Neilson started to perform open mic sessions when he was 12 but didn’t start making music until he was about 18 years old.<\/p>\n
He then started writing songs in 2022, and in 2024, BBC Introducing’s Dean Jackson selected Neilson to perform at Y Not Festival in Derbyshire.<\/p>\n
After performing in front of thousands of people at the festival, Neilson said: “I thought that would be the breakthrough moment.<\/p>\n
“After that I experienced the adrenaline dump reality check, and everything sort of went into a stasis. <\/p>\n
“I found myself banging on the door of the industry and couldn’t get in.”<\/p>\n
The year 2025 was the “questioning everything” year for the young artist.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s a lot of gatekeeping in the industry and a lot of socioeconomic barriers, which as someone from a working class background I’ve been unable to overcome,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you talk to people of experience, they say it’s all about the music and songs. <\/p>\n
“I want to know how to build an audience, what are the mechanics, what do you have to do day in, day out, how much commitment does it take?<\/p>\n
“I was just sick of it (not getting anywhere) and I came to the conclusion that I had to do a make-or-break year where I give it 100% of what I’ve got.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neilson started to perform open mic sessions when he was 12 but didn’t start making music until he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-451919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}