Janet Devlin

Janet Devlin is a 24-year-old Northern Irish singer-songwriter, who grew up the only girl and youngest of four, outside the village of Gortin in County Tyrone. Fuelled by a love of bands like Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers and inspired by their songwriting, she taught herself to play instruments by ear and penned her own songs. Her musicality and determination flourished from a young age and she joined YouTube in 2006 at age 12 to push out her music to the public. This gained an unexpected but welcome fan base who were ready to support her in the next stage of her music career. In 2011, she caught the public’s attention on Series 8 of The X Factor, where she consistently received the highest consecutive public vote out of all the contestants and gained a place on the live arena tour.

Janet’s debut album Running With Scissors was released in the UK in June 2014 (reaching number one on the UK Indie Breakers chart) and in North America in Feb 2015. It is full of folk-driven pop songs and heart-touching ballads, which perfectly showcase her unique and enchanting vocals. The tracks are mostly authored by Janet and were recorded up in a staggering 6 weeks; but hidden around the corner you’ll find featured co-writes with Newton Faulkner (‘Creatures Of The Night’ and ‘Hide And Seek’) and Jack Savoretti (‘Delicate’) nestled alongside a surprising and sensitive cover of The Cure’s ‘Friday I’m In Love’.

Janet slipped into the studio in early 2015 to record a covers EP entitled Duvet Daze, and again in November to release its festive brother full of originals; December Daze. ‘Outernet Song’ is Janet’s catchy single released in 2016 – with her distinctive vocals and ukulele, it showcases her honest and frank lyricism to great effect, and couldn’t be more timely as more and more people embark on a ‘digital detox’. The track got a worthy revival at the start of 2017 when it was remixed by dance-floor maestro Jason Nevins, to industry acclaim. Little Lights EP arrived in 2016, another Christmas cracker which skilfully captures a range of feelings associated with Christmas. Each of Janet’s releases was followed by an accompanying tour, which saw her travel around the UK and Ireland, as well as the East Coast of North America.

2018 was a real turning point for Janet as she embarked on new experiences! She made her screen debut for Triskelle Pictures’ indie film Songbird. While writing the script, award-winning screenwriter Tommy Draper was inspired to write the part of Jennifer specifically for her. Janet wrote two original songs for the film, of which ‘Chandeliers’ has gone on to win numerous awards; Original Song, The Midlands Movies Awards 2019; Best Foreign Theme Song, Artemis Women In Action Film Festival 2019, and was nominated for Best Score/Soundtrack, Nexus Film Awards 2019.

Over the last twelve years Janet’s been posting on YouTube, but 2018 saw her creating bi-weekly video content for nearly half a million subscribers including original music, cover versions, vlogs and poetry, and posts on a variety of subjects including mental health, sexuality and bullying. She was invited over to the YouTube Creator Summit in Berlin in September, then again to Athens to attend a Google launch event where she performed and took part in a speaker panel. Another huge highlight was being included in the UK Book of YouTube 2018; an industry manual containing the top 100 most influential YouTubers in the country, and she’s been confirmed as a guest at the YouTube Creator Summit this summer.

At the end of last year Janet released ‘I Lied To You’ – a very personal, soul-searching baring of emotion, which ignited conversations on social media about the challenges young people face in today’s society. Her long-awaited second album ‘Confessional’ is in the final stages of production.