Tom Odell
photo: krists luhaers · cc by 2.0 ↗Tom Odell is a British singer-songwriter and pianist born in Chichester in 1990, who studied at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music before being signed after label head Lily Allen saw him perform. His 2012 debut EP 'Songs from Another Love' won the BRIT Awards' Critics' Choice, and his 2013 debut album 'Long Way Down' topped the UK chart, but it was the piano ballad 'Another Love' that became his signature, a slow-burning hit that resurged for years afterward. Across records like 'Wrong Crowd,' 'Jubilee Road,' and 'Monsters,' he has built a body of confessional, piano-centered pop that pairs plainspoken heartbreak with dynamic, sometimes explosive vocal delivery.
Odell grew up on Elton John — he has said 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' was one of the first albums he heard — and counts him among his formative influences; the imprint is his whole approach to the piano as the emotional engine of a confessional ballad, with the voice sitting close over a bare keyboard before the melody lifts.
listen forPut on 'Your Song' and then 'Heal' — hear how both open on a hesitant, close-miked piano figure and an unguarded vocal, then let the melody swell upward without ever pushing the piano out of the frame.
Odell has said that finding Buckley's album 'Grace' around age 13 or 14 blew his mind, singling out the voice and the guitar playing; the influence surfaces in his taste for a fragile, quavering vocal that can tip over into full-throated, cracking wailing.
listen forCue 'Grace' next to 'Can't Pretend' — listen for the way each starts guarded and trembling, then breaks into a raw, straining upper-register cry that sounds on the edge of coming apart.
Odell has named Billy Joel among the pianists who taught him to use the instrument as a storytelling tool, and the two later became friends, with Joel inviting him to play Madison Square Garden; it shows up in Odell's turn toward narrative, place-and-character songwriting rather than pure interior confession.
listen forPlay 'Piano Man' before 'Jubilee Road' — both are piano-led narratives that sketch a street full of ordinary people, the piano rolling underneath while the singer plays the observer of a whole small world.