JOHN BLAYLOCK SHARES THE NEW SINGLE ‘VIOLETS’ 

Melody, honesty and a love of community are the three strengths that shine throughout everything that singer-songwriter John Blaylock does. After making a strong start to 2026 with appearances on Five Live and Times Radio, John Blaylock now further previews the May 8th release of his debut album ‘Sounds of the Dreadnought’ by sharing his new single ‘Violets’. 

Plaintive but powerful, ‘Violets’ is a stark acoustic ballad in which John’s distinctive voice ruminates on the end of a relationship. It captures him at the point where the reasons and the arguments behind the break-up no longer matter: it’s over, there’s no going back, and all that remains is the blank space where a love once thrived. 
 
John says, “I’m blessed to have grown up in Manchester, with bands like Oasis, The Charlatans, The Stone Roses – all these guys wrote amazing melodies. But at the same time, at home, my dad got me into Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits. Great, great melodies that I was equally blessed to grow up with. As a kid I went to church a lot, so I was always hearing melodies, absorbing them and invested in them. As a songwriter the melody is always the first thing I write in a song and the chorus of ‘Violets’ is a great example of that. It’s about splitting up with a girl who’s bipolar and me saying I can’t take this up and down-ness anymore, so the key line is at the end of the chorus: ‘Don’t think about me I’ll be alright without you, this world’s mine for the taking, I just wish my heart wasn’t breaking.'”
 
The song was written by John, and was produced by the two-time Grammy winner Guy Massey (Ed Sheeran, Manic Street Preachers,Jack Savoretti) and Helen Boulding (Ward Thomas). As with the rest of the upcoming album it was recorded during sessions at Konk, a studio that was famously founded by The Kinks.
 
John Blaylock has been building a reputation with singles including ‘Bulletproof’, ‘Temples’ and ‘Burns Like Fire’. The recent ‘Moonshine & Roses’ then prompted the Daily Star to compare him to Ed Sheeran and Mumford & Sons, while Northern Exposurestated that he is “ready to make 2026 his year.”
 
That’s exactly what he’s set to do with ‘Sounds of the Dreadnought’, an album that traverses influences from the timeless songcraft of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Nick Drake and James Taylor to the swaggering indie/hip-hop hybrid of Jamie T, and the classic Manchester sounds of The Stone Roses and The Charlatans. In addition to Guy Massey and Helen Boulding, John’s collaborators on the record also include  Freddy Sheed (Lewis Capaldi).