Only Real is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, placed on streaming services.

A decade ago, the songwriter and producer shared his debut album in full, completing one arc in his creativity. Released in 2015, ‘Jerk At The End Of The Line’ was a potent example of bedroom pop, the work of singular passions, and idiosyncratic impulses.

But then… nothing.

Only Real retreated from the centre of the stage, but his work remained – indeed, it seemed to grow and grow, absence making the hearts of fans grow fonder.

Late last year, however, things changed. A single emerged online, ending an almost decade-long wait for something new. Now a full EP is online, with ‘Days Go By’ illuminating where Only Real exists in 2025.

A song cycle that embraces personal growth and the renewal of imagination, it’s a beautiful, bewitching re-start from a potent talent.

Here, Only Real writes for CLASH about his decade-long journey to the new EP.

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Back on a warm spring evening in 2011 I was sat on the computer trying to load up my emails. I had just spent the day herding my drunk friends around the streets of west London – scrabbling together a music video for a song I was working on. I finally logged in and noticed an unread message in my Only Real inbox. This was a big development – up til now there had been no inbound messages, except when I had used the email to order pizza. This evening I had not ordered pizza. Yet. 

I realise in the context of the slick online content we’re all now used to seeing – it sounds crazy that I was shooting a video for a song that was half finished – but the truth is I went on to only ever half finish anything I put out for the next few years, so somewhere in my fruit loop addled 19 year old brain there was method. 

The email was from a guy called Noam who told me he ran a blog called Don’t Die Wondering, as well as working for a record label called Merok – I looked this label up and saw they had signed Klaxons – my heart skipped a beat – oh my days i’m about to be fucking famous.

He asked me a bit about Only Real and said he was going to post it on his blog the following day. I didn’t really know anything about music blogs but it turned out the ‘blogosphere’ was my spirit animal and within 24 hours of him posting my song it was like everything had clicked in to place – lots of re-blogging, an influx of new Soundcloud and Facebook followers (people I hadn’t even gone to school with!) and then in-turn a load of messages along the lines of “Hey Only, love the tunes! Wanna get 10 pints with me on a Tuesday afternoon?” from artist managers and record label A&Rs. All this newfound attention – At this rate I’m going to need a new email for ordering my pizzas – I thought to myself. 

These blogs were that era’s TikTok – feeding the music industry with tips on the artists they should be asking out for 10 pints.

I continued releasing songs on Soundcloud and then in early 2013 I put out a 7 inch on a small and fleeting subsidiary of Warner called ASL records – after that, in the autumn of that year I put out a self produced EP on a label called LuvLuvLuv which went through Universal. It seems mad now, as it doesn’t feel that long ago but I don’t think these even went on Spotify at the time.

Also that year, I put on a party in a bar I had grown up going to on Portobello Road and played one of my first London shows. It went bananas tbf and as was the cunning plan – the show led to me signing a major label deal. I was still too young to really understand what this meant both in terms of what I was getting (£££) and what I was giving away (my soul) JOKE!!!!

But I did notice that things felt like they changed at this point – I look back at this as the beginning of a second era of Only Real. The first few years had felt pure and fun – really exciting and ambitious but also developing in a way that I felt made sense. 

This second era was different – I was a few years older and Only Real was now not just something I was running from my bedroom. At the time I felt I was still headstrong and clear on what Only Real should be but now I can see things had definitely started to get hazy. New external opinions (from well meaning record label people working on Only Real and also from the online haters that come when you reach a certain level of popularity) found their way in to my already overthinking brain and I found it harder and harder to decipher my own thoughts. This eventually led to a completely consuming level of anxiety and insecurity  –  partying became an unhealthy coping/numbing mechanism and spiralled. Looking back I can see where I inevitably lost my way and how this all contributed to things falling apart soon after. 

This is not to say if my decisions in these moments had not been influenced by others – the creative/financial results would have been any better or worse. The critical thing for me was that I felt like I had lost track of what Only Real was and this took me in to a really dark place, which in turn ended the project and affected me for quite a few years afterwards. 

I don’t blame anyone for any of this – it’s just part of going down that route. I worked with some amazing people and this period of time also brought some incredible moments.

Thanks to the budget I was allocated – I got to record with two producers who had made loads of stuff l had grown up loving. I spent a chunk of time recording in Atlanta which I look back on as a really formative time of my life. Over there I was working with Ben Allen who had produced lots of the best American indie of the 2010s (Washed Out, Deerhunter, Youth Lagoon etc) this was all the stuff I was obsessed with at that time. The other half of the album I did with Dan Carey in Streatham who as well as being one of the best producers in the world – Is one of the nicest and most genuine people I’ve ever met.

There was also lots of funny/surreal moments around this time… my friends have always said I attract weird things happening around me but there definitely was quite a high hit-rate of them in this period…
For example when the then prime minister’s wife said I was her favourite new artist and I got invited on newsnight lol or when I had a 6am heart to heart in Berlin with Frodo Baggins or when I met David Schwimmer in the Shoreditch House gym. He was very muscly! 

After a while of battling the increasingly dark situation I was in – I made the decision that I needed to stop Only Real. It wasn’t just that I was in a bad place, it was also that after a period of hype and rapid growth – Only Real had plateaued and found the level of popularity that it was going to for the time being. It felt to me that the music industry back then didn’t really cater for artists after this first hype train trajectory spike – again this is just my view on it – but it seemed if you didn’t keep getting bigger there was very quickly a common rhetoric introduced that “it isn’t working” and everyone involved, except for the artist, moves on to buy someone else 10 pints. Again this is noone’s fault and it is understandable from a business point of view but unfortunately for newly signed artists (who are often very young) this is incredibly damaging to their self confidence/identity and therefore their chances of persevering are hugely knocked. This was also before DSP distributors entered the scene, so if you weren’t signed (and if you’ve just parted ways with a major after your first record – you weren’t going to get signed, for the reasons above) it kind of felt impossible to release music in any real way. I remember feeling really powerless – how could I have gone from where I was a year ago to now literally not being able to put music out? That question rang around my head for years. 

So off I went to sort myself out. 

Once I was back on my feet I was like a new born baby learning to walk – I bought a shirt and tried working in an office but my boss was a jobsworth, I’m scared of talking on the phone and ultimately my heart just wasn’t in it. So I quit that one. But I kept going and slowly but surely I became a fully formed human adult – I found two jobs I liked that I have slowly but surely built up to become sustainable incomes – firstly as a composer for film, TV and adverts and secondly holding music workshops for children. These two things are now my bread and butter.

But around 2023 I started to feel an itch for releasing music again – A big break up at the end of 2021 had re-lit my creative fire and I had a few songs in the bag that I felt were good. For the first time in ages I actually wanted people to hear them. It also quickly became apparent that they were too idiosyncratic to be anything other than Only Real. Then I started realising that whilst it had previously been necessary for me to walk away from the music industry in order to protect myself – I now felt in a far better place where I could confidently take the positive aspects without the negatives. 

The other crucial change was that it’s now logistically possible to release music yourself via a distributor. There was nothing gatekeeping/stopping me.. I now didn’t need anyone to help me put these songs out and I was doing it purely for creative fulfilment – so why not? 

And that leads me to now, with those songs out in the world as my new EP. I have been completely blown away by the response to them, I really hadn’t expected the people that cared before to still care – and I also hadn’t realised how much I had missed Only Real and the fulfilment it brings me every day.

Thanks for reading, 
Niall 

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