Tom Odell has announced his fifth studio album, Best Day Of My Life, released on October 28th via UROK/Mtheory and is available to pre-order/save now here. Tom has also released his stunning and heartfelt new single ‘Smiling All The Way Back Home’ – listen here.
To celebrate the announcement, Tom has also shared the first episode of his brand new docu-series, which gives viewers an insight into the making of the album – watch here. Future episodes will follow in the coming weeks. Also announced today is a UK in-store tour, kicking off in London on the 21st October. For ticket details, see here.
Having fulfilled his major label record deal in 2021, Tom began to look ahead to a new era, a new way of working, and embarked on an independent new chapter of his career in which he reclaims control and takes back the reins of his artistry. Now an independent artist, free from the constraints of a major label and armed with a newfound sense of freedom, Tom Odell has stripped things back. He says, “I feel so free, so liberated to be an independent artist. There’s a huge amount of relief in this music, of just getting to do exactly what I want to do”
With focus taken off hooks and songwriting strategy, Tom Odell has created an environment where listeners can sit with the music and breathe. Inspired by a Rick Rubin quote on the importance of applying rules to yourself, he put that into practice, limiting himself to creating music using just his voice and his piano. The result is a work of minimalist beauty, comprising just Tom’s voice, a piano and the occasional creak of a stool, to form what is not just Tom’s rawest and most honest album to date with its profound songwriting and masterful piano, but a body of work of which Tom is immensely proud. He says “One year ago, almost exactly to the day, I set myself the challenge to write and record an entire album using only my voice and my piano with absolutely nothing else. I found myself digging deeper than I ever have before both with my words and piano playing. I am so proud of the way this record has turned out and I really cannot wait for you all to hear it.”
Best Day Of My Life takes Tom to some frank and painful places. On ‘Enemy’ he discusses his ongoing battle with anxiety, and ‘Just Another Thing That We Don’t Talk About’ narrates his inherited tendency to suppress his own feelings. The album also features the already-released title track ‘Best Day Of My Life’, one of the most poignant songs he’s ever written, tackling the emotional peaks and troughs of being alive and experiencing moments of euphoria following bouts of sadness; ‘Sad Anymore’, a beautifully delicate and haunting track and a bittersweet moment of self-reflection that see’s Tom question his own happiness; and ‘Flying:))’, an elegant and mellow expression of despair.
The tender, heartfelt new single ‘Smiling All The Way Back Home’ is the closing track on the forthcoming album. Discussing it, Tom says “I went through a really hard couple of years where I really lost my stability, and in a way the album is a journey towards letting go. When I get to that last song, I really feel that journey of arriving somewhere better than you were before.”
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