Tom Odell

A pianist-focused British vocalist and composer, Tom Odell shapes atmospheric, tuneful reflections on emotional distress into intimate, unfiltered, and frequently muted pieces that call to mind Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley. His widely praised debut EP from 2012 brought him the BRITs Critics' Choice award, and his first complete album, Long Way Down in 2013, entered straight at number one on the U.K. albums chart. He tracked his following two projects in New York and Los Angeles before heading back to London for the personal Jubilee Road in 2018 and the shadowy, electro-pop-leaning monsters in 2021. His fifth release, presented in stripped-down form as The Best Day of My Life, surfaced in 2022.

Odell entered the world in Chichester, a West Sussex town in England, and completed his early training at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music. In 2012, after signing with Columbia Records, the then-21-year-old issued his opening EP Songs from Another Love, appeared on television for the first time on Later... with Jools Holland, and took home the Critics' Choice prize at that year's BRIT Awards. His initial full-length studio album, Long Way Down, arrived in 2013. The platinum-certified set scored an immediate U.K. chart-topping debut, prompting Odell to spend the next several years performing the material nonstop while supporting Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Rolling Stones.

Seeking distance from public scrutiny, Odell settled into a modest apartment in New York's East Village, where he began shaping his next record, Wrong Crowd, released in 2016. After a 2014 European tour and an Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year, he relocated once more, this time to Los Angeles. Producer Jim Abbiss, whose credits include Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, and Adele, helped guide the sessions. A committed film enthusiast, Odell created a companion series of short films for Wrong Crowd that followed the album's narrative arc. Written by Odell and directed by George Belfield, the films probed themes of isolation and innocence, drawing cues from Wenders, Malick, and Fellini during his quiet period in New York.

In April 2018 Odell released the self-titled single from his third studio album, the reflective Jubilee Road, which followed in October. Early 2021 brought the track "Numb" ahead of the full-length monsters. Darker and more brooding than its predecessor, the electro-pop-inflected set found inspiration in XXXTentacion, Drake, and Travis Scott. Early the next year Odell returned to a piano-and-vocal core on the moving "Best Day of My Life," the title song of his fifth album that appeared in October 2022. He opened 2023 with the gentle "Butterflies," a collaboration with Norwegian artist Aurora.