Right off the bat, Rag 'n' Bone Man is surprising.

Most listening to debut single 'Human' would have assumed the deep, baritone voice coming from the speakers belonged to a soul singer in the Deep South of the US, rather than a tattooed white man from just outside of Brighton.

The singer, who releases his third album in October, tells The Herald: "It comes from listening to stuff like Muddy Waters, so if you listen to my very early stuff it does sound very American.

"I can remember getting up at the jam sessions and my dad's mates going 'what the f***? You sound like a 70-year-old from Mississippi!'"


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'Human' proved to be a monster hit across the globe. It reached number two on the UK chart, cracked the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and went to the top of the charts in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and more.

For its creator though it proved to be something of a double-edged sword, Rag 'n' Bone Man admitting that he didn't care for all the celebrity obligations which came along with it.

"I still don't, really," he says now.

"I've just sort of accepted that part of it as being 'the work', the stuff you kind of have to do.

"I kind of have two separate lives now, with my family when we close that door it's just us, I live out in the middle of nowhere."

His third album, What Do You Believe In? will be released on October 18, and finds the singer in a positive place.

"There was this song I had written for Life By Misadventure, and it just didn't really fit on that record.

"It had this kind of 60s soul sound with a little bit of 00s hip-hop and that was kind of the sound we were going for.

"Even if the lyrics in the songs aren't happy, there's generally a happy vibe to the music.

"Having kids changes you, I wrote the title track after losing someone close. Now, having to explain something like that to your child is a bit weird. I’ve never been involved with religion, but the question you get asked is: where do people go?

"That’s what the song is about. It doesn’t really matter what people believe in, you can believe that they’ve gone to a better place.

Rag 'n' Bone ManRag 'n' Bone Man (Image: Fiona Garden)

"I'd like to think people will listen to the album as a whole, but I'm not sure that's something people really do anymore.

"It'd be good if they did, because that's how I wrote it but I'm not naive and I'm not going to be offended if people just love, say, track 13."

For now the songs belong to him and to his band, but he expects that to change on release.

Rag 'n' Bone man says: "When a song is released people take their own meaning from it, to the point I'll kind of forget what I wrote it about.

"A song like 'Skin', you'll have people saying 'oh it's about this' then I'll get asked in interviews what songs are about and I can't even remember.

"It's cool though, it's great that people can take something from it."

A former carer who worked with people with autism and Downs Syndrome, Rag 'n' Bone Man told Channel 4 News in 2017 that he was planning to vote for the first time, having been inspired by Jeremy Corbyn.

It's not, however, a subject he's keen on tackling seven years later.

"It's too early to tell," he says of the new Labour government. "I'm glad the Tories are out but I think we have to give it a bit of time. I don't really know, I don't have the answers."

He'll play at the Academy in Glasgow in November, in support of the new album and is currently working on the setlist.

"I'm not at the point in my career where I can just go out and play all new stuff. Well, I could but I think it would be a bit self-indulgent!

"I'm not worried at all about Scotland though. Scotland has never let me down and I don't think it ever will."

Rag 'n' Bone Man's new album, What Do You Believe in is released on October 18. He will perform at the 02 Academy in Glasgow on November 19, tickets are available here.