Colouring Shares New Single “How’d It Get So Real?”

Colouring Promo Photo by Pierce Tews

With his anticipated new album Love To You, Mate due out February 23 via Bella Union, and following the singles “Lune”, “For You” and “Love To You, Mate”, Colouring today shares another new track, “How’d It Get So Real?”, ahead of the LP’s release. “How’d It Get So Real?” was something Jack Kenworthy’s wife Helen said to him during the year following her brother’s cancer diagnosis and the song is a message of support to her during this turbulent time. With its shuffling groove and beautiful ear worm of a chorus the song is one of the most uplifting and life-affirming on the album.

“I’ve always been on the side of making up scenarios rather than being really honest about my life within my music,” adds Jack about his second album Love To You, Mate. “This is the first time I’ve been able to do that. I’ve been less scared of it because it’s not my story. It’s a shared one.”

The Nottingham-based songwriter and producer’s life was upended in February 2021, months before the release of his debut album Wake, when his brother-in-law Greg Baker was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. What followed was the most “unbelievable” year of a family’s togetherness when life seemed set on fracturing the life of a young man. Kenworthy, knowing in particular that he needed to be a pillar of support to his partner Helen, whom he’s since married, found that the family’s journey together in the face of adversity was both brutal and beautiful.

“We were of course so terrified,” Kenworthy remembers of the following Christmas spent in hospital, a memory etched into the album’s title track. “But they’re just such positive, kind and inspiring people who had everything thrown at them and handled it all with this incredible togetherness and spirit. We’re all so grateful to have had him in our lives.”

“Love To You, Mate is a love letter to my wife, family and Greg for what they all did; a photograph of that time.” Kenworthy continues. “We were this tight-knit, inseparable group of friends for a whole year… a year we look back on with great pride. I really feel we’ve made this music together.”