“A lot of people don’t know what’s about to hit them,” smiles Tom Grennan when he talks about Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be, and that’s not just because it takes roughly as long to say the album’s title as it does to actually listen to it. “I’ll be honest, every time I was sending these songs to my record label, everyone was like, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’”
“A lot of people don’t know what’s about to hit them,” smiles Tom Grennan when he talks about Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be, and that’s not just because it takes roughly as long to say the album’s title as it does to actually listen to it. “I’ll be honest, every time I was sending these songs to my record label, everyone was like, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’”
Britain’s best male popstar has either appeared out of nowhere or been hiding in plain sight for over half a decade, depending on how closely you’ve been following things.
If the Tom Grennan in your mind is still the moody troubadour we met two Number One albums ago, around the time of 2018’s debut Lighting Matches with its moody black and white photos and earthy singer-songwriter vibe, you may want to reach for the smelling salts.
But if you’ve been picking up on some of the last few years’ not-so-subtle hints — collaborations with Calvin Harris, Chase & Status, Ella Henderson and Bugzy Malone, along with songwriting credits for the likes of Clean Bandit and Sigala — the state-of-the-art pop sound of Tom’s new album will make a little more sense. It’ll seem like the continued evolution of one of UK music’s most exciting talents, and the latest chapter in the story of a multi-platinum-selling artist who’s already picked up multiple Brit and Ivor Novello nominations and an MTV Award for Best UK Act, along with countless airplay smashes and a rise to arena-selling, festival headliner status.
To pull this all off Tom assembled a team of collaborators for the new album; some, like Mike Needle and Dan Grech-Marguerat, were familiar faces. But the beating heart of the album is a new creative relationship between Tom and Justin Tranter, the songwriter and producer behind hits for Britney Spears, Linkin Park, Dua Lipa and Fall Out Boy.
“The first time I met Justin they asked what I wanted to do musically, but they asked more than that,” Tom recalls. “Justin said to me: ‘Who do you want to be, and what do you want to say?’ I said, ‘Well, I feel like the public doesn't know the full me. I’ve never told the complete truth of who I am.’” They talked about where Tom was in life, and where he’d been. “We spoke for hours before even trying to write a song. Justin was saying: ‘Talk to me about you. Where are you from? What’s going on in your soul? I trusted Justin from the beginning.”
The first song they wrote together was Shadow Boxing. “It represents what the whole album is about,” Tom explains. “It's about my fight with a side of me I have a lot of trouble with. It’s still a daily battle.”
Tom speaks frankly today about the period not so long ago when his career was flying high, but his inner life seemed to be in something of a downward spiral. Pressure seemed to be coming from all directions, and his mental wellbeing took a hit.
One day Tom’s mum came to stay. “My mum could see I was not in the best of places,” Tom remembers. "She said to me: ‘I’m your mum and I’m your friend. Be honest: are you alright?’ And I said: ‘No, I’m not.’ And she said: ‘Right, you’re coming home with me.’” It was exactly what Tom needed, he says. “It’s not that I needed love, it’s that I needed to accept it. I just didn’t have the words to ask her for help.” He left his London flat, moved home and started a fitness journey after a close friend took him to the gym. “I was so out of breath, I thought I was hallucinating,” he laughs. “But I felt all these endorphins in me, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is what I’ve been missing.”
The more you hear about the story soundtracked by these new songs, the more it makes sense that three words Tom uses a lot when talking about the album are belief, purpose and risk. And the more those three words fall into some sort of order: Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be is an album about how a sense of purpose brought self-belief and, with it, the confidence to take risks.
This is demonstrated in the album’s sonic identity, because as well as being an unintentional swerve into Jungian psychology, Shadow Boxing is typical of the new album’s sound in that it’s also a belting pop song. Justin Tranter didn’t just understand exactly what Tom wanted to say, they also pinpointed precisely what Tom wanted to sound like: George Michael, Prince, Freddie Mercury. “So much of the new album is uplifting — it makes you dance, makes you sing — but for me there’s also the excitement of it being a sound I've never explored,” Tom says.
On Tom’s second day with Justin they struck gold again, this time with the song Cool With That. “I was like: ‘Hang on, are we really good together? Is something special happening in this room?’” It was indeed: on day three came Drama Queen, another song that made the album. Then came Higher, partly influenced by Tom’s experience of getting into fitness, “which is about me reaching my prime — taking myself to a higher place”. Boys Don’t Cry, meanwhile, strikes a particularly pensive note. “I'm an emotional person,” Tom says. “In a lot of towns, especially where I come from, there's still this stigma around emotion. Men are told they need to be about football, beer, and zero emotions. Boys Don't Cry is the song that helped me go, ‘do you know what? I'm proud of being able to cry and call my mum or my missus.’” He hopes it strikes a chord with others, too. “We're all human,” he shrugs. “We experience emotions. We're not made of rock.”
Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be is a stunning addition to Tom Grennan’s already-impressive discography. Looking back now, he says his 2018 debut Lighting Matches was the sound of “me being thrown into uncharted waters and being expected to swim” — a challenge he met with some aplomb, with the album going gold. 2021’s Evering Road, which Tom now sees as an extended apology letter in the wake of a messy relationship breakup, became his first Number One album in the UK, while 2023’s What Ifs & Maybes, another Number One, was Tom’s third gold-selling album in a row. That third album was also, he says, an early hint of what was to come. “It was the first time I thought: ‘I don't want to just be a singer-songwriter’,” he remembers. “It established the foundation for where I am with this album.”
While Tom’s mental health challenges are helpful context in terms of understanding why this new album’s positivity is so authentic, it would be a mistake, Tom suggests, to see this album as being solely about his darkest moments. Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be isn’t really an album about dark times. It’s about the journey out of them. It’s an album about optimism, opening up, and looking at the path ahead, on a journey to physical and psychological robustness.
“I’m mentally prepared and physically prepared,” Tom states. “I’m in athlete mode now. I've fought all these demons, and now I can go out and smash up life in a good way. For the first time in my career, I’m ready for it.”
“This album is about me, revived,” he grins. “Now I'm at a place where I DO want to be. And I'm ready to blow people's heads off.”
