As a surly young major label malcontent, Jake Bugg has been put through all the authentic rock rites. Slagging off popstars? Endlessly! Posing with naked dollybirds? Right here! Album with Rick Rubin? 2013’s Shangri La. Gallagher patronage? Mais bien sûr. Which brings us to 2016, where at the ripe old age of 22, Nottingham-born Bugg confessed that his newfound wealth had opened his eyes to the benefits of voting Conservative. “Coming from a working-class background, if you didn’t go left, you’d be resented,” he told NME in March. “But after having a few albums and touring a while, maybe financially it’s better to be right-wing. So you’re stuck in the middle.”
If he's not quite moving to the Isle of Man yet, his political ambivalence still isn’t particularly surprising. Despite Bugg’s much-toted council estate background, his skifflin’ songs have always hidden a ruthlessly individualist streak: a sorry-not-sorry attitude about escaping his past (while exploiting its downtrodden character for poverty tourism ballads and cred) and sneery dismissals of his less ambitious friends. “When you’re the kingpin, people wanna take you down,” he sang on Shangri La, in what he unconvincingly claimed was a song inspired by The Wire. As Bugg’s first record without the help of cowriters or much of a producer (Jacknife Lee worked on three songs), his third album On My One is the test of whether he can indeed stand alone and swim without his authenticity armbands.
Uninspired as Bugg’s previous records could be, they were at least coherent: 2012’s Jake Bugg coasted on dusky pre-Beatles bonhomie, while Shangri La had a rockier sting in its tail. The prevailing impression left by On My One is of a young man desperately grasping in the dark for his musical identity, and coming up with one of the most arrestingly baffling collections of music in recent memory. Lead single “Gimme the Love” is a swaggering slab of maxed-out radio dynamics in debt to Kasabian and Second Coming-era Stone Roses, written at the label’s insistence that Bugg give them a single. He makes his feelings on the matter evident in a tirade of jibbered lyrics about airplay, fakery, and the “middle road well bode the game played.” He recently explained that his people had reservations about the bombastic track. “People would say to me, ‘How’s that gonna sound on the radio next to Little Mix?’ That was the wrong question. It should be, ‘How are Little Mix gonna sound next to this?’” (Like sweet, sweet relief.)
Bugg has not been blessed with a natural singing voice (just hear him honk “LAYDEH!” on “Hold on You”) though on doleful acoustic numbers like “All That,” he finds a low husk that suits him well enough. It transpires that one of the benefits of having external producers and songwriters may have been their rather more judicious understanding of this limited vocal range. “Love, Hope and Misery” elicits the kind of “bless him for trying” pity of *The X Factor’*s audition week: a lovely, dramatic torch song whose poise is shattered by Bugg crooning like a stuck sheep. The words “I'm just a maaaaaaan” have rarely been sung in a less convincing fashion; the chorus does not grow any less painful after a dozen listens. It’s like watching the Titanic hit the iceberg again and again.
“Ain’t No Rhyme” is equally embarrassing. It’s here that Bugg deals with his political uncertainty in a Beastie Boys-inspired rap. It’s his “Straight Outta Clifton” moment, a visit to his old stomping ground that manages to be utterly graceless about his money-grabbing friends, and sound like a government PSA warning young people about the perils of prison. “C’mon Kurtis/Just put down the knife,” he urges. “I knew from his eyes he wasn’t gonna think twice/Put your mask on before committing crime/These kids need to think about time inside/Cos a dagger through the heart comes at a price.” It is miraculous that he doesn’t start the song with the words, “I’m MC Bugg and I’m here to say.”
The diversity of On My One shows that Bugg certainly isn't short of musical inspiration. There are country ballads, like the title track (“I'm just a paw boy from Notting-hum”), while “Bitter Salt” is “Keep the Faith”-era Bon Jovi. “Livin’ Up Country” and “All That” evoke Ryan Adams circa Heartbreaker (or, less favorably, Britpop also-rans Cast). He’s trying, and his time with Rick Rubin has made him into a decent producer. But the lyrics expose Bugg as a young man with nothing to say about society, masculinity, love—anything other than his arrogant, dull disgruntlement at being “three years on the road, 400 shows... no place to go.” His love songs are muddled and mean, one verse accepting blame for a relationship’s downfall, the next telling a girl, “it's all your fault because I won’t do what I’m told.”
On My One is Nottingham slang for “on my own,” subtly illustrating how isolated Bugg seems to feel from his upbringing, and from the major label system that’s got him this far. An album this terrible is certainly the product of some bad decisions by people who don’t have his best interests at heart. To the outside world, it shouldn’t matter that Bugg is a bit manufactured, or that he had help writing his early material. But there’s a difference between being capital-A authentic and being convincing. All the effort he put into diligently slagging off pop music in order to shore up his own indie credentials (even One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson called him on it) has backfired massively. On My One is precisely the kind of mistake that pop stars make when they think they’re smarter than the system.
