Danny & The Champions Of The World announce new album, You Are Not A Stranger Here

Alongside the announcement of their first since 2017’s, Brilliant Light, Danny & the Champions of the World have unveiled a video to their new single "I'm In Love". As previously announced, Danny & the Champions of the World have confirmed a show at London's The Garage on 2 November.

"The way the record is laid out is across a day," explains Danny. "You hear the weather report in the morning and then you're immediately into this question of 'I know what I'm doing, but I don't know why I'm doing it anymore. As it goes through the day, you get the commute, the hold message from a call centre and finally ending the day back home with 'Sooner or Later.'"

More than a quarter-century since Wilson emerged with his brother Julian at the helm of Grand Drive, he acknowledges the step change in his approach to his song craft this time. "I think it's one of those records where you suddenly think, you're not old but you're not a kid anymore, and you wake up and go, 'What's this all about? The songs don't profess to know anything. In fact, they're a lot less self-assured than all of the previous thirty years of songs. I'm looking in the mirror a bit here.”

"As a result, it's a weird mix of looking at yourself and looking at the world. There's nostalgia in there, and there's regret. I'd been reading and talking about lots of things that maybe you don't do so much when you're young. Not the big questions, but you find yourself going 'Sorry, can we just stop and think 'What's the point here?' And I guess the title of the album is reflective of that." '

You Are Not A Stranger Here grew out of extensive discussions among the Champs, and between Wilson and Collison in particular, about what type of album they wanted to make. "I made a playlist that I shared with the band, and I was constantly adding to it," he says, adding with a laugh: "No, I didn't test them. But it wouldn't have taken more than a few songs for them to realise 'OK, the terrain is different here.'"

Circling back to that contradiction between the intensely personal and the inspiringly universal, Danny concludes "These aren't huge epiphanies. They're little things that you've suddenly realised about yourself, about life and the weirdest thing is that by singing about not trying to be universal, these are possibly the most universal things I've ever written."