George Ezra – Arrggghh, No More !!!!

Sometimes a new artist comes along that you think, ‘he sounds all right, I’ll keep an eye on what he does’ – but then he’s go stratospheric and you can’t bear the sound of them anymore !! Well this happened to me with George Ezra.

First track I heard a couple of years ago was 'Budapest' which is an incredibly catchy, feel-good song albeit he does have an odd voice, sounds a bit like a little boy mimicking his dad. He sings in that trendy indie folk fake accent, just like Mumford & Sons and Sam Smith. Must admit I wasn’t sure I could listen to a full album of it without it becoming annoying though. Move on to last year and good old George has now released an album and is getting regular airplay on the radio.

Don’t ask me what happened but last summer it all changed. In our office we usually had Virgin Radio on, a station that played a big enough variety of music that we could all cope with it - admittedly it was the only station we could all agree on!! Problem was they played 'Shotgun' by Mr Ezra, now this wasn’t just once or twice a day but (it felt like) every hour, every day. This went on for months and it became a running joke in the office – especially if we hadn’t heard it for an hour or so!!

Upshot of this was that George Ezra was now everywhere, not only were we hearing him ALL the time on the radio, we were seeing him plenty in the press, he was on the TV all the time too! Sorry, but this just turned me off him, it got to a point where I can’t stand his fucking annoying, faux old fashioned American black guy voice anymore!! He even spoiled Jools Hollands Hootenany on New Year’s Eve for me, let me tell you I’d have quite happily taken a shotgun to him myself that night.

Over-Exposure leads to career death
This isn’t the first time over-exposure of a debut artist has lead me from liking them to detesting them, remember Emile Sande? She followed a similar path to George Ezra going from nothing to being absolutely everywhere – and what has she done since? Nothing to match that first album! - I’d like to say Ed Sheeran too but I never really liked him from the start!!

Traditionally artists would normally get that level of exposure by around their third album - if all was going well, not now though! I think the lack of regular charts and programmes like Top Of The Pops leads the media grasping at anything that sounds remotely good, they just totally over do the exposure and kill that artists career. So they do what they do with everything else, build it up and up till it eventually collapses. 

As with most things, slow and steady often wins the race. Since the New Year we’ve changed stations now on our office radio and I haven’t heard George Ezra since. Ahhh Blisss !!!