James Bay: Imposter Syndrome, Trauma & Controlling The Voice In Your Head | E166

I remember writing Hold Back the River and everybody at the label jumping for joy and thinking that they had a hit on their hands.

James Bay! Hold back the river. Let me look in your eyes. Hold back the river so I...

I dreamt about being on those stages in front of all the people that my heroes were in front of. And I remember this burning desire. I was dead certain that I wanted it more than everyone.

Chaos and the Calm comes out, debuts at number one. That's crazy.

And the winner is James Bay!

Thank you so much. This is insane. Nobody could have made us understand it was gonna be traumatic. Who I was on the Chaos and the Calm campaign, I needed to stop all of that for my soul and my mental health. Yeah, it's pretty fucking intense. Ed Sheeran's invited me to open for him in football stadiums around Europe. And the bit I hate to admit and I'm anxious to confess is that... Life can take a toll on people. To be male and talk about your feelings, it was more about, "Can you suck it up, though?" It's all, like, an act.

Would you do it all again?

(sighs) I'm really concerned about what happens next.

So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. James. So you're a '90s baby.

Yeah. 1990.

S- same as me, 1992.

Okay.

What about those early years defined you?

Ooh.

And the person you would g- go on to be? When you look back at the dots and say, "Well, that, that, and that is the reason I am who I am," what are those first dots?

I, I grew up in a, in a, um, kinda commuter belt town called Hitchin in Hertfordshire, which is about an hour outside of the center of London. I hated going into London. It's horrible, busy, noisy, smelly, awful. The quiet calm of my little hometown was perfect. It was safe, pretty much safe. Um, I'm the youngest of, of me and my brother, um, and then there's my parents, my mum and my dad. And we don't have my... I only have one cousin who was born ten years after I was born. So we were a small family. It wasn't a big crowd, it wasn't the sort of noisy experience growing up, uh, in that respect. My parents are pretty fiery people and, um, they're kind of party animals in a way. They, they're very social. They're very loud and, and, and, and, um, kind of excitable. So I feel that, that was going on sort of all the time. They had people round all the time and they kind of, I suppose, inspired me and my brother to sort of be okay in all sorts of social situations. And, uh, I think all kids, myself included, go through moments of shyness and moments where they're a little more outgoing, then maybe a little more shy again, then outgoing again. I r- remember most vividly the sort of shyer times and I stood behind my older brother, who would lead nine out of ten times into any situation with other kids or whatever. So I felt I was a more timid person, gentle, compared to my parents and my brother who were more, um, just louder. (laughs)