As humble as he is, Reuben James is no stranger to the music world. He has been in it for many years, now, and worked with artists such as Little Mix, Olly Murs and Tori Kelly. He even wrote with some of them, like Sam Smith on his album The Thrill of It All (2017) and Bruno Major on A Song for Every Moon (2017). Last year, the Birmingham-born musician released his first batch of songs under his own name, an EP named Adore. Then in June 2020, he released another collection, Slow Down.

Pop! Goes the Music sat down (over video chat, safety first!) with James for our new series ChillChat to talk about his new EP, his career and his experience in the music industry. And as a bonus, the songwriter told us more about how each track of his record came to be, which we share with you right here.



TRACK 1 – My Line (feat. Col3trane, Jay Prince, Vula & Soweto Kinch)

RJ: Me and my boy Linden (Jay), we made the beat about, like, maybe 6 or 7 months before the song came out, I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it. I really wanted to put the song out and I knew I wanted it to be the first song that I put out ‘cause I just loved the beat, I just couldn’t really express myself on it, I couldn’t find the right thing to do. So I called my friend Col3trane, and I was like: “Yo, bro, I beg you just vibe on this beat for me and see what you come up with.” He was in Australia, and he was like: “Ok, ok, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.” And then he sent the chorus. Still there was no structure, it was just kind of a long beat.

Then I was home in Birmingham and I called up my friend Soweto Kinch. He came over to my house, and I was like: “Yo, can you just play a crazy sax solo over the whole thing?” And he did, like, one take, and we hung out. And then he left and I had loads of saxophone. Then a couple of weeks later, a good friend of mine, Vula, came around to the studio and started singing. I didn’t have any lyrics yet, apart from Col3trane, and so she was just like: (singing) “la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la” (referring to the intro). And, step by step, it just started coming together. My friend Jay Prince had these different chords for the outro. I FaceTimed him while I was playing the beat, and I was at this little place called The Tree House, and I was like: “Bro, you gotta come, I need you on this song, I need you, I need you, I need you” and he was like “ok, I’m coming, I’m coming, ok”. So he got into an Uber, came and did this incredible rap on the outro. And I was the last person to do anything on it. I just wrote my 2 verses, this was like, literally a couple of weeks before it came out. I just like slided my 2 verses in and kinda made out a structure of it all. And that was it. We started it 7 months before, but then it all came together in the last week or 2. We shot a video and edited everything, stacked things together, the vocals, tried to make it into something soulful. But you know, the beat was so good that you could kinda do anything on it.

Check out the story of the My Line Challenge that Reuben James launched and had musicians all over the world taking part in it.



TRACK 2 – All the Things

RJ: I wrote this with a friend of mine called Phairo who does all of Bruno Major’s music and ELIZA’s and Sam Willis’. He’s a dope producer and I’ve known for about 10 years, but we’ve never really worked together. And then he did a song, one of my favourite songs on my first EP Adore. He wrote and produced Burn with me. I called him up – I’m actually trying to do the same thing now – I called him, I was like: “Dude, we need to do a song, come on up. At least one!”. We just did one evening in his studio and we were listening to a lot of Michael Jackson, the Invincible album, and a lot of that kind of 90s r’n’b flex, and we came up with All The Things. So we sat down and wrote, spent a lot of time with the lyrics, just trying to make it really beautiful. Then a good friend of mine “Paddy”, Patrick Linton, came to my house in Birmingham. We were drinking a lot of Wray & Nephew, and he ended up singing these beautiful backing vocals on it. And then my boy from New York, Ruben Fox – well, actually he’s from Brixton, but he lives in New York now – he was the final cherry on top. He came over to The Tree House and played some tenor sax, which made it really sexy.



TRACK 3 – So Cool

RJ: I did a writing trip to Hastings, it’s just this old town on the seaside in England, with my friends Tom Ford, Jay Mooncie, Karma Kid. And me, Tom and Karma Kid were all just hanging out and we were jamming. We made… so many songs, like 20 songs, and that (one) was really the favourite song from the trip. It just kinda had a bit of attitude about it, bit of swag, but feel-good at the same time. It’s definitely like a road trip type of song, for sure.  And we wrote it in about 15 minutes, finished the whole song. It was always a favourite of mine to go back to so I thought it’d be really nice to have it on the EP.



TRACK 4 – Run Away (feat. Kevin Garrett)

RJ: Oh yeah, Kevin Garrett, he’s so good. Run Away was actually the first song that I kind of wrote and produced all on my own. I made the whole beat, in my bedroom, in Birmingham, at my parents’ house. I started with a little drum beat. I don’t really play bass, this is the first time I ever played bass on (a song), really. And it was just bass and drums, really. And then I was going through some orchestra sounds, that I kind of reversed and just messed around with a load. And then- (sings a bit of the chorus). That was kind of it. I had the pre-chorus and the chorus, and I really liked it as a concept, but I couldn’t really vibe on any verse. So I was like: “Maybe it’d be cool to get one of my friends in.” Me and Kevin have been friends for a long time so I just called him. “Dude, I beg you to sing some beautiful verses on this one.” The same day, he sent back the most beautiful thing. And as soon as he sent his verses, I was like: “Man, this is so good! I wanna do a verse.” So I sat and wrote a little verse, I was just inspired. Then I played it to my friend Chris Daddy Dave, best drummer in the world, and he was like: “Yo, I need to put drums on this!” So he sent some drums the same day. And then my friend Reuben Fowler who arranged all of the brass for the Adore EP, I hadn’t done a song with him yet for this EP, and I thought it was only right to get the dream team in. So he called in some amazing “cats” (meaning jazz musicians) to put some lush brass arrangement on Run Away and the song was done.



TRACK 5 – Peaches & Whiskey (feat. Chris Dave & Thomas Ford)

RJ: I was in Los Angeles, and (drummer) Chris Dave wanted to do a day in the studio together. So I called up Nick Littlemore who’s got these 2 amazing or 3 amazing projects. I called him up, I was like: “Man, I need a studio with a drum kit”. He called me back 10 minutes later. “I have Studio A, Capitol Records.” And I was like: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” So it was, like, Nat King Cole’s piano, such a historic room, Frank Sinatra’s mic. We got there, Chris arrived, and I was like: Do you want anything, like do you want me to get some food, some drinks? You know, whatever.” He was like: “Man, I’m detoxing. I just wanna get, like… some peaches. If you could order some peaches and… some whiskey? But I’m on a detox right now so, just peaches and whiskey.” And that was it. Like, literally Nick snapped his fingers and loads of the most incredible peaches arrived. And I tasted one and I was like: “What the hell? These were the best peaches I ever had.” So me, Tom, Nick and Chris, were just in Capitol Records’ Studio A, drinking whiskey and eating peaches while we recorded that song. And we jammed all day, and that was one of the songs I really loved.



TRACK 6 – Slow Down

RJ: I also did this in my bedroom, in Birmingham. I invited two of my friends: this drummer called Jack James, who’s a great singer as well, and a bass player called Seb (Read). We actually set up a little drum kit in my bedroom, and I had a little piano in there, and he was playing bass, and we just jammed like- (hums the intro). We were just improvising on it. It was the first real time of writing a song for my EP by just sitting with musicians and jamming, which felt great. We just recorded drums on our iPhones, recorded the piano on our iPhones, and I was like: “This feels like… just… slow down.” And the concept just came to me from vibing with it. Jack sang some BVs (backing vocals) on it, like: (singing) “Slow down”. And they ended up leaving at, like, 4 am and I stayed up until 7 am and just produced the whole song. And when Soweto came to play on My Line, he was trying to leave and I was like: “Just wait five minutes, play a little bit on this song as well” And he did one little take. And that was the last song on the EP.


Slow Down by Reuben James / Rufio Records