Saint Raymond: Young Blood EP

January 2014

BRAMCOTE teenager Callum Burrows is in a battle with music superstar Beyoncé at the top of the iTunes chart.

The 18-year-old, who goes under the name Saint Raymond, released latest EP Young Blood on Tuesday. In 24 hours it was at No. 3.

“It’s beyond anything I expected,” says Callum, whose last EP, Escapade, reached No. 24 on the same chart.

“My only hopes for it were that it would beat Escapade, so when it was at No. 11 I thought ‘that’s amazing, I’m done’. Then it climbed to No. 6, then No. 4 and someone tweeted me saying it was at No. 3, sat right behind Beyoncé... which isn’t a bad view.”

Due to the rules of the chart, the EP is listed with the albums, not the singles – or “songs”.

While Beyoncé’s self-titled album was at No. 2, the compilation The Trevor Nelson Collection 2 was at the top. Lagging behind were Ellie Goulding and Bastille.

“It’s a youthful anthem,” he says of the lead song. “I wanted to celebrate what it was to be young and daring.”

Zane Lowe and Greg James have played it on Radio 1 and Jo Whiley on Radio 2.

“It was played on Celebrity Big Brother the other night as well,” he says. “I got a tweet about that because I don’t watch it. I’d rather watch paint dry.”

The video was shot in Australia but he’s not in it: “The last few months have been a bit crazy and there wasn’t the time for me to shoot the video. The opportunity arose for this video to be shot in Australia of a guy going for it and jumping around. I thought it was a cool idea and exactly what the song is about.”

This week he’s in Hertfordshire writing his first album, due out in the summer. He started it at the end of last year in Los Angeles.

Since then he’s been on a tour of Europe and the UK with chart-topping US band Haim.

He says: “Haim were cool. On the last night they gave me a bottle of champagne and invited me and the band to join in a birthday party they were having for one of the girls.”

His headline tour comes to the Rescue Rooms in March. Callum, who lives with his mum and dad in Bramcote, adds: “The whole family will be down for that so it’s going to be a special night.”


Tickets to see him at the Rescue Rooms on Friday, March 28 are £8, call 0845 413 4444 or go to alt-tickets.co.uk. Watch the video for Young Blood at nottinghampost.com. 

James Morrison

July 2010

My weekend

IF I get a weekend off I’ll be at home with the family. I’ve got a kid now. We live near Brighton. It’s a nice lifestyle for going out, it’s good for kids because there are nice schools and the air’s clean. I moved down there initially because it was near the sea and that reminded me of growing up in Cornwall.

There’s loads for the family to do. The other week I took (Elsie) to a farm. So my weekend’s will be normal family stuff like that, if I’m not working. The time I get with my family is pretty precious at the moment because I’m away so much.

I still go out for a drink. I still want have a good time because I don’t get a lot of time off, so I mix the two.

My daughter’s nearly two. She loves Peppa Pig. I can’t stand it, I think the character is a spoilt little brat. She also likes Tom & Jerry. I’ve been trying to get her in to the old school stuff, like Jungle Book, all the stuff I watched when I was a kid.

My little girl likes being outside so we don’t sit in front of the telly much at all.

I like stupid comedies, like

Anchorman, or a Bruce Willis action film. I watched Daybreakers the other day, about vampires. It wasn’t too bad. I’ll watch anything really apart from period dramas. I can’t stand them.

My girlfriend doesn’t like action films or anything violent. She gets scared really easily. So I always try and steer her in that direction just so I can watch her get scared. She likes comedies and girly films, like The Notebook, stuff that’ll make girls cry. There’s always a handsome bloke and romantic story.

I don’t watch that much telly anymore. When I do it’ll be Family Guy, Harry Hill, Oops TV and You’ve Been Framed. Pop telly, you know. I even still watch Friends.

The music I buy is new stuff that I’ve been told about, like Jack Johnson, Mumford & Sons and old classics, like Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers or Chairman Of The Board.

I used to get sent a lot of stuff but I don’t mind buying it. I know I should milk it and get as many free CDs as I can.

I don’t see many gigs when I’m touring but when I’ve got time off I will. I’ve seen Plan B recently. I saw David Gray, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, an American girl called Ingrid Michaelson... I’ve been to quite a few. That’s the good thing about being in this business, you get a lot of free tickets.

I’m not bad at cooking. I’ve got better over the last couple of years because I’ve been reading cookbooks. Before, I didn’t know how to cook any proper meals. I could do a roast but it wouldn’t be very good, whereas now it tastes good every time.

If Beyonce and Lady Gaga came round for dinner what would I cook? I don’t think they’d be happy with anything I cooked. I’d do them a nice, wholesome English meal, a Yorkshire pudding and some nice veg, if they didn’t like it then tough. (he actually said: “then screw you”)

I’m really not that good at keeping fit. That’s the main thing I’m trying to tackle. That and smoking. I let it go recently. I was running three times a week and I was going snowboarding, but since I’ve been a home, I’ve found it really hard to find the energy to do a workout.

A perfect weekend would be having some friends round on a Friday night, having a jam, a drink and a smoke. The weather would be nice so we’d be outside. We recently went to a rundown castle, which was great. So it’d be simple stuff like that with the family and friends.

James Morrison plays his only East Midlands date this summer at Leicester’s Welford Road stadium on Thursday July 15. Tickets are £32/£35, 0844 847 1742 or visit www.ticketmaster.co.uk

Review: Beyoncé, Trent FM Arena

November 20 2009



It was a performance that raised the bar for production values. A bar so out of reach of most pop performers, they shouldn’t even try.

This was Beyoncé, finishing the UK leg of her I Am... Tour at the Trent FM Arena last night and as one fan said after the show: “Highlight? I don’t know where to start”.

It could have been when she ‘flew’ on to a circular stage in the middle of the arena and performed a medley of Destiny’s Child hits.

This will have been the highlight for Roy, a middle-aged man picked out by Beyoncé during the thirty minute set and serenaded with Say My Name - a request he initially responded to with a hilarious “sorry, what?” This exchange was projected on to the huge definition screen that served as more than just a backdrop.



It could have been when she sang At Last, while images of the civil rights movement in the US segued to the inauguration of Barack Obama (huge cheer), at which Beyoncé performed that very song.

For others the strongest image will have been the Michael Jackson tribute during the closing number, Halo: “Michael we can see your halo, I pray you won’t fade away.”

As home movie footage of her singing as a child played, the 27-year-old explained it was during this time she “discovered the magic of Michael Jackson”.

In the steady shuffle out of the arena afterwards, a couple could be overheard discussing this as the moment that had them in tears.



For a girl in the front row the highlight may have been the one-to-one, as Beyoncé’ had 9,000 plus people (of course it was a sell-out despite the £49.50-£75 tickets) wish her a happy birthday.

For others, it was the song (and video) of the year: Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), introduced with clips from the numerous videos uploaded on to YouTube, copying the booty-shaking moves, before she showed us how it’s done.

For me it was the sheer scale of the production. Like Jackson she understands the importance of exceeding expectations, putting on a show like no other and not being afraid to invest whatever it takes to achieve that.

That said it wasn’t perfect.



The surprise warm-up at 8pm, when we expected to see Beyoncé, meant another hour to wait. The English singer Julian Perretta and his band, like a junior Toploader, were out of their depth in such company. His album “is out in February” we were told, repeatedly.

Even Beyoncé can improve. The middle section had too many short song shifts that failed to gather momentum.

At times the sound was distorted and muddy, a bass and drum sludge that shook the place. You couldn’t always hear what she was saying and the video footage was often inaudible.

The ‘I’m overwhelmed by your love’ expressions were a tad cheesy.

A spirit-dampener for a predominantly female audience were the nagging security, repeatedly instructing us not to take photographs and to stand within designated areas.



As she herself asked: “Noddinghairm, did y’all come to dance?”

We had. And the drones in the yellow sweatshirts weren’t going to stop us.

But the dry ice, the lighting, the glitter bombs, the backdrop, the choreography, the costumes changes, the interaction, the humour, The Mamas, her elbow-length hair that was constantly blown out by wind machines, the menacing UFO-style lighting pods, for her alter-ego Sasha Fierce, for her vocal ability during Ave Maria, for If I Were A Boy, Survivor, Broken Hearted Girl, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) and Halo... this was the greatest show of the year.

Perhaps the decade.