James Marriott
BIOGRAPHY
The cathartic communion between James Marriott and his ever expanding following has been a hallmark of every moment in his rise to date. It was there at his debut show in his hometown of Brighton in October 2022. An electrifying atmosphere ignited as soon as he stepped onto the small stage at the Electric, and moments later the audience were roaring the hook to ‘Where Has Everyone Gone?’ right back to him. Those scenes have been replicated at every stop since, from playing The Royal Albert Hall with Jake Bugg to storming the Reading and Leeds Festivals, and selling out his biggest headline show to date at KOKO.
“I feel like my music is my space to be honest about everything because it feels so validating,” he explains. “I mean, I have a therapist and I sometimes treat my friends as therapists as well. But there’s nothing really like the validation of when you play a show, and you're singing about something that's really important to you, and people are singing it with you. It feels like this real moment when you can kind of let go of those feelings.”
The power of that connection is deceptively simple to explain. James always questions if he’s fearlessly throwing all of his personal vulnerabilities into his music (“To the point where it starts to get uncomfortable”) and fans translate those songs through the prism of their own emotions. And when everyone is rammed together in a dark, loud room for shows, the outpouring of translating emotion into energy is akin to a Jedi mind trick.
Just as remarkable is how quickly everything has come together. There was less than a year between his first show and the Reading / Leeds Festivals, and even now he has played fewer than 100 gigs in total. And it only took another few months to go from that big festival weekend to catapulting into the UK’s Official Album Chart at #17 with his self-released debut album ‘Are We There Yet?’.
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