Jake Bugg has shared his third single of 2020, ‘All I Need’. About chasing the excitement, being in the right place at the right time, it has a euphoric edge to it. ‘All I Need’ follows ‘Rabbit Hole’ and ‘Saviours of the City’, bringing an energy that we haven’t heard from Bugg in his recent output. ‘All I Need’ had its first play on Radio 1 tonight (October 26), by Phil Taggart sitting in for Annie Mac. The video was released an hour later – you can watch it below.
Tune into @BBCR1 tonight from 6:45pm to hear All I Need for the first time. @philytaggart stepping in for @AnnieMac will be giving it a first play. pic.twitter.com/8CjNZphGpV
— Jake Bugg (@JakeBugg) October 26, 2020
‘All I Need’ is sort of anthemic, sort of pop, complete with Bugg’s distinctive voice. It’s about not quite fitting in, and the value of that, and about making yourself stand out in your own way. All I need is evidence of Bugg’s style becoming slicker and more refined, with a video of the same quality to match. His previous two singles this year have both been a little more stereotypically ‘Jake Bugg’, mainly aided by being acoustic. ‘All I Need’ sounds closer to a stadium filler.
The video is all in black and white, a series of high-quality vignettes of basketball and dancing and police shields. Although it doesn’t exactly have a storyline, there’s a sense of triumph and euphoria throughout it, of rising up and overcoming. You can watch it below.
All of these singles are rumoured to build up to a new album, although the specific details of it are currently still a mystery. Earlier this year, ‘Saviours of the City’ was accompanied by a short art film interspersed with psychedelic shots. It juxtaposes the monotony of staying in (all too familiar to us all) with the lurid technicolour of making it into the real word. Unlike ‘All I Need’, which has all the energy of a fight to break out, the visualiser for ‘Saviours of the City’ is gentle, although I would say it is not exactly comforting. Bugg brings an element of grit to many of his creative projects.
The pandemic has somewhat interrupted Bugg’s progress on the album front; before live music ground to a halt, he was playing warm up shows ahead of the announcement of his new album. Either way, it is still expected to arrive this year, following 2017’s Hearts That Strain.
