Lucy Spraggan

When Lucy Spraggan strolled onto the X Factor stage in 2012, smiling in her comfy cardie, it took three minutes to change her life forever. Strapping on her guitar, she played original song ‘Last Night (Beer Fear)’ – a rousing, hilarious, folk-pop-hip-hop riot of booze-related bedlam – and saw the 4,000-strong laughing audience rise to its feet chanting “we want more!” Bootcamp beckoned and her second original song, ‘Tea and Toast’ – a strikingly poignant tale of eternal love and grief – saw the now tearful audience rise for a second ovation. Today, she’s still recognised for those performances wherever she goes, “all the time, every day…”

But that’s all over now. In 2015 Lucy Spraggan is no longer merely The Talented One From The X Factor but simply one of Britain’s most gifted young talents, her staggeringly emotive melodic and lyrical powers a bewitching amalgam of Adele, Ed Sheeran, 80s Victoria Wood and early Alex Turner, a northern girl with a world-class wit and an infinitely musical soul. She’s performed since aged 12 (at the Chrich Tramway Festival, her songs were “angsty!”) and spent her determined teens busking outside record labels with D.I.Y CDs, a grafter’s route similar to another similarly tattooed troubadour, Ed Sheeran.

Lucy Spraggan’s third album, ‘We Are’, released on CTRL, is the story of the last two years of her life, of how overnight household fame and its brutal aftermath broke her apart and how she put herself back together again. These are songs of survival, defiance, loss of identity, addiction, booze, hurt and confusion, the most sophisticated, wry, wise and beautiful music of her life. Lead single ‘Unsinkable’ is an epic, piano-led soundscape, a national anthem in waiting, a euphoric swell of defiance which implores, massively, “We won’t abandon this ship, we are unsinkable/Bring on the storm, we are unsinkable!” Featuring a 15-piece choir from London’s Urdang Academy, it was co-written with Adam Argyle and Martin Brammer (James Morrison, Olly Murs) and produced by Steve Power (Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow).