Tom Grennan: Writing songs saved me from depression

The Bedford-born 23-year-old said songwriting helped him to express his emotions 
Music therapy: Singer Tom Grennan
Dave Benett
Emma Powell6 July 2018
The Weekender

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Singer Tom Grennan has shared how songwriting helped him recover from a violent attack that left him with four metal plates in his jaw.

The star, now 23, was set upon by strangers when he was only 18. He said: “I hated school, then something happened in my life where I was attacked and that sparked a creative thing in my head.

“I was housebound because I was mad scared and depressed so it made me think on a deeper level. Because I wasn’t talking to anyone I thought, ‘Right, I’m going to write about what I’m feeling’.

“I wouldn’t be here talking to you if that hadn’t have happened. I probably wouldn’t have dived deeper into me. It definitely helped me out.”

Party time: Tom Grennan and Laura Whitmore attend the launch of his debut new album Lighting Matches
Dave Benett

Grennan, who starred with Stormzy in a video for Charlie XCX last year, today released debut album Lighting Matches following a party in Mayfair last night.

He said he has had to “graft hard” at song writing which “hasn’t come easy at all”.

Performer: Tom Grennan is currently on the summer festival circuit
Eamonn M. McCormack/ Getty

He said: “I think you do need a natural kind of thing to do it, some people it comes so natural that they don’t need to think about it or you graft at it and I’ve grafted hard.

“If you could tell my younger self that I’d be here now I’d tell my younger self to do one.”

Grennan, who will mark the release of Lighting Matches with a performance at HMV Oxford Street tonight, is currently doing the summer festival circuit and will headline the Festival Republic stage at Reading and Leeds later this year, an achievement he thinks will reduce him to tears.

“Reading was my first ever festival so to be headlining a stage will be pretty humbling,” he said. “I might have a little tear that day. I’m a crier. It’s good to cry and get it all out. I think I’ll be very shocked at the fact I’m doing it.”

He said it’s getting harder to go out without being recognised, describing his new found fame as “pretty weird”.

“It’s nice that people are liking my music and I think people like the fact I’m a real geezer – I’m a normal lad from Bedford.”

Tom Grennan will perform live at HMV Oxford Street 363 tonight

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