JP COOPER

JP Cooper has done the legwork. Ten years in bands in and around his Manchester hometown. Multiple songs written on his own and with a variety of collaborators, a couple of which became global hits-that-will-not-die: Perfect Strangers with Jonas Blue and his own September Song, which is now sitting at some 600 million streams. An international solo career built on pure songcraft.

And he’s done the business. The singer-songwriter’s 2017 debut album Raised Under Grey Skies has sold in old-fashioned numbers: one million copies at time of writing. His 11 million monthly Spotify listeners have contributed to a grand – very grand – total of four billion total streams.

And, over the past 18 months, Cooper has done the hardest thing: built on all that to create a second album, a collection of 13 songs that work as together and work apart, that out-paces, out-sings and, by his exacting standards, out-classes his debut.

“My first record reached so many people on a personal level,” he reflects, “so they’ve built a relationship with it ­– and even now it keeps doing its thing. But coming back now, this is more of a body of work that’s been put together with thought and care and not in a rush. When you have a hit single that changes things and what the album should be – there’s pressure to write a load more singles.