You'll all be humming "do-do-do, do-do-do" by the end of the summer.
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Where’s George Ezra been? ‘Barcelona’? ‘Budapest’? His sudden ‘Breakaway’ from the spotlight is perhaps forgivable; you can’t ‘Blame It On’ the 24-year-old for wanting to escape ‘Over The Creek’ given the mass fame he was so suddenly exposed to. His music is a little divisive; some fail to understand the appeal of ‘Listen(-ing) to the Man’, so I’m ‘Leaving It Up To You’ to decide whether his new track is for you.
If you feel like you’re missing out on an inside joke right now, you clearly aren’t familiar enough with Ezra’s brilliant debut album Wanted On Voyage – the third best selling album of 2014, coming in behind Ed Sheeran’s x and Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour. His distinctively dulcet vocals don’t quite seem to match the fresh-faced musician, his voice emitting a pitch so low it could win a game of limbo with ease. In my mind, he’s a musician you either just don’t get or fall in love with. Far from your traditional pop artist, George Ezra flies with his own unique and fun brand of folk rock that’s garnered him cross-generational fans.
Nearly three years on from the mass success of his debut, Ezra had disappeared off the radar, forgotten by those that raved about him just a few years earlier. But all that ‘Don’t Matter Now’ (I’ll stop now, I promise), because his return single is like embracing an old friend. ‘Don’t Matter Now’ doesn’t particularly revolutionise the folk rock singer – if you weren’t a fan of Wanted on Voyage then don’t expect this to turn you – but draws from what’s already proved to be a successful formula. It’s an effortlessly enjoyable listen, a single to please middle-aged mums as well as their troublesome teenagers. The whole family will be humming “do-do-do, do-do-do” come the end of the summer, by which time we’ll all be as sick of it as we are of ‘Budapest’.
The positive and carefree message of the song is welcome in a sea of noisy, angry musicians, as is the use of real instruments over computer-created synth. Ezra’s widely publicised anxiety on the lead-up to this single is a battle I’m sure many listeners can relate to, and the “shake it off” moral to ‘Don’t Matter Now’ is one the world needs to listen to. With a summer of festivals ahead of him – he played Isle of Wight earlier this month, and is due to play Glastonbury this weekend – his treacle-thick vocals will surely leave fields of festival-goers feeling good for a lot longer yet.
‘Don’t Matter Now’ is available now via Columbia
