Jamie Lawson

Having established himself through years of performances across Ireland's music community, the acoustic singer and songwriter Jamie Lawson rose to prominence once a single composition achieved sudden viral status via YouTube. Plymouth, England, served as both birthplace and childhood home, where Lawson first took up guitar at the age of eight. Early influences from Crowded House, R.E.M., and Leonard Cohen led him to launch his musical path in a school-era covers band. His vocal style emerged at age 17, after which he spent several years on the Irish club circuit alongside Gemma Hayes, Glen Hansard, and Tom Baxter. The 2003 release of his debut album, Last Night Stars, came via his independent Allotment Recordings imprint, yet genuine breakthrough arrived only with the second album seven years afterward. Although The Pull of the Moon appeared in 2010, momentum built the next year after a YouTube clip of its track "Wasn't Expecting That" aired on The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM, Ireland's biggest station. That song quickly became the station's most requested number and opened Lawson's chart trajectory in his adopted homeland. Lawson became the inaugural signing to Ed Sheeran's Warner Bros. imprint Gingerbread Man Records in 2015, with his self-titled third LP following later that year. Subsequent tours supporting Sheeran and One Direction preceded a return to the studio for the next project. His fourth album, Happy Accidents, included the single "Can't See Straight"—co-written with Sheeran and Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid—and reached stores in September 2017. Late 2018 brought the single "Testify," issued after Lawson announced a major headlining tour of the U.K. and Europe. Early 2019 delivered his fifth LP, The Years in Between, composed during dates supporting Sheeran's own 2018 U.K. and European tour.