KID BRUNSWICK 1,739

“If I’m being honest, I don’t feel like I fit in,” says Kid Brunswick when asked about his place in the music scene of 2020. “There’s no one I hear who sounds like they’re pushing rock forward. There’s no one who’s really breaking boundaries. I’m waiting to see who comes along and opens everything wide up.”

When you scratch beneath the surface of this 21-year-old’s dark and confessional take on beat-driven electro-punk and where his restless spirit comes from, you’ll understand why he always feels so displaced.

Growing up in a house full of music, a young Harry James was drumming by age three before taking to singing, piano, bass, guitar, stringed instruments, and dabbling with organs and stringed instruments. By 16 he was making beats and writing his own songs, and by 17 he was signed to Island Records. While his talent was undeniable, it faced a constant battle against drugs and trouble – while also having ADHD and eating disorders to contend with. His music was his only anchor as he spent his teens sailing through the choppy seas of addiction and depression.

“Drugs fucked up my education to the extent where I couldn’t remember how to do anything,” says Brunswick. “The only thing I could do was open my laptop and go on GarageBand.”

Outside of school, he started making beats for rappers before writing bars for them too. His flair for rhythm and songwriting landed him a place at music college where his futuristic grunge sound took shape and he found his calling. “That’s when I realised this is what I should do. I couldn’t do anything else so this was my only option.”

Education wasn’t for him as drugs had seen Harry kicked out of every school he’d ever been to, and before long at 16 he was kicked out of his home too. “I was a nightmare to be around,” he remembers. “I would only leave my house to get drugs. The police got called, I spent a night in a cell and then after that my mum was like, ‘I can’t have this’.”

While sleeping on sofas and floors, all he could do was make beats and write songs. “I was putting everything into it because I had nothing else,” he says. “That’s what propelled it to a different level. The music that I write comes through a lot of pain.”

He needed a profound intervention if he was going to survive. He found it in rehab. “I was on the brink of death,” he says. “It was fucking hard and I fucking hated it. Detoxing off alcohol and cocaine is not a fun thing to do. I was on a lot of benzos, xanax and valium as well – and they’re probably even harder to get off than the alcohol. It sucked dick. It sucked fucking camel dick, man.”

After the painful process of admitting that he had a problem, Brunswick at 21 is now clean and sober, but still carrying the scars of all he’s been through. You can hear it in the fiery industrial stomp of ‘Prescription Kid’ (“Ruin my life with that American shit/Let’s get high like American kids/If we wanna be cool, we gotta make ourselves sick”), the moshable but macabre techno rave of ‘Skinny’ (“Because I’m sick as I’ve ever been, so skinny, I came here uninvited”) and in the aching anti-ballad of new single ‘4AM’ (“When I’m sober I can figure it out, cigarrettes and sex help us get past all of it again”).

“Even if it doesn’t feel like a song is about me, it’s almost certainly about me,” he reveals. “I can’t write through anyone else’s eyes. I wrote ‘4AM’ in rehab. It’s about my manic depression and suicidal thoughts. ‘Prescription Kid’ is a song I wrote about two kids on prescription drugs who go into a school and kill a load of other kids. It’s not saying, ‘Fuck violence’, but more telling the story of why they did what they did.”

Citing his inspirations as Kurt Cobain, Thom Yorke, Trent Reznor and Travis $cott, Kid Brunswick is now bent on following his own path to create “some form of rock music, but with new ideas and new production”. His game-changing, genre-hopping sound and soul-baring words have also seen Brunswick receive scores of messages from fans who find comfort in their shared experiences; experiences that inspired a lifetime of music he hopes to share in the coming years. That’s his only real ambition – to share and connect with those who get it.

“Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about what happens,” he says. “I just like talking to people. Social media, fans, that stuff – I’ve figured out that’s never really going to make you happy. I find real happiness from helping people. That’s having an impact on people. As an artist, I’d be scared to be famous. I’d never want to be as big as Billie Eilish. I’d rather be on an Elliot Smith level – someone who changed stuff, but was never a global star.”

Now sober, focussed and catching up on the years of colour, life and emotion that he lost to his troubles and habits, Kid Brunswick has once again fallen back on the one thing that’s always saved him – the songs. He may not fit in, but his songs and his truth will find a home for others who’ve been waiting for someone to blow everything wide open with something new.

“Whenever I write a good song, that’s the best drug in the world. It really is,” he says. “It’s a natural high and I’m really addicted to that feeling. It’s all a learning process. Some days I feel like shit and some days are really, really cool. I’m still sensitive to so much stuff. I try and toughen myself, but in reality I’m like a kid. That’s why I’m Kid Brunswick.”