Yesyou are so heavy! » moans Saint Harison, a 26-year-old R&B singer, in front of his five-month-old miniature dachshund, Louis. A nearly identical wiener dog, this one called Vinnie, pokes his head into the frame during our Zoom call. “Come here,” Harison said, lifting the squirming dogs into his arms. “Say hello, Louis!”
Harison – whose real name has been conspicuously scrubbed from the internet – is exhausted as he speaks to me from his living room in Southampton. He was up late last night, giving relationship advice to a friend while recovering from the shock of seeing his latest Instagram celebrity: British model Cara Delevingne. “I threw my phone across the room when I saw the notification!” he’s laughing.
There have been a lot of phone-in moments lately, ever since Harrison released his soulful, gospel-tinged debut EP. I lost a friend in May. “I definitely threw my phone across the room when Elton John followed me,” he says, his voice high with excitement. “That’s probably when I broke my screen.” Ultimate British Chun and The only way is Essex Star Gemma Collins is also a self-confessed Instagram fan. “Gemma Collins is a queen! »
Harison was also shocked when the angelic falsetto riff from his ballad-style song “Ego Talkin'” recently went viral on TikTok. The videos, which collectively have more than 130 million views under the #EgoTalkinChallenge tag, show amateur and professional singers either trying out Harrison’s riff themselves or delivering their own version of the fiery track. “My managers were like, ‘This is the riff, it’s going to be something,’ and I was like, ‘OK?'” he shrugs. “TikTok has taken over and the riff is now in its own universe.” American singer-songwriter Tori Kelly, whom Harison cites as an inspiration, also took a chance. True to his love of theater, Harison had a completely visceral reaction. Luckily, his phone was out of range. “I screamed when I saw Tori Kelly take the challenge,” he says. “I’ve already checked a lot of boxes on my list of goals – I wasn’t expecting much from this first project.”
Harison grew up a musical theater kid in Southampton, where he attended a local pop academy. Rather boldly, as part of his audition for the school’s famous showcase, he decided to sing Mariah Carey’s “Emotions,” a technical birdsong brimming with notoriously hard-to-hit soprano moments. He got the solo. In a grainy home video that takes pride of place on his Instagram feed, a young Harison, just under 10 years old, nails those high notes. Her natural red hair is dipped in gel and styled into spikes. (Today, her locks are dyed a neon pink.) The clip is a vision of 2000s nostalgia as the chorus of synchronized backup singers punctuate the beat, almost exactly recreating the much-loved Christmas concert scene from Love in fact.
It wasn’t until years later, however, that Harrison felt confident enough to pursue a career doing what he loved. He dropped out of university in London to do so, but soon found himself running out of money. “I eventually became very poor, so I returned home [to Southampton]”, says Harison. Soon, he landed a job teaching music at a public adolescent referral unit, an alternative school that serves children who cannot attend a regular school for reasons including difficulty learning. behavior or learning. Harison fell in love with them. “I’m still sad now because I love this career, but I really miss working with them. I saw myself in them because when I was a kid I was going through difficult times,” he said. Between classes, Harison would take time to film and share videos of himself singing online. It didn’t take long for his cover of the hit “Pick Up Your Feelings” to by Jazmine Sullivan in 2021 went viral, giving Harison enough exposure to acquire a management team, quit her teaching job, and begin work on her debut record.
This cover showcased Harison as a standout R&B voice. On this one, he transformed Sullivan’s upbeat song into a stripped-down number – performed in an empty concrete parking lot, the better to amplify his roaring falsetto screams. Harrison’s voice on I lost a friend are comparable to the soulful songs of Adele or the earlier work of Sam Smith. On “Why Didn’t You Call???” “, he questions an estranged lover about his absence, while on the bouncy “TMF” he channels R&B influences like Sullivan. Elton John, Aretha Franklin and Amy Winehouse are names Harison regularly brings up in conversations.
“In my 26 years of experience, I finally had the opportunity to write about them”
(Saint Harrison)
The writing experience I lost a friend It was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Harrison’s situation had changed radically; he no longer worked nine to five and was suddenly offered the resources he once dreamed of. (“For the first time I had a crew, there was money there and I was able to go out and meet people and record with them,” he says. “All those things were so out of scope for me before that.”) On the other hand, when it came to writing, Harison had no idea the amount of emotional purging that would be required of him. “I always knew I wanted [pour my emotions] in my music because that’s the music I listen to – it’s about real people and real stories – but I didn’t expect it to be hard on the soul,” he admits. “The writing process was so intense. I would go into a room every day where someone would say to me, “How are you feeling today?” It became less exciting and more [emotionally] deep. I was quite upset at times because I think in my 26 years of experience I finally had the opportunity to write about them – and some of them weren’t experiences very pleasant. I loved it and I hated it at the same time.
I lost a friend was named after Harrison’s recent experience of losing friends. His success led to inevitable changes in his lifestyle and schedule. “The hardest thing is that people don’t understand, and they take it personally when you’re not free. It was a strange experience,” he says. “But then you find yourself in new situations, you meet new people, and then other friends say, ‘Why are you meeting new people?'” Harison lets out a big sigh and takes a swig from the can of Coke in his hand. “As much as you want to stay the same person, you don’t. Everything changes.”
Saint Harison’s debut EP, ‘Lost a Friend,’ is out now
