Ex-student ‘JGrrey’ talks exclusively to Oaklands College

Former Performing Arts student known now in the music industry as ‘JGrrey’, sits down to speak to Oaklands College as part of our exclusive front cover interview with the up and coming musician. 

Tell us about your time at Oaklands, what led you to study here and what did you enjoy?

I remembered when I was younger, I enjoyed studying Performing Arts, nothing else was working out for me and then when I came to an open day it just felt exciting to be there.

Tell us about your tutors during your time at Oaklands, who inspired you to pursue your dream and helped you achieve it?

All of the tutors really, they all had a real dedication to wanting to help people individually, I knew that if I ever needed help, I had it – I had a drama teacher called Lee, he was pretty gnarly and understood me entirely.

Describe what it was like to tour with Billie Eilish? How did the opportunity come about?

The most amazing time of my life, we have the same booking agent and she randomly followed me and messaged me, next thing you know I’m hanging out with her in catering at her backstage arena tour, crazy!

Did Billie offer you any advice to take with you into the music industry?

Not really, but she emits this laid-back energy, not trying to force too much and that’s stayed with me.

Tell us more about your style of music, who are your influencers, some of your tracks have a similar style to Lily Allen and Jorja Smith, are they people you look up to?

Jorja and Lily are actually friends of mine! Lily saw my ‘Colours’ music video and invited me to her recording studio to write some songs with her!

Me and Jorja have a lot of mutual friends and always bump into each other, we work with the same producers a lot and also share the same engineer.

I’m pretty certain we’ll end up working together soon – Both of those ladies have inspired me massively, as well as Mahalia, Sol Galeano, Celeste, Billie Eilish, Zilo and Tungz – I hold them all in high regard and look up to them.

Finally, if you had any advice for current Oaklands students, what would it be?

You know what you’re capable of! Grow, make yourself better at what you do and allow the universe to conspire in your favour!