Top 3 North Eastern artists to keep an eye on before they get huge
- Evie Cunningham
- Apr 23, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 6, 2023
With all eyes on Newcastle after their current football success, what better time to delve into the other great things the Toon, and other places across the North East, have to offer?
There is something quite delightful about finding a great artist before they begin to trickle their way into mainstream music, which is why I want to share my current favourite artists from the North East with you all before the general public (TikTok) start to use their music for their silly little videos, which seems to be the only way for smaller artists to make a name for themselves these days, unfortunately.
However, as the TikTokers like to say, I will not be ‘gatekeeping’ these three incredible artists from you.
1. Lizzie Esau
Although Lizzie is not completely unknown, especially considering the fact she draws in 25,000 monthly listeners on Spotify alone, when I came across her, I felt like I’d found a little gem.
She has a unique musical style mainly cemented in alternative rock, but Esau’s music enjoys marrying that with elements of dream pop, shoegaze and even elements of grunge, all an expert recipe for some bloody great music.
If you are a fan of Wolf Alice, Phoebe Bridgers, London Grammar etc. then Lizzie Esau may very well be your new favourite singer. However, she would also heavily appeal to fans of pop or R&B as she includes aspects of both genres as well.
Forgetting even how well-crafted her sound is, her songwriting skills are also something worth listening to Lizzie for. One of her more recent singles, Jellyfish, speaks about being emotionally unstable, hating easy relationships and people-pleasing. Just a few issues the majority of late-teen-early-twenties girls experience in their lives, Esau manages to cover them all in 3 minutes.
Although Lizzie was born in London, she grew up in the Toon. Therefore, she is still classed as a Geordie to me. She even studied architecture at Newcastle Uni, so she must be smart.
2. Gone Tomorrow
Gone Tomorrow are one of my favourite upcoming North East bands. Hailing from Teeside, this band’s tunes are punchy and gritty, and yet can even take a more mellow tone, their song Projector Screens is my favourite of theirs, and perfectly details falling for someone and feeling insecure about if the love you have for them is requited or not.
The band again has a genre of alternative rock (I feel like my bias towards this genre is already starting to show after my first article on Sound of the Toon). However, their music takes a more lively and raw sound, mirroring more of a garage-rock element to their alt-rock roots.
The lead singer, Ben Ruddick, graces each song with passionate, raw vocals that are so convincing to the song’s lyrics that each time you listen to the song, it feels like you are listening to him sing it for the first time. The rawness of Ruddick’s vocals is an element that most indie-rock bands are seriously lacking in the past decade.
The soul and attitude of the band is why I am such a fan of them. A lot of their songs cover feelings of love in an Alex Turner-esque style with lyrics that sound like sonnets, but they also speak about more niche personal feelings, such as feeling outgrown of the place you live or the position your life is in, and the dullness of monotony in their song Escapist.
If you like Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Courteeners etc., you should definitely listen to Gone Tomorrow.
3. Andrew Cushin
Picture the embodiment of a true Geordie lad, and then you have Andrew Cushin.
Cushin is already a well-known name in Newcastle and the North East, often hailed as the ‘Next Sam Fender’. However, I feel that Andrew deserves to be the next big thing in his own right, forgetting the success of Sam Fender, as I feel they are both versatile artists that exist in different worlds of music.
Although Fender and Cushin come under the same genre, I feel like as an artist themselves they are different. It is quite rare to find Andrew not donning a Stone Island jacket and dressing in general like a football hooligan, which is a style we admittedly love at Sound of the Toon (we do not condone hooliganism, just the dress sense, don’t cancel us).
Andrew has already been recognised by many of the most influential fathers of the alternative rock genre and has even been invited to play with them.
One of the most notable artists is Mr Paul Weller, the Modfather himself, who had Cushin on his line-up for his Lincolnshire Showground gig.
Noel Gallagher also produced Cushin’s track Where’s My Family Gone, and supported him at Rock N Roll Circus, an event at Town Moor in Newcastle’s city centre.
The critical acclaim for Andrew is huge, but as a humble lover of alternative rock, I can recommend Cushin to anyone interested in British music as a whole, particularly those who enjoy the nostalgia of the Britpop era.
So, it’s no secret that the North East hosts some of Britain's greatest talents, whether in football or music. If you want to find out more about the newest musical talents in the North, stay tuned to Sound of the Toon.
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