Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
When I heard Gallant’s song Bourbon for the first time last week on Radio 1, it sounded so commercial and polished, I assumed it was a big comeback single by an established male R&B star like Usher, The Weeknd or Miguel. I then made the surprising discovery that the song was by a new artist, and had been around for 6 months already. I quickly had to catch up on everything Gallant, so concisely I can tell you his name is Christopher Gallant, he’s 24, based in LA and he released his debut album Ology in May to great critical acclaim (again, how did I miss all this?). He also made a passionate performance on Jimmy Fallon that earned him a standing ovation. He takes influence from R&B and alt-rock, resulting in his alt-R&B sound, and clearly wants to appeal to a broad range of music fans as he’s toured with indie blogger fave Sufjan Stevens and EDM artist Zhu (with whom he shares management), and released a cover of Foo Fighters’ Learn To Fly. He was in the Live Lounge today – it hadn’t happened yet when I was writing this, but you people in the future should be able to watch/listen to it here.