Golden Oldies
BY GEORGE
The Oldie readers will doubtless be aficionados of the quiz show Pointless, the one in which contestants have to come up with the most abstruse and least obvious answer to a given question. Confession: I have won Celebrity
Pointless. Indeed, I have the trophy to prove it (it is the only one on the dusty, empty shelf, apart from the Bad Sex Prize, which licenses me to say, rather like Quentin Letts does, that I am an ‘award-winning author’).
Anyway, the first time I heard of the subject of this month’s column was when I was standing on a podium on some shiny-floored studio and the Pointless question was, ‘Name a capital city in the title of a pop song.’
Mm. Obviously, everyone would say Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’ and ‘London Calling’ by The Clash. So I offered ‘Amsterdam’ by Coldplay. But the song the most people had heard of by miles was ‘Budapest’ by George Ezra.
I had never heard of George Ezra. Since then, though, I have heard of almost nothing but George Ezra, currently in mid-tour of the UK and Ireland. He won a Brit for best male solo artist in February, and has had number one singles and albums akimbo.
And I, too, have become a superfan of this unassuming boy-next-door with the astonishing golden voice that appears to emanate from somewhere in the Deep South, from the time when Dylan was first strumming an acoustic guitar.
George Ezra is, in fact, 25, and from Hertfordshire, but sounds as old as the hills. Yet his bass-baritone voice belts out of a blond boy who looks like he should be doing a Saturday job serving Egg Mcmuffins.
He is clean-cut and blond. He favours a pork-pie hat, polo shirts and chinos but when he opens his mouth, none of that matters. You think, where on earth did that God-given voice and songwriting talent – not to mention his unnatural niceness – come from?
Answer comes there none. He is a once-in-a-generation talent, a rarissima avis, and, so far in his short but dazzling career, he hasn’t produced a duff album; even a duff track.
Sadly I have to write this before I head off to the O2 for his gig as The Oldie has to be put to bed, but I am confident I can send this off to the printers and the ether, safe in the knowledge that everyone’s journey to the O2 will be worth it.
And by the way, I have actually heard him sing live. I was standing right behind him as he crooned to his girlfriend in Hyde Park last summer, at the Paul Simon concert – so no pointless letters in green ink to the editor, please, about not listening to singers in the flesh.