Phil Collins

100% The British musician has carved out a niche making bangers that would make any indie sleaze fan punch the air.

I like going out to the pub with my friends, even though I don’t drink. I need to just let things be. I want to show who I really am.” I hate that we’ve got to pay for travel. It was something along the lines of: trying to look cool stops you from being yourself. You know when you’ve had a long day at work or you’ve been in the studio all day, and you just come home and have dinner. Everyone would praise me up and then I’d leave it to someone else. “People like me aren’t confident to do that because they don’t want to show who they really are. “Lots of artists already know what they’re going to be from the jump – they’re taking piano, guitar, singing lessons and whatnot. “My parents listened to a lot of gospel music at home and Phil Collins and A‑ha. “I didn’t really know too much about all that, but my friends were putting me on,” he says. Since he started releasing music in 2018, he’s worked hard to subvert stereotypes of what kind of music Black artists “should” be making, choosing instead to go down a punkier path.