Jamie Cullum

England's Jamie Cullum, armed with a raspy singing voice and nimble piano technique, has earned praise for fusing jazz, melodic pop, and rock into a wide-ranging style. Equally comfortable tackling material by Radiohead or Thelonious Monk, he reached mainstream listeners through the 2002 album Pointless Nostalgic and 2003's Twentysomething, which brought a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Once compared to Harry Connick, Jr. and Norah Jones, Cullum matured into a singular singer-songwriter who shifts convincingly between heartfelt ballads and sardonic pop songs. He expanded his palette further by exploring electronica on 2005's Catching Tales and crafting original soft-rock material on 2010's The Pursuit and 2019's Taller, while still circling back to jazz traditions, most clearly on the 2014 orchestral standards set Interlude.

Born in Rochford, Essex, in 1979, Cullum was raised in the Wiltshire village of Hullavington. Guitar and piano studies began at age eight, and an older brother, bassist and producer Ben Cullum, passed along a deep love of jazz. Drawing inspiration from piano masters Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck, Cullum lived for a time in Paris, sharpening his skills in the city's jazz clubs. Although music remained central, he enrolled in English literature at Reading University. While there, at nineteen, he cut his debut album, Heard It All Before, whose unexpected success led to an introduction to jazz bassist Geoff Gascoyne. Gascoyne invited Cullum to appear on his own album Songs of the Summer and encouraged the recording of Pointless Nostalgic, issued in 2002. The release gained wide exposure through heavy television rotation and regular play on radio personality Michael Parkinson's BBC 2 program.

Cullum later signed with Universal Records and delivered his breakthrough third album, Twentysomething, in 2003. The record charted worldwide, sold several million copies, and made him the fastest-selling British jazz artist in history while earning his first Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Catching Tales followed in 2005, and the compilation/mixtape In the Mind of Jamie Cullum appeared in 2007. In 2009 Cullum shared a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song with Clint Eastwood for their composition “Gran Torino.” The album The Pursuit arrived the next year.

His sixth studio album, Momentum, surfaced in 2013 and reached number 20 on the U.K. charts. October 2014 brought the orchestral standards collection Interlude, which entered the charts at number 19. Cullum returned to original songs with the Troy Miller-produced Taller in 2019, which entered the U.K. Top Ten. The holiday-themed The Pianoman at Christmas was released in November 2020.