Liam Bailey

Coming from a Jamaican-British background and growing up on an estate in Beeston in Nottingham, Liam spent much of his childhood watching Michael Jackson on old editions of Top of the Pops that his dad had taped. Perhaps it was this early connection with soul music that made Liam feel destined to be a singer.

Liam's childhood was often turbulent. "I was always in trouble at school," he says. "There was a lad on the council estate who'd bully me, until I got the upper hand on him." Even when his family moved out of Nottingham to the nearby village of Selston, he found that life was often a struggle, having to deal with racism in the classroom, but time and again he found that music offered him a way out. "There were only one or two other kids in my school who weren't white...but I got into Oasis then. Before them, there was no-one who made you feel it was all right to be who you were, wherever you came from."

It's this salvation in music that runs deep through Liam's work. Songs like "It's Not the Same" and "Stranded" sound like someone whose been to the brink and nearly lost it all. After he moved to London, he went through some times, splitting with his girlfriend and seeking solace in the bottle, but he's come out the other side to tell the tale through his music. "I was listening back to the record the other day," he says with a grin, "and it's all about her!"

The result is the sort of record that you could describe as timeless, and if one thing is clear, it's that Liam Bailey is a now singer who's very much found his own voice.