El Roig is a Catalan phrase that translates to ‘the red’ in English and 25-year-old Jamie Roig is a Barcelona-born London-based folk pop musician.

• Read on for reasons including how to hear everything El Roig’s released so far

3rd single Stupid Cowboy boasts acoustic and electric guitar, bass, organ and strings.

El Roig explains: ‘I wanted to capture the feeling of pouring your heart out for someone while being let down, the pain of having to ask for their love.’

He tells Attitude: ‘The song lives in that push and pull – wanting someone who only shows up in fragments, while knowing you deserve better. It’s about the frustration of giving so much to someone emotionally unavailable, and the moment it clicks that love shouldn’t make you feel small. If anything, it’s a reminder not to be with someone who can’t meet you where you are.’

Out now on No Nothing Records via Universal Music Group (watch and listen below), it drips with heartbreak and disappointment but there’s also a defiant country and rock elegance in its execution.

Listen to delicately plucked and dreamlike 2nd single I Love You Goodbye below as El Roig tells Attitude: ‘But at 12 or 13, as I began puberty, I’d cry myself to sleep. I’m not religious, not even baptised, but I would pray to something for me to wake up and be different. I’m sure that’s quite a universal thing. By 14, I’d accepted it. I told my family at 16.

‘Moving to London at 19 to pursue music – I studied songwriting at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute for three years – was a way of rejecting the homophobic culture of where I grew up.’

Listen to debut single the OCD exploring Tiptoes below as El Roig reveals: ‘I said to myself: ‘I’m going to make a life for myself. Fuck these people. I’m moving to the big city, where the sky’s the limit. I’ll choose my own people, my own path.’ I’m hopeful that it’s changed, but in the 2010s, there was still so much horrible homophobia. At least that was my experience. 

‘At university, I made amazing friends who I still play music with. My songs are my observations of the world, my relationships, the people around me, in a melancholic, cinematic light. I have written many songs across my life. They help me process things.’

‘I’m inspired by ‘60s, ‘70s songwriters: Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Scott Walker. These people are truthful and authentic in their stories. No façades. I aim to be like that, to make people think.’

Tiptoes is probably the most affecting song El Roig has released thus far. Its beautiful understated piano and devastating: ‘I close all the windows. I know that you hate when light shines in. I walk on my Tiptoes. How does it feel to always win?’ hook is just sublime.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy El Roig Tickets
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