ON THE RISE
CHICAGO — Singer-songwriter GBO wears his heart on his sleeve and talks about the grief and loss of beloved friends while talking about the positive memories these relationships left behind in his latest single “Gone Too Soon.”
GBO has long found music to be therapy, helping him cope with a hard childhood in family struggling to keep its head above water when it came to money, and as an adult he used music once again to help him cope when he lost some friends who passed on far too soon.
“A couple of my close friends I grew up with, they passed away and so I was thinking about them and I was hearing that melody and it made me think about writing a song,” GBO said. “That’s how it started. It’s really about the people I’ve loved in the past that passed away. At first I was going to make it specific to one person, then I had a couple of other people pass away so it made more sense to make it broader.”
GBO said his stage name, pronounced Gee-Bo, was inspired by a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force, when his fellow service members had a hard time with his given name, Gilberto.
“They were butchering my name so they said we’ll just call you GBO,” he said. “I kind of stuck with that as a pen name.”
GBO grew up in a musical family and started writing music when he was 12. He even had a song he wrote produced when he was 14 years old.
That’s when music became his therapy.
“I grew up in a bad neighborhood, I grew up in what people would say is an economically challenged situation,” GBO said. “Then I just wanted to get away and I would listen to music for therapy. Music was one of my outlets when I was really young. I just always liked it and that stuck with me. It was happiness, I listened because it was fun, like therapy.”
GBO said people reacted positively to his music when he was young, giving him the confidence to pursue it as a profession.
GBO said he’s working right now to find his brand in his music, and “Gone Too Soon,” is part of that search.
He said he weaves in and out of different genres of music, including hip hop, trap, pop and R&B.
“My older songs are more like hip hop songs, more energy songs, more energetic,” GBO said. “Different kinds of music attract different kinds of emotions, it can be fun or sad. I think mainly my sound is laid back, that’s a good word, they’re laid back sounds.”
GBO said he hopes people learn a simple lesson from “Gone Too Soon.”
“I think the message is like you love someone and you miss them and you try to be positive and know that’s not the end yet,” he said. “Don’t let it drag you down, you’ll have your grief period obviously but I think in the end I think there’s positivity in your memories.”
This single is a taste of more music to come in the new year. Listeners can expect to hear more of the vivid stories GBO tells, all connected by the string of empathy that laces his music together.
Make sure to stay connected to GBO on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
Websites:
Spotify
Soundcloud
Youtube
ON THE RISE
Blossoms caught up with NME to discuss competing with The Beatles and Johnny Marr for this week’s Number One album. With ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ in the running, the band also explained why making things themselves remains such an important part of their work as AI becomes more common.
The Stockport group put out their sixth album last Friday, October 2. By the midweek update, it was sitting at Number Two, between The Beatles’ expanded edition of ‘Rubber Soul’ and Johnny Marr’s latest solo album, ‘The Age Of Everything’.
“It’s mad, to be honest,” singer Tom Ogden said to NME about the chart race. “Liverpool on one side, Manchester on the other and Stockport in the middle. If you’d told us this 10 years ago, when we were releasing our debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I mean, we’re in good company aren’t we?”
Discussing the stories behind the album, Ogden described ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ as “about being married and all the everyday stuff that comes with it”. He married Katie Donovan, the sister of Blossoms drummer Joe, in 2021. Married life has since given him a new appreciation for what he describes as “the extraordinary ordinary”.
“Saying the wrong thing in an argument, losing your wife’s no claims bonus, crying at the Kardashians, it’s all in there,” he explained. “The album is named after Stockport Town Hall, which everyone round where we live calls the Wedding Cake, and it’s where I got married, so it couldn’t be much closer to home.
“The last album [‘Gary’, 2024] had a song about a stolen fibreglass gorilla, which everyone loved, and that gave us the confidence to bring the same playfulness to this one, just with more personal subject matter this time.”
Alongside tracks that came out of writing sessions with Declan McKenna in a hot tub, the album reflects the band’s desire to stay involved in every part of the creative process.
“It started with the recording,” Ogden explained. “We made the album with Shawn Lee, playing live straight to tape, and once you’ve done it that way you can’t really go and fake everything else. We sat down as a band and picked the colour palette, and everything visual followed from that. We had body scans taken of ourselves and cake toppers of the five of us 3D printed, put them on a real cake and photographed it. I’ve directed and edited the videos, and the sets are all built by hand, no green screen. For the pop-up shop on launch weekend, a local artist hand-painted the album cover for the sign outside.
“It’s more work, but you end up with a world that’s yours, and I think people can tell when a band’s had its hands on everything.”
With AI tools and digital effects becoming increasingly widespread, that approach feels particularly relevant. For Blossoms, though, the motivation is simple: “the fun is in the making”.
“Tape doesn’t let you cheat and neither does a real cake,” Ogden said. “If a set’s a bit wonky, it’s because one of us or our mates built it. I think the more stuff gets generated, the more people want to know a human being actually did it. We’ve been in this band together for over 10 years, five lads from Stockport, and that isn’t something you can ‘prompt’.”
Maya Jama also appeared in the video for the album’s first single, ‘Meet Me In Love’. Her appearance came shortly before the UK launch of Celebrity Traitors, where she took on the role of a traitor alongside a cast that included Richard E Grant and James Acaster.
“She was brilliant,” Ogden recalled of working with Jama. “We’d met her at the MTV EMAs in Manchester a couple of years ago, so we took a chance and sent her a DM …and she said yes. Next thing she’s in a theatre in Cheadle miming my vocals while a load of people dressed as me serenade her. She got the idea straight away and was a proper laugh about it.”
The conversation then turned to whether he thought Jama could take home the win on Celebrity Traitors.
Ogden joked: “As for Traitors, she spent a whole day pretending to sing my song and I almost believed her, so I’d say she’s got every chance.”
Fans can listen to ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ now. In November, Blossoms head out on a UK arena tour with The Royston Club. Tickets and further details are available here.
Before the tour begins, the group is also scheduled to appear on SNL UK on Saturday, October 24.
