It’s getting trickier and trickier to predict who’s going to be the Next Big Thing.
An act can be thrust into public consciousness by a legion of Spotify playlists, only to find themselves dropping off the face of the earth by the time their ‘more experimental’ third single hits the shelves a few short months later. A singer-songwriter can sell out an entire arena tour before they’ve even released their debut album.
Hell, sometimes a singer’s entire album can worm its way around the globe in what feels like a microsecond, soundtracking every moment of your summer before disappearing into the abyss as soon as the next Hot Young Thing rolls out of the gym and saunters towards the nearest microphone.
It’s a tough ol’ industry, eh?
Sometimes, though, you come across an artist for whom you just know that success is inevitable.
Georgia Barnes – or, just Georgia – is a twenty-five-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer. She’s from London and she writes the kind of floor-filling anthems that you, your Mum, and your Cooler Younger Sibling can all get have a ‘lil boogie to.
Her songs aren’t dance tracks, but they’re not pop; instead, they take the best elements of both and melt them together to create some of the most irrepressible pieces of radio-ready dance-pop that we’ve heard in a long time.
What’s even more impressive than her songwriter and production chops, though, is her live show.
On record, she’s a force to be reckoned with; but, live, she’s a force of nature.
When we arrive at Bristol’s Louisiana, a mound of frizzy black hair is being propelled around the stage. It’s attached to the head of a young woman who’s simultaneously whacking a drum pad, hammering away at a keyboard, and belting out choruses that sound like they were designed for rooms ten times the size of this one.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the gist of a Georgia show. It’s one part raw passion, one part ginormous pop bangers, and one hundred percent fantastic. By the time that her set hits the mid-way point and she bursts into Started Out – which, for the record, is still her best song – the audience is like putty in her hands; and, by the time she closes with the Radio 1-A Listed About Work The Dancefloor, she’s somehow managed to transform a tiny venue in Bristol into a bonafide house clubbing extravaganza.
It’s hard to be sure of anything in this day and age; but, we don’t think we’ll turn out to be wrong when we say that Georgia is going to be a superstar by the time next summer rolls around. Keep an eye out for her, dear reader, and do make sure that you’re there the next time she rolls into your town: trust us when we say that you won’t want to miss out.
