The best pop music is built on contradictions. It creates songs so immediate they stay with you for life. It inspires melodies that pluck one person’s heartstrings, yet can also inspire a whole stadium to move their feet. Pop is responsible for lyrics that speak directly to an individual experience while provoking total strangers to join in a communal outpouring of emotion. The greatest pop is a beautiful conundrum. It’s made by truly unique individuals like Bowie or The Beatles, Elvis or Aretha, yet soundtracks whole swathes of time. It’s impossible to imagine the world without hearing certain pop songs in your head. It’s art; it’s product; it’s style and substance, because in the rare instances when pop truly manages to balance its contradictions and marry its opposites, truly unique music emerges. Creating his second album, ‘Electric Light’, James Bay is not only aware of the precarious equilibrium needed to succeed in this pop world, but he’s determinedly embraced the challenge head on. He does have an advantage though, because the Hitchin-born singer-songwriter is something of a pop paradox himself… the best kind.

Hunter Metts

Events

Past events

May 4, 2025

James Bay · The Ogden Theatre

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