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In 2024, Bec O’Malley went on a hike in the Peak District with his friends. He’d taken his acoustic guitar with him and decided to film a quick video of him covering Dylan Gossett’s ‘Coal’ while out on the misty paths. In the short clip, the young musician forgets the words a few lines in, but there was something about it that connected with those who saw it on their algorithm. Perhaps it was the unpolished charm of the video – mistake left in, cut off before he could try again – or his resonant vocals that hit in even just a few seconds, or a combination of the two. The likes quickly poured in, more so than for any other video he’d posted on TikTok before, igniting interest in this unknown talent.

O’Malley’s name may have been undiscovered when that video was posted, but by that point, he’d already been playing music and writing his own songs for years. Growing up in Stockport, he first picked up a guitar aged 12, learning the basics from his cousin and fleshing out the rest from YouTube tutorials. A few years later, his interest turned from simply playing others’ creations to working on his own, first in bands with school friends, and then on his own. Along the way, his sound evolved, pulling in new influences and building the foundations for the music he makes today. “I was doing the indie stuff for so long, and I was just getting bored of it,” he explains. “I started listening to more of the modern side of country – Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, those guys – and it just revamped it in my head.”

Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the surging popularity of country music in the UK, the genre is something that’s always been around O’Malley. He comes from an Irish family where music was always playing around the house and at family gatherings, and “they’d always play all the country music – a bit of American country, Irish country”.

The 23-year-old’s material, though, is a balance – one that draws from a world of Nashville skylines and pick-up trucks, but also from his lived experience in the UK. Instead of parodying the language and topics of his American counterparts, he puts his reality front and centre, writing about things he and the people around him have seen or been through. “You don’t see many trucks around here,” he laughs. “It just wouldn’t feel right to [copy US country] – it’d feel like role play.” It’s an approach he sees as having a unique allure to it: “No one in the States is going to sing it from a perspective that I’d sing it from.”

Sonically, too, he merges two disparate parts – country and indie – and, rather than be seen as someone predominantly in one lane, he wants to be known for his distinctive blend of them both. A love for The La’s, Sam Fender and Oasis have fuelled the indie side of his writing, with the latter band in particular having a huge impact on him – not just musically, but in attitude and ambition, too. The Gallaghers’ hometown of Burnage is just down the road from Stockport, and their influence seeped into O’Malley’s surroundings early on. “You see Oasis and how big they got when they’re from just down the road, and it’s like, ‘If they can do it, why can’t I?’” he reasons.

While posting on social media, O’Malley also built up his following and learned his craft the old-fashioned way, too. During his university course in Liverpool, he’d return to Manchester on weekends to play in the city’s Irish bars, sometimes playing multiple sets in a day. Those venues proved the perfect performance classrooms as he battled rowdy crowds and learned how to get them on his side. “Sometimes you’ll get people who are quiet, but then as the night goes on, everyone gets a bit more pissed and scream and shout,” he says. “We’ve learned how to deal with them – and have a night with them, as well.”

Since those days, he’s been invited to play at Manchester’s Neighbourhood Festival, support Weston Lonely and was scheduled to support Jeff Lynne’s ELO at their farewell show at BST Hyde Park, until Lynne’s medical issues meant the gig had to be scrapped (more high profile bookings are set for 2026, with appearances at State Fayre, Kendall Calling, Country Calling Festival and Highways’ Songwriters Round at Royal Albert Hall in the offing). By November 2025, O’Malley had booked – and sold out – his first headline gig at Manchester’s famed Deaf Institute. These bookings would be impressive for any emerging artist, but become even more so when you consider that they all came without O’Malley releasing a single song.

For a long time, the rising artist’s tagline has been “singer with no songs out” – a slogan that gets more powerful when witnessed beneath ever-growing follower counts. Soon, though, that line will have to change – first, following the release of his debut single, ‘Let You Go’, and later, with the arrival of his first EP. “It’s the end of an era – although I might just change it to ‘singer with one song’. When the Grammy comes, I’ll just say ‘singer with a Grammy’,” he quips.

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