Practicing Vulnerability and Hope: James Bay on the Release of His Latest Album Leap

Tracing all the way back to 2014, James Bay could be seen making his presence known as an artist. Catalyzed by the tender, emotional single “Let It Go,” he fostered a large following in the wake of his powerful lyricism and mesmerizing acoustics. In this time, he has amassed more than a handful of recognitions, including three GRAMMY® Award nominations and two BRIT Awards. 

His first album, Chaos And The Calm (2014), truly showcased his musical abilities in an array of twelve heartfelt songs infused with different rock and folky tones along with some more contemporary acoustic sounds. Electric Light (2018), his second project, came forth with a magnetic and thundering addition to his style. His newest album, Leap (2022), was released on July 12th this year, putting a spin on his trajectory as an artist as he pulls in the essence of hope through dauntless vulnerability. 

With Leap, James wanted to bring a sense of hope to the listener. He’s well known for his more heartbreaking, tear-jerking pieces. Taking the bad with the good in this album, he tapped into the flip side of his music’s emotional nature to foster a lighter element. He explained “I wanted to make songs that people could – not to be sort of too bold – but, I was sort of trying to go for like anthems on hope… I knew that I wanted to make music that gave people something to kind of stay hopeful, to use to stay hopeful.” 

Jame’s music is not short of authenticity, as his songs transport you into a very personal realm. With him taking on this more hopeful theme to his music though, there is a more grounding sense of reality found. He discusses how he learned to bypass fears of vulnerability with the creation of Leap saying, “It’s not as scary to be more vulnerable with my lyric writing, my songwriting. It’s not as scary as I thought it was. So what I mean by that is that I’ve gone to kind of a new depth of reality with regards to what I say in my songs. Ninety-nine percent of my songs are written from a very personal experience and I was always writing in a kind of abstract way. I think definitely on my first album, sometimes on my second album. Because I was always afraid to kind of just say it, whatever the thing may have been that I was writing about.”

The track “Endless Summer Nights” is what James claims to be his favorite from the album. He explained that this was one of the first songs he wrote for it and that “I wanted to write about a moment that you never ever want to end.” It is the perfect song to wrap up your summer this year. He said “I remember when we wrote the chorus, we wrote the lines ‘so stay up with me forever / throw your arms around the night / all we are is now or never’ and it just felt juvenile and brilliant and it felt like you had no kind of limits and I wanted to bottle that up, and keep it, hold on to it.”

In 2019, James went on tour with Ed Sheeran and he recalled one of those “Endless Summer Nights” in Iceland where Ed invited him and other members on the tour to go run into a lake after midnight. He said “We ran into the darkness. Nobody could see where the water was and eventually you could hear these splashes as people were kind of diving in. It was so unbelievably cold. I think my heart burst out of my chest for a second. We turned around and ran back to the hot tub and we got in and it was just the greatest feeling ever. It was a summer night in itself.” 

On the evolution of the album, James commented that he had wanted to put it out in 2020. In turn, some of his most rewarding moments came from the universal Zoom experience brought on by the pandemic: “That’s how this album was made. And it’s this crazy kind of hybrid of really wild times in the world. You know I’m sort of proud to have those memories because we did it. You know, life threw a global pandemic at us and it didn’t stop us. It held up the music but it didn’t stop it. I really wanted to put this music out in 2020 and the world said no, so I was patient and I used my time to keep writing.”

The title of the album was inspired by the John Burroughs quote that reads “Leap, and the net will appear.” James asserted that the quote had a heavy influence on the album saying “It’s just about the reach. It’s about the leap. It’s about the ‘going for it.’ And I was reminded of that when I read the quote, when I read those words, and so it affected the entire album, it affected all the writing, and really helped turn it into what it is, and of course inspired me to call the album Leap.” 

As for going forward, James wants to continue to grow and thrive as an artist, especially in the sense of live performance: “I don’t know if I’m at my sort of peak-best yet and I’m trying to get there and I want to share the journey will all these people that are interested in what I have to put out and make. My ambition is to be able to do it in 10 years and beyond, it really is.”