I hope that if my ex listens to the album she knows that I’m sorry
The final track on Evering Road, Tom Grennan’s new album is emblematic of all that has gone before. The song is about how Love Has Different Ways To Say Goodbye and the 25-year-old Londoner lists quite a few of them. It and the other songs on the collection dissect the breakup with his ex-girlfriend. But you won’t find him playing the blame game. He says one person caused the parting of the ways.
‘Unfortunately, I was the problem in that relationship,’ he confesses.
‘I didn’t have any self-love so I couldn’t love anybody else. As a result, I lost someone I love. I let loads of different things get in the way of that relationship. I let my ego get in the way. I was going out all the time. What should have mattered at the time was her and it didn’t. I will always be sorry for that.’
But every cloud and all that, as they might say in Bedford where he was raised by his English mother and Offaly-born father. Evering Road, his second album, gave the singer-songwriter his first number one in the UK charts last week. The title is taken from the street on which
Tom Grennan
he shared an apartment with his former partner. Apart from the occasions last year when he and a photographer went to take the shots for the album’s artwork he hasn’t been back.
‘I’ve been back to do different shoots and it gave me anxiety, man!’ he exclaims. ‘But I had to call it Evering Road; it was the hub of love and the hub of heartbreak. I’m just hoping it becomes the new Abbey Road! Maybe some fans might want to walk down it like with the Beatles album… ah nah, I’m joking, mate!’ He won’t divulge the name of the ex-girlfriend to me nor of the new love of his life that has supplanted the former one. But though he has no way of knowing, he hopes his ex hears the album.
‘We don’t talk to each other but I hope that if she does listen to the album that she knows that I am sorry and admitted to what I’ve done,’ he says.
‘I needed to mess up so I could learn how to become a better human being. I’ve turned my life around. I dived into all the reasons for the demons I had.
‘She was with me from before the beginning (of his music career). That was one of the problems. I wrote the whole album during the on and off of that relationship. There were times when I’d have written a “goodbye” song and I didn’t have the balls to say goodbye at that time. It was like I was living those two different lives.’
He knew he needed to ‘reset’ as he puts it so he moved back to his mum and dad’s house.
‘I moved back in just before lockdown. That gave me a lot of time to think more clearly,’ he says.
‘We are all in this pandemic, this lockdown thing together and I wanted to give positive energies back into the world. I am not some guru guy going “energy, energy!’ but I do believe that if you give good you will get good back. I’m a Catholic. My dad’s a Catholic. I’m not religious in that I go to Mass every week. But I believe in a higher power. ’
Like many second-generation Irish, Tom is proud of his Irish heritage, even going as far to get a tattoo in tribute.
‘What does that say?’ he asks holding his right hand up to the camera on our Zoom call. ‘OY95’ I reply.
‘And what county is that?’
‘You’d be driving an Offaly car if you had that on your number plate and not your knuckles,’ I tell him. ‘Exactly! My dad is a Ballycumber man. All my cousins and all my family are still over there.’ The album has only gone top 20 in this country so far but give that time.
Tom Grennan – Evering Road is out now. He plays the Olympia Theatre, Dublin March 28, 2022.
‘I needed to mess up so I could learn how to be a better human being. I’ve turned my life around’