In August, Fred Gibson became the first dance artist to headline the Reading and Leeds festivals. Early on, he addressed the crowd, talking about how nervous he was. It’s the kind of thing festival headliners are wont to say, flattering the magnitude of the event, but in Gibson’s case, it didn’t seem pat: he looked genuinely, frantically uneasy. It’s only been three years since he released his debut solo album, pivoting from what looked like being a lucrative gig behind the scenes as a pop songwriter and producer for BTS, Clean Bandit, Stormzy and George Ezra. His breakthrough single Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing) was a reflection on the privations of the Covid era, released just as lockdown ended. Now, here he is, a bigger festival draw, if the Reading/Leeds bill is to believed, than Lana Del Rey.
In the interim, he’s enjoyed a kind of portmanteau career: big pop-dance hits alongside collaborations with underground figures such as Four Tet; the occasional high-profile production gig for Ed Sheeran next to collaborative ambient albums with Brian Eno. His success has been popular rather than critical, attended by a degree of carping about his well-to-do and well-connected background (he is descended from Huntingdonshire gentry, Eno was his parents’ neighbour) and the alleged unoriginality of his musical approach.
