Ezra Collective have been announced as the runners-up to the BBC Sound Of 2025 shortlist.
The list looks to highlight the acts with “the best chance of mainstream success” in the next 12 months, and is chosen by a panel of 180 music industry experts.
The longlist was first shared late last year and contained names like Kneecap, Confidence Man, Mk.gee and NME 100 2023 alumni Doechii.
This Monday (January 6) saw the BBC begin a day-by-day countdown of the top five Sound Of 2025 artists. Leeds band, Mercury Prize winners and former NME Cover Stars English Teacher came in at Number Five before 2025 BRIT Rising Star winner Myles Smith took the Number Four position.
Yesterday, third place was confirmed as going to festival favourite and Scottish electronic producer and DJ, Barry Can’t Swim.
Now, it has been announced that London-based jazz quintet Ezra Collective have secured the Number Two slot on the 2025 list.
The milestone accomplishment comes on the heels of a massive couple of years for the band. In 2023, for instance, they became the first jazz act to walk away with the prestigious Mercury Prize. There has been a whirlwind of acclaim and further accolades too, including streaming figures rising exponentially and the 2024 single ‘Ajala’ being nominated for ‘Best Independent Track’ at this year’s AIM Awards. They were also the first jazz act to sell out Wembley Arena last November.
“We’re just trying to bring something positive and joyful to whoever will listen,” Bandleader and drummer Femi Koleoso told the BBC. “So anything that exposes us to more people is always gratefully received.”
For Ezra Collective, the win comes after the members met in a youth club in London and went on to play their first gig in a Foyles bookshop. Their debut EP, ‘Chapter 7’, was shared in 2016 and followed by a debut album, ‘You Can’t Steal My Joy’ in 2019.
Their second album – which would go on to see them win at the 2023 Mercury Prize – was ‘Where I’m Meant To Be’ and arrived in 2022. Last year they shared their latest LP, ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’.
The BBC Sound of 2025 shortlist countdown is due to reveal the overall winner tomorrow morning (10). The artist many expect to top the list tomorrow is pop megastar and former NME Cover alumni Chappell Roan.
Upon its release two months ago, the longlist for 2025 drew a mixed reaction from fans on social media. This came as many agreed that the chosen names were already too established to be considered a “rising” act.
Looking at the Top Five so far, for instance, Barry Can’t Swim, English Teacher and Ezra Collective have all been nominated for Mercury Prizes – with the latter two going on to secure the prestigious award. Myles Smith, who came in fourth spot, has been announced as a winner of a BRIT Award in 2025 too.
As for other longlist artists, Mk.Gee recently made an appearance on Saturday Night Live and Croydon drill star Pozer became the first UK rapper in history to have two debut singles chart in Top 40.
One of the most successful artists to be named is Chappell Roan, who landed a UK Number One album in August, won the Best New Artist prize at the MTV VMAs the following month, and later earned six nominations at the Grammys 2025. She was announced as a headliner of next year’s Reading & Leeds at the end of last year too.
Her inclusion on the list came as new rules were implemented for 2025. Previously, an artist would not be eligible if they had been the lead on a UK Number One or Number Two album by the cut-off point. However, this year that rule has changed so that an artist “cannot have had more than two Top 10 albums in the UK Official Albums Chart” by 30 September 2024.
Asked about the change to the rules, a BBC Radio 1 spokesperson told NME: “The Sound Of list has a strong track record of predicting future superstars and we periodically review the criteria to better reflect how audiences consume music.”
Last September, Ezra Collective’s third album ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’ was given a four-star review by NME and described as seeing the “five-piece pivot their style of jazz into hard funk, dub, neo-soul, Afrobeat and highlife”.
Earlier that month, the band also spoke to NME about what it was like to become the first jazz act to win at the Mercurys. “I know. We were the first jazz act to win, but we weren’t the first jazz act who deserved to win,” Koleoso said.
“I feel that every great jazz moment that came before us was a stepping stone, and we had the blessing of being able to climb up those stones. Even though Ezra Collective won, I really hope that UK jazz felt some pride, because I really saw it as something ‘we’ won, not ‘I’ won.”