Scottish singer-songwriter Tom Walker rocketed to fame thanks to the success of his 2017 single “Leave a Light On.” His 2019 debut album What a Time to Be Alive topped the UK Albums Chart and sold three million copies worldwide.
He should have been on top of the world. Instead, he almost lost it all – and quit music entirely.
“Do you know what I should have done?” Walker told the BBC in a new interview. “I’d just spent five years touring a very successful album, I hadn’t seen friends, I’d barely seen my missus. I should have just taken some time off. And instead I was like: ‘Oh, my God, I need to write this next album.'”
He started working on a follow-up just as the pandemic hit, forcing his writing sessions online as the world went into lockdown. “Five hours on a Zoom call. It’s the worst thing you can imagine,” Walker said. “Somebody would sing a melody, and you’d sing it back with an amendment, and it just went on for so long.”
He went through the motions of writing and recording, but his heart wasn’t in it, and it showed in the results. “I binned an album’s worth of stuff,” Walker explained. “I lost my way with music. I fell out of love with it during that process.”
Even when the world opened back up and live concerts became a possibility again, Walker had some trouble readjusting. For his first show back, a socially distanced outdoor event, Walker said he practiced “more than for any other gig I’ve ever done” but still experienced the beginnings of a panic attack onstage. “I went out on stage and messed up a load of the lyrics. I completely fluffed it,” he admitted.
Last spring, however, Walker finally found his lightning bolt of inspiration. He recorded the majority of his upcoming album I Am, which he called “depressing with an undertone of hope,” in just three weeks.
Songs like “Freaking Out” and “Lifeline” touch on on weighty subjects like anxiety and the unexpected loss of a close friend. “I came to the conclusion that these experiences are important to talk about, as long as it doesn’t upset the people who are directly involved,” Walker explained.
After a five-year gap and “no top 20 hits in a while,” Walker still has a ways to go before he reaches the same heights of his first album. But his new music has already connected with audiences on TikTok, and that’s just as meaningful to him.
“One of the most beautiful things as a songwriter is when people feel the song is written for them,” he said. “When you see people in the front row bawling their eyes out, it’s mad that the connection to music can be that deep.”
