Black Lounge's George Grant wants to write songs that outlive him

It's a wonder it took so long, since Grant comes from a relatively musical family – both his mum and dad have been musicians in bands for as long as he can remember. For the young George, it was a healthy diet of Led Zeppelin and their ilk that soundtracked his youth. His first introduction to playing music came through piano lessons during primary school. He then switched to a few drumming lessons, but this wasn't his time.

During lockdown, he bought a "really crappy electric guitar", as he puts it. "I was playing with a coin because I didn't have a pick, it was all very makeshift." Learning on his own, he became obsessed with creating songs. In fact, if it wasn't for the lockdown periods, Grant reckons he may never have wound up pursuing music at all. "I was working from home as well. I was doing some sales job, which I didn't actually mind, but I just remember spending eight hours a day playing the guitar instead, and wasn't hitting targets, mate, let's say that," he winks.

The push into this musical exploration came from exploring the Arctic Monkeys' discography, most prominently their debut. Their growth gave Grant a deep insight into what he was searching for – a space to become more than a salesman, to see what lay beneath.

"If you listen to their last record, and then go back and listen to their first album, it's just so different. It's incredible…going from that adolescence to the maturity stage now," he tells me. "That is seriously what opened it up for me. You can hear the influence, I'm definitely 100% not going to shy away from it."

"I already see that happening with myself as well," he adds, "I only recorded the first song in our discography three years ago, and the stuff that we recently recorded is so different."

Grant first heard Arctic Monkeys in 2012, at the age of 11. It was via the tried-and-tested method how we've all discovered some of our favourite acts in some format: drinking with friends. "I remember being down in Camber Sands. I was having one of my first ciders on the hills of the beach, and I remember hearing, 'Do I Wann Know?'" He recalls. But while he was arrested by them in the moment, it was short-lived. "And then I didn't listen to music for like 10 years, or I was listening to other types of music, such as house music. I had a rap phase listening to UK grime, as you do when in high school."

When it came to Grant exploring songwriting during the pandemic, he found himself writing stories as opposed to drawing directly from his life. "The best ones are the ones that happen to you because it flows more natural and it can mean a lot more to you," he admits, "but there's two things I like to write about, it's very simple, it's experiences that have happened to me and storytelling. That's my two writing styles, I'd say."

From discovering songwriting to becoming the frontman of a band was actually the most difficult part of the process for Grant. Growing up in Billericay, Grant found that the Essex town wasn't a hotbed for kids trying to start bands. But with the impetus of wanting to perform live, and his parents egging him on, he signed up for BandMix – the website equivalent of the back pages of music magazines back in the day.

Here he found the first lineup of Black Lounge. Getting together and rehearsing, Grant started finding his feet, and the band began to get some wind in its sails. But after a fallout, the initial lineup disbanded and Grant hired new mercenaries for his journey.

A part of the initial lineup falling apart was the understanding of what Black Lounge actually was:essentially, a George Grant enterprise. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to give the band a name, preferring to take the solo artist approach. "I was super embarrassed," he admits, laughing. "I didn't want the attention on myself, so I hid behind this alias, Black Lounge. There's no story behind the name. I thought it was pretty cool. I should probably think of a cool origin story for that," he laughs again.

Black Lounge's first releases were an entirely solo effort. In 2023, Grant paid for his first-ever studio session in Billericay. Minus the drums, it's all Grant on the project's first releases ("Bickering" and "Doing It Again"). Eventually getting together five songs, the green Grant took them home, and deliberated his next move with his mum, dad, and sister.

"We held on to these songs for a year, and then the first one we released in 2024 was ‘Bickering’, and it was the best decision because it got such a reaction because of the way it sounded exactly like AM," Grant recalls. "I remember at the time thinking, 'Oh, I'm getting all this hate, but then it's not really hate. Actually, they're saying it sounds like something they've already heard."

They do indeed sound like the work of someone knowing what he loves and is figuring out his creativity through that template. Releases since still hold his influences dear, but they now expand beyond homage, and the sound feels like Grant finding his feet as George Grant the musician, rather than George Grant the novice. Recent single, "Roommate" has a rousing guitar part picked straight out of the jangling early 00s driving the tale of "the world's worst roommate", while "Sake of a Laugh" is Kooks-y and Libertines-y in equal measure. These sounds are all familiar, but that's what Grant's about – he wants to celebrate the music he loves.

And more importantly, Grant is only just getting started. With his band in tow, he proceeded to start playing shows, gaining as much experience as possible. Shyness about performing has been the biggest hurdle for Grant to overcome. His first step onto a stage didn't come until October 2024. But two years earlier, there was one lightbulb moment prior to this that sowed the seeds for his future.

"I remember I was down the pub one time, and I went to this guy's afters, and he had an acoustic in the corner, and it was all getting a bit messy. I was drunk, and I picked it up, and I played it, and he was like, 'Man, you're actually quite good'.

The two ended up having an emotional conversation, with Grant picking apart his fears around the idea of performing. The stranger – who he still sees out and about in Billericay today – simply told him earnestly, "Just bloody go for it!'"

Grant cites this as the real turning point in his decision to become a musician. After all, it's one thing to be writing songs, but they also need to live and breathe. That doesn't mean it was easy sailing for Grant: “It's so difficult to get out of that mindset," he tells me, “but I've really gained confidence, and it's shown me that I can do things that I didn't know I could do – not to get too emotional!”

Now that he's found himself on the proverbial and literal road as a musician, has the ambition for the project taken shape? For Grant, it's simple –H he wants to build a credible career. "To be something that a lot of people listen to. It's never been anything to do with money or anything like that. You would not get into this if you wanted to be rich," he explains. It's such a gruelling process, and there's not much money in it at all unless you're really big. For me, it's building something that can stem off to go be multiple things; a massive fan base, a massive community, and some really decent songs that are bigger than you and live on once you're done."