularity posting his poems to YouTube. While earnest, serious-minded British hip-hop seemed to have been dealt a blow with the commercial failure of Speech Debelle after she won the Mercury prize in 2009, it has seen a resurgence this year, with the acclaim for Young Fathers, this year’s Mercury winners, and the success of Kate Tempest, another performance poet setting words to beats.
Years & Years, meanwhile, are a three-piece group whose 90s-influenced dance-pop sound is reminiscent of recent commercially successful acts Clean Bandit and Disclosure. Olly Alexander, the singer, has a parallel career as an actor, with roles this autumn in the film The Riot Club and the TV series Penny Dreadful.
The likely favourite, however, is 24-year-old singer-songwriter James Bay, who follows in a line of male singers who have achieved huge success in the past few years by matching inoffensive singer-songwriter pop to incongruously bluesy voices. He shares management with George Ezra, this year’s breakthrough act in in that genre, as well as James Morrison, a previous exponent.
Virgin, Bay’s record company, has been pushing him hard, even doing what used to be commonplace but is now considered almost unthinkable for budget reasons – hosting a lunchtime showcase for tastemakers, with food and alcohol laid on.
A look at historical patterns suggests it’s not just the marketing muscle of Virgin – part of Universal, the world’s biggest record company – that makes him the likely winner. All the previous winners have been solo artists offering commercial, mainstream music – exactly what Bay does. No dance act has ever won and neither has a hip-hop artist.
The winner of the award, which is chosen by the time-honoured “panel of music industry experts”, will be announced on 4 December. Next year’s Brit awards take place on 25 February 2015.
