In 2023, Billy Bragg celebrated a remarkable 40 years as Britain’s favorite folk singer, songwriter and campaigner. To mark this significant landmark, he released an acclaimed career-spanning box set, ‘The Roaring Forty,’ and has played to sell-out crowds across the world. In November, he performed his most famous song, ‘A New England,’ on Later With Jools Holland almost exactly 40 years to the day that he debuted the song on The Tube (also presented by one Jools Holland!).
Galvanized in the late 70s by The Clash and an aversion to the austere policies of Margaret Thatcher, Billy set out to inspire political engagement and empathy. He has performed numerous benefit shows for the miners, the Labour party, CND, the jobless and many more, and has run the Left Field political stage at Glastonbury for the last 20 years.
Billy has released 11 solo studio albums, three albums of Woody Guthrie lyrics set to contemporary music by Billy and Wilco (the Mermaid Avenue albums), and one album with Joe Henry. He released a mini album, 'Bridges Not Walls,' in 2017. His latest studio album, the acclaimed ‘The Million Things That Never Happened,’ came out in 2021.
Billy Bragg added best-selling author to his CV with the success of his acclaimed 2017 book, Roots, Radicals & Rockers – How Skiffle Changed The World. He has written two books of political analysis - The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging (2006) and The Three Dimensions of Freedom (2019).
Billy won the Outstanding Contribution To British Music Award at the prestigious Ivors Awards in 2018. Born and raised in Barking, East London, Billy has a street named after him in his hometown – Bragg Close. This year, Billy has been honored with a pavement plaque on the Camden Music Walk Of Fame (previous recipients include Madness, Amy Winehouse, The Who, David Bowie, and The Kinks).