A song I like by Gabrielle Aplin

About 18 months ago, a PR spent several weeks politely pestering me about Gabrielle Aplin. The "USP" was that she 16-year-old Gabrielle had recorded some of her favourite songs on YouTube and people quite liked them (This was long before Birdy and Conor Maynard and Charlene Soraia turned breathy, twee YouTube cover versions into a hateful subgenre all of its own).

I passed up the opportunity to write something about Gabrielle that summer. The music was pretty enough, but it felt incomplete. Weirdly, though, I was visiting Bath a couple of weeks later and saw Gabrielle's face plastered all over the town's phone boxes. It turns out she was studying for a diploma in the city and had become something of a big deal on the local music scene. I made a mental note to remember her name.

Fast forward to today, and Gabrielle has just released her first proper single, Home. It's a huge step forward: Her voice is stronger, the instrumentation is more confident, the lyrics are mature. If you're a fan of Emmy The Great or Laura Marling, this might make you go all gooey inside, like a Tunnock's Teacake. The video is below, and the EP is out on 9th January.

Gabrielle Aplin - Home

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