Virtually famous: Isaac Gracie

Tips season is now in full flow, with the Brit Awards naming three success stories for 2016, MTV offering 10 names and the BBC and Spotify going with 15 – but the ever-restless hype machine has already moved on to a singer-songwriter who isn’t on any of those lists.

Isaac Gracie, a 21-year-old from Ealing, is generating industry salivation for a single song he recorded on Garageband in his bedroom. Last Words is the only recording on his Soundcloud page, a simple acoustic ballad that sounds both ancient and familiar.

It’s a beauty, dusty and careworn, sung in a voice that sounds as if its owner has lived a little, even if he is a veteran of the Ealing Abbey Choir. There are a handful of other live recordings on his YouTube channel, but this is the one that looks like it will earn him a record deal.

He put it online in July, and on his Facebook page you can track his excitement from learning it’s been played on BBC Radio Norfolk, to finding that Zane Lowe has made it his “World Record” on Apple’s global station, Beats 1. This week Radio 1 started playing it too.

A debut headline show in Hackney last month was a sellout, and 2016 looks extremely bright even without a tips list slot.