Why Jack Garratt Resents Comparisons To Ed Sheeran

Jack Garratt is the UK's new electro-soul everyman. But, while the hirsute singer, songwriter, musician and producer is depicted as a more versatile Ed Sheeran, modish James Bay and poppy James Blake, he's determined to establish his own identity. And Garratt is on his way.

Garratt, whom The Guardian has hailed as "the figurehead of all modern hipster music," auspiciously won both the 2016 BRITs Critics' Choice Award and the BBC Music Sound Of… poll — as did the mega Adele and Sam Smith before him. Earlier this year his debut album Phase, containing the breakout single Weathered, reached #3 in the UK and, with triple j's support, Top 10 here. Now on the back of sold out transatlantic shows he's bound for Splendour In The Grass on his inaugural Australian tour.

Even those international music critics suss on Garratt's polished bluestronica — and hype, period — concede that he's riveting live. Like Sheeran, Garratt performs as a one-man band, but he juggles multiple instruments. Garratt rehearsed with other musos but decided that autonomy mattered more to him than camaraderie. "It's me giving myself the opportunity to just do a lot of things — and I like doing a lot of things," Garratt explains. "Some people say it's because I'm a control freak - I'm not sure if that's the right word for it, but I think there's probably some truth in that. I like to know what's going on… But me doing the show in the way that I do it live just always seemed to make sense. I've only ever known how to make music and produce music and perform music on my own. I've been in bands before, but I've only ever really truthfully known how do it by myself. It made sense for me to continue that when I was building the live set. So I walk up on stage with a couple of keyboards and a big drum kit and I try to play it all at the same time!"

"I like doing a lot of things … Some people say it's because I'm a control freak - I'm not sure if that's the right word for it, but I think there's probably some truth in that."

Garratt, based in London, is genial and earnest. However, he reveals an ambitious streak, often talking about "the bigger picture". He's an artist who manages to be focussed and exacting while freely following his muse. Garratt is sensitive. Not unreasonably, his (trademark) beard, hair and cap are no-go interview topics.

Garratt is already a veteran at 24. Raised in the sleepy English village of Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire, he had childhood piano lessons, his mother a music teacher. The precocious Garratt taught himself guitar and anything else that took his fancy. In his early teens, Garratt competed to be the UK's entrant in 2005's Junior Eurovision, his number The Girl ignominiously coming last (today he's pleased to hear that Eurovision isn't stigmatised in Oz). Subsequently, Garratt gigged in bands — actually playing trombone in a skacore outfit. In 2011 the now-troubadour readied an acoustic folk and blues project, Nickel & Dime, only to abandon it — lately telling Q that it was "shitty". Garratt, who'd intended to teach music like Mum, dropped out of uni. He experienced a crisis of confidence.

Music saved him. Fascinated by Frank Ocean, and the surging post-dubstep soul, Garratt experimented with a fresh hybrid. "I grew, I think. I grew up in a way as well," he ponders of the transition. "I didn't fall out of love with the music [acoustic fare] — it just didn't make sense to me anymore. Something about me had changed and clicked and I suddenly realised I wasn't happy with the music I was making and that I felt like I needed to change something, and that's kinda where the new sound that I'm still trying to figure out started to come from." As Garratt sees it, legacy artists such as the late David Bowie and Prince naturally diverged stylistically. "I'm inspired by musicians who never gave themselves any kind of obvious boundaries — like one of my favourite Stevie Wonder records is [1980's] Hotter Than July, which has everything from gospel ballads to upbeat funk songs to country songs on it."

"No one's calling me 'the new Justin Timberlake' — even though Justin Timberlake is a bigger influence on me than both Stevie Wonder and James Blake are."

Garratt turned to the BBC Introducing platform to expose his material. In 2014 he self-issued his first EP, Remnants. A deal with Island Records ensued. Uber-producer Rick Rubin, a fellow music buff, became Garratt's unofficial mentor. Then, after being declared 2015's BBC Introducing Artist Of The Year, Garratt scooped the BRITs Critics' Choice Award and BBC Music Sound Of… For Garratt, the wins were "incredibly humbling" — and validating. But there was latent apprehension. "I was very aware that, 'Okay, things are going well, but I've gotta be careful. I've gotta still work hard'. I was given these awards and I haven't even released an album yet, so what does that mean? Do the awards mean anything?"

Garratt is routinely likened to other acts — Sheeran, Bay, Smith, Blake. "I always felt really cringe-y if someone compared me as being the 'new version' of something that was still current," he says, bemused. "That just really weirds me out. I understand getting compared to someone like James Blake, because I'm a huge fan of his — and I don't hide that. I take influence from his music and I instinctively, without consciously thinking about it, put it into my own music. But no one's calling me 'the new Stevie Wonder', even though I do the exact same thing with Stevie. No one's calling me 'the new Justin Timberlake' — even though Justin Timberlake is a bigger influence on me than both Stevie Wonder and James Blake are. Ultimately, it's down to easy targets. That's why I get compared to Ed Sheeran a lot — because I'm white and I play the guitar and I have ginger on me somewhere. It's nothing to do with the music."

Many of the songs on Phase emanated from Garratt's existential episode, his most caustic lyrically Chemical. Yet presently Garratt is less sad lad than sanguine star. "Everything's going very well," he admits with a laugh. "But I'm still as intensively self-deprecating as I ever have been and terrified of failure and terrified of not being good enough for other people. Play-by-play, I'm an insecure person — I am! But I love music way too much. I love it. It's been the most consistent form of therapy that I've had my entire life. I wrote about that [self-doubt] a lot on the last record. I'm probably gonna keep writing about that because I doubt that that fear will ever go away. I kinda also hope it doesn't. It makes me feel alive, it makes me feel real. In this industry, especially in the pop side of an industry like this, you're expected to be 'on' all of the time and smiling and happy and great and 'Isn't everything fantastic?' As true as that is, as happy as I am with everything that's going on, I still bleed like other people do, I still have a heart and a brain and a body — and I'm a person. I have insecurities and issues. I like that I do — it makes me human."

Garratt isn't pressuring himself to consider his second album — the next Phase. "I'm playing around with ideas, and I'm not sure what that is or what that means. But I'm playing with ideas," he laughs. "I'm not thinking about the next record, though - I've only just put the first one out!"