Tom Walker - What a Time to Be Alive review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 40

(Relentless Records)
Gruffly ordinary, featured on the Love Island soundtrack and boasting a Brit award, Walker seems algorithmically designed for our times

It would be hard to argue that the winner of this year’s best British breakthrough Brit award is anything other than a very 2019 kind of pop star, and not merely because his route to success was bolstered by regular appearances on that noted barometer of public taste Love Island. The last series of the reality show deployed so many of Tom Walker’s songs on its soundtrack that he might as well have been stalking the contestants around their Mallorcan shag-pad, popping up from behind bushes and out of wardrobes to serenade them.

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