Girl band Flo, pop singer Cat Burns and dance act Piri & Tommy are all tipped for success in 2023.
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The post-pandemic resurgence in dance music is reflected in the longlist for BBC Radio 1’s Sound of 2023, which tips new music for the coming year.
The nominees include hotly-tipped house producer Fred Again, drum and bass duo Piri & Tommy and the Mobo-award winning jungle musician Nia Archives.
R&B girl group Flo and busker-turned-baladeer Cat Burns are also nominated.
Now in its 21st year, the Sound Of list has predicted success for the likes of Adele, Stormzy, Sam Smith and Haim.
This year’s longlist suggests that dance music will continue to dominate the charts next year – after club hits like LF System’s Afraid To Feel and Eliza Rose’s Baddest Of Them All became the soundtrack of summer 2022.
Breakout British producer Fred Again is already a must-see live act, whose electrifying set at London’s Boiler Room went viral earlier this year.
Born Fred Gibson, he’s been a behind-the-scenes hitmaker for years, producing and writing hit singles for the likes of Ed Sheeran (Bad Habits), George Ezra (Shotgun), BTS (Make It Right) and Stormzy (Own It).
He struck out as a solo artist in 2020, releasing a trilogy of albums that blend house music with everyday samples and conversations recorded on his phone.
Image source, Getty Images
Bradford-born Nia Archives is at the forefront of the jungle music revival in the UK, whose fast-paced Forbidden Feelingz EP was praised for its “laser-sharp” songwriting and “electrifying soundscapes”.
Real-life couple Piri & Tommy, meanwhile, have become known for infectious, feel-good drum and bass tracks like Beachin’ and Soft Spot.
The longlist also features US neo-soul band Gabriels, whose debut album Angels & Queens has “a strong claim to the title of album of the year”, according to The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis.
The band are fronted by former American Idol contestant Jacob Lusk, who recently told BBC News his time on the TV show had been “treacherous” and “harrowing”.
Cat Burns has already scored a platinum-selling single, after her break-up ballad Go went viral on TikTok earlier this year.
The 22-year-old followed that up with support slots on Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour, and a nomination for the Brits rising star award.
The longlist is completed by pop-punk singer Dylan, indie songwriter Rachel Chinouriri and alt-pop musician Biig Piig, who has been championed by Billie Eilish.
Image source, Brent McKeever
You can listen to their biggest songs and find out more about their careers to date below.
The top five will be revealed in the new year on BBC Radio 1, with one artist announced each day from Sunday 1 to Thursday 5 January.
The prize is open to new artists, who have yet to score a top five album, or more than two top 10 singles by 31 October 2022. Artists who have appeared on TV talent shows within the last three years are also ineligible.
Last year’s poll was won by bedroom pop singer PinkPantheress, with breakout indie duo Wet Leg in second place and emotive pop singer Mimi Webb in third.
Asake
- Nigerian singer Asake – sometimes known as Mr Money – broke out in 2020 with the irresistibly sunny hit single Lady.
- Born and raised in Lagos State, he originally studied theatre and dance at Obafemi Awolowo University before turning his attention to music.
- His songs are part of the Nigerian street-pop subgenre, that blends Afrobeats with Amapiano, pop melodies and cheeky, street-smart rap lyrics.
- The star’s first forays in music were thwarted by a record label who sat on his material. “It was four years wasted,” he told Nigeria’s Cool FM. “I was alone in the house recording and [I] couldn’t put any records out.”
- After escaping that deal, he released a debut album Mr. Money With the Vibe in September, supported by sold out gigs in New York and London.
Biig Piig
- Biig Piig is the stage name of pop singer Jessica Smyth, who chose her moniker from a pizza menu, reasoning it “puts no pressure on me to be a certain way – I can be a mess, and I can also be cute and put together”.
- She was born in Cork, Ireland but raised in Spain, where her family moved to help her younger brother cope with chronic asthma. She often sings in Spanish to this day.
- Music made an early impression on her. “I remember listening to Gabrielle when I was really young,” she told Our Culture magazine. “My mum was going through something really tough, and just to watch her kind light up with Gabrielle’s song Sunshine… That was when I think I really understood the power of music.”
- Her dark, soulful music has been championed by Lil Nas X and Billie Eilish – who described tracks like Shh and Lie To Me as her favourite songs to relax to.
Cat Burns
- Cat Burns’ stripped-back, acoustic ballad Go is the very definition of a slow-burner, becoming a smash hit this summer, two years after it was released.
- The London-born singer was busking to make ends meet when the song went viral on TikTok. “It completely changed everything for me,” she says. “I can’t believe it.”
- Music isn’t her only talent – she nearly became a professional basketball player before signing up for The Brit School and pursuing a career as a songwriter.
- The 22-year-old has a knack for relatable, slice-of-life lyrics; whether talking about her strained relationship with her dad in I Don’t Blame You; or expressing her relief at coming out as queer in Free.
- “That’s always how I’ve written,” she says. “I always want to make people feel heard and listened to with my music.”
Rachel Chinouriri
- Fans of Bat For Lashes and Billie Eilish’s Guitar Songs EP will love the charcoal-shaded indie-pop of London singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri.
- The 24-year-old was born into a large family who had emigrated from Zimbabwe and settled in Croydon shortly before she was born.
- Growing up, secular music was largely forbidden in her house – but she nonetheless discovered acts like Coldplay, Daughter and Lily Allen, opening up a world of layered, confessional songwriting.
- After teaching herself guitar, she enrolled at the Brit School, studying musical theatre as a way to confront her fear of performing.
- Her breakout song, a hushed confession of love called So My Darling, went viral on TikTok last year, soundtracking more than 130,000 videos.
Dylan
- Dylan’s in-your-face pop punk has the spiky confidence and acidic quotability of a young Avril Lavigne or Billie Joe Armstrong.
- She’s been making music since she was a kid in Suffolk, holding impromptu concerts on the kitchen table with a plywood guitar.
- Dylan recorded her first song when she should have been revising for her A-Levels, and was quickly snapped up by Ed Sheeran’s management team.
- Her first couple of EPs showcased a burnished, radio-friendly pop sound that she’s since disowned. “I was trying to sound like other people – and obviously that doesn’t work,” she told BBC News. “Ultimately, I’ve discovered I’m a rock star stuck in a pop star’s body.
- Her latest EP, The Greatest Thing I’ll Never Learn, sneaked into the Top 20 last month. “The elation when I got the call,” she told BBC Introducing in Suffolk. “It was like ‘you did it!'”
Flo
- Bringing back the girl band sound of the late 1990s, Flo are a three-piece vocal harmony group from London.
- Founder members Stella Quaresma and Renée Downer met at the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School and invited Jorja Douglas to join them after watching her sing on Instagram.
- Their MNEK-produced debut single Cardboard Box was released in March, and the music video – which pays tribute to the Sugababes’ Overload – has been watched more than 5 million times on YouTube.
- They says their throwback sound is all due to their mums. “They brought us up on 90s music,” says Jorja, “so it’s hard to make music that’s not influenced by Brandy, or Faith Evans, or SWV. All the girl groups, all the boy groups. It happens naturally because that music is so ingrained in us.”
Fred Again
- Fred Again, aka London-born musician Fred Gibson, has been a long-time producer for artists like Stormzy, Ed Sheeran, Charli XCX, George Ezra and BTS.
- In 2019, he was responsible for one-third of the UK’s number one singles, earning him the Brit Award for best producer.
- By then, he was already toying with the idea of putting out his own music. A message from his mentor Brian Eno pushed him over the edge: “All right, Fred, enough,” wrote the star. “You’ve gotta go back to doing what you were doing when we met.”
- Since then, the musician has released a trilogy of albums, Actual Life 1-3, whose trancey, club-ready songs are built from a tapestry of voice memos, social media clips and found sounds that Gibson collects on his phone.
- His breakout single Madea (We’ve Lost Dancing) sampled a speech about the impact of Covid on nightclubs by DJ The Blessed Madonna.
Gabriels
- Elton John gave Gabriels a huge boost last year, when he declared their debut EP Love and Hate in a Different Time, “one of the most seminal records I’ve heard in the last 10 years”.
- The LA-based trio are an unlikely combination. Singer Jacob Lusk is a choirmaster, backing singer and former American Idol contestant, who was persuaded to work with producers Ryan Hope and Ari Balouzian, after they approached him outside his church.
- Their musical chemistry was instant. Emphasising Lusk’s gospel roots and his friends’ background in scoring for cinema, they honed a sound harnessed the raw power of Aretha to the dense emotional textures of Massive Attack.
- The band released the first half of their debut album, Angels And Queens Part One, in September to rave reviews. “Any sense that the listener is being short-changed” by the release strategy “is blown away by the sheer quality of the writing and production on offer”, said Mojo Magazine.
- More than music, Lusk says his new bandmates have allowed him to flourish as a gay, black man in an industry that often crushes individuality. “Ari and Ryan pushed me to be more comfortable in my skin,” he told BBC News. “To have people who support you, with no ulterior motive? It’s literally changed my life.”
Nia Archives
- Bradford-born Nia Archives blends jungle, neo-soul, reggae and dance music in a sound she calls “future classic”.
- Growing up, she was surrounded by Jamaican sound system culture, but fell in love with rave music after moving to Manchester in her teens.
- Today she works with the jungle label V Recordings as part of its EQ50 initiative, which aims to correct the historic gender imbalance in Drum & Bass music.
- Debuting in 2021, she racked up massive streams for emotionally frank-but-irresistibly funky tracks like Forbidden Feelingz, Mash Up The Dance and Sober Feels.
- After winning an NME Award for best producer in March (“I cried on my manager’s shoulder all night”), she successfully lobbied the MOBO Awards to reintroduce a dance music category, and duly won the award last week.
Piri & Tommy
- Piri & Tommy’s playful, summery dance-pop has been described as “devastatingly gorgeous” and “pure musical escapism”.
- The band are real life couple Sophie McBurnie and Tommy Villiers, who hooked up on Instagram, then took the potentially disastrous decision to bubble up in a student house during the pandemic. “It was the best date I’d ever been on,” Tommy noted.
- Bonding over a shared love of disco and drum & bass, they started making their own music, and went TikTok viral with a song called Soft Spot in 2021.
- Still making music in their Manchester bedrooms, the duo have racked up more than 40m Spotify streams, and recently released their debut mixtape, froge.mp3.
- “We went from zero to 100, basically,” Piri told Radio 1’s Jack Saunders. “We’re so amazed and overwhelmed.”
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