John Newman on course for number one in singles chart

After huge success with Rudimental on their track Feel The Love, John Newman is going it alone.

The soul singer released his debut single Love Me Again this week and it looks set to top the charts.

"It's incredible, even if I am number one in the iTunes chart that's making my mum proud enough," he laughs.

"It's not John Newman and Rudimental which is a shame because I love them boys so much. But I always wanted to do my own solo thing and here it is."

He says he draws from a variety of influences that go back as far as the northern soul that his mother used to listen to.

"People do listen to a lot of the older stuff but they're not brave enough to put it into the music because it is seen as a pastiche to the record labels now," he says.

"I knew if I wanted to do this on a commercial level, I couldn't just use my soul influence.

"I had to go back to my 90s house influences and my hip-hop influences and just throw it all back together."

The 23-year-old is not just a singer though, he writes and produces his own music which he says is important to him.

"I definitely think [that's important] because a producer's sound is a producers sound," he says.

"There aren't any producers, apart from [Mark] Ronson, who's now not doing it that I'd actually go to."

He says the vision he has for his music is so strong that he would be scared that someone else might not get it right.

"I'd be constantly listening to it and thinking I could have done this myself and I could be listening to the album I've got in my head."

John Newman's self-titled debut album will be released on 7 October.

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