Award-wining singer-songwriter Michael Nelson — who uses the stage name BANNERS — is back with a ✨flawless✨ EP to kick off the new year.
If the name rings a bell in your mind, that means that you’ve heard his hit song “Someone to You” on TikTok, or from his music that appears in some of today’s biggest movies and TV shows like Suits, Teen Wolf, Lucifer, After, Grey’s Anatomy, The Royals, The Good Doctor, Love, Simon, Beautiful Boy, New Amsterdam and more.
Amassing 1.5 billion streams to date, that number is about to skyrocket with BANNERS’ incredibly raw and vulnerable new EP titled I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not, which hit all music streaming platforms on January 13th.
The project is centered around the idea that “actually nobody is perfect, and it’s actually the it’s the imperfections that make us interesting and that make us fit perfectly with other people. It’s also subjective isn’t it? Perfection doesn’t really exist,” BANNERS revealed to Celeb Secrets reporter Melanie Rooten in an exclusive interview.
In the one-on-one chat, the Liverpool, England native talked ALL about the new EP, touching on the meaning behind both the title and the project itself, the process of creating the project and more.
When asked about the intriguing and unique title of the EP, BANNERS revealed to us, “It’s called, I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not, which is just a lyric from [‘Perfectly Broken‘], one of the songs that’s on there. It felt like it just summed up where I was up to at the moment… It’s sort of the last bunch of songs that I had that I wrote during the pandemic.”
“I think your brain goes a bit crazy [during the pandemic]. I just got a bit obsessed with my appearance and just hating what I look like and stuff, so that was a bit of a lyric that reflect reflected that a bit. I think that feeling of needing to feel like you look perfect, because you’re only seeing people on Instagram and on Zoom, and everyone else’s looks so perfect and brilliant, and you’re just left with your own self in the mirror,” he continued.
Since I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not was written during the pandemic, BANNERS touched on the uncertainty he felt during this time, as well as his fear that the music industry would not be able to continue. After figuring out how to successfully write a song while being isolated from his fellow co-writers, BANNERS saw a light at the end of the tunnel, with one song setting the tone for the rest of the EP to come.
“There’s one on there it’s called ‘In Your Universe,’ which was the the first session that I did on Zoom during the pandemic that really worked out,” BANNERS revealed. “I’m really proud of the song, I really love it, but also it was like ‘Okay, this is possible for me.'”
According to BANNERS, the pandemic “was crazy for songwriting, because all of a sudden, everybody was free all of the time, and you could write with anybody, really anywhere in the world.” Regardless of how difficult or abnormal the creation of the project was, the award-winning singer-songwriter was able to create a no-skip project that we are seriously obsessed with.
With I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not out for the world to hear, we asked BANNERS if he had any other goals or plans for 2023, and his response was incredibly heartfelt.
“My main thing now is to bring my musician, artist, photographer and videographer friends along [this ride] with me. I just want to write as many songs as I can with my friends, because some of my friends are in such great bands, they just never got their little break yet, so if I can help in some way with that, or just develop people’s careers as songwriters, or filmmakers, or anything, we can make it a big collective. That’s just what I want to do.”
With this goal in mind, BANNERS is hitting the road for his Perfectly Broken Tour, and everybody on the stage with him are “his best friends from the UK,” which will be fun for all.
“I feel in a bit of a position to curate things for myself really, and just make it all a bit easier and do this with people that I really love, so I think if nothing else, you know, I’m really proud of the songs and I think I’ve I think the live shows are really good, but it’s also a bunch of people that just really really like being on stage together, and I really hope that that comes comes out,” he continued.
If you want to see one of these extra special shows for yourself, click HERE to get your tickets.
Until we can catch BANNERS on the road, we will be streaming I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not nonstop. Listen for yourself below and let us know which song you enjoy most by either leaving a reaction at the bottom of the post or by sending us a tweet at @celebsecrets.
You can learn more about BANNERS and his music by watching our full interview below.
