Even the most accomplished artists experience off nights. Tom Odell, reflecting on his 2016 performance at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, considered it a setback.
“I was really dissatisfied with that show,” he admitted. “I was frustrated, and I don’t think it went how I wanted it to go. I don’t even think it was a full crowd.”
Unbeknownst to him, the audience that evening included an 18-year-old musician named Finneas O’Connell and his younger sister, Billie Eilish.
Having uploaded a demo to Soundcloud just months prior, Odell’s performance unexpectedly altered the course of their careers.
“I was already a fan,” O’Connell stated, “but I watched the show he put on, and his band were incredible and his songs were incredible.”
“I credit that show as being the reason I wanted to start putting out music under my own name.”
O’Connell shared these remarks on stage in Manchester this April during his inaugural UK solo tour.
Odell, present in the audience that night, expressed his astonishment.
“It was really moving for me, because my career has not always been easy,” he confessed.
“But also, it was a wonderful lesson. We write off days where we feel like we have nothing to offer – but you never know what effect you might have on people.”
Eilish and O’Connell have remained mindful of this influence. Earlier this summer, Eilish invited Odell to open for her European tour dates, hinting at future collaborations.
This opportunity coincides with a resurgence in the musician’s career.
Following his discovery by Lily Allen, the Chichester-born artist achieved considerable success with his debut album, propelled by the poignant ballad “Another Love,” which has become a streaming giant with over three billion plays on Spotify alone.
However, this was followed by a period of relative obscurity, with subsequent albums and tours appealing primarily to dedicated fans without achieving mainstream breakthrough.
In 2021, he fulfilled his contract with Sony Music and embarked on an independent path – a move he described as “liberating” after years of “struggling to put out the music I wanted to put out”.
His subsequent material embraced darker and more confessional themes. After gaining traction on TikTok, the title track from his sixth album, “Black Friday,” became a global sensation, garnering 700 million streams last year.
Similar to the Hollywood gig, Odell underestimated the public’s response to the song’s stark and vulnerable lyrics.
“It wasn’t even supposed to be the first single,” he admitted with a laugh, “but in the wonderful world of TikTok, there was a bit of it that really caught people’s attention.”
The lyrics – “I want a better body, I want better skin / I wanna be perfect like all your other friends” – were later featured in the teen drama “Heartstopper,” underscoring an emotional scene depicting a character’s admission to an eating disorder clinic.
Odell described the reaction as profound.
“When I wrote that song, I was really, really miserable,” he said. “I’m a vulnerable person and it’s hard to be alive sometimes.”
“Then fast forward to a year later, and I’m singing that song on stage and all these people are singing back these words and going, ‘We feel the same way’.”
“It’s the most connected I’ve ever felt to an audience.”
The success of “Black Friday” afforded Odell greater creative freedom in producing his new album, “A Wonderful Life.”
His previous record was crafted in his small, personal London studio (the creaking piano pedals are audible on “Nothing Hurts Like Love”).
This time, he secured Studio One at RAK Studios – the very space where The Pogues recorded “Fairytale of New York” and Radiohead composed “High And Dry.”
“I haven’t been able to afford to make a record like that for the last 10 years,” he stated.
“But Black Friday made some money so it was a nice moment of being independent, having success, and then being able to carve out time out to record live.”
To preserve spontaneity, he intentionally left his collection of “16 or 17” songs unfinished, opting to refine the arrangements in the studio alongside his touring band.
This approach lends the songs a weighty, authentic quality.
Odell’s voice, characterized by its tremulous nature, resonates with emotional depth, subtly enhanced by delicate percussion and soaring strings.
Despite this mid-career resurgence and his November 2023 marriage to sculptor Georgina Somerville, “A Wonderful Life” is marked by pervasive uncertainty.
Several song titles pose direct questions (“Can We Just Go Home Now?” and “Why Do I Always Want The Things That I Can’t Have?”), and Odell frequently juxtaposes romantic themes with imagery of mortality and decay.
Odell has stated that the music is the “truest reflection” of his state of mind between January and October last year.
While personally and professionally thriving, he acknowledged the tumultuous state of the world.
“We’re living through such a period of global political uncertainty,” he observed. “It feels like an epochal moment, and it also feels extraordinarily terrifying.”
A devoted diarist, Odell noticed his “anguish” over global events was impacting his personal relationships. He maintains that this heightened awareness is a rational response.
“Is it, in fact, unhealthy and desensitising and numbing to feel joy when we’re surrounded by so much suffering?” he questioned.
“And how much joy is okay before you have to go back to giving a damn?”
The album refrains from offering definitive answers, presenting instead a series of observations.
“There’s a tension that’s resolved when you start answering things, and the best songs for me are those that leave you with more questions,” he explained.
Nevertheless, the final track, “The End Of Suffering,” achieves a sense of balance as the singer welcomes the warmth of the sun.
Odell cites Leonard Cohen’s “The Goal” as inspiration.
Written in the final weeks of Cohen’s life, at a time when his long-term depression had unexpectedly subsided, the song concludes with a serene contemplation on humanity’s capacity to improve the world: “Nowhere to go, nothing to teach / Except that the goal falls short of the reach.”
“As he reached the finishing line of this life, he was saying that the [human] mind can’t solve all the problems we face,” Odell noted.
“And more and more, I feel let down by thought. I find that this idea of the individual is so dissatisfying.”
“I find myself most at peace, most content, when I’m in an ensemble making music, or talking to somebody and the conversation is flowing.”
He concludes that releasing anxiety and embracing the present moment significantly enhances life.
“All through my 20s, I was constantly running towards this goal, you know, ‘one day I’ll feel artistically satisfied’, and you begin to realise that it doesn’t exist,” he confessed.
“It’s actually in each day. The destination is there. You have arrived, it’s right there.”
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