How Gomez's Tom Gray Ended Up Taking On Spotify in Parliament - Part 1

How do you go from winning the Mercury Prize to writing music for a CBeebies series about a pig named Hector and a very glamorous chicken named Pru? The answer takes in a Tim Buckley obsession that lasted five years, years of touring America with bands like Frightened Rabbit, and a Brighton theatre company you've almost certainly never heard of. In this week's episode, Sean finally sits down with Tom Gray, songwriter, founding member of Gomez, and the person behind the Broken Record campaign that took on Spotify. This is the first bit of a two-part conversation. This episode stays close to the music and the person: what it meant to make Bring It On in 1997, before home recording was what everyone did, and what it felt like when it won. Tom Gray is a songwriter and composer and a founding member of Gomez. The band's debut album Bring It On, recorded in bedrooms and back rooms when its members were 22 and 23, beat Massive Attack and Pulp to win the Mercury prize. He went on to write music for theatre and film, including the CBeebies animated series Tilly and Friends, based on Polly Dunbar's books. However, since 2020, Tom has been at the centre of one of the most significant debates in the British music industry. He founded the #BrokenRecord campaign, which started as a Twitter thread during the first lockdown and became a movement that put music creator rights onto the parliamentary agenda. Alongside the campaign, Tom has been Chair of The Ivors Academy since 2022 and stood as a Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion in the 2024 general election. The conversation covers how Gomez happened: what making records at home without a budget or a studio actually does for the music, and the aesthetic of limitation that defined the band's early sound. Tom talks through the years he spent chasing down a slice of Tim Buckley's back catalogue, the anticipation of finally hearing the Starsailor album, the disappointment of actually listening to it, and the one track, 'Dolphins', that made the whole rabbit hole worth it. The conversation also gets into what the other Gomez members have been up to, including an Empire of the Sun connection, and the first threads of the streaming frustration that becomes the whole of Part 2. Part 2 is next week: more on the Broken Record campaign, the Kevin Brennan Bill, and AI. The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Visit: The Ivors Academy Listen to: Dolphins - Tim Buckley (Sefronia, 1973) - original by Fred Neil (Fred Neil, 1967) Watch: Tilly and Friends on CBeebies Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org