The authentic voice of the streets is translated, captioned, polished until it can be dissected in Guardian think‑pieces, consumed by middle‑class voyeurs who treat our lives like edgy exhibits rather than lived realities. This is why we don’t step forward. Why we don’t submit our manuscripts or scripts. Because standing at the gates are the cultural custodians: well‑spoken, well‑heeled, Oxbridge‑seasoned.

Now everything is shit. Plastic and polished, predictable and soulless. Every song sounds like a template: click-track drums, a fake build, a drop made by some guy hunched over a laptop in a bedroom that smells like Monster Energy.

We live in an era where talent is not enough. In fact, it might be a hindrance. Because while you were honing your craft, someone else was learning how to go viral. The algorithm doesn't want your genius, mate. It wants your pliability. Your photogenic smirk and ability to dance on cue. It wants quick cuts, controversy, and a hook in the first three seconds. Greatness needs time. The algorithm gives you milliseconds. It doesn't reward soul. It rewards sensation.

One you feel in your chest. The song I wrote, "Japanese Lights," isn’t just about this man wandering Shibuya or getting lost in the side streets of Shinjuku. It’s about all of us trying to find ourselves in a world that stopped resembling home sometime around 2007.

Oasis are playing shows this year, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Not just for the nostalgia, not just for the songs, but because the world has changed—and not necessarily for the better. And I believe Oasis, in all their swaggering, unapologetic, two-fingered glory, are the antidote to everything that’s gone wrong.

Scottish football is a museum piece disguised as a sport. A game fuelled by passion but throttled by parochialism. A national pastime clinging to relics of a bygone age that in truth was never as golden as we pretend.

Power, fame, influence—each a drug, each corrupting faster than the last. We live in an age where grifters steal truth, sell it back as spectacle, and gaslight the masses with fake metrics. The circus of influence is here—and it feeds on your attention. Step outside the tent.

We tell ourselves we could have been great, as if talent alone was ever enough. But potential is just another way to say never tried.

My story. No magic moments, no sudden epiphanies. Just grit, change, and the next step forward. Take it, or stay exactly where you are.

when your entire culture gets boiled down to a handful of clichés that fit neatly into an Englishman’s idea of Scotland.