Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
In the race to become the next male singing, songwriting superstar, there seems to be a new strong contender every week. James Bay’s Brit award seems barely significant when his competitors are getting shout-outs from the biggest names in music. Last week I featured Adele’s new fave, Tobias Jesso Jr, and now it’s time for Taylor Swift to pick her horse. She recently tweeted about Garrett Borns, who goes by the artist name BØRNS. It’s a fitting choice, as I noted on first listen that he sounds like a male version of her friends Haim, making authentic-sounding ‘70s-inspired indie-pop. And he lives in a treehouse, which certainly seems like something Taylor would enjoy. His current single is 10,000 Emerald Pools, but the jaunty Electric Love is the most talked-about track from his EP Candy. I like this acoustic duet version with fellow Future Pop star Zella Day. Although he’s only become a hot name in the last month, he’s been doing his own thing for a while, and you can get an interesting snapshot of his college years in his very endearing and entertaining TEDx performance and talk from 2011.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4J9vDrA0Mo]