Rag'n'Bone Man (2022) [no longer playing the Fest!]

One Liner: Soulful belter with a killer voice

Wikipedia Genre: New blues, blues, blues rock, R&B, soul, hip hop, alternative rock.  That's like most of the genres.
Home: Uckfield, England

Poster Position: 13
Weekend One Only.  Friday.

Thoughts:  I could have sworn that I wrote a review of this dude in the past, but I can't find it anywhere and he does not appear to have played ACL Fest before.  Dude is kind of wild - bearded, tattooed, heavyset white guy with killer pipes and a soulful sound that doesn't seem to match the package.  He looks like he should play bass for a Norwegian Death Metal band instead.

Rory Charles Graham is his real name, and he's English.  He's named after the British term for a person who collects unwanted household items and sells them.  Back in the day, this was a guy who would walk the neighborhood with a cloth sack to collect his items.  According to Wikipedia, this still sometimes happens, but mainly by guys collecting scrap metal.  The really weird part about that to me is that they apparently collected and sold bone.  WTF were people buying the bones for?  Like, I get finding cloth or scrap metal that maybe could be sold, but if you found a leg bone, who is buying that?  Anyway, when he was first getting started, he was MCing with a drum and bass crew and used the handle Rag 'N' Bonez.  He later rapped with a group called Rum Committee.

Before his big hit, he had a handful of albums - 2012's Bluestown, 2013's Dog 'n' Bone (sorta a rap/R&B album?), 2014's Put That Soul on Me EP, 2014's Wolves, and 2015's Disfigured EP.  Those first two are definitely more of a blues rock guitar type sound.  Not many streams on those discs.  But by Wolves, he was getting more streams, with most songs on there having more than 5 million streams.  The top one is "Guilty," which comes on like a rap track almost.  12.5 million streams.

The title track on that album also has a rap/spiritual sort of flavor to it.  Dude's voice is fantastic.  he also has Vince Staples on a track on that disc, which is obviously rap-centric too.

In 2017, he released Human, which blew up in a major way.  Four times platinum, "the fastest selling album by a male for the entire decade," and led to several BRIT Awards.  The title track has 705.4 million streams, and the video for it has just under 1.5 billion freaking views.

Another that has a chain gang/spiritual sort of vibe to it.  Nice groove, amazing vocals.  As of that point, he hasn't yet gone with the face tats.  Just the neck appears to have ink.

But then the cover of the new album - 2021's Life By Misadventure - shows him with several really crappy-looking face tattoos.  Odd choice.  This album has a few monster songs, and then a lot with surprisingly low stream counts.  One has P!nk on it, so of course it has more streams.  And so I'm pretty sure his set will involve a visit from her Pinkness as well.  But then several tunes have less than 2 million streams, which just looks odd.  Here is the P!nk song - "Anywhere Away From Here."  57.3 million.

Nice song, but I wish they combined their voices into a super extra power ballad - they mostly just sang their own bits without each other until the very end.  Also, freaking sad.  Both this and "Talking to Myself" sounds like a showtune - feels like it was on the Greatest Showman and I've just forgotten it.  Certainly a different vibe than the guy was doing with his first few albums!  "All You Ever Wanted," later on in the album, is at least a fun sounding tune.  The majority of this album is kind of a bummer.  Maybe that is why it has so few streams.

I'd go watch this dude roll.  Would be cool to hear his voice in person!