Maverick Sabre

Maverick Sabre crafts intimate, compassionate material rooted in working-class experience while channeling raw soul, rock, and hip-hop. As a vocalist, songwriter, and part-time rapper, he broke through in 2012 via the Top 20 singles “Let Me Go” and “I Need,” followed by the gold-certified album Lonely Are the Brave, which reached number two shortly after release. His next studio effort, the more refined Innerstanding, arrived in 2015; three years later he went independent for When I Wake Up, his third charting LP, on which he produced or co-produced roughly half the tracks. In 2022 he looked both ahead and back, releasing Don’t Forget to Look Up alongside a tenth-anniversary re-recording of his debut. Burn the Right Things Down, issued in 2024, moved his sound further toward rock after he noticed an absence of fear in his original vocal delivery; across his career he has worked with an eclectic range of artists including Professor Green, Joey Bada$$, Jorja Smith, and Chronixx.

Born Michael James Stafford in London’s Hackney borough, he spent part of his childhood in Ireland before returning to England to focus on music. Early exposure arrived through low-key yet resonant guest spots alongside Terawrizt and Nu-Centz as well as Jermiside & Danny Diggs. His output grew in 2010 with further Terawrizt and Nu-Centz pairings, appearances on Professor Green’s Top 40 U.K. single “Jungle” and Chase & Status’s “Fire in Your Eyes,” and the November drop of the mixtape Travelling Man. The following March, now signed to Mercury, he issued his first EP, The Lost Words, led by the reflective, sobering “Look What I’ve Done,” which blended hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and folk. By year’s end, the retro-modern pop-soul cuts “Let Me Go” and “I Need”—produced respectively by Matt Prime and Utters—had climbed to numbers 16 and 18 on the U.K. chart. Those successes propelled Lonely Are the Brave to a number-two debut the next January, with “No One,” helmed by Fraser T Smith, becoming a third charting single.

Although work on a follow-up began promptly and additional features, such as K Koke’s charting “Turn Back,” continued, Innerstanding did not surface until October 2015. Backed by “Walk Into the Sun” and “Come Fly Away,” the set shifted closer to pop with contributions from several prior collaborators including Utters, Fraser T Smith, Eg White, and Jimmy Hogarth; Chronixx, Joey Bada$$, and Gorgon City also appeared. After the album peaked at number 41, Maverick launched his own imprint FAMM in 2018 with the George the Poet collaboration “Follow the Leader,” which featured label artist Jorja Smith—his earlier duet partner on “Carry Me Home.” Further guest roles with Shy FX, Liam Bailey, and Rudimental, plus the singles “Drifting” and “Her Grace,” preceded When I Wake Up, a number-46 release in March 2019. That project brought in Charlie J. Perry, another Jorja Smith associate, as producer and examined socioeconomic realities from a street-level vantage.

In the ensuing years Maverick added more guest appearances and standalone tracks, issuing the EP You Know How It Feels in 2020. His fourth album, Don’t Forget to Look Up, emerged in January 2022; among its tracks, the soulful “Good Man,” produced by Linden Jay, proved especially popular, while Maverick himself handled much of the remainder, including “Not Easy Love” with Demae. Later that year he marked the tenth anniversary of Lonely Are the Brave—on which he had earned no royalties—with the re-recording Lonely Are the Brave (Mav’s Version). In 2023 he debuted his production persona via Micheál Dear (Beat Tape), Vol. 1, teamed with Nia Archives on “No Need 2 Be Sorry, Call Me?,” and revisited his debut once more through the live set Lonely Are the Brave (Live from KOKO). He pressed on in 2024 with Burn the Right Things Down, his fifth studio album, released that October behind the lead single “If I Could Only Love You Again.”