JC Stewart

Stewart grew up on a farm in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He has two younger sisters and is the fourth generation of JC Stewarts, with his family running a grocery business of the same name.[1]

Despite not coming from a particularly musical family, Stewart sang in school and was encouraged by his mum to attend a local theatre where he learnt to make music and fell in love with songwriting aged 14.[1][5]

Once he had finished school Stewart took a gap year and then moved to Brighton to study International Relations at Sussex University but dropped out of university and moved to London to pursue music instead.[1][5]

In 2014, Stewart independently released his debut single ‘Gold’.[6]

In 2018, he signed to Warner Records and released two singles, ‘Medicine’ and ‘Like I Did’.[7]

The following year, Stewart co-wrote the track ‘Hollywood’ which featured on Lewis Capaldi’s 2019 debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent which was the UK’s best-selling LP of the year.[3][8] Stewart released 4 further tracks of his own in 2019, ‘Have You Had Enough Wine?’, ‘Bones’, ‘Pick Up Your Phone’ and ‘The Wrong Ones’.

Stewart held a four night residency at The Islington, London in September 2019, which sold out within a few hours.[9] He has also sold out shows in Belfast, Manchester and Glasgow and toured with the likes of Lewis Capaldi, LAUV and Anne-Marie.

In 2020, Stewart released two singles ‘Lying That You Love Me’ and ‘I Need You To Hate Me’, both achieving multiple BBC Radio 1 plays whilst the latter has had over 20,000 UK radio plays to date. The video for ‘I Need You To Hate Me’ premiered on Wonderland magazine’s website.[10]

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, he uploaded a parody of the Friends theme tune, 'I'll Be There For You' (The Rembrandts song), to TikTok which caught the attention of Jennifer Aniston and subsequently led to his first appearances on US television, on The Today Show and Good Morning America.[4]

Stewart collaborated on a track with 220 Kid, ‘Too Many Nights’, which peaked at Number 72 in the UK Singles Chart in November 2020.[11]

Stewart also released his debut EP ‘When The Light Hits The Room’ in November 2020. He co-wrote the EP in two weeks with Tom Odell, who he has cited as one of his biggest musical heroes.[12]

In January 2021, Stewart released his latest single Break My Heart, which was co-written with Niall Horan and Plested and premiered on Dork magazine.[13] He was also named MTV’s Push Artist of the Month.[14]