Tom Odell has been stripping back the layers, creating a prolific and increasingly vulnerable canon of work that speaks to the frailties of the human condition and the fragility of the world around us. Particularly since the pandemic and 2021’s ‘Monsters’, Odell’s songwriting has put rawness and honesty to the fore, with a whole new generation of fans finding vital solace in his music in response. Seventh album ‘Black Friday’’s haunting title track has earned nearly 700 million combined streams since its late-2023 release, while a resurgence of excitement around his first ever single - 2012’s ‘Another Love’ - has seen it soar to over three billion plays on Spotify alone.
As Odell has become braver as a writer, pushing himself to uncover the most fragile and often painful parts of his psyche, so has he established himself as a true artist of note: a fact underlined by a pair of Ivor Novello nominations for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, in both 2023 and 2024. For the now-34-year-old, it’s been an illuminating journey. “The things that you feel slightly uncomfortable playing to your friends or your parents, they’re what you should put out because then it’s worth sharing,” he says. “We keep so much stuff inside, and that’s what tends to torture us the most - not the things we’re prepared to talk about - so I try to write about that as much as possible.”
Though Odell first came to prominence as a Brit Award-winning new UK pop hope, it’s never been this type of shiny, mainstream success that fuels him. “I never applied to the role of pop star and I always felt like I was being perceived in the wrong way,” he reflects. And as he’s committed further to his own vision, crafting intensely personal songs dealing with mental health struggles, body image issues and beyond, he’s seen the connections spread across the globe, through his 2.4 million TikTok followers and out into the real world environs of the live stage, where he’s been supporting Billie Eilish on her European arena tour before embarking on his own run of intimate underplays. “It alleviates some of the loneliness of existing,” he suggests of why his music has resonated so strongly, “which is what we’re all going through, together.”
