Prior to ‘This is the Place’ Tom Grennan has released, or been featured on three other tracks that have made it into the top 75 of the singles chart.

His debut album, released in 2018 was one of the 10 best selling debuts of that year and with Radio 1’s Live Lounge exposure, as well as Later with Jools Holland, he has already made quite a name for himself as a singer, working with Chase and Status and others. But with attention now on his solo work, we will certainly be hearing a lot more about Tom Grennan in his own right. 

‘This is the Place’ is a song that is based on what we’re all looking for from time to time. A tranquil, calm place we can quickly escape to when everything becomes a bit too much, or when we’re trying not to think about a specific someone! What you hear from the very start of the song is that Tom Grennan has a powerful vocal, that is edgy and is very unique. The pace of the lyrics is fast, but the clarity of the delivery is so good you can still carefully follow where the story goes. The music has a mixture of guitar, bass, drums and piano as the main instruments, with backing vocals that fill any void that is left. The verse is catchy, and gets your interest straight away, the chorus takes it to another level. It’s powerful, takes the pitch up and rounds the whole song up beautifully. The construction of this is well thought through, it follows what we would want to hear in a new release and is slick in the final product. It builds and fades and has a warmth to the sound. 

Tom Grennan nearly ended up as a football player, and it was people saying that he had a good voice that turned his head into the direction of music. Thank heavens they did, yes he has a good voice, it’s really distinctive and powerful, but he’s also a more rounded artist than just a singer, he performs and writes as well as anyone and this could well be the start of an exciting episode in his career.

 Indie rock    Singer-songwriter 

Author: Phil Arnold

Phil Arnold is a musician, producer and music reviewer from Devon, in the South West of England. Whilst not writing music reviews, Phil also writes and records under the name of Ugbrooke.