That George Ezra. Here, there and everywhere, and all the time, it seemed. An out-of-the-box, rafter-rattling success story, where the vehicle for that success was the only one that mattered: the songs. Songs that took him on a world tour that lasted a full two years. And even when it looked like the border-busting breakout star of 2014 (and ’15) wasn’t, finally, all over the place (nor all over the radio), it turns out he was still at it: travelling, searching, writing, playing, whistling.
Wanted On Voyage, the Hertfordshire singer-songwriter’s debut album released in June 2014, sold more than three million copies. It was the third-best selling album of the year in the UK, beaten only by Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith. But, like its creator, for Wanted On Voyage it was all about the journey, not the destination: it took 14 weeks to reach the Number One slot, a proper, word-of-mouth, word-of-ear hit. Then, led by flag-bearing tracks Budapest, Barcelona, Cassy O and Blame It On Me, that debut propelled the guitarist, barely into his twenties, on a two-year world tour.
Finally, a reset, not to mention reinvigorated, musician emerged from what sounds like his own personal Almodovar movie and returned to the UK with the beginnings of several songs. Key amongst these was Pretty Shining People, the song that would end up opening George Ezra’s second album – an album he’s calling Staying At Tamara’s because “all these songs came from this little flat, and I need to doff my cap to that”.
Lyrically and creatively, Pretty Shining People set the tone for the rest of the songs on an album that is winningly tuneful and powerfully uplifting in any language. Firstly, the song was completed on the move, during a subsequent writing trip to the Isle of Skye. Back in the UK, Ezra undertook other writing getaways, on a pig farm in Norfolk, in a former cornflour shed in Kent, in a converted cow shed in north Wales. The latter trip was in the company of Joel Pott, the former Athlete singer who’s been Ezra’s longstanding wingman co-writer.
Secondly, the sense of positivity and communality in the “weirdly Britpop” Pretty Shining People (“we’re alright together”) is one of the cornerstone moods of Staying At Tamara’s. He was writing his songs in a year of Trump, Brexit, food banks and general turmoil. Switched on to the chaotic world around him, and inspired as ever by his reading and listening material (e.g. very early Bob Dylan and So Long, See You Tomorrow by American novelist William Maxwell), Ezra decided to do what he does best: write songs of support, encouragement and escape.
In the meantime, Ezra is further doing his bit to increase the stock of human happiness with a comeback album that is cheerful and cheering, mindful and soulful, heartfelt, energetic and energising. Staying At Tamara’s is about getting away, getting on and getting high – on music, and life, and love.