Teddy Swims

About

Atlanta's Teddy Swims has lived a few different lives. He's been a football player at school, a musical theatre student, and grew up as the grandson of a Pentecostal pastor. It shouldn't come as any surprise, then, that his musical styles are just as varied. His music mixes sounds from the like of '80s hair metal, funk, soul and alt-country, and if you try and fit him into a box, he'll break out. He's that type of artist.

He's played in rock bands, been a rapper, and spent a year living alongside his team in order to become the artist he wanted to be. These sessions saw him combine R&B, soul, country rock, pop and more, and he's always going to have his team by his side. He told Ones To Watch that, "We built this ourselves…I always say: 'If there's twelve of us here it's not a democracy - it's a jury.' We can all figure out why we have to make a decision. But if there are two or three people that don't have the same answer as us, there's always time to make sure that everyone can get on the same page. Because we trust each other and we have each other's best interest at heart."

Teddy defines himself by his experiences, and Swims actually stands for "someone who isn't me sometimes". He started really getting people's attention through covers of the likes of Marvin Gaye, Billie Eilish and Shania Twain, with Shania Twain loving his cover of her track You're Still The One (which he dedicated to his mum).

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