
With over 11 million monthly listeners at Spotify, ‘Let Her Go’ is just one song from a remarkable and prolific back catalogue, including 2016’s Young as the Morning, Old as the Sea, which topped the charts in the UK and beyond. Although still known for his busking, he long ago made the journey from street corners to stadiums, thanks in part to supporting his good mate Ed Sheeran, and most notably with “Let Her Go,” which reached number 1 in 19 countries and is approaching three billion plays on YouTube. Hailing from Brighton, England, Passenger is a multi-award winning, platinum-selling singer-songwriter. Everyone who pre-orders the album receives priority access to the event and will receive Suzanne, A Song For The Drunk and Broken Hearted, The Way That I Love You and London In The Spring as instant downloads. Until then, Rosenberg invites fans to an intimate evening at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall for an exclusive performance film that will be broadcast on Januto celebrate the album’s release. With an authentic and engaging live show that has won over scores of fans and critics around the globe and allowed him to headline some of the world’s most famous stages, he looks forward to returning to the road as soon as it’s safe for everyone. No one is more surprised by the song’s success than Rosenberg himself.Passenger’s proposed year of busking, festivals and headline shows is postponed until 2021*. “Long-term, I think it’s brilliant, because people feel a long-term connection to the project, not just the song on the radio.”īut that song on the radio, “ Let Her Go” from “ All the Little Lights,” has topped the charts in 16 countries and gone platinum in Britain. Some days you’d go out and feel like you were trying to convince people one by one,” he says. “At times when I was busking, it was frustratingly slow. “It’s kind of learning to deal with disappointment, but be okay with it as well,” says Rosenberg, who took that sentiment to heart over the years he spent as a street musician and while writing “All the Little Lights.” The verses flow at breakneck speed with stream-of-consciousness ease, but the line he wrote first was the simple refrain - “If you can’t be what you want / You learn to be the things you’re not” - a stark outlook on embracing what lies in the gap between what you dream your life might be and what it actually is.

When writing the track “Things That Stop You Dreaming” off his most recent album, “ All the Little Lights,” Rosenberg struggled for months to find that balance. I think it’s important to get all of your personality across in the music.” “It’s very easy to sing a song about being miserable and sad and talking about your ex-girlfriend all the time,” he says. Rosenberg has a knack for tackling dark subjects with a light touch, whether using a joke or a disarmingly honest remark that makes disappointment less daunting. “Community Centre,” the opening track from 2010’s self-produced “Divers and Submarines,” is anchored by an understated, melancholic refrain that intones its protagonist’s regret even before the lyric “I never wanted to stay / But the morning came so soon.” Rosenberg distills the journey of an ambivalent alcoholic into 2 1 / 2 minutes, ending by asking the group, “Anybody up for a drink?” It just hits you.”Įmotional resonance is at the heart of Passenger’s songs, although it’s easy to be carried along by the melodies. You don’t understand how it’s made, who’s making it or what’s going on.

When you’re a kid and you listen to music, it just feels magical. “I remember listening to Simon and Garfunkel on really long car journeys. “My dad’s originally from New Jersey, so he got me into that stuff at a really early age,” Rosenberg says. Rosenberg began writing on acoustic guitar and playing street corners in Brighton and eventually across Britain as he honed his sound, which is heavily influenced by singer-songwriters of the ’60s and ’70s.
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“I had these songs I knew I wanted to get to people, but I didn’t know how to do it.” “I was quite a bit younger,” says Rosenberg, 29. The collaboration ended when Phillips left in 2009, but Rosenberg kept the moniker as he set off on his own. Spanning the musical gamut from soft rock to rockabilly, the sound reflected a band searching for its identity. The group was founded nearly a decade ago by British singer-songwriter Mike Rosenberg and his friend Andrew Phillips, and their first and only recording together, 2007’s “ Wicked Man’s Rest,” was a chaotic blend of drum machines, chimes and electric guitars.

Passenger hasn’t always been a one-man folk band.
