JP Cooper has done the legwork. Ten years in bands in and around his Manchester hometown. Multiple songs written on his own and with a variety of collaborators, a couple of which became global hits-that-will-not-die: Perfect Strangers with Jonas Blue and his own September Song, which is now sitting at some 600 million streams. An international solo career built on pure songcraft.

And he’s done the business. The singer-songwriter’s 2017 debut album Raised Under Grey Skies has sold in old-fashioned numbers: one million copies at time of writing. His 11 million monthly Spotify listeners have contributed to a grand – very grand – total of four billion total streams.

And, over the past 18 months, Cooper has done the hardest thing: built on all that to create a second album, a collection of 13 songs that work as together and work apart, that out-paces, out-sings and, by his exacting standards, out-classes his debut.

“My first record reached so many people on a personal level,” he reflects, “so they’ve built a relationship with it – and even now it keeps doing its thing. But coming back now, this is more of a body of work that’s been put together with thought and care and not in a rush. When you have a hit single that changes things and what the album should be – there’s pressure to write a load more singles.

“Whereas this one I feel like I’ve been able to give a lot more attention to all of them because I’ve not been distracted, trying to launch my career. I’ve been able to sit at home and work with the people I love and get it to the place I want it to be – and only then send it off into the world.”

It is, too, coming from a place of love. Which is one reason why the second album from JP Cooper is called She.

As he explains: “I started thinking how most of my biggest life experiences have come about because of women: losing my mum at an early age, having four sisters, having a baby with someone I didn’t end up with, meeting my wife, with whom I’ve just had a baby… I’ve learnt most of my lessons through women and wanted to celebrate that and give thanks!

All things considered – i.e., the pandemic – JP Cooper had a productive 2020. He released the Too Close EP, with two of the songs, the title track and Bits and Pieces, making it onto the album.

“Then Covid came along and everything stopped. It’s been a trying time but thankfully, it gave me the time to really pull this album together. We had all the songs, and we knew what the main tracks were, but it was a case of working them up and finishing them”.

“A big thing for me during Covid was to take stock of where I’ve been and where I’m going,” he continues. “Up until then, I’d really been working from a place of survival. I’d never reset, so all my decisions were made from that place. But I realised I wasn’t in that place anymore. I could make creative decisions and be bolder with them, not be so fearful, not worry too much about it from the industry side. I’d earned my stripes.

“So, it was nice to have that new mindset, and make music from that position.”

Opening the curtain on the new album is Holy Water, the first track and recently released single.

“I’ve got deep roots in gospel music, real musicianship and playing in bands, so I wanted to make that statement with this single. I don’t want to try and emulate pop stars. Because I’m not a pop star. I’ve stepped into that world and it felt like a badly fitting jacket. But this feels like me. It feels more about the record as a whole.”

Recording in a tiny room in The Premises in Hoxton, East London with songwriter/producer/keyboard player Hannah Vasanth (who’s worked with everyone from Rihanna to Jessie J via Jason Derulo), Cooper called in “all my favourite players, and we recorded it like an old school record – built it from the ground up, piano, live Hammond organs from Nicky Brown, who’s just an absolute animal on the organ, my guitarist Jack Shepherd, everything.

“It wasn’t made on a laptop with synthetic sounds. It was real players, real voices, real relationships. That’s the people I want to make music with moving forward. I much prefer working in a room with musicians than arranging little dots on a screen.”

The rootsy, gospel-tinged hymn to family and the difficulties that can arise therein also serves as the opening statement in a five-track narrative that will be told across subsequent videos for songs from She.

“We wanted to take a different approach to the promo videos for this new album," he says of the accompanying film. "Holy Water follows the strained relationship between father and daughter because of the father’s struggles with alcohol. The two part ways and we follow their separate journeys of self-discovery, healing and growth. In this short, our main characters are at a turning point in their lives. Growth isn’t always easy, and we often distract ourselves with things that aren’t necessarily in line with our true selves – but the beauty lies within the journey. Falling and failing are two very different things. I can’t wait to unravel the rest of the story.”

Call My Name, pivoting on the kind of big pop chorus and soulful delivery that come naturally to Cooper, continues that story. “That was a pain in the arse to get right!” he admits with a laugh. “We’ve had four different producers on that, because we were constantly searching for this extra 20 per cent. But we got there in the end.

“So, another long journey, but this is the thing with this record: we’ve been really meticulous with where we get the songs to before we let them go into the world. Pushing forward, going back to the drawing board, keep at it until we were totally happy with where the songs were at.”

Also ticking the Big Tune box is Radio, a rippling, hands-in-the-air moment as sure to ignite dancefloors as playlists. Again, Cooper has taken his time with it and been unafraid to radically remodel the song. He began writing it a couple of years ago with singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow and Moon Willis, then he gave it to a producer called Vodka who tweaked it further.

“It used to be slower, but we put it into Ableton and sped it up – and it just came out great. It’s another reason why I want to give every song on this album a bit of focus. We had this last time with songs like In The Silence, which streamed really well in other countries like Germany and Holland. So this time, we’re trying to do something amazing for every track, whether it’s a gospel version, lyric video, full video, or release it as a proper single.”

One of the album’s best vocals – intimate yet soaring, old school yet fresh – comes on the beautiful soul of Need You Tonight.

“Not many songs like that come along, it’s such a well-written song. I wrote it with Jamie Scott, who I’ve written a lot of songs with. And we knew from the start it was really, really special. We spent a lot of time on the production. Lyrically it basically sums up navigating the aftermath of a relationship – still wanting to believe in somebody after you’ve split up, living in small town, often bumping into each other because you drink in the same places."

We Cry is another cornerstone song, a simple yet powerful note of reassurance and comfort. Both personal and relatable, it feels purpose built for a film soundtrack moment. “Such an important song in terms of the lyric and as a part of the story. I wrote it with Matt Koma and Fran Hall in LA. We’d never met before and she was heavily pregnant. She was talking about how she had days where she cried all the time, and I wanted to get that energy, and feminine energy, in there.” Given that Cooper’s wife was pregnant for most of 2020, the message took on extra potency.

The shimmering, elegant If The World Should Ever Stop is another song of outreach and connection. “In the journey of it, that’s in the middle, this place of, no matter where we’re at, 

“I love the simplicity in the message, ‘I’ve got you and you’ve got me’, it’s so straight to the point and universal. And it worked within the story of the song, finding that place of finding a true home with someone. Initially I wrote this song thinking I’d give it to another artist, but when it was done I had to keep it for me”.

The title track, another Scott co-composition, closes out the album.  JP switches it up again, with nods to both Stevie Wonder and Bacharach and David in a retro-soul moment tricked out with future nostalgic electronics.

“The lyric summed up a lot of where I’ve been in my life, with my ex-, my first son’s mum. Our relationship is incredible now. So, it’s about appreciating her and giving thanks to each other for setting each other free. Everyone deserves to be free. And with my little Leo’s mum, when we met, I was still very mixed up… and she’s been very patient with me,” he acknowledges with a smile. “So, in terms of the title of the album, it felt perfect.”

This, then, is She. It’s that paradoxical thing: a collection of songs that hangs together as an album, that tells a story, but that’s also rich in standalone tracks the each ignite a moment. It’s the sound of an artist developing, stretching and reaching, both inwards and outwards.

He’s done the legwork, done the business and done the hardest thing. Now JP Cooper has done himself proud. “And I’m only just getting started,” he promises.

They say you get your whole life to write your first album, but it took Sam Fischer just ‘a cool 35 minutes’ to create his favourite track on it, Landslide. It came about back in 2018 at a song-writing camp in the Hollywood hills.

“It was midnight when we started this song,” says Sam. “Everyone had got on the beers. It started as a party rock type vibe but turned into this acoustic lullaby. We ended up writing the most tender love song, and it hasn’t changed at all since that day. I’m so excited for people to hear it.”

Despite having written for the likes of Demi Lovato, Keith Urban, Ciara, Cian Ducrot and Cat Burns, and finding global success with viral TikTok hit This City, Sam’s debut album, I Love You Please Don’t Hate Me, is his first extended body of work. It is a compilation of tracks he has written over his career, and the common theme is his relationship with himself - which at times has been fraught.

“The album name is a pretty good summary of what’s to come,” he explains. “It’s like, ‘I’ve been terrible to you, but I’ll be better. You’re worth it, but you’ve also been an arsehole.”

Sam grew up on a farm outside of Sydney, later moving to the city with his parents. Music was integral to his childhood - he started playing the violin at the age of three, and later the saxophone. His mum would listen to Enya at home while his dad had three albums on rotation - The Bodyguard soundtrack, Michael Jackson HIStory on Film, Volume II and a rock compilation. By 12 he was writing his own music.

He recalls his parents buying him his first album. “It was a Human Nature record,” he explains. “I listened to it over and over again, and learned all the songs. I asked them to buy me another album, and they said no! I was like, ‘excuse me!’ So I decided to write my own albums out of sheer spite! Proving people wrong has been a major driving force in my life.”

He joined a jazz band at his high school and won a scholarship at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston when he was 18. It was a pivotal four years in his life. Not only did he learn his craft, but he met his wife Erin, who now does backing vocals in his band. It’s also where he met his guitarist, fellow Australian, Marton Bisits.

“He was one of the first people I met. We used to play these tiny little gigs, and now we’ve been working together for 13 years.”

After graduating Sam moved to LA to try and make it as a singer and songwriter. But it was tough, and he struggled to make ends meet. While sleeping on any soft surface he could find, he did backing vocals for the band Holychild, worked for cash as a delivery driver for an Australian meat pie shop in downtown LA called ‘The Bronzed Aussie’ and said yes to any and every session he could find. 

When he finally landed a record deal with a new label under Columbia Records in 2017, it was short-lived. He was dropped after ten months having released no music but gaining an identity crisis. Sam almost let it deter him, but in 2018, as a last ditch effort at being an artist, he self-released his EP Not A Hobby which included a track called This City, documenting his LA struggles. That song ended up completely changing his life. 

Early in 2019 he noticed that the track had gone from 4000 streams a day on Spotify, to 10,000, then later to 60,000. “I was wondering what was going on? The track had been out for a year already. Then I got a message from someone named LeeThe4th saying, ‘I wanted to let you know that your track This City is the biggest song on a new app called ‘TikTok’ right now.’ I was like, ‘What’s TikTok?!’”

It was still very early days of the app. “I downloaded it and the first thing I saw was a girl lip syncing to my song. There were about 700,000 videos using it, but it didn’t have my name on it or the title. I had gone viral but nobody knew it was me” He and his manager set about changing that.

Within months Lewis Capaldi had been in touch asking him to support him on the US leg of his tour. “After the final night of the tour, Spotify put This City on their Pop Rising playlist. It was doing 4 million streams a week by then. The previous year it had done 4 million streams in the whole 12 months!” It is now at over a billion.

It was in October of the same year that he got a call from RCA Records in the UK. At the time, he was in Nashville working on a song, Polaroid, which would later be released as a Keith Urban single. “They said, ‘We think you’ve got a hit on your hands!’” They flew him to London with his manager the very next day and within 48 hours of landing in the UK he had been offered a record deal.

“The first meeting was three hours long and I must have played them 30 songs,” he says. RCA re-released This City, and there were big plans to promote it, including touring with Niall Horan in the US, but then the pandemic hit. So he set about doing a promotional tour from his LA apartment. His first TV gig? Performing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on a segment called ‘Live from the Lavatory’.

“I performed an acoustic version of This City with my wife and Marton, my guitarist. We filmed it and texted it to my manager and it was played on TV. We were like, ‘OK, so that’s our TV debut.’ When we finished filming, we had a shot of tequila and then Marton went home because he wasn’t legally allowed to be in my apartment.”

He also went on to perform remotely on The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Ellen Show. “I had a wild amount of people messaging me about the song during the pandemic and telling me how the song was helping them. Those messages made me realize the song was becoming something much bigger than me. It’s amazing to think that This City was one of the markers of the pandemic for so many and helped people get through it.”

He’s since recorded a single with Demi Lovato, What Other People Say, which was released in 2021. “I actually wrote it two weeks before I went on tour with Lewis in 2019,” says Sam. “I thought it was the best song I’d ever written. My publisher sent it to her manager Scooter Braun, and it brought Demi to tears. We didn’t meet until we were on the set of the music video. Now we text and check in on each other. She’s a good egg.”

Sam is no stranger to collaboration having released his These Cities EP in 2020 featuring artists like Anne-Marie and Kane Brown, as well as writing and appearing on Sam Feldt’s 2021 dance track, Pick Me Up. Staying true to form it was important for Sam to have collaborations with other artists on his debut album.

Amy Shark features on High On You, while his good friend Meghan Trainor pops up on Alright. He wrote Alright back in 2018 after experiencing a panic attack in the shower.

“I never have panic attacks,” he says. “I was telling myself, ‘I’m going to be alright, I’m going to be alright’ and that mantra was turned into the chorus. I performed it for the first time on tour with Lewis. Meghan was at one of the shows and she texted me after, saying, ‘Yo, what was that song? I want to jump on it.’ It’s a banger and it’s has really rounded out the whole album.”

Now Sam is looking forward to getting back to performing live in front of an audience again. “I’m excited to tour as much as possible. And really work my arse off to show the world who I am and what I can do as an artist.”