GLOBAL NEWS—Emerging UK singer-songwriter Tom Gregory launches the next chapter this month with his debut offering for new label Sony Music: “Forget Somebody” is an enticing up tempo hit and the first track from his as-of-yet-untitled third full-length.
The 26-year-old Northern English composer who produced major songs like “Fingertips,” “Never Let Me Down,” (with VIZE), “River,” and “Footprints” along the road produced two albums during the pandemic.
“My dream has always been playing on big festival stages around the world, but then all my success came during Covid, so I had no chance to play the songs live.”
Photo courtesy of Sony Music
With over 770 million global streams already under his belt, not to mention massive radio hits in major European markets such as Germany and France, the Blackpool-born musician spent most of last year in Los Angeles working on songs that will define his forthcoming third full-length release.
“It’s going in a direction that I’ve always wanted to end up in,” he says of the new single ‘Forget Somebody,’ a surprisingly fast-paced track “about trying to move on,” as he defines it.
“I would say it’s sad up tempo. It’s not a happy record at all,” he says about the new single that incorporates 80s-flavored guitars and also nods to his Indie Rock influences. “One thing I learned from playing live and touring is that people love to dance around and to get freaky with up tempo songs. After being gone for a while, I wanted to come out with something that wasn’t a mid-tempo song. I wanted to make people move.”
“I think you always come to that point in a break-up – when you leave somebody or someone else breaks up with you – where one person moves on, and the other person doesn’t,” he says about the feeling that inspired the new single. “With this song, we wanted to find a way of capturing the struggle of moving on from somebody. Trying to move on in a world with social media can be so hard – and I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to.”
The forthcoming album he’s currently working on, Tom wants to create “something that I feel could exist in two different worlds – both on a festival stage and on Pop Radio. I think they are two really difficult things to achieve, separately, but together it’s even harder. Having achieved the radio part with a couple of my earlier songs, I wanted to show that I’m someone who can also exist on an Indie Rock/Pop festival stage – and this new music is me making that transition,” says the young musician whose inspirations range from The Killers and Kings of Leon to Britpop classics and even P!NK. She’s a Rockstar.”
Tom, who has long been a fixture on European Pop Radio, actually had to take a few detours to get to where he is now. As a shy teen, his father signed him up to audition for The Voice UK when he was 16 but he was “knocked back: no one turned around for me,” he says about the live audition round in London.
Back in Northern England, battling early bouts of depression, he sought a new outlet and eventually took an acoustic guitar from his school’s music supplies.
He tried playing in a band, but it didn’t work, so he enrolled in a course in music production and dropped out after just one week to take up a role in the BBC series The A Word, But he hated acting. He began working on solo material, eventually locating the ideal song writing collaborators, and using the guitar he had stolen from his old school to pen future successes like “Fingertips.”
Photo courtesy of Sony Music
He has become one of the UK’s biggest exports since the release of his first track “Run To You” (currently 30+m Spotify) in 2017. He has multiple radio #1s under his name across Europe. His 2020 single “Fingertips” (148 million) immediately reached Germany’s top spot (airplay) and received Gold (Germany) and Platinum (France) certifications throughout Europe.
After collaborating with German production team VIZE, the song “Never Let Me Down” (now with 246 million+ streams) went platinum in Germany and reached the top 10 of the sales charts in Austria and Germany. Following the release of his official sophomore full-length, Things I Can’t Say Out Loud (2020), which featured the hit songs “River” (68m; #4 airplay GER; top-15 yearly German Radio Charts), “Footprints,” and “River,” he made a comeback in 2021.
Listen to “Forget Somebody” here: https://tomgregory.lnk.to/ForgetSomebody