Mike Rosenberg Interview

I am the Passenger

From the streets of Brighton to global success, Mike Rosenberg is walking tall. Jeff Hemmings spoke to the quietly determined one …

After years of chipping away at the coalface of an increasingly saturated music scene, Mike Rosenberg (aka Passenger) has suddenly seen all that perseverance, talent and passion pay off, in a most explosive manner.

Born and bred in Brighton, Mike’s band Passenger was being touted as a Next Big Thing in the mid-noughties. He had secured a substantial development deal via ie:music, a management company that has included the likes of Robbie Williams and Ladyhawke on their books. Although Mike and his band were making some inroads, and developing a solid fanbase, they never got enough traction to take off. The money ran out and the train came off the tracks.

Not that it seemed to overly bother Mike, as he went about busily re-inventing himself as a solo singer-songwriter whilst retaining the Passenger moniker. He went back to his roots, and became a troubadour, busking his way around the UK and then on to Australia. An incredibly hard working, passionate and honest songwriter, this need to write, sing and perform was truly in his blood. A junkie of sorts, but in the right way. Whether or not he was going to become rich and/or famous was now by-the-by; he found out he could make a living by doing it by himself, and in his own way.

“When the band broke up I started from scratch again, and that was when I started busking. I had no band, no house, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was thinking, ‘how can I make a living from music immediately’? Busking wasn’t a masterplan, but I started seeing the reaction from people; they stopped and listened to me in the street. There would be no reason for that, other than liking what I was doing. That started to fill me with confidence and everything grew from that.

“In 2009 I busked around the UK, sometimes just getting on a train to go to a town and play. It was romantic, liberating and a great few months. It was exciting having control, not needing to ask for money from someone else. And when it started getting cold I booked a flight to Australia and started from scratch there.”

Then, less than three years ago, Mike rekindled his friendship with Ed Sheeran and suddenly his fortunes took a huge leap forward. “Ed Sheeran is a good mate from quite a long time ago,” says Mike. “Touring with him completely changed the game; going from busking and playing to a couple of hundred people in a pub to the Brighton Centre and venues of that size, all over North America, Europe and Australia.

“We met at one of those tiny gigs, the first year I was out on my own (2009), in a pub in Cambridge. He was 16 or 17, unknown at the time, and we ended up on the same bill. And I watched his set and was blown away by it. I think he watched mine and liked what I was doing as well. We became mates, played a few gigs together and then when he exploded he was good to me; ended up giving me a year of touring.”

As well as having the opportunity to support and even duet with Sheeran at every gig, Mike got to see up close what makes him tick: “Ed’s work ethic is like no other artist I have ever met. He left home when he was 16 and there wasn’t a day when he wasn’t pushing it forward. He has talent of course, and is a lovely guy. It was no surprise to me. The first time I saw him, it was one of those moments where you go: ‘You’re going to be pretty big’. He deserves it.”

The fact that Mike was tapping into huge audiences every night gave him the opportunity to win new fans. And when he first played in Brighton following his stint with Sheeran, he sold out the Concorde 2 in no time. Shortly after that, his song ‘Let It Go’ suddenly, and literally out of nowhere, went global.

Originally released as an album track on his low-key 2012 All The Little Lights album, the song eventually became one of the biggest selling songs of 2013. It was everywhere. “This is the weirdest part of it all … we got this email from a radio plugger in Holland, who’d heard it in a cafe. I think he Shazzamed it – that’s how ridiculous this is – saw it was me, got in touch with my management and said: ‘Look, I think this could be a hit in Holland; let me take it to radio in Holland, see what happens’. Within a few weeks it was number one. You look at the iTunes chart and see your little song at number one, just incredible! I thought that would be the end of it, but then it went to number one in Belguim, Luxemburg, through Scandinavia and Sweden and Germany. It was bizarre.”

‘Let It Go’ ended up being number one in 16 countries, as well number two in the UK. And then it went big in America, the song being used for a Budweiser advert that was shown during the Superbowl, an event that attracts some of the biggest television audiences in the world. And the song was nominated for a Brit this year: “That was really great, to be nominated, and to get to see the other side of the industry. I’ve always been on the outskirts of that really. It was fun to put on a suit, drink champagne and see Prince.”

His recent album, Whispers, was made on the back of all this success, and yet Mike still saw fit to finance it himself and be in control of his destiny as much as possible. Recorded in Australia, where he had made his previous two albums, it became a high charting album around around the globe. “I’ve financed them all myself. If you fund it yourself, no one can say anything creatively, although you obviously want people’s input and their advice. But, you don’t want someone to tell you which song to leave out or which photo to use. F*** that, it’s your vision, you’re the artist, you created it. For me, it’s just a more sensible way of doing things.”

After spending the last six years being a troubadour and travelling around the world, Mike has recently settled back in Brighton.
“It’s an amazing town; the more I’m away from it the more I love it. A lot of my mates are still here. My folks are here.”

Passenger, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, 8 & 9 November, supported by The Once. (Sold Out.) 01273 709 709, brightondome.org