Back in 2011, Mike played a few gigs in Caffè Nero Brighton and then appeared on our stage at the Cornbury Music Festival. As a result we started featuring his music on the Caffè Nero Playlist and among the tracks we played was ‘Let her Go’. Somewhere in a Caffè Nero around the country a record company executive heard the track, Shazammed it and contacted Mike and the rest as they say, ‘is history’!
Today we celebrate 10 years since the release of his seminal album All The Little Lights with the release of All The Little Lights (Anniversary Edition). Entirely re-recorded and completely re-imagined, Passenger infuses these songs with another decade of experience and wisdom as he calls friends like Foy Vance, Gabrielle Aplin and Nina Nesbitt for special collaborations. Through it all, he preserves all the spirit and soul of the original while breathing new life into these well-loved Passenger staples. Listen HERE.
With the album’s release comes a brand-new video for the re-recording of “Let Her Go” featuring one final collaboration with Passenger’s longtime friend and tour mate, Ed Sheeran. The original global smash single went #1 in 19 countries, and today it has over 6 billion combined streams, is the #2 most Shazamed song of all time, and remains the 16th most viewed video on YouTube of all time. See the video HERE.
Passenger reflects on “Let Her Go”: “Where do I begin… it’s a truly life altering song. Four minutes of music that shifted my trajectory entirely. It’s so big that I think of my career in two sections - before and after ‘Let Her Go.’ People often ask me if I knew I’d written a hit straight away after writing it. The honest truth is I didn’t. I’d written so many songs up until that point that I had been excited by, but nothing had ever come of them, so by this stage I had genuinely stopped thinking in those terms.”
“I vividly remember writing it. It was early 2011, and I was out on a regional tour of Australia playing tiny rooms to a handful of people each night. I remember walking into a venue dressing room, picking up my guitar and playing the opening riff like I’d written it years ago, like I’d played it before. Like it had always been there. I don’t think I’ve had many other moments like that.”
All The Little Lights was originally recorded in Sydney at Linear Recording and produced by Chris Vallejo, who would become Mike’s longtime collaborator. The album quietly transformed into a global phenomenon buoyed by “Let Her Go.” The smash single soared to #1 in 19 countries and reached platinum status in 11 countries, landing at #2 in the UK (5 x Platinum), #5 in the US (6 x Platinum) and scoring nineteen international #1s as it exceeded a staggering 2 billion streams, as well as another 3.5 billion views at YouTube.
Tracks from the new album will be playing daily in every Caffè Nero throughout December at 15.30 for 15 minutes!
It is great to welcome you back Mike!
