Get to know GoodThing, interviewed by TOPNOTE. Image credit: Bethany Cordery
‘You’re gonna hear a lot of percussion, you’re gonna wanna dance, and it’s gonna make you feel like you’ve just woken up and written your manifestations for the day down.’
Where all the best ideas begin, GoodThing’s notes app contains a 2020 entry, jotting down two words that had popped up, capitalised with no space between them, in the captions of a Doctor Who episode (a David Tennant series). ‘I was like, I’m gonna do this one day, and when I do, I’m gonna have that as my name’ the solo artist recalls from a South London restaurant on a rainy October afternoon.
‘I didn’t want it to be my own name because I wanted it to have something about it.’ The musician’s real name, Jordan Bramley, ‘would sound like a jam, or some sort of… Nature Valley bar’, he says.
Read on for our conversation with GoodThing on his new single ‘Get Happy’, collaging ideas, and a message to his future self.
GoodThing releases his second EP in May 2027. Image credit: Bethany Cordery
Hope, dogs, and Liverpool Football Club are three inherently Good Things, according to the 30 year-old multi-instrumentalist. Originally from Nottingham, now based in London, Bramely’s self-coined ‘Tarantino disco’ style is his version of ‘gangster Nancy Sinatra’ he explains, referring to the term Lana Del Ray used early in her career to describe her music.
Bass, percussion and danceable rhythms are central to the fold, leaning close to the more ‘true’ version of 70s disco, Marvin Gaye, and ‘anything that Nile Rodgers has been in’. On the more modern side, Gorillaz, Avalanches, Jungle and ‘artists that do a lot of sampling, including in a live environment’ have played their role too. But GoodThing is equally inspired by the film scores of Scorsese and Tarantino movies, attracted to the eeriness and mystery of those opening scenes, and the idea of mixing them together with ‘straightforward disco’ to create something ‘slightly off-kilter’.
It was a TV advert soundtracked by The Black Keys which switched GoodThing onto the idea of combining the concepts, ‘thinking about something more visually and then imagining what sounds would go with that, rather than the other way around.’ He cites a George Harrison print framed in his house, taken with oversaturated film from The Beatles’ first trip to America, as an example of the artwork that inspires him. ‘I’ve always thought that image has got so much character and so much excitement.’
It becomes clear that it’s not possible for Jordan to separate the sonic from the aesthetic, admitting that often the meaning or connection comes after he’s finished making a song and collaged its accompanying visuals. At the heart of it, though, is a desire to produce ‘music that’s actually quite lighthearted and fun. You’re gonna hear a lot of percussion, you’re gonna wanna dance, and it’s gonna make you feel like you’ve just woken up and written your manifestations for the day down.’
“It’s in the artwork, it’s just me slamming together loads of different images that, for whatever reason, resonate. Whether it means something, whether it’s just hopeful or fun or exciting or I just love the colour in it… that’s kind of the same way that we make the songs.”
GoodThing is a cherry-picker from orchards of inspiration as ‘disparate’ as South American groove and Mancunian swagger, though they converge in his love of football. ‘I used to feel so free when I was 9 years old when I’d go in the garden and play football. It was the best thing ever, you’re really… there. Things like that you lose a lot of the time as you get older. When you watch the Brazil football teams of the late nineties, early noughties, there’s so much personality in the way they play. Adidas and Nike always used to do great adverts where you’d have the players in and they’d be showing off these amazing bits of flair which weren’t gonna score them a goal… but it would just look like they were having fun. I was like, this is how I want my music to feel to people.’
‘It’s in the artwork, it’s just me slamming together loads of different images that, for whatever reason, resonate. Whether it means something, whether it’s just hopeful or fun or exciting or I just love the colour in it… that’s kind of the same way that we make the songs.’
His current single, the sleek, synth-driven ‘Get Happy’ was itself pasted together from multiple different demos – its original guitar line started off life in a country song. ‘A lot of the songs we tried to push into the exact vibe that they are’, he says of his – as yet unnamed – second EP set for release next May, whether it’s amping up the disco, ‘the aggy’ Manchester grit, or the ‘Primal Scream, Oasis-y vibe’. ‘Get Happy’, he believes, is a concise statement of intent for his upcoming project, that best represents the melting pot of cultural influences and music samples. ‘This is what it’s gonna be about for the next seven, eight months. If you like that, you’re probably going to like the rest of it’.
T-Rex is among the first artists he remembers listening to in the car, but Jordan’s first true love in music was discovering Oasis.
‘The amount of hope in that music is unbelievable.’
GoodThing talks upcoming EP and new single, ‘Get Happy’. Image credit: Bethany Cordery
‘Underneath The Sky’ he picks as a current favourite. ‘It’s on ‘The Masterplan’ and I remember buying the album in a shop where you could get 3 CDs for five quid… pre Spotify. I remember taking it home and I was like this is unbelievable, I’ve got 12 new Oasis songs I didn’t know existed before today. I remember walking to my best friend’s house, up the hill… probably on our way to go and kick a football about in the park. It reminds me so much of that time’.
‘Real activities are great’, he says, of what makes him happy now. GoodThing loves to cook, spend time with friends and family, watch a Liverpool game with his grandfather, and ‘anything where you’re not doomscrolling’. ‘And if you see a dog in the street, that’s great.’
‘Musically… it’s really lovely when you make something that you’re really proud of, quite often I realise in the moment. I do not know what that is, and I think it’s magic. It’s so fun to be able to do that, it’s just amazing when you get that spark. You can’t get ideas down as quick as your brain’s firing them at you… Then you throw it on Spotify and no one listens’, he laughs.
“Being an established musician now is so hard. You come home from work and then you do your music project and then it’s midnight. And you’ve got to think about the big shop, and trying to be a good partner, and a good mate.”
GoodThing recently supported Romare at Village Underground, and has begun making connections in the DIY scene, with artists not necessarily sharing his invented genre, but ‘an energy’. Later this month, he supports ‘crocodile rock’ artist, Underdown, at The Grace. Damon Albarn (Blur) is top of Bramley’s list to open for, and picks Avalanches as his dream collaboration. ‘I would love to understand how they make a song. I would love to get under the hood and be like what are you doing, let me nick some of your tricks. I’d also love to work with a soul singer… I’d love to work with Corinne Bailey Rae. Someone who can sing properly… cause I’m more of a shouter.’
This time next year, GoodThing will have just finished the first year of his thirties, and his EP will have been out for a few months. So what does he hope to achieve, and tell his future self?
‘I would love to have just toured the UK and maybe played a couple of shows in Europe. That would do me. I have bigger and grander wishes but, that feels good. And I would just tell myself to keep going. This project means a lot. It’s taken me so many years of playing in different bands and learning how to play different instruments, how to sing… I’m still learning how to sing. It makes me so happy that I’m able to do it. And being an established musician now is so hard. You come home from work and then you do your music project and then it’s midnight. And you’ve got to think about the big shop, and trying to be a good partner, and a good mate… have hobbies… not totally losing your mind. So I think if I keep going and I’m still releasing things, I’d be really happy.’
While GoodThing is on a mission to ‘Get Happy’, his music promises to do the same.
Jordan Bramley aka GoodThing, photographed for TOPNOTE at Chucs Belgravia. Image credit: Bethany Cordery