After days of teasing his fans with an announcement, and a quick glimpse at new music on Instagram, ex-Union J member George Shelley has today revealed the details of Debut Solo Project.

Shelly, who was thrust in to three-piece Triple-J, who then went on to become Union J at X Factor judges houses, went on to have considerable success with the band, releasing 4 top ten singles and 2 albums. Shelley quit the band earlier this year after a stint on British reality show I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, the new series of which starts on ITV tonight (The line-up of which can be found here), before going on to replace Lisa Snowden, who is amongst this years I’m A Celebrity... line up, as co-host of the Capital FM Breakfast Show London, which recently beat out Nick Grimshaw at Radio 1 to become the cities most listened to Breakfast show.

Taking to Twitter to make the announcement, Shelley shared the details of a unique new project, comprising of 6 songs and accompanying music videos, and his inaugural Solo show.

The project, titled “Originals”, will see George release six original songs, and six unique music videos, for the next six weeks, starting from next Sunday and culminating on Christmas Day, with the singer-songwriter commenting “Think of this like an advent calendar from me, to you guys!”.

The videos will be released through Vevo, and during the 5th week of the project Shelley will give a live performance – his first as a solo artist – to take place on December 18th at Under The Bridge in Chelsea.

“Originals” is an impressive feat, with George not only writing all of the songs, but co-producing them, and directing and editing all of the accompanying music videos as well, making him undoubtedly one of the hardest working young men in music right now, and one who appears keen on showing more artistry in his Solo work than he had been allowed to in a band.

Speaking about “Originals”, George said “This is an outburst of creativity, the whole project is. I spent a lot of the last few years holding back so now this is all kind of like an explosion of expression showing the different parts of my mind. It’s my little art project. Through school, college and uni I always had art projects on the go, I loved them. I was the first kid in my school who was allowed to do 2 Art GCSE’s at once, only because I would fly through the projects; I get so obsessed with them.”

The first video, entitled ‘360’, will air on Sunday November 20th, with 1 release following per week on every subsequent Sunday after that.

George – whose ex-band members have been recording new music themselves, but delayed their upcoming tour – also took the time to speak about the 6 tracks in a little more detail.

“After ‘360’, which is about me at my most vulnerable, I’ll release ‘Soldier’, a song about the importance of family, and how it’s always worth fighting for. From there, we have ‘Scars’, inspired from a DM on Twitter I received from a girl in need of help who was self-harming. It touched me, and although I didn’t know how to help directly, I picked up my guitar and this song kind of fell out of me. I hope she gets to hear it one day, and it helps her in one way or another. ‘Make It Better’ is the next song, with an adorable video about friendship; and ‘Poltergeist’ is about the energetic ‘noise’ that is left in a place after a relationship has ended. Finally, ‘Prove Me Wrong’ is my attempt to show the silly side of love, you know, when you’re being a bit of a goofball!”.

We think it’s fair to say that George is aiming to cover a wide range of topics with this project, and we will definitely be setting our alarms for the next Six Sundays!

Summing up the creative process of making music and music videos, Shelley said “Creativity is fun, and should be about nothing else. Delete expectations, delete pressure; what will be, will be. Just create.” 

Not bad advice, if you ask us!

The announcement for “Originals” can be seen below if you still need convincing that this is something to get excited about, and tickets for his upcoming debut Solo Show in London, available Monday 14th November, can be found here.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @CelebMix.

https://twitter.com/higeorgeshelley/status/797741979375439873

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