Watch English Teacher perform new song ‘Billboards’ at US show
The band are currently on the road across North America.
By Nick Reilly
Fresh from winning the Mercury Prize earlier this month, English Teacher have offered a fresh glimpse at their future with a new song called ‘Billboards’.
The Leeds band and RS UK Future of Music stars have been playing the song at a number of recent shows, but footage from a date supporting IDLES in Montreal last Sunday (September 22) is one of the first times it’s been available in full.
It’s a brilliantly wonky effort which begins with a lengthy piano sequence before singer Lily Fontaine reflects on “a vital message that the Earth should see“ and later sings of “screaming at a life in front of me“.
It then becomes an all-out love song as Fontaine declares “If happiness wore a face / It would steal your smile, eyes / And carve them into the Hollywood Hills. ‘Cause I know / If I ask him to give me a sign, he will.”
The group also benefitted from the Mercurys effect when their 2024 debut This Could Be Texas won the coveted prize, experiencing an increase of over 1000 per cent and re-entering the UK top 40 albums chart.
Accepting the award, the group – who beat bookies favourite Charli XCX – said they were lost for words and that they “didn’t really plan this far”.
“We just thought we’d make a band,” said singer Lily Fontaine, before paying tribute to her bandmates and the formative influences of the Leeds music community including Nathan Clark, the owner of the Brudenell Music Social Club venue.