Radio 1 has announced two new additions to Radio 1’s Brit List! Mahalia and Freya Ridings will be the latest artists added to the highly successful playlist, launched by the station in 2017. The Brit List was coined to provide sustained playlist support for home-grown and upcoming artists, that are already doing a seemingly good job at emerging in the British music scene.
Director of music at BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, David Price, recognised the extreme decline in UK chart entries; ten years previous to the launch of the playlist, the number of entries was as high as 230 but has since dropped to 86. He decided that Radio 1 was going to do all that it could to help British artists further their career and reach further success in the charts – it gives these rising British sensations the final break that they need.
Mahalia had a successful year in 2018, after the release of her breakthrough single ‘Sober’ in July 2017. She was nominated for Critics Choice Awards at the Brits, and was included in the BBC Sound of 2019, on top of this, she was named YouTube’s ‘One to Watch’. With Mahalia having a place on Radio 1’s Brit List, her next three songs are guaranteed a place on the stations playlist.
Her latest track ‘Do Not Disturb’ was released in March this year and has already reached over four million streams on Spotify, following in the footsteps of previous singles with a high of seventeen million streams. It almost sounds as though Mahalia has reached this point of success in the space of two years, but this is far from the truth; she has been signed to her record label ‘Atlantic Records’ since she was 13, and has toured the US with the ‘Boo’d Up’ soul sensation Ella Mae. Mahalia has thanked BBC Radio 1 stating she “feels overwhelmed to feel this kind of support” and that being added to the Brit List is “the best news she could have had this year”.
Freya Ridings rose to success in 2018 after her breakthrough track ‘Lost Without You’ featured on the popular show ‘Love Island’. The song attracted a significant amount of recognition and quickly became Scott Mill’s ‘Tune of the Week’ on his Radio 1 show – the Brit List is therefore not the first time Ridings has received support from Radio 1’s DJ’s.
Her latest track ‘You Mean the World To Me’ was released in March, with the video featuring Game of Thrones star ‘Maisie Williams’ and co-directed by William’s co-star ‘Lena Headley’ and of course has received widespread positive acclaim. Ridings expressed her gratitude via Facebook and Instagram yesterday describing the feature as “an absolute honour that I can’t get over”.
Previous artists that have been featured on the Brit List include Stormzy, Pale Waves, Lewis Capaldi, Anne Marie and many more – names that are now recognised worldwide. We hope to see both Freya and Mahalia reach the same levels of success.
