Gold Rush Kid (Apple Music Edition)

“I would say that 50% of it is festival sing-along songs and 50% of it is reflective,” George Ezra tells Apple Music of his much-anticipated third album Gold Rush Kid. You’ll hear the former in “Anyone for You,” the singer-songwriter’s grin-inducing comeback single that’s every bit as buoyant as “Shotgun” or “Budapest,” and which was born during the first 2020 lockdown. “I did five weeks in a flat alone and had an awful lot of conversations with myself,” he says. “A big part of that was about the idea that, from whatever age, promoting yourself is an odd thing. And I think I felt very locked into ‘this is who you are.’ And it didn't take much to be like, ‘Well, that's not true. There’s a lot of you. And that's true of all of us.’ Naturally, once we started writing it, it was going to be a positive song.”

Unlike 2014’s Wanted on Voyage and 2018’s Staying at Tamara’s, Gold Rush Kid came from looking in, rather than looking out. “Both records before this one, I have tied to a journey of some sort,” he says. “The first record I roamed around Europe for a month and kept journals; the second record I went and stayed at Tamara’s in Barcelona and kept journals. It’s almost professional-level people-watching and I loved it. That's what feels different about jumping into this album: It feels less runaway and more like, ‘Well, hang on, how are we approaching this thing? Because this is going to eat up all of our time and let's approach it sensibly.’” This album’s title is a neat summation of where Ezra—an artist who has sometimes struggled to reconcile his position as a superstar singer-songwriter—is at, three albums in. “In the past, this thing's been quite overwhelming, unappealing, and scary, but the truth is you love it,” he says. “You’ve seen places you never thought you'd see, you've met people you never thought you'd meet, and you've lived a life that you couldn't have predicted so far. More than anything, you know it's not going to last forever. It’s a gold rush, and so throughout the album, that's what I hear. Be the gold rush kid.” Listen to “Anyone for You” now, then add Gold Rush Kid to your library to get the whole thing when it’s released.