Ten years in the game is a long time for any artist, even more so for one who's had multiple Top 10 hits, toured with some of the biggest pop stars on earth, and played The O2 five times over, all before they've hit the big three-oh. But instead of stepping away for some much-needed R&R, quietly squirrelling away in the background at the tail end of a period he's dubbed 'The Panic Years' was Bradley Simpson, ready to make his first solo album on his own terms.

"I literally ran away," says Bradley, dialling in from Antwerp, where he's in the middle of his first solo European tour. "It was great. It was like, right, I don't want to fucking see or speak to anyone, I don't want to know anyone in the city, and it was so nice having that separation. I've written a lot in London over the years, I've written a lot in LA over the years, but I haven't really done that much in New York, and I don't really know that many people. It just meant that I could really focus."

Born in Sutton Coldfield, Bradley likens his upbringing in the Birmingham suburb to the attitudes of New Yorkers, finding similarities in the grittiness of the English midlands and the northeastern state, and the abrasiveness of their populations – "You have to kind of earn your niceness from people," he says – making a place he initially chose as unfamiliar territory the perfect place to get back in touch with his younger self.

"I just wanted to write what felt natural," he explains, "and the stuff that I started to write was drawn on what I grew up with, which was more rocky and alternative, and that's kind of how I got into music. So it felt really natural for me to go into writing that, especially because I hadn't had the chance to write in that style, really, in a long time."

As a child, Brad picked up on his mum's taste via their car stereo and her preference for classic rock like Led Zeppelin and T Rex, and early 2000s funk and soul from Angie Stone and Jamiroquai; both genres he finds reflected in his own taste as an adult ("Funnily enough, I love rock in terms of writing, I gravitate to it, but if I'm not listening to music in a methodical way, I'll listen to Stevie Wonder or something," he says). But it was his older sister's love of alternative rock that has made the biggest dent in Bradley's solo work.

Working with a small bunch of collaborators, his first solo single 'Cry At The Moon' was created with Andrew Wells in Los Angeles way back at the start of 2023, noting that Andrew was the first person to give him the big alternative sound he wanted. Andrew was on board for most of the process, alongside indie veteran Anthony Rossomando, whose early 2000s band stories Brad was all ears for, but it was his partnership with producer Jordan Asher Cruz, also known as Boots, that made the process a completely different experience for Bradley.

"I never really made an album with an executive producer in the way that I made this album. [Jordan] was very different to anyone I'd worked with. He sat back and had a bit of a Rick Rubin approach, which really threw me off at first, because I was like, 'Are you going to do anything?' for the first few days. But then every change that he makes is like the one thing that you were looking for the whole time. You could be in there playing a million parts, and he could just come in and go actually… and then you're like, oh, that was it. There were a lot of bucket list moments.

Of course, a lot of these things are happening for the first time for a reason. Bradley spent that first decade of his career as the frontman of British pop band The Vamps, but as other members of the group started to branch out on their own, it soon became Brad's turn.

"I started to write a couple of songs that felt a lot more personal than stuff I'd written before, so I started to toy around with the idea. As I got more into the writing process, the album really felt like a moment to process the past ten years of my life. It became a really good way to decompress everything that's happened. It's intentionally or unintentionally become essentially a therapy session over the past two years of writing the album."

Determined to step out as a brand new artist, Bradley started in smaller rooms than he'd ever had the chance to play with the band, first hitting Oxford Street's legendary 100 Club for his debut solo performance (then three more, as he ended up selling out four nights there). His first European tour, currently in action, consists of similarly small, sweaty rooms, while this summer saw him take on the British festival circuit, playing Reading & Leeds, Latitude and Isle Of Wight. It's been a learning curve and a deliberately nerve-wracking experience.

"For the first few gigs, I felt a bit naked, and you get into an unspoken rhythm [with the band], even on stage with them, we played together for so long, so it was almost like rediscovering who I am as a performer outside of that, which has been quite it's been fun to do actually. I've shit myself at certain times, and been like, 'Oh, I don't know what to do with my hands', but it's been a learning as I go thing, which I've actually really enjoyed. I think different is good. It's nice to have something that I feel slightly challenged in, something that's a bit uncomfortable.

It's something he'll have to get used to, with a bigger tour coming in May, that'll see him headline more landmark venues like London's Kentish Town Forum and Sheffield's Leadmill.

But there's still more to come before the album drops in February, starting with the new single 'Holy Grail', written in London with the unlikely Ina Wroldsen (recently found in the credits of 'Padam Padam'). He'd become familiar with her work as a teenager, because of his friends' interest in drum'n'bass then, and finally got into the studio with her one day last summer, memorably due to Ina turning up in a pink double-denim look, stopping by on her way to see Barbie.

"We were in Wendy House Studios in London. We went and sat in the live room, and we were just chatting, spent the first hour talking about life, music, love, all of the things. And then we got speaking about love in the context of those ups and downs that you go through, about music and how tough it can be at certain points, and that how having someone to go through all of those things is amazing, it makes it so much easier and special."

Also written with Ina is the single 'Picasso', and it sounds like there's more to come ahead of the full release, too.

"There's a song called 'Carpet Burn' that I really love, which will be coming out pretty soon. That was the first song I wrote when I got to New York. I really struggle to write sometimes, when I've got a load of distractions around me, even if it's like someone who's like, 'We could go to the pub?' So having no one there to go to the pub with is great. I met Boots through the day, and then I went back to my hotel, then wrote 'Carpet Burn' around acoustic and brought it in the next day. It felt like the beginning of a nice relationship with me and Boots.

"The last lyric of the chorus is 'It gets me down that I didn't know you before we met', which is that idea of meeting someone and it being amazing – I'm a big believer in right place, right time – but being like, this is great, would have loved to have met you two years ago and have had more time together. I was really proud of that song. I've been playing it on tour, and the fans seem to gravitate to it."

It's one of eight songs from 'The Panic Years' Bradley's been playing on this tour, noting that he feels like he owes it to those coming out before hearing any new music to treat them to a few previews. The slow rollout of the album wasn't an accident, with Brad peeling back the layers over the course of the year to reveal a brand-new artist.

"I didn't want to drop the album straight away, or just do one song into the album, because the album's got a real theme through it in terms of the production and the songwriting. But I think there are different colours to it, and I wanted to show the different parts before giving the whole thing away."