Some people say, “never meet your heroes”, but they are wrong. If you are lucky, they turn out to be as wonderful as you hoped, or even better.
Laura Jayne has become a hero, not only for everything she does to support up-and-coming artists through her radio shows, playlists and podcasts, but for her singing too. Through her work, I have found artists including The Great Leslie, The Silver Bars and Dean Dovey. Over the last year, she has been fighting cancer while sharing the hard times and the strength it takes to get through them.
Although it feels like half a lifetime ago and five minutes ago at the same time, Laura Jayne won TuneFountain Song of the Year with her last single, ‘90 Days’. I was lucky enough to talk to Laura Jayne about the song, her work in independent music, and the other projects she has on the go.
Please can you introduce yourself for TuneFountain readers?
I am Laura Jayne. I’m a singer-songwriter from the North East.
Your last single, ‘90 Days’, was voted 2025 Single of the Year by TuneFountain readers. How did that feel?
It was great. The whole process was good fun because it was all about voting. You had to keep re-sharing, so it became a fun process more than anything. Other people got behind it as well. My few hardcore fans were saying, “come on, let’s get this done and get voting for Laura.”
What is the story behind the song?
It is all about being infatuated with somebody. Some people describe it as something called limerence, where you are obsessed with this person, but you do not know the ins and outs of them. You build this idea yourself, and then you realise they are not that person. Then you have to go a bit cold turkey.
What are your earliest music memories?
My mum used to play a lot of musicals. I still love my musicals, and Blood Brothers is an absolute favourite. My first record was from the front of a Rice Krispies box. It was by Barbara Dixon and it was called ‘January, February’. I was playing it in the car the other day, singing along, and I thought, “oh my God, this is amazing.”
Then my dad was into Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow. They were the things I was brought up with. My brother, Mark, was into New Order and REM. I fell into Madonna and loved a bit of the pop stuff.
You went from liking the big acts to loving independent artists?
Yeah. The independent thing started when we were all shut in during COVID. I had a friend, Andy Davidson of Feed Your Wolves, and he was starting to do his own independent music at that point. I joined Twitter to help him out and try to get some traction going with his music.
It kind of morphed into this massive thing. Everybody was in this lovely community on Twitter, and it built from there. I started sharing a lot of independent music.
Dean Dovey was one. I think his song ‘Journey To The Sun’ only had about 200 streams, and it had been out for about 18 months. Me and Andie from Hartlepool, who I did not realise was so close to me, said, “should we do a little playlist with it?”
We put 10 songs on it to see if we could get them past 1,000 streams. I said, “yeah, let’s do it”, and I think Dean’s song flew. I think it has over 40,000 streams now. That was from doing that playlist, and he became quite popular. That is how it all started for me.
Then a friend, who is now a good friend, April from America, got hold of me and said, “this should be a good radio show.” We started doing that for her radio station, From The Holler. We started the Loud n Lush show, which ran for about two and a half years, until April became quite poorly.
Then it morphed into the Sh!t and Giggles podcast, where we brought more conversation about the things going on within music, not only the music itself. We had some great guests.
Little Man Tate and Safe Gigs for Women came on, and we talked about festivals and safety. We have done some good stuff with that and hopefully brought some insight into what goes on in the independent scene, including the behind-the-scenes stuff. They are still all on Mixcloud if anybody wants to go and have a listen.
You are playing Front Row Festival. That is a long trip from the North East, so how did you decide to do that festival?
Keith, the guy who runs it, got in contact with me. We met at Network in Sheffield. He got hold of me through following The Great Leslie. It is strange how these things happen. He said to me, “please, will you come and play?”
I was supposed to play there last year but unfortunately, I was not well, so that did not happen. It is happening this year, and I cannot wait. It is going to be great fun.
You came to producing your own music quite late. Did you always want to do it?
I kind of did my whole life backwards. I had my daughter when I was 16, so everything has been backwards for me. When I was at school, I was always into drama. I can remember going for an interview at drama school in Newcastle with my friend Rhian.
When we got together, we were a bit like Ant and Dec. We bounced off each other, but obviously we were not allowed to audition together. We would do silly songs. Our friend’s dad worked for Skoda and had a Skoda car. They were crap back in the day, and we made this whole song up about Yoda Skoda.
I sat outside and had the whole waiting room in stitches. I felt sorry for this lad who went in because he forgot the props he was taking in. He was too busy laughing at us.
That is the thing. If you make it fun, it does not feel like work, does it?
As I say, I did everything backwards. So, it goes back to lockdown and Twitter. People had started doing a thing called Murder Song of the Day, where they picked their guitars up and murdered a song. If you look at the hashtag Murder Song of the Day, you will see them all come up on X.
I could not even play guitar at that point. For my first song, I used my guitar as a drum and sang. Then it progressed from there, and I did one of my own songs. People were saying, “you can sing.” I started the radio show and was promoting everybody else’s songs. Then I had written stuff, and it all started spiralling into what it is now.
You talked about the podcast, and you have started a new one, This Thing’s On. How did that begin?
Baker Lilivick dragged me into that one. I work with Baker at CVFM in Middlesbrough, and he does so much. He has had some great interviews, including Chesney Hawkes and Rowetta, and you name it.
He is there trying his hardest to interview some of the best people, and he does so well. He is always thinking of other things to do and dragging me along with him. He likes to put me in front of the camera. He says, “right, you do this,” because I go over the top a little bit sometimes.
I understand you are doing the Great North Run later in the year. What made you want to do that?
Yes, I am doing it for Maggie’s Centre in Middlesbrough. As most people will know, I had my own cancer diagnosis. I was diagnosed a year ago yesterday, which is surreal. Maggie’s Centre has helped me a lot, and they offer some great services.
If you go in, you can get financial help from them. At the moment, I am receiving auricular acupuncture from them. They do other complementary therapies. They are there to chat, and they do support groups.
They are devising a new support group for men because, as we know, men tend to be the ones who do not go in and talk about things. They are going fishing and doing things like that with them. They are trying to get the men together and do something with it, rather than sitting around and talking.
By getting the group to go out and do something, the hope is that they start chatting among themselves. Maggie’s has helped me massively throughout my diagnosis, so I am running for Maggie’s Middlesbrough to raise funds for them.
What are your other plans for 2026?
I have a few songs sat here waiting to be done, but it is all money right now, isn’t it? Everything costs, and I have not got a lot right now. I have not been at work for so long. If I can get some funds together to get more songs out, I would like that. Then maybe there might be a little bit of an EP on the way.
Laura Jayne can be found on socials here: Instagram.
You can catch Laura Jayne at Front Row Festival on 27th June here: Instagram.
Photos by Wilf Gill. You can find his work here: Instagram.
This Thing’s On podcast can be found here: Instagram.
