James Arthur, My Story: The Official X Factor Winner’s Book
Introducing James Arthur – the winner of The X Factor 2012!‘I still can’t get my head around being on the UK’s biggest talent search, singing in front of millions of people every week – let alone winning it. This is the story of how my dream became reality.‘Before the show, I felt I had no future. I’d been working so hard for so many years, through an endless succession of bands and gigs, that at my lowest point I nearly gave up on my dream. The competition changed everything. I’ve grown so much, both as an artist and as a person, and I hope I’ve finally achieved something that will make my family proud. This is the full story of how I got there – my story, in my words.’
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James Arthur
My story
Photography by Ken McKay
Contents
Guys, thank you so much for all the incredible support you gave James during the competition. I loved working with him week after week and seeing how he could take a song, totally turn it on its head and ‘James Arthur’ it. He truly is an incredible artist and a real one-off and I am so excited to see what his future holds!
Nicole Scherzinger, December 2012
I was born James Andrew Arthur in Redcar, Middlesbrough, on 2 March 1988. My parents, Shirley and Neil, split up when I was very young and I stayed in Redcar with my mum. I was a normal little boy who liked running around with my mates, playing and getting into trouble.
If I am being honest I don’t think I was the easiest child to look after. I was very naughty and I think people around me thought I suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because of the way I acted. I don’t know if I actually had ADHD because I was never tested, but let’s just say that I was quite ‘spirited’. I was always messing about and getting told off. It was nothing really bad, just the usual kids’ stuff.
I first started singing when I was about six. I’d literally sing along to whatever my mum was playing on her CD player and people always said I was really good. I was more into running about like a headless chicken at that time, so I certainly didn’t think about singing as a career. I didn’t think about anything as a career – I was all about having fun and scoring goals.
Both of my parents were massively into music when I was growing up. My mum always played a lot of Michael Jackson and David Bowie, and when I was with my dad I’d hear loads of heavy metal like Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. My music upbringing was pretty eclectic in terms of the variety of what I listened to. That’s given me an appreciation of all kinds of music, so I’m really grateful to my parents for that.
I don’t think it will come as a massive shock to anyone to hear that I wasn’t the greatest at school. I really liked P.E. because I got to play games, and I was pretty good at English. I always picked up language quite well, so I loved creative writing. I’d often write little stories and I had a good imagination. I was terrible at maths, though. I used to daydream my way through the lessons and I couldn’t get the hang of it at all. I didn’t see the point in trying to do something I wasn’t good at. I’ve always been a bit like that. I only like doing things I can do really well in.
I’ve got one brother, Neil, who’s 34, and four sisters: Sian, who’s 26, Charlotte, 18, Jasmine, 18, and Neve, who’s 12, and they’re all lovely. Because Neve is still quite young I didn’t live with her for very long before I left home, but we’re incredibly close. Sian and I were either thick as thieves or fighting like cat and dog when we were younger. We used to conjure up little plans together all the time. When we were left alone with a babysitter we used to make fake sick, using things we found in the bathroom. We’d pretend one of us was ill so we could go downstairs and watch TV instead of going to bed.
When I was about four or five we were bouncing around on the sofa in our living room and I fell off and crashed into a glass-topped table. I cut my eye on the corner of the table and I got rushed to hospital. It turned out I had severed some of my nerves, and as a result I got a lazy eye. I had it corrected, but even to this day I’ve got a complex about my eye turning in when I’m talking to people. I find it hard to keep eye contact because I’m so self-conscious about it. That’s one of my earliest memories, and it’s quite a dramatic one.
From a really young age I was best friends with a boy called Michael Dawson, and we’re still best mates now. Two other friends called Callum and Dean lived on my street, and I used to play with them all the time too. We were lucky because we had a park directly opposite our house, and we were always in there mucking about. When I make friends I tend to stick with them, and I’m very loyal.
My mum remarried when I was nine, and we all moved to Bahrain because her new husband got a job out there. It was a complete contrast to the life I was living before in every way, but it was great being exposed to something so different at such a young age. I especially liked school as all the kids in my class were from all over the world, so I experienced a lot of different cultures. In Bahrain we had a much grander lifestyle than the one I had been used to, so it was a bit of a culture shock at first.
None of my mates sang or performed when I was growing up, and I didn’t really tell anyone that I did it on the quiet. When I first realised that I wanted to be a singer I kept it to myself, and it wasn’t until I moved to Bahrain that I even took part in a school performance.
