A soul singer in a fairly traditional vein who’s been plugging away for a number of years, dreadlocked Manchester man John Paul Cooper looks like he’s about to have his first hit with the sound of the moment.
He’s the voice of Jonas Blue’s new single, Perfect Strangers, a box-ticking examplar of the tropical house genre that is currently high on the iTunes chart and has just crept into the official top 40. That’s a style that’s likely to be considered naff at any moment, if it isn’t already, but Cooper’s latest solo single is far better.
It’s called Party and has a thudding house beat, but with its acoustic guitar and smooth falsetto vocal, there’s a sadness to it that makes it more than something to play and forget at your barbeque.
He may still be a stranger to the charts but you can tell he’s on his way up by the size of his gigs. A headline show at 1,400-capacity Koko has been and gone, and one for 2,300 at the Forum is on the way in the autumn.
This weekend he’ll share the stage with an obvious influence, Stevie Wonder, in Hyde Park. His fellow solo pop men Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes have enthused about him on Twitter, and no doubt he’ll soon be joining them in the hit parade at last.
July 10, British Summer Time, Hyde Park, W1 (08448 24 48 24, bst-hydepark.com)