James Hersey is January’s ‘One to Watch’ Artist!

James Hersey is a singer songwriter from Vienna, Austria and cites everyone from James Taylor to Michael Jackson as his musical influences.

As a teenager he played in a punk band, sang in a choir, recorded covers but still felt limited in what he could do in his hometown so he decided to travel.

He said, “I came to London in 2011 and played around 100 open mic nights in six weeks. I would sell mixtapes to make money for the tube and that didn’t work at all…Sometimes you play for tourists and there’s 45 people or sometimes you play for two guys and nobody cares and one of them is wasted.”

Despite his humble beginnings Hersey was determined to succeed and in 2014 his luck began to turn around.

While sound checking before a show in Germany, he played a series of chords in front of his manager, who then convinced him to turn the accidental song into a full length song; that track became known as, ‘Coming Over’.

That song became reworked and remixed by Kygo and Dillon Francis and blew up for Hersey.

Fast forward to today, James is signed with Glassnote Entertainment and has released his debut single, ‘Miss You’.

He’s also getting noticed by major radio DJs such as BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac and is confident in the music he’s working on, “I’m at that point where I’ll put out music and if people don’t want to listen I couldn’t care less. For now they’re listening, which is fine by me.”