James Bay: 'I love proving people wrong'

His excitement is understandable. At 25, he is the breakout star of the year. His debut album, Chaos and the Calm, released in the spring, went on to become the UK’s biggest-selling so far of 2015 and has shifted more than a million copies worldwide.

The single ‘Hold Back the River’ has been unescapable for the past year. His celebrity fanbase is as wide as it is varied: Alexa Chung calls him ‘James Bae’; Ellie Goulding filmed herself singing ‘Let It Go’ (his hit song, not the one from Frozen) in the shower, while Taylor Swift asked him to support her on tour in Europe. Which he did, even though he’d never really heard her songs. Last month Ronnie Wood joined him on stage in Brixton.

The crowd went nuts — nobody more so than Bay’s parents, who raised both their sons on a staple diet of Rolling Stones records. (Bay first met Wood and Keith Richards at an awards ceremony, where they clapped and cheered along to his set and Keith told him, ‘Keep it up, boy. I need your music.’)

Then there’s his growing stature as a fashion muse, which he can’t quite get his head around. Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey is a huge fan and asked Bay to perform at the S/S 2015 Burberry show in Kensington Gardens; he played an acoustic set on the runway while the models walked, watched by Cara Delevingne and Kate Moss. Afterwards, Mario Testino nipped over and said he’d like to shoot him, and Anna Wintour’s mustachioed right-hand man Hamish Bowles told him what a lovely face he had. Of the fashion world’s interest he says: ‘I appreciate it, but I hope there was never any suggestion that I’d set out to become that. I don’t care. All right, I probably care two per cent about it, and then 98 per cent about the music.’

He says his signature look (his hat is by the Australian brand Akubra and he favours Topman jeans) evolved from what he was comfortable wearing anyway and it has ended up as a bit of a uniform. He points out that Michael Jackson had his glove, Springsteen his blue jeans and bandana everyman vibe, and Prince the colour purple. ‘I do believe in the iconic, the signature look. So the long skinny jeans and the hat are all about that, I suppose, but I was wearing them before all this happened. With the other guys in the band, quite often they’ll say, “Right, two hours to stage time, what shall I wear?” And often, in my case, I like to be able to look down and say to myself, “F*** it, I’m going to wear what I’m already wearing, because I can’t be bothered to take it off.” ’

He does really like Bailey, though; the pair went to the Met Gala in New York together in May. Which was just as well, as Bay didn’t have any other friends there. ‘He knew everybody! He’s so cool, he’s wonderful, and I felt like the littlest, loneliest thing in the world,’ he laughs. ‘So I just went round saying hello to people like Alicia Keys, who I love.’

Bailey dressed him in a black Burberry suit, which Bay says has never happened before. What, getting dressed for free? ‘No, wearing a suit! I’d never worn one in my life before.’ Not even for weddings, or job interviews? ‘I’ve been to one wedding and it was in summer, so I wore a shirt and trousers. And job interviews were all in bars, or Sainsbury’s. I had a job on a market stall when I was 14 — there’s no suits there.’

So he put on his finery, along with a bow tie (‘I’d never worn one of those before either’), after spending hours with his pampering team. Sorry, I mean he didn’t actually bother to spend ‘even one hour getting ready, I haven’t got the patience. I just put the shoes on. But I loved it! It was great… It was a mad night, lots of shiny famous people there — those things are a bit surreal to me. If I’m invited, I’ll go, but they’re not what I do this for.’ He chuckles to himself. ‘It’s a funny old world.’

It is certainly a long way from his childhood in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where he went to the local boys’ state school. His dad is a wine merchant, his mum a former fashion illustrator, and the whole family are hugely into music. His uncle had a classical guitar in his house, which was never played. Bay’s dad decided to buy this guitar off his brother and so then it was in their house, still never played, until one day little James said that he’d quite like to play it and so somebody found him a teacher.

‘That was it. My parents never said, “You must practise at every hour of the day,” but they also didn’t say, “You can’t be a musician, stop being an idiot.” They just thought it was nice that my brother and I were having a good time.’ As a teenager, he had friends, but spent more time in his bedroom practising than going out: ‘I was so head over heels in love with playing music. They’d go, “Why isn’t James out?” “He’s at home.” “What’s he doing?” “Playing guitar.” ’ Still, he says: ‘I don’t regret it.’

Well, of course you don’t, I say, thinking of his Brits Critics’ Choice award, his top ten iTunes album chart position in 51 countries and how he went to the Brighton Institute of Modern Music and saw Tom Odell, who was on the same course, get offered a record deal, which spurred Bay on to try for the same. He was signed to Republic Records, the same division of Universal as Florence and the Machine, in 2012 after a fan took a video of him singing in a North London pub, put it on YouTube, and somebody at the New York office saw it. Another big break came when Lana Del Rey pulled out of the Radio 1 Live Lounge and Fearne Cotton needed somebody to step in. Cometh the hour, cometh the man from Hitchin.

‘I’ve done all right,’ he jokes. He is quite happy to admit that he has an ego. ‘James Baldwin, who’s my favourite author really, wrote that to be an artist of any sort you’re going to be vain and egotistical, and you’re going to need those things to carry you through. I do think you should always have a fight with those characteristics… Never let them run wild,’ he says, ‘because then you really are a dick.’

He spends a lot of time ruminating on the modern music industry: ‘It [used to be] a lot more social. Now people make up their mind about other people from social media, looking at them from behind the scenes. Before that came in [you] made your decisions about people in the flesh — and everyone’s nice to each other in the flesh, aren’t they, so you’d meet up with them again and again, and collaborations could be a free-flowing thing. Whereas now we all watch YouTube videos of somebody who’s probably had a shit morning, had to do a radio show, voice felt like shit, and so-and-so sees that video and decides they aren’t any good. But if you actually go to their gig, you’ll find out they’re bloody brilliant.’

His drive is remarkable; I bet there are plenty who’d clock his long hair and casual style and jump to the conclusion that success has come easily. He insist he likes it when people make lazy assumptions about him: ‘Because I like watching their faces as soon as I plug in and it kicks off.’ One fellow pop star he does feel the love from is Sam Smith with whom he shared a bill at a festival in Mexico. ‘All the bands were staying in the same hotel, so we sat at the bar and he was just saying nice things, like “Keep doing what you’re doing because you’re on the right path.” It’s just nice when us musicians can all be cool with each other.’

He’s held back from splurging his considerable earnings on any rock-star trappings. His only weakness is vintage guitars. ‘I’m a bit tight with spending money on myself.’ His tour manager, Ross Lewis, walks into the room and says, ‘Can you put this on record in the Evening Standard? Will you tell him to buy a f***ing car?’ ‘I do need to buy a car,’ nods Bay, a bit pathetically, ‘because this Christmas I’m not arsing around with trains and asking my dad to come and pick me up from the station.’

He also needs to buy a house, as he and his girlfriend Lucy, whom he’s been with since his teens, are still living in a rented two-bed flat on a noisy road in Wood Green. ‘I’ve spent two or three years lugging guitars and things upstairs, because we live on the first floor, and it’s a pain in the arse. The second bedroom only has room for the washing and amps I don’t use, and a sofabed that nobody can even sleep on any more.’ Why? ‘Well, because of… other things in there that will make me sound like a big-headed idiot.’ Bondage gear? Star Wars figurines? Oh, I get it, he means platinum discs and awards.

He looks embarrassed. Better get used to it, love, you’re going to need a much bigger spare room soon.

Chaos and the Calm is out now. Bay plays three nights at Eventim Apollo in March 2016. Portraits by Jon Gorrigan, styled by Anish Patel