THE winner of the Sunday Herald competition to secure a slot at the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival has been revealed as rising country music star Lucy May.
The singer will open the main stage of the festival on Thursday, August 3 after beating hundreds of other up-and-coming bands and artists for the prize slot.
She was chosen by a panel from Belladrum and the Sunday Herald to open the 14th annual festival with the life-changing, 30-minute set.
More than 16,000 festivalgoers will attend the three-day event which takes place in the beautiful Highland surroundings of Belladrum Estate, near Beauly in Inverness-shire.
The independent festival, which was founded in 2004, has built a reputation for its eclectic line-ups, its offbeat non-musical entertainments as well as its all-ages approach.
It has won a Visit Scotland Thistle Award in 2009 and is a past winner of the Grassroots Festival Award at the UK Festival Awards, the festival industry’s ‘Oscars’.
This year it will welcome Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand, Twin Atlantic and the Pretenders as the headlining acts.
They will be joined by disco legends Sister Sledge and other musicians including KT Tunstall, First Aid Kit, Feeder, and Gallagher and Lyle.
The festival will also feature the brand new Temple of Dub Arena which will produce a constant flow of reggae, roots, dub and jungle tunes.
Lucy May, who comes from Sidcup, Kent, has already been making a name for herself in the country music scene. An alumni of the Brit School — which spawned the likes of Amy Winehouse, Jessie J and Adele — she has worked with multi-award winning songwriter and producer Jeff Cohen in Nashville.
She released her debut single Paper Heart in 2013, was praised by Sir Terry Wogan when it which made the Radio 2 playlist.
She has since opened for Michael Bolton on his recent UK tour and has released the latest single from her debut EP, a Jeff Cohen-penned song called Whirlwind.
Lucy May said she was "absolutely thrilled" to have won, adding: "I am really excited about this opportunity and cannot wait to get up on that stage."
A special recording of an acoustic number with the singer will also be included in BBC ALBA’s live coverage of the festival.
BBC ALBA will be on air live from Belladrum from 9:30pm on Thursday 3, and 10pm on Friday 4 and Saturday 5.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here