Morgan M. James
"Funnily enough, a lot of my songs are written on the bus. I find that when I’m sat on the bus, I’ll see things out the window and ideas just come into my head!"
I’m a singer, songwriter, and content creator from Brighton and I went to the Lewes campus from 2015 to 2017.
My time at college was amazing. I met so many great people and learnt so much and I had a really really good time and I was quite sad to leave to be honest.
I studied Music, Musical Theatre, and Photography and was able to go on some really great trips. Studying photography comes in really handy now with getting bits for Instagram and social media. I’d definitely say that my time at college has helped to set me up for what I’m doing now.
I’ve always loved music, and moment that I decided to take it seriously and make a career out of it was when I made a few videos on Vine. From there I started to record song covers and post them online too and I guess it grew from there. That's pretty much how I got to where I am at the moment.
My style is very acoustic driven pop, very mainstream pop. Funnily enough, a lot of my songs are written on the bus. I find if I sit down with my guitar or piano in my studio or bedroom and try and write lyrics, nothing really comes to me. But when I’m sat on the bus, I’ll see things out the window and ideas come into my head. A lot of my most watched videos and songs on YouTube were actually written on a bus!
I write songs all the time and really enjoy writing with other people - I think it’s really important to share ideas and collaborate. That’s one of the key things that I learnt at college.
I’ve written plenty of songs so I definitely have enough to fill an album. In fact I’m about to release a single very soon which will be the first from my album. The album is definitely a six month process and I'm planning to launch it in February 2020. At the moment I’m recording the main tracks and shooting the music video, doing an acoustic version which will come out a month later, doing an acoustic video, getting all the PR sorted for it, and getting marketing campaigns and influencers sorted. So it's a long process, but once the song comes out I'll be really happy - I’m really excited to release it.
I’m steadily growing my online followers, but one of my first big successes was a show that I put on in Brighton. It was really cool, I put it all together myself. I sorted out a band, sold the tickets, and it sold out in a week - it was mad!
Over the next few years I want to keep writing and release music, hopefully growing and building my online profile to reach more people. There is so much more I want to achieve and so much more I want to do - I just need to keep working everyday and putting in the hours until I get to where I want to be.
My advice for anyone starting out in the industry would be to work hard and make sure you’re smashing it. One thing I’ve found in music is to just do it. There are plenty of people out there who talk about how they want to start a YouTube channel or how they want to be a musician, and they’re holding back and reserving because they want to wait for the right time to come up or for something to happen. But the right time is now. It’s so important to jump in, do it and see what happens. If it doesn't work then just keep trying and hopefully something will come of it.
You can see more of Moragn’s tracks on his YouTube channel - @MorganMJames