The Jaded Hearts Club emerged as a collective drawn from the Last Shadow Puppets, Jet, Muse, Blur, and the Zutons when guitarist Jamie Davis assembled his celebrated circle of friends to deliver covers at a birthday celebration. Shaped by Northern soul and Motown, the ensemble made their status official in 2020 by issuing the debut album You've Always Been Here.
Los Angeles resident Davis, who had run the Transcopic Records label for Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, looked in 2017 for a Beatles tribute band to play at his birthday event. Finding no fitting option, he instead pulled together a lineup that, besides Coxon and himself, comprised vocalists Miles Kane of the Last Shadow Puppets and Nic Cester of Jet, bassist Matt Bellamy of Muse, and drummer Sean Payne of the Zutons. Keeping the Beatles tribute concept alive, the high-profile unit first went under the name Dr. Pepper's Jaded Hearts Club Band. They performed sporadically in following years, among them a Teenage Cancer Trust benefit at Royal Albert Hall in 2018, while onstage guests ranged from Nic’s brother and Jet bandmate Chris Cester to Bellamy’s Muse colleagues Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme, NIN’s Ilan Rubin, and Beatle Paul McCartney.
As the decade wound down, the Jaded Hearts Club chose to preserve their sets in the studio, laying down a selection of cherished Northern soul and Motown numbers. Their opening single, a lively reading of the Isley Brothers’ “Nobody But Me” sung by Kane, surfaced in early 2020. A pounding version of Marvin Gaye’s “This Love Starved Heart of Mine” fronted by Nic Cester came next. Both songs featured on the band’s first official release, You've Always Been Here, which arrived that October.
