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If you are looking for proof of the redemptive and transportive power of song, look no further than ADMT. Born Adam Taylor in Doncaster, the singer-songwriter not only has the knack for creating candid, soul-bearing tracks, but he also makes songs that have changed – and even saved – lives, starting with his own.
A teenage drummer whose first role in music misleadingly landed him poolside in Los Angeles when he was recruited for a local band’s American tour, the fairytale was soon punctured when ADMT found himself back home, working in a bottling factory after the group stepped back from playing live. Though he would not have believed you back then, this mind-numbing reset proved to be the start of another story, ADMT’s own.
“I was working at a bottle factory and I hated it,” he admits. “There were a lot of amazing people working there, but it just didn’t feed my soul watching bottles go past. Then one of my mates suggested I should sing rather than drum, but initially I wasn’t sure. It’s quite a scary thing and I didn’t want to be – and I still worry about this now – the shit guy who everyone says is good but when they end up on The X Factor they look like an idiot. [laughs] Eventually, though, I gave it a go.” After applying, ADMT’s first show was remarkably for secret gig promoter Sofar Sounds, playing a house in Camden (“In at the deep end!” he grins) before more acoustic sets followed. However, while the switch from drum stool to ‘open mic’ offered the glimpse of a new path, life and bottles conspired to create an inertia that stopped him from taking it as he found himself unable to leave in his childhood bedroom.
“I was depressed,” he explains with what proves to be his typical candour. “As much as I hate that word in its entirety, that is the truth of what it was. I was suicidal. A few things had happened in my life and the accumulation of circumstance gets to you. It was dark, man.”
Yet days spent lying in the gloom of his darkened bedroom were fortunately interrupted by a song – a song ADMT needed to create.
“A mate of mine, Mikey Gormley, who's an amazing songwriter, rang me to see how it was. He was the first person I said, 'I'm not doing too great and I don't understand why' to,” recalls ADMT. “He suggested I write a song about it and I thought 'fuck that!’ [laughs] But he rang me the week after to write the track, so I said 'alright bro' and we jumped on. We wrote a song called Prison about being trapped in your head, and I definitely found a therapy in writing. Now, if I'm going through something, it will be in a song. So that is how I entered this space of people knowing I give a shit about mental health, which we all should do.”
Writing Prison was a transformative experience, though ADMT is keen to stress that the reemergence of better mental health is part of a wider process. “I do therapy too. My mum got me to do it. Apart from when my dad left, it was the most emotional I’ve seen her about her family,” he recalls. “She just came into my bedroom and said 'please go' so I did it for her thinking it would be shit. In the second session I had – through the NHS, so I have to give props to them – I had this breakthrough and since it’s almost like I’m hooked on finding out more about me.”
Finally able to throw his bedroom curtains open, ADMT also discovered that busking offered therapeutic opportunities. Not only did his crowd-drawing performances around Yorkshire raise revenue that allowed him to quit his job, but the connection he was making with people on the streets created something tangible.
“Doing something I love definitely helped me,” he suggests. “I want to connect with people. I want them to feel, because that's the most magical thing. That’s the human experience, emotions, good and bad.”
Busking also led to another life-changing song. After doing covers to win over passing shoppers, he began posting some of these renditions online, including one version that caught the ear of its creator. “I wanted to do a 50 Cent track, but I had to figure out how to do a rap song as a ballad. Eventually, I found a way of doing Best Friend with a chord generator, so I sang the chorus and we put it on Instagram,” he explains. Initially spotted by the rapper’s web team, within days, 50 Cent himself was endorsing the cover.
“It was like a winning lottery ticket,” declares ADMT. “Having someone like 50 Cent, who is quite prolific for giving people shit online, go ‘this little white kid's all right’ was one of those moments in your life where you think ‘I'm doing something right.’”
Curtis James Jackson, though, wanted to know where the verses were, so ADMT worked with his studio collaborator and friend Lamour to complete the song, which the rapper approved for release as a proper single.
With the confidence and online following (“I started getting all these notifications – ’50 Cent has tagged you in a post’ – fuck off, no way!”) that Best Friends created ADMT has continued to do “something right.” Sharing with artist like Ed Sheeran, Charlie Puth or Sekou an ability to meld warm, authentic acoustics, deft beats and raw emotions, though imbuing his smouldering pop with a personality and outlook entirely his own, ADMT began pivoting to his own songs, big streaming tracks that mesh frank lyrics with soul-stirring tunes, including Homeless, North, Without You, Overboard and the aforementioned Prison have followed as ADMT’s journey as an artist continued.
There have been more unexpected twists and turns, though now for the better, including an appearance as a busker in Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, being invited by Teddy Swims to sing alongside him live and being featured as a street performer in Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. Now a record deal with BMG has been inked and he’s traded busking on the streets for acclaimed live shows, including a slot headlining the Festival Republic stage at last year’s Leeds Festival.
What has arrived so far are a series of affecting, yet immediate singles, and now comes his long-awaited debut album From Good To Bad And Back Again, plus an upcoming UK & European arena tour supporting Louis Tomlinson.
As the album reflects, ADMT has the ability to pour real life into his tunes, plus the fact that truly transformative songs seem to follow him around. It is time to sit up and listen.
The anthemic Come Along does not hold back, laying it all on the line as it bittersweetly charts ADMT’s road from the bottle factory to musical fulfilment, though revealing it has been a journey not everyone he hoped came onboard for. “It's a story of my development as an artist and my belief in myself, but also how a person who was once a huge part of my life isn't in it anymore,” he explains of the potent mix of euphoric hope tinged with a melancholia for what might have been. “That person was around when I started busking, when I went, 'I'm going to do this thing’, and most people went, 'What? You're not going to be a singer, no way!’ Now I've done everything I told that person that I would do and it just sucks arse that they weren't there.”
Home Is Where The Heart Is dives deeper into cathartic heartbreak, ruefully even cherishing the “bad times” in a lost relationship because at least it was still going. “It’s just the story of me wishing I'd done things differently, not taken things for granted. I can't speak for all men, but we get it wrong a lot,” admits ADMT, describing perhaps his most confessional song to date.
Still Breathing charts the impact of a tough upbringing, but also coming out the other side. “I don't even know if my peers noticed, but I really felt like it didn't fit in growing up. There was some bullying going on and a lot of different manipulation situations,” he recalls, before noting that a growing resilience (plus taking up boxing) moved the dial, turning this cautionary return to school into an empowering anthem. “It's a story of survival, man, that sense of working it out for yourself,” he declares. Cover To Cover meanwhile takes inspiration from a friend’s enthralment in a novel they were reading to imagine a relationship as the different sentences, chapters and styles of the ever-turning pages of a book, its soaring chorus vowing to stick around to the final line. “Imagine getting lost in another human as much as you can in a book or something you really love doing,” he grins. “Somebody you can’t put down.”
ADMT’s own story is taking on a similar quality for those who encounter his music, as both the crowds at his shows and the community engaging with him online are testament to. His signature is his ability to turn personal pain into collective healing, and nowhere is that more powerful than onstage. His live shows, whether in an intimate venue or headlining a festival stage, are immersive experiences built on honesty, storytelling, and unfiltered connection. It’s this emotional authenticity that has drawn fans in and kept them coming back, and it’s what makes each set feel more like a shared conversation than a performance.
“I'm just a normal guy who's chosen this video game life, so I want to come across as real,” he suggests of why he’s prepared to share the intimacies of his life, his story and his mental health in his music – and why it resonates with those listening. “ I want to speak to as many people, from every spectrum of life, as I can. I want them to know ‘we’ve got this.’ We’re humans living a human experience.” Sometimes it takes a song to remind us.
From Good To Bad And Back Again is out May 15th via BMG + supports Louis Tomlinson on Apr/May UK & EU shows & commences his own UK headline tour from May 22nd.
