“Leap,” James Bay’s third studio album, has been announced. “One Life,” a hopeful new single, is released. Republic Records will release the album on July 8th.
James Bay has announced the release of his third studio album. Leap, the singer-first songwriter’s full-length album in four years, will be released on July 8 via Republic Records. Bay’s new single “One Life,” a return to the mellow acoustic origins of his 2014 debut Chaos and the Calm, was released alongside the announcement of the album.
After struggling with dread and worry, as well as bouts of self-doubt in 2019, Bay used his writing to help him recover from a personal low point. He had only published his sophomore album Electric Light a year previously, and he had no idea that he was already halfway through the process of crafting a complete record. However, the musician claims that by writing out his inner anguish and releasing the thoughts he never wanted to convey, he created “some of the most positive and uplifting music I have ever done.”
“I didn’t know I was only halfway through recording my third album when I came across John Burroughs’ quote “jump and the net will appear,” Bay wrote in a letter to his fans. It was in a book about creative rediscovery, and those lines struck a chord with me. I was reading it because I was feeling hopeless and lost. I’d written a new round of sorrowful songs by 2020. I recorded them and assumed the job was finished. Then the globe went dark, and I was unable to tour my new music. All I wanted to do was sit at home and write. That’s when the record started to come together. It turns out that even in the darkest moments, there is light.”
Bay learnt to embrace his melancholy rather than resist it. With the previously released track “Give Me A Reason,” he began teasing his third studio album. The musician untangled himself from the spiral that negative ideas typically bring with them while searching for purpose.
“I started to notice what motivates me when things became rough. “All of a sudden, I was pushing the limits of my writing in ways I’d never done before,” he explains. “I looked about at the people in my life who love and care about me the most, and for the first time ever, I was able to express myself via writing.” In my work, I’ve always been frightened to get to those areas, to be so vulnerable; to say I love you, I need you, and thank you.”
“It was so freeing to honor those individuals in my life who I love the most, who hold me up when I need it the most,” he says. They are the ones who inspire me to take risks and take risks. They give me the courage to leap when I can’t see the net.”
