For Wes Nelson, music isn’t just about the final product, it’s about the entire creative process. Since bursting onto the UK music scene with his debut single See Nobody in 2020 - a track that landed in the UK Top 5 and spent 14 weeks on the charts - Nelson has made a name for himself by combining a feel-first writing style with a solid technical grounding in the studio. Recently, Nelson sat down with Headliner to talk to us about his love for music, why creative freedom matters and the gear that shaped his sound.
“I used to sing gospel as a child, so that sort of shaped my singing style,” recalls Nelson. “My dad was heavily into old school R&B, Luther Vandross specifically. And at my grandmother's house, there was a keyboard, which I used to go on and learn how to replay songs.”
R&B has remained a major influence in Nelson’s sound, grounding him even as his music has moved increasingly more towards pop. “My major music influence growing up was Ne-Yo – it was the first album I ever bought, and of course, Luther Vandross, thanks to my dad. So that sort of R&B/pop was a heavy influence at the start of my career.”
Though now a fixture in the charts and on stages across the UK and Europe, Nelson’s serious pursuit of music didn’t begin until fairly recently. “It was just before the COVID-19 lockdown, around the end of 2019. I'd been invited to a few studios and fell in love with the behind-the-scenes of music production and the writing process. I bought some equipment myself, and I was in my good friend Josh Denzel’s spare bedroom, and I was writing and doing some pretty amateur production,” he explains. “That was where it all kicked off. And then, I started getting some good feedback from the likes of Krept and Konan and some other artists at the time, and it filled me with the confidence to want to pursue it professionally.”
Since then, Nelson has released a string of singles and collaborated with heavyweight UK artists including Yxng Bane and Hardy Caprio. Most recently, he teamed up with multi-award-winning singer, songwriter, rapper, DJ and producer Craig David on the 2024 single Abracadabra. Speaking to Headliner last year, Craig David was full of praise for Nelson, later bringing him out at his arena shows and introducing him to the crowd as "the future."
As a writer and producer, Nelson takes a hands-on approach from the very beginning of the creative process. “I don't really like taking [finished] beats. I usually build with a producer from the ground up. I like focusing on the chords first, and it depends on how I'm feeling on the day,” he explains. “Often I go into the studio with something I really want to talk about, a life experience or something like that. But for the most part, it's how the chords make me feel.”
Diagnosed with ADHD, Nelson finds himself juggling multiple creative ideas at once. “It's almost like I have 1,000,001 different ideas, and I pursue three or four of them and then cut it down from there,” he offers. His method also includes a lot of vocal exploration, long before lyrics are set. “I'm usually scatting and mumbling melodies over the chords, and that usually gives me a good idea of the energy that I want to put into the song and how it makes me feel.”
As his studio skills have evolved, so too has his recording setup. “I remember going into Sarm Studios in West London, and they had a Neumann U87, Tube-Tech CL 1B and Neve 1073, and I was told that that was the holy trifecta. So in my head, I was like, ‘Oh, I need this setup!’”