James Morrison is singing into the storm

A week ago, he walked onto a stage in Tivoli, Denmark, expecting to play for around 3,000 people. Instead, more than 11,000 packed out the open-air stage, singing along to songs both new and old. “That was probably my favourite of the year,” he says. “All singing the words, new and old fans, it was cool.”

It’s a moment that feels symbolic. For an artist whose career has often been defined by soaring highs and long stretches of silence, Morrison is still pulling crowds far larger than expected. But it’s not just nostalgia driving them back. His new record, Fight Another Day, is his seventh—but it has the urgency and hunger of a debut, written out of necessity rather than convenience.

That necessity has always been at the heart of Morrison’s story. Back in 2006, his debut album Undiscovered launched him into global consciousness almost overnight, powered by breakout single “You Give Me Something”. The record went straight to No. 1 in the UK, selling 1.5 million copies, and earned him the BRIT Award for Best British Male Artist. Across the next decade, he piled on hits like “Wonderful World” and the Nelly Furtado duet “Broken Strings”, becoming one of the most recognisable voices in British pop-soul. By 2022, he had released a “Best Of” and even re-recorded much of his catalogue—a kind of line in the sand before the next chapter.

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If Tivoli proved anything, it’s that there’s no rust on Morrison. He jokes that fans are “pretty forgiving” when he reshuffles his setlists, though he knows better than to drop “Broken Strings” again. “I remember leaving “Broken Strings” out years ago. I just felt like I’d had enough of it, and the crowd were chanting, “Broken Strings! Broken Strings!” I looked at Matt my bass player and he was like, “you’ve got to play it.””

Still, there’s no lack of ambition in the way he talks about what comes next. Even while Fight Another Day lands, Morrison is already dreaming beyond it. A blues album is high on his wish list, inspired by his love for covers and the traditions of soul, R&B, and rock. “I’ve always loved doing covers because that’s where I started,” he says. “Busking, playing pubs, you always had to play a cover. I think it’s a good gauge of what an artist really is when they sing another version of someone else’s song.”

Even looking back at his own discography, he doesn’t treat the past as sacred. Re-recording his earlier work was less nostalgia than recalibration. “I thought I’d come out of it feeling like these songs are rubbish and too old, but actually I was proud of some of them,” he admits. “It was a weird feeling, like 21-year-old me was all right. Didn’t really know what I was doing, but it was okay.”

The songs—old and new—continue to shift meaning for him. “I can sing a song a thousand times and then suddenly one day it’ll just be different, and it’ll just sound really good,” he says. That unpredictability, that ability to keep finding new life in familiar material, may be why his return feels so alive. Two decades into a career that could easily have plateaued, Morrison seems to be starting again—not out of obligation, but because he still has something to prove, first to himself and then to everyone else.

Before listening to the record, I had expected what most people expect from an album by a pop star whose hits are old enough to drink — mediocrity. As I plowed through Fight Another Day I found myself totally wrongfooted, second guessing if Morrison had always had a voice this golden. Twenty years later, a voice as gritty as his is supposed to be worn down to a barely audible rasp at this point, but the songs in this album prove he's still one of the most gifted vocalists the UK has to offer. Every song on this record has the right to be a hit. This is even more surprising when he tells me he felt like he couldn’t write anything he liked for a long time.

“I definitely was writing songs, and they just weren’t coming as easy, you know?” he admits while explaining the album gap. “We’d have a title, and we’d try to write something around it, but it just didn’t feel like I was writing about anything in particular. So it went on like that for about a year. Some of the songs were all right, but for what I was feeling at the time, it just didn’t feel right.”

That drought broke in 2022, when Morrison entered therapy. The shift cracked open a new writing style — direct, unguarded, sometimes uncomfortably so. He found himself collaborating with writers Adam James Kjetil Morland, whose melodic instincts unlocked something dormant. “And then I just sort of leaned into it a little bit and had the time to play with my guitar and get ideas together,” he says. “Adam wrote quite a few of the tunes with me, actually, like “Silver Lining”, “Man Who Can’t Be Loved”, and “Something I Can’t Forget”.”

The resulting record is eclectic but cohesive, balancing R&B grooves with rock-leaning choruses, piano ballads with bouncy pop. Yet its heartbeat is lyrical—clear-eyed accounts of self-doubt, perseverance, and hope. Morrison knows it’s a collection where singles don’t necessarily define the album. “Album tracks to me are more important because it shows you a slightly different side to the artist rather than the single shiny thing,” he says. “The singles are like little dangling carrots—hopefully you like those songs, but the album tracks are where you really see what someone’s trying to say.”

This duality defines Fight Another Day: a record where “New Day” can feel like a breezy radio hit, while “The Man Who Can’t Be Loved” plays like open-heart surgery. Morrison insists there’s no filler here. Every track needed to earn its place. And while the industry might still measure him by streams and chart positions, Morrison is more interested in listeners discovering the deeper cuts.

After years of pressure to deliver hits, the breakthrough came when he stopped treating songwriting like a problem to solve and instead treated it like a process to trust—which involves working with trusted writers and producers to get the best out of each other.

“I wouldn’t call myself co-producer in terms of like, right, I want it to sound like this,” Morrison says, reflecting on the recording process. “But it happens like that when it’s natural. It’s more like I feel like I know how it needs to sound. And if you’re with two, three other people, and you’re all saying the same thing at the same time, it just clicks. I like that camaraderie part of writing.”

That shift in energy brought a freedom he hadn’t felt in years. “In the beginning it was definitely more like I was learning, so I wasn’t really pushing my ideas as much as maybe I should have or wanted to,” he says. “In 2005 when it was all kicking off, l was naive to the game. I feel like that’s kind of where I’m at now, but I’ve got experience. It’s like I started again. I just didn’t think about anything other than: did I like the songs? Am I doing something that makes me feel good?”

The result is a record that refuses to disguise its seams. Morrison admits he no longer fears imperfection; if anything, it has become part of his artistic compass. By inviting others into the room — from long-time collaborators to new voices like James—he found himself breaking out of the loop of second-guessing. He’s not trying to prove himself with radio polish, not hiding behind lyrical gloss, but trusting that letting go might be the very thing that gives his music its staying power.

For all his longevity, Morrison is blunt about the limits of his career. He’s not chasing the endless, 200-date tours that many of his peers still grind through. The reason is simple: family comes first. With two daughters at home, his approach to live music has shifted into short bursts rather than marathons. “That’s the main reason why I’m not really doing loads and loads of gigs—it’s because I’ve got the two girls,” he admits. “So yeah, next year I’m hoping there’ll be some more shows, but right now it’s about balance.”

Despite the discipline, he acknowledges that his voice won’t last forever. “Maybe one day it won’t work the same,” he says quietly. “It happens to a lot of singers. Definitely something I’m worried about.”

That worry is tempered by a kind of succession plan: his daughter. Morrison lights up when he talks about her budding talent. “My daughter’s really good at singing. I’m hoping to do a song or two with her. She’s been like my little padawan for quite a few years now.” She’s already involved, if only in the background, absorbing the realities of a music career while testing her own voice. “She’s really, really good. I’m excited to sing with her, do some shows, get some nice songs together.”

But he doesn’t glamorize the industry to her—or to anyone. He’s careful to emphasise that music isn’t always a dream life. “It’s not all a bed of roses,” he cautions. “You’ve got to be stable, do it for the right reasons. You’ve got to have your shit together a little bit.” That groundedness is perhaps what keeps him so connected to his fanbase after all these years.

Even his daughters double as critics. “Kids are brutal,” he laughs. “If they don’t like something, they’ll just go, nah.” Yet their enthusiasm has been a compass. “Elsie listens to a lot of different music—Olivia Rodrigo, all the new guys coming through. If she says, ‘This sounds really good, Dad,’ I take notice. Honestly, I think she’s more excited for the album to come out than I am.”

It’s a fitting image: Morrison, once a twenty-one-year-old in the glare of a debut Number One, now steady at forty with his children cheering him on from the living room.

Two decades in, Morrison has little interest in myth-making. His legacy, as he frames it, is the act of still being here, still making music that feels vital. “I think it’s definitely important to be like that,” he reflects. “No matter how well you do, it’s always important to be humble and to remember you’re just a little speck of meat walking about. Bring the best you can bring and don’t hold it in regard. Just hopefully you can add it to what’s already been done and be proud of it.”

If there’s a thread running through Morrison’s career, it’s that refusal to settle. “I’m always competing against myself,” he says. “If I don’t feel like I’m doing better than what I’ve done before, then I just feel like it’s a waste of time.” That restless energy, equal parts bruised and buoyant, is what keeps his songs alive—and why Fight Another Day feels like a second round of success rather than a desperate clamouring of the past.