Tourist

In 2015, William Phillips won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year, as a co-writer for Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’. “It’s an absurd compliment,” he says, “but my intention has only been to write music and work with great musicians.” Since then, Phillips has released three albums as Tourist –2016’s ‘U’ and 2019’s ‘Wild’ and ‘Everyday’ –and several solo EPs. He’s also remixed Christine and the Queens, Churches, Deftones, Wolf Alice, Swedish House Mafia & The Weeknd and Sofia Kourtesis. In May 2022, his fourthalbum, ‘Inside Out’, will be released on Monday Records.Growing up, Phillips fell in love with dance music: Goldie, Daft Punk and MJ Cole were favourites. In 1999, he started making beats on production software Reason; later, he taught himself piano by listening to his fathers pop records. It’s a process he put to the test in the Covid-19 pandemic. After hearing the devastating news that a friend had passed away, locked down with his phone, laptop and a keyboard, Phillips started writing ‘Inside Out’. Though it came from grief, ‘Inside Out’ is tender and uplifting, with kaleidoscopic fragments of garage grooves and French filter house.After playing Coachella and Glastonbury, opening for Bonobo on tour and selling out two nights at Village Underground, Tourist is preparing a new live show that will make his dreams come true: to feel everything, with everyone, through dance music.