‘Pressure doesn’t Bugg me’
JAKE Bugg was a wiry teen with an acoustic guitar and a handful of bluesy songs inspired by The Beatles, Dylan and Hendrix when he rose to fame with the release of his Mercury Prizenominated 2012 debut.
The Nottingham-born singer was 17 when he signed to Mercury. His debut self-titled album went to No1 and he was lauded by the likes of Noel Gallagher, who invited him to support him on tour.
Jake, now 27, said: “I was quite lucky actually.
“When the first record came out and it topped the charts, I went to tour America with Noel. So that’s probably the best thing that could have happened.
“I got out of the country and started touring in a country that didn’t know me.”
Still, comparisons to Gallagher and even Dylan couldn’t have been easy to shoulder as a teenager.
“That’s just how it is,” he said. “It’s a highpressure job, especially in this industry. You’ve got the pressure of the comparisons.
“But you’ve also got the pressure on the label side of trying to sell records.
“There’s always a lot of pressure, no matter what. You just either deal with it or choose not to.”
He added: “I’m never one to reflect very much or stop and think about how crazy things were or what could have been.
“I guess it was a bit of a mad time. But at the same time you have just got to carry on, just do what you got to do.”
The shine of being a singer-songwriter was initially tarnished when Gallagher discovered Jake used co-writers including Iain Archer, who worked with Snow Patrol.
Jake tried to go it alone on his third album On My One, which reached No4 in 2016, to mixed results.
So for his latest album – Saturday Night, Sunday Morning – he’s recruited crack collaborators who have written for the likes of Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa and Camilla Cabello.
While Lost or All I Need sound like pop chart bangers, other songs like Downtown or Rabbit Hole have the music DNA early Bugg fans will recognise.
Jake said: “I’ve never felt like I’m not allowed to do anything.
“When people heard Lost I was prepared for the criticism.
“There were a lot of those comments that you expect. But at the same time, I knew I had other songs like my latest single Downtown that were in contrast to songs like Lost.
“I knew that once people hear those, they know that I’ve not totally gone the full distance in the pop world. I felt like I had other songs to back up what I was trying to do.” ● Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is out now. He plays Edinburgh Corn Exchange on March 21 and Glasgow O2 Academy on March 23.