WHEN Jess Glynne returned in May this year with I'll Be There, the sturdy-lunged Londoner looked upset.
Her first solo single since February 2016, the opening frames of Adriaan Louw's[CORR] video to the mid-tempo stomper saw the 29-year-old's face wet with tears as she left behind a house going up in flames.
While those hoping for another titanium-strength belter like Hold My Hand or Don't Be So Hard On Yourself were left a touch underwhelmed, I'll Be There – written while Glynne and co-writer Camille Purcell were supporting each through break-ups – hurtled to the top-spot.
It scored Glynne her seventh number one in four years, an astonishing feat for an artist then yet to release her second album. The hit also saw the flame-haired singer crowned the most successful female British artist in chart history – ahead of Dua Lipa, Kate Bush and even Adele, and to top it off the news this week that she will be supporting the Spice Girls on their tour next year.
Whereas the rocket-fueled soul of Hold My Hand and Don't Be So Hard On Yourself powered Glynne to number one by herself, four of those number ones were as a guest artist: Rather Be with Clean Bandit and My Love with Route 94 were scored back in 2014, while in March this year she hooked up with drum 'n' bass band Rudimental, r 'n' b singer Dan Caplen and US rapper for These Days, a megahit across Europe.
A magnanimous track about being grateful for the good times when a relationship has fizzled out, These Days felt like the mirror to Not Letting Go, Glynne's collaboration with Tinie Tempah in 2015. A buoyant tribute to being young and loved-up in London, it's a modern classic for bringing instant sunshine, no matter the weather.
More collaborations will undoubtedly follow, with old school dance cut So Real (Warriors) – a track with KDA and Too Many Zooz – another likely release in the coming weeks.
It's not difficult to hear why others want the Glynne touch. She can turn even a mediocre number into a show-stopper, and brings with her a sense of lived-in authenticity as well as bags of showbiz glamour.
As a youngster, Glynne's voice would ring out around her Muswell Hill home, singing hits by Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey – similarly big-voiced women whose emotive power and strong personalities seared them to the hearts of millions around the world. It's for the best that Glynne walked away from a close encounter with The X Factor at the age of 15: Cowell and the gang would have likely filed down her rough edges, told her to rein things in a tad.
"I'm so glad I did that," Glynne told an interviewer in 2015. "I was too strong-minded about what I wanted, and [X Factor is] not an easy road when you’re really creative.”
That year she released her debut full-length I Cry When I Laugh, a triple-platinuum-selling album which spawned six hit singles. While some long-in-the-tooth critics said they'd seen it all before, what set Glynne apart from other heartbroken divas and inconsequential pop starlets, what really connected her with her fans was a sense of resilience, recovery and self-possession.
If others dealt with hurt and rejection by recrimination or, like Dua Lipa, protecting herself with a set of "new rules", Glynne's songs were often about the power of friendship, of being honest and upfront, and of pulling yourself back up by the bootstraps.
"With the majority of my songs there is a message, a struggle, something I’ve been through," she said ahead of the release of new album Always In Between in September.
The title she says, is about embracing “the parts of your life that don’t match up ... when you’re in between or a bit lost”.
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