Name: John Blaylock
Nationality: British
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current release: John Blaylock's new album Sounds Of The Dreadnought is out May 8th 2026. Single “Violets” is out now.
Local Recommendation for Manchester, UK: Tawa Grill in Longsight for a brilliant curry / kebabs.

If you enjoyed this John Blaylock interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and tiktok.



Entering new worlds and escapism through music and literature have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to writing?

Always genuine experiences.

Interesting things that have happened in real life always make good things to write about.

What were some of the artists and albums which inspired you early on purely on the strength of their lyrics?

Definitely the Stone Roses and Bob Dylan.

Listening to Dylan’s lyrics as a kid was just like opening up a book of stories, so random yet so intricate. Paul Simon too, especially on records like Graceland - just poetic depth with real meaning, love it.



What moves you in the lyrics of other artists?

One that got me recently was in “Stick season” by Noah Kahn. In the chorus when he says “And I'll dream each night of some version of you that I might not have, but I did not lose” ...



Such simple words but really powerful. Great writing that!

On the basis of a piece off Sounds Of The Dreadnought, tell me about how the lyrics grew into their final form and what points of consideration were.

On my record that’s out on 3rd April - “Where Did All My Friends Go.” It’s the story of growing up and losing your childhood friends.

In the verse every person mentioned is a real person and I poetically tell the story of where they’ve all disappeared to. I had a lot of friends growing up so I had a lot of inspiration to work with.

It’s funny when I first wrote that song, I felt I have to apologise to friends whose names I’d used. Now it’s got quite popular I’m finding I’m having to apologise to old friends whose names I didn’t use.

Do you tend to start writing with what will be the first line of the finished lyrics? The chorus? At a random point? What are the words that set the process in motion?

I generally just make up as many different lyrics as possible for a melody that I’ll have written. Sometimes out of that comes a great hook lyric that feels good to sing and has some good meaning.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words?

Yes definitely, some words feel great to sing, some not so much.

Dylan’s a great example of this for the good and the bad. It feels great to sing “Here comes the story of The Hurricane,” but it doesn’t feel quite so good to sing “Tax deductible charity organisations” like in “Ballad of a Thin Man.”

I try and stick with lyrics like the former.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

Yeah it's quite an interesting thing when someone turns a song into meaning something different to them than what the writer meant. In a way that’s the magic of music and I don’t think those people should be corrected in any way, it’s a piece of art and art can be interpreted in many ways.

I’ve even had this with co-writers where we’ve worked on the same set of lyrics but with it meaning something different to both of us - then only worked out the other person’s interpretation weeks or months later.