Samantha Fish

“I want to shock people,” says Solomon Hicks with a megawatt smile. And whether you were there at his barely legal teenage club shows, caught on for 2020’s breakout debut Harlem – or hearing him for the first time on his new album How Did I Ever Get This Blue? – the rebel energy of this acclaimed New York singer-songwriter always moves the needle.

Hicks is a thrilling paradox, a sonic contradiction. He’s an old-soul roots scholar who salutes ancient musical forms – blues, jazz, soul, funk, gospel – but also a renegade gunslinger here to bend, stretch and scratch them for the modern world. His songs race from earworm originals, past pop covers torn up with electronica and punky riffs, to reignited blues standards that prove how potent this genre still is in the right hands.

“It’s great to be alive in a time period where I can reach back to the past, but also be inspired by the now and the future,” says Hicks, whose accolades include the 2021 Blues Music Award for Best Emerging Artist Album. “With this new record, I wanted to showcase where my ear, my head and my guitar playing is at right now.” Released 23 January 2026 on Artone/Provogue, How Did I Ever Get This Blue is no linear statement, pulling both its creator and its listeners all over the map. Tracking in Austin, Texas, with producer Kirk Yano, Hicks assembled a crack-squad studio band that spans from US roots icons like Chris ‘Whipper’ Layton of Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble to seminal Bronx turntablist DJ Logic. “Y’know, the usual suspects,” he smiles of an all-star cast that also includes Kevin McCormick (bass), French vocalist Bénabar, Joanna Connor (slide guitar), Tommy Mandel (keys), Keith Shocklee from Public Enemy (drum programming), John Nemeth (harmonica), Les Warner (of The Cult on drums) and Frank Amato (vocals). “It’s like building this car,” reflects the bandleader, “that goes at 200mph.”

The album they created together races from transformations of Further On Up The Road and Feels Like Rain to untamed reworkings of Adele’s Rumour Has It and Bruno Mars’ When I Was Your Man (not to mention Hicks’ originals, How Did I Ever Get This Blue? and I’m Burnin’ Up). Far from a ‘covers album’, each song unfolds as you’ve never heard it before. “I’m not looking to copy or recreate sounds from the past,” he nods. That alchemist ethos and melting-pot mentality to genre, reflects Hicks, is the product of his New York childhood. Born in Harlem on 8 February 1995, he soaked up the sonic kaleidoscope that flowed through city life. “I remember my mom would play music in the car: hip-hop with heavy 808s. But then she was also into vocalists like Sarah Vaughan, Barbra Streisand, Nancy Wilson, George Benson. She even showed me Neil Diamond. At first, I was like, ‘I like a harder guitar. Give me Thin Lizzy or Rory Gallagher’. Then it was, like, ‘Actually, I like this’. So my ear went so many different ways. And it came to shape my own sound.”