Bruno Major

Grown-ups also need lullabies for calming down, coming down and bedding down. The British singer/songwriter Bruno Major makes records for all those occasions and more. Over understated electronic beats and feathery acoustic guitar, Major’s voice drifts as cozily as woodsmoke. Born in Northampton, England, in 1988, Major got his first guitar at age seven and learned to play jazz as a teenager before earning his living as a session player. (His father was a guitarist, and his brother, Dot, plays in London Grammar.) Eventually Major moved to London and began writing his own songs in between serenading weddings and playing Sinatra covers in Italian restaurants. His debut, 2014’s Live EP, introduced a falsetto as expressive as Jeff Buckley’s. Then, channeling D’Angelo, Nick Drake and Randy Newman, he released a song per month for a year, ultimately compiling them all into 2017’s A Song for Every Moon. He pursued a similarly diaristic approach on 2020’s To Let A Good Thing Die, drawing from voice notes on his iPhone. A verse in “The Most Beautiful Thing” (“Someone on a screen asked me a question/Something about what love means to me/Maybe it’s just circumstance/Or general compatibility”) came from a Twitter exchange. Along the way, Major has gathered fans with serious clout: He cowrote “The Most Beautiful Thing” with FINNEAS, Billie Eilish’s producer and brother, and he’s opened arenas for Sam Smith. That’s a long way from the single-mic setup in his kitchen where he used to record. Yet even on the biggest stages, Major’s music has never lost its hushed intimacy.