Jamie Scott’s CV reads like a who’s who of the upper echelons of the music industry. Successful as an artist in his own right as part of Jamie Scott & The Town and Graffiti6, his writing and production credits include Ed Sheran, One Direction, Justin Bieber and Rag ‘N’ Bone Man to name but a few. In fact, as a writer and producer Scott has sold over 50 million albums, 50 million singles and has 10 billion streams on Spotify.
Born and raised in Surrey, he taught himself the guitar at the age of 7yrs and the piano at 12yrs old. His parents introduced him to Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, and he entrenched himself in singer-songwriters such as Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Carol King, and Joni Mitchell. In 2007 he released his first single, and by 2009 he was actively working as a songwriter, having penned hits for JLS, Enrique Iglesias, and a new boyband called One Direction. “I just love to write songs that will connect,” said Jamie in his 2016 feature piece with The Guardian.
It is this love of writing great music that has meant Jamie Scott is one of the most successful songwriters of his generation. It’s also what made him stand back and take stock of what was really important to him. “When you write so many songs, there are always certain ones that you feel attached to. You never know how long a song will sit around for…”
This was certainly true in the case of his biggest hit to date, Cold Water, which was picked up for Major Lazer feat. Justin Bieber 3 years after it was written.
At the end of 2019, having spent over ten years in the studio writing for other people, Jamie decided to take some time to focus on his own career as an artist. Revisiting some of the songs he had fallen in love with, he cleared his schedule and started the process of recording in the way that he had envisioned the songs taking form. Locked away in his home studio, he recorded most of the instrumentation himself and, without really intending to, finished an entire album’s worth of music in just 5 weeks.
The result is possibly the most significant and personal body of work that Jamie has released to date. A combination of brilliant writing and expert musicianship blended together with his striking vocal, Jamie Scott has truly found his identity.
Leading the charge is debut single Friendly Fire. Upbeat, but with slightly tragic undertones, Jamie takes us through the motions of a difficult relationship, with two people once so in love now marking out their battle lines. Written with friend and longtime collaborator Theo Hutchcraft from Hurts, Friendly Fire is almost anthemic in its delivery with a hook you can’t help but sing along to.
“Friendly Fire is a song about the inevitable break in a relationship that went wrong a long time ago, but which was played out because no-one was strong enough to end it, and in the process, both hurt the only person they never wanted to. Sonically Friendly Fire was the first track produced for the record and set the tone.”
Friendly Fire is the first in a series of singles leading up to the release of his album How Still The River on 7th August. Having already clocked up 65 million streams on his own artist projects, this record has been a long time coming for Jamie Scott fans. To Support the release (1st May) Jamie is releasing an acoustic version of the single, with accompanying video filmed from his home studio in lockdown, on 15th May.
Check out ‘Friendly Fire (Acoustic Version) – BELOW:
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