Tom Odell

Tom Peter Odell is a British singer-songwriter. He released his debut extended play, Songs from Another Love, in 2012 and won the BRITs Critics' Choice Award in early 2013. His debut studio album, Long Way Down, was issued on 24 June 2013. Odell was born in Chichester, West Sussex, to an airline pilot father and a primary school teacher mother. He has an older sister He spent part of his childhood in New Zealand because of his father's job. He was educated at Seaford College He studied piano classically to Grade 7. He began writing his own songs at the age of thirteen but told no one, because he felt it was "uncool". At the age of eighteen, Odell abandoned plans to attend the University of York and attempted to gain a place at a music college in Liverpool. He appeared at open-mic events nightly: "It was full of humiliation: dragging a keyboard round, turning up to find out I’d been taken off the bill, gangs of lads grabbing the mic off me and laughing... I learnt to perform and learnt what songs work." After a year, he moved back to Chichester after being made redundant from his job as a barman. Using his grandmother's car, he travelled regularly to London to play shows and to put advertisements in music schools. He then moved to London to play as part of the band Tom and the Tides. However, he later decided to become a solo artist because he "didn't want to have to rely on people".