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A Top 10 UK chart entry for his 2021 album Boy From Michigan followed by some of the very best reviews of his career for 2024’s The Art Of The Lie confirm that John Grant continues to go from strength to strength.
In fact, the last 15 years have been an astonishing era for Grant, since the boy from Michigan released his belated debut solo album Queen Of Denmark after a prolonged exile from the music business. QOD was voted MOJO Magazine’s best album of 2010 and Grant’s profile has since risen massively through a series of rapturously received LPs that entwine acutely melodic chamber-pop with darkly glittering dance music tropes, centred on synth-pop and disco. Against this brooding and inventive backdrop and channelled through his glorious dulcet baritone, Grant unleashed autobiographical laments and diatribes, as painful and intimate as they were caustic and savagely funny.
Michigan is where Grant’s journey began where he felt compelled to hide emerging same-sex feelings from his God-fearing family and community. The Grants’ move to Colorado where John spent his miserable closeted teens, and the emotional fall-out, led to severe depression and substance and alcohol addiction that he only managed to combat after the messy split of his band The Czars in 2005.
Even so, over six Czars albums, Grant had mastered the art of gorgeous, country-flecked melody and gripping narratives, and once he’d embraced sobriety, the exquisitely brooding and rousing soft-rock contours of Queen Of Denmark changed his life. Between that debut and The Art Of The Lie are four albums. 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts (recorded in Reykjavik, after which he decided to stay) helped earn him Attitude Magazine’s Man of the Year award, and then perhaps the greatest accolade so far, a Best International Male Solo Artist nomination at the 2014 BRITS, alongside Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars and Drake. After recording tracks accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for BBC Radio 6 Music (later released as John Grant And The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra: Live In Concert), Grant released Grey Tickles, Black Pressure in 2015, his first Top Five UK album. 2017’s Top 20 album Love Is Magic was his most electronic to date, co-produced by synthesiser savant Benge, a member of the electronic trio Wrangler, Grant’s collaborators under the collective name of Creep Show for 2018’s dynamic album Mr Dynamite and 2023’s Yawning Abyss.
Whilst forging his own records, Grant’s adventures in mood, texture and sound has featured numerous collaborators, including Sinead O’Connor, CMAT, Hercules And Love Affair, Tracey Thorne, Elbow, David Arnold, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams, Midlake, Susanne Sundfør, Cate Le Bon and Big Special
Grant was also one of four vocalists to perform Songs Of Scott Walker (1967-70), part of 2017’s BBC Proms season backed by the BBC Philharmonic at London’s Royal Albert Hall – a venue that Grant had sold out on his own the previous year 2016. There have been soundtrack collaborations too, with Grant’s songs featured in the film drama Weekend, the HBO TV series Looking and Queerama, which documented a century of LGBT+ pride and persecution.
If Grant’s records are beautiful cut jewels, perhaps his star shines even brighter on stage, typically backed by an empathic band drawn from Icelandic, American and British musicians, where this endearing character’s deeply personal sagas trigger an immediate response from his fanatical following.
As well as releasing and touring The Art Of The Lie the past year has seen Grant duet with the brilliant CMAT and provide guest vocals on a track with Big Special. Meanwhile, this Summer will see Grant embark on one of his most ambitious projects to date writing the music for, and starring in, the ballet production of “A Single Man” premiering at the Manchester International Festival and then London’s Opera House In other words, the boy from Michigan has done good, often against the odds, quelling the demons and creating some of the most resonant singing and songwriting of the 21st century
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