You’d have to be the most terrific curmudgeon not to walk away from a George Ezra show feeling at least a little uplifted. He’s got a slightly awkward charm, like a nerd trapped inside the body of the first XI captain; he’s absolutely determined that the audience has a good time, to the extent of asking them to stand up for Blame It on Me (he’d had them standing for Paradise, but he took too long between songs and everyone sat down), and he’s got hooks so plentiful he could go long-line fishing with them.
These are songs that have been laboured over. Hooks as indelible as Cassy O’s don’t get written by accident, and you can hear the cleverness in the way the chords under the chorus shuffle their order rather than directly repeating: hooks under hooks. He’s spoken often about his mental health, and it rises up in his lyrics – in the lecture he gets from a friend in Pretty Shining People about being afraid to embrace the world; the references to anxiety in Get Away – but these aren’t just sad lyrics in cheerful music. They’re sad lyrics in music designed to feel like sunshine.
This is so much the case that being at the gig rather feels like listening to a succession of holiday ad soundtracks. During Blame It on Me, when the brass section are invited off their platform to cavort awkwardly around the stage to a Latin breakdown – pop’s internationally recognised symbol for “Let’s party!” – it even looks like a holiday ad. The songs – inspired by trips abroad – are filled with travel, and you rather wonder if he and his co-writer, Joel Pott, simply realised that people like being reminded of their hols, and set out to recreate that feeling again and again.
They’re not afraid to remind you of other songs: Green Green Grass, from his forthcoming third album, has a chorus a stone’s throw from Quinn the Eskimo; the chorus of Paradise, with its burbling bass, scratching guitar and references to “hot sun” sounds like a Graceland outtake. This is all ruthlessly professional songwriting, but that’s pop: ruthless professionalism delivers hits, and there’s no sign of them stopping for Ezra.
