Advertisement

The band who beat Taylor Swift to the top of the charts – without leaving Yorkshire

'I’d rather be in a band that’s got actual fans than somebody that’s all over the radio': The Reytons
'I’d rather be in a band that’s got actual fans than somebody that’s all over the radio': The Reytons

At the end of January, electronic billboards all over South Yorkshire were ablaze with messages imploring listeners to help The Reytons get to number one. Under the Tinsley Viaduct from their hometown of Rotherham, at the Meadowhall shopping centre, in Sheffield, the group had opened a pop-up shop selling copies of their second album, What’s Rock And Roll?, which was released last week. In anticipation of reaching the summit of the charts, they’d spent as much as £40,000 pressing up vinyl and CDs.

Turns out it was money well-spent. Last Friday, the quartet received a gold trophy for the achievement of beating Taylor Swift to the top of the British albums chart (Swift, who had spent five weeks at number one, now sat at number two). Never mind that this is no small achievement for self-proclaimed “normal people” who write “normal songs”, The Reytons don’t even have a record deal. Whereas other LPs in the top-five have been issued by EMI and Columbia, What’s Rock And Roll? has been paid for (up front) by the band themselves. If there’s another example of a rock act reaching number one in anything like similar circumstances, I can’t think of it. Pick the bones out of that, tastemakers.

“Any profit we make, that’s ours,” explains singer Jonny Yerrell. “We invested all our money, so we reap all the rewards… I’d just like to put that [fact] out in world.” Because “what I think is really, really rock’n’roll is being able to set up your own business, and to self-release your own album with multiple people on the payroll and a dedicated army of supporters who help you take the number one spot without any mainstream press whatsoever.”

Before this, though, Jonny Yerrell had spent years “getting good at failure”. In an attempt to gain a foothold in the formal music industry, the now 37-year old claims to have “played every genre you can imagine”. As well as fronting bands, more than a decade ago he achieved a measure of very modest success as a solo artist named Jay Mya. But in truth he was plugging away long past the point at which others would have admitted defeat. In 2017, he formed The Reytons with 30-something Lee Holland, on bass, and then-teenagers Jamie Todd (drums) and Joe O’ Brien (guitar).

Not surprisingly, their indefatigability is a thing to behold. Never mind that the group’s South Yorkshire vernacular - a Reyton [R8 ‘un] is a “right one”, a likely lad – invites comparison to the guitar-drenched era of the Arctic Monkeys, What’s Rock And Roll? burns with all the anger of the excluded. “We dropped a ball in a stocking and swung it round the f______ room,” Yerrell sings on Uninvited, the group’s assault on the institutionalised music industry. “Until we battered the problem, and now we’re on the inside.”

“A few years ago, I was pissed off because I couldn’t understand why we weren’t being talked about,” Yerrell tells me. “But I’ve stopped caring. We’re number one in the charts. We’re doing this as a full-time job. We’re all enjoying our lives. It f______ doesn’t matter if they don’t want to write about us. I’d rather be in a band that’s got actual fans than somebody that’s all over the radio and on every front page going, but who goes to London to do a show only to have 30-people show up.”

It should be said that The Reytons’ decision not to employ a publicist has made it harder for them to catch the ear of the kind of music writer who happens not to notice that the group are filling venues such as the Barrowland, in Glasgow, and the Nottingham Rock City. It’s also not quite correct to say that they don’t have their champions, either. On BBC Radio 1, the DJ Jack Saunders is a supporter, while on LBC James O’ Brien has enthused about the band to his 1.3 million weekly listeners on several occasions. For what it’s worth – coughs discreetly – I wrote about them here in The Telegraph in 2021.

Even so, it isn’t hard to imagine sectors of the music industry cocking a snook. Appearing on a Zoom link on a Monday afternoon, in his Adidas cap and Sergio Tacchini tracksuit top, Jonny Yerrell certainly looks like the kind of lad who might be able to source a car stereo at short notice. Neither is it fanciful to imagine well-spoken journalists from the south of England transcribing his words phonetically: “us sens” for ourselves, “nar” for now, and so on. As someone who also comes from South Yorkshire, I hate it when people do that. It’s classism. So let’s not, eh?

“What we’ve got is good word of mouth,” Yerrell explains. “But that’s all you need, isn’t it? If you’ve got the right people who are going to turn up, talk about you, and sing along to your songs, that’s more important than anyone that writes for a magazine can do for you.” Certainly, the appearance of debut album Kids Off The Estate at number-11 in the British chart at a time when no-one at all was profiling the band in the press suggests this is indeed true.

The Reytons celebrating their chart win at Radio 1
The Reytons celebrating their chart win at Radio 1

In lieu of write-ups, The Reytons devised a marketing campaign that ought to be the envy of every record label and management company in the world. Following the online success of early day songs such as Slice Of Lime, in May of 2017 the band made their live debut as a support act at the 350-capacity Plug club in Sheffield. Come the autumn of that year, for their second concert, they filled the same venue as headliners. Taking care to play live no more than twice a year, with each gig the band doubled the size of their audience. The same strategy has been replicated successfully across the UK.

“The point,” says Yerrell, “is not to oversaturate.” So dependable has this slowly-slowly-catchy-monkey tactic proved to be that (at least for now) The Reytons have just one British concert on the docket for the whole of 2023. It is quite the gig, though. Announced in the weeks before the release of What’s Rock And Roll, the band’s scheduled appearance at the 13,600 seat Utilita Arena Sheffield in September is already all but sold out.

“I thought that after getting a number that I might have some time off,” the singer says. “But the truth is I just feel more determined to carry on… I feel like, for me, that I confused the chase with the catch. See, the chase is what I like. Never mind the f______ trophy [for reaching number one]. I haven’t got that with me. One of the lads [in the band] has got it. The moment I got my hands on it, it was great; but the next morning I woke up and it was by the side of my head by the bedside table, and I was, like, that’s f______ nothing now, is it? I’ve got it. Now I’ve got to do something else.”

The Reytons
The Reytons

Even here, though, The Reytons had their rebuttal ready in case of failure. Had What’s Rock And Roll? debuted anywhere other than atop the chart, the band planned to begin writing their third album the very next day. They get knocked down but they get up again, etcetera etcetera. Instead, upon receiving their trophy at their pop-up shop at Meadowhall, the four music-makers boarded a train to London to appear on The Official Chart on BBC Radio 1. They tweeted a picture from the studio. Its caption read, “No label. No backing. All Reytons”.

“We ran all the way back to Kings Cross, jumped on the train, which was packed, sat on the floor eating sandwiches with this gold trophy in our hands,” Yerrell says. “People were coming up to us saying they’d heard on the radio that we were number one, so could they have a picture with us? We were like, yeah, course you can.” The following morning, the singer took the trophy to the dance class run by his partner and her friend at which young pupils and their parents had been following the band’s chart saga. Handing it round, he told the kids to dream big.

“I know that some people will go, f___ ’em,” he says. “They’ll say, I don’t like ’em. Hate Reytons. But some people are going to look at us and go, do you know what? There isn’t just this one path you’ve got to take. There are other ways to get where you want to go. And I feel that with real hard work and determination, you can achieve.”

Taking off his cap, Jonny Yerrell fashions a smile. “I used to think that was bollocks,” he says, “but I said it anyway. Now I know it’s true.”


What’s Rock And Roll by The Reytons is available now