The Young Songwriters Competition…
Hello folks,
Thought it was about time I drew your attention to this great competition, the final stages of which are imminent.
A little while ago I was approached by Hellen Bach (who works closely with the Children In Need team) and our good friend AD Chivers to be a judge in the Young Songwriters competition for Barnardos. AD had been responsible for whittling down the hundreds of entires and my job was to choose five finalists from the twenty shortlisted for the Scotland and East of England region.
I was astounded by the quality of some of the entries and it really brought home how important a competition like this really is in these times. Many of you will be aware of my Saturday night X Factor tirades on Twitter. The general public are regularly exposed to nothing more than a parade of sub-standard karaoke singers and fed the notion that this is the future of music in our country. Well let me tell you; we have a host of extraordinarily talented young musicians and songwriters right under our noses and the Barnardos Young Songwriters Competition is a great way to give these young people a voice.
It was a great honour to be involved in the judging and I was also able to contribute to the recording sessions for the final four songs at the wonderful British Grove Studios, under the direction of producer AD Chivers. I played on two tracks; Imogen Mechie’s Build My Wings and Bethan Funning’s Spaceships & Moonbeams with some great musicians including Grant Windsor, John Bleese and Ian Matthews from Kasabian.
But now it’s over to you folks…
The winner of the competition will be decided by whichever song of the final four gets the most downloads from the Young Songwriters website. 45p from each download goes directly to support Barnardos. I really do think that this is such a worthwhile cause, both as a charity and as a concept to support young musical talent. Now I don’t want to sway your votes too much, but my personal favourite is Build My Wings, and not just because I’m on it;Â it has hit written all over it.
You can check out the songs of all four finalists at the Young Songwriters website. Please do go have a listen and download your favourite tunes. The competition closes on 12th December and the winner with the most downloads will be announced on the 14th.
Enjoy! x
