Tom Odell has treated fans today with an insight into the music which influences him, curating a new Spotify playlist called ‘songs i like,’ which fans can follow and see the singer’s inspirations as they stand and as they are updated. The singer uploaded to his personal Spotify account which also features a public playlist of all of his top tracks. Tom Odell is not stranger to the streaming platform, with his artist profile clocking over 5.7 million monthly listeners and top tracks like ‘Another Love,’ and ‘Heal,’ reaching play counts in the hundreds of thousands.
A first listen to Tom Odell’s playlist may be a cause of some surprise to listeners used to the sensitive vocal and piano compositions he is known for, to find the singer’s listening tastes to be surprisingly varied and in some cases far removed from his own music. While some tracks are more predictable given the songwriting of Odell, such as pieces by Claude Debussy, and explain his sound a little more, other tracks are in there which are very different. For example, tracks by US Rap and R&B artists like Juie WRLD, A$AP Rocky aren’t exactly similar to Tom Odell’s own music but may offer some insight into the broad taste which creatives usually have, taking influence from diverse sources, not necessarily to make something in the same style but to act as part of an eclectic pool of influences to draw subtitles from.
The social media savvy singer makes use of the description box on his playlist to invite fans to his Instagram and TikTok profiles which are fast becoming the go to tools for this generation of music promoters. While instagram has been building its sizeable user base for several years now, it is only now with the entry of the upstart TikTok platform and its groundbreaking short-form video formatted content which has lead to race between the two to become the self-promoting musician’s best friend this year. While instagram’s visual style and occasional video content has always been a good option for musicians looking to engage with fans in a way more direct and frequent than through their album and single releases, TikTok’s improved integration of music into the fundamental format of their platform has been a huge help to musicians who can now get a short clip of their song featured in hundreds of user-uploaded short videos and reach greater levels of fame and success through a new pathway.
Tom Odell also leaked on his Instagram feed today the news that he would soon be releasing new music with a photo of himself with the caption ‘can’t wait to play you all my new music,’ which suggests he has been busy writing and recording throughout this pandemic, making good use of the time which has kept British musicians at home for the best part of 2020 and now the early parts of 2021 as well. Fans would be wise to keep an eye on his playlist for clues about what this new music might sound like.
