Expect The Unexpected

“The line itself was said to me,” Jamie Lawson recalls. By now, most radio listeners will know the one he’s referring to, the titular line from 2011’s most unexpected hit, the heart-breaking ‘Wasn’t Expecting That’.

“I was sat exactly where I’m sat this minute,” he continues, “in the kitchen of my friend’s house in Dublin. I started playing and the line kept cropping up. It was quite easy, it came. You try not to get in the way, as a songwriter, try not to get in the way of yourself!”
Although he’s been making music for a decade now, it wasn’t until Ian Dempsey started spinning a YouTube rip of ‘Wasn’t Expecting That’ on Today FM that people started to take notice of 28-year-old Jamie.
“You would never think that was a radio song,” he laughs, “not at all. That blew my mind.”
In the tune, Lawson croons about finding love and settling down, but it’s the final part of the tale, where he loses his partner to illness, that really yanks at the heart strings.
“The comments that I’ve gotten have all been incredibly touching and very, very personal. We all know someone who’s been through this and without sounding arrogant, and I hope I don’t sound arrogant, it’s a beautiful story. I’m sure it’s been done before, but it seems to be striking a chord at this moment.”
Now signed to Universal Records in Ireland, Lawson is plotting a reissue of his second album The Pull Of The Moon, which was a critical success but commercial flop when released in the UK last year.
“The reviews I got, I was really chuffed with,” he remembers, “but I got no airplay. I was still doing covers gigs in pubs in Cornwall to pay the rent!”
Lawson had even taken to spending half of his year in a seaside caravan to save a few pennies.
“It’s very small and can be quite cold and quite blustery,” he laughs. “I live there most of the Summer for a couple of reasons. One of them is money in that it’s cheap, and the other is that I find it very easy. It’s quite calming. You open your door and there’s a view of the sea and if it’s night you’ve got a million stars above you. I’ve got no internet and no television. I listen to the radio and I play a lot of music, that’s how I occupy my time.”
In a blog entry dated November 2010, Lawson wrote about watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer and trying to sort out his car insurance. These days, the Brit’s got a little bit more on his plate.
“My plan for the year was release a new record, then try and gig as much as possible. A goal was selling out some sort of 100-seater venue and within a week of telling my manager that, I had 140 people in Whelan’s!”
Perhaps the most surreal part of Lawson’s jet pack flight to fame was finding himself on the Late Late Show, sharing a studio with Bob Geldof.
“He wished me luck,” he beams. “But he gave out to me for drinking cough medicine! He said, ‘You shouldn’t be having that!’ and he gave me a Strepsil, bless him. He only had two left, so he shared his last Strepsils with me. I was quite moved!”

Jamie plays Dolan’s, Limerick (March 10); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (11); The Thatch, Rahan (12); the INEC, Killarney (13); and the Wexford Arts Centre (16).