Benjamin Francis Leftwich

Benjamin Francis Leftwich (born 4 September 1989) is an English singer-songwriter from York. Leftwich released his first album Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm in 2011 which peaked at #35 on the UK charts. He has released four further albums since, the most recent in February 2024. Leftwich has also co-written with other artists, including The 1975, Holly Humberstone and CMAT.

Early life
Leftwich began playing at the age of ten and grew up listening to The Rolling Stones and Nina Simone; later discovering Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, and Elliott Smith. He cites Cher, Arcade Fire, Ryan Adams, and Bruce Springsteen as inspirations.

Education
Leftwich was educated at Hempland Primary School, and then at Bootham School.

Life and career
Leftwich's debut album, the Ian Grimble-produced Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm, was released in July 2011. The Fly called it "a majestic debut" The Skinny, while the Sunday Express called it "lovely". Hazel Sheffield, writing in The Guardian, gave it a 3/5 rating, as did David Pollock, writing for The Scotsman, who drew comparisons to Damien Rice and José González. Leftwich's "Shine" was named Spotify's most addictive track of 2014, the most repeat-played song of the year. Leftwich sold more than 100,000 copies of Last Smoke and received over 150 million global Spotify plays. "Atlas Hands" was featured in Zillow's TV Commercial 'Lake House' in 2015 In this same year, Benjamin Francis Leftwich co-wrote "Grow" with British artist Frances which featured in the Amazon UK TV advert.

His second album After the Rain was released in August 2016. Performing songs off this album and his former, he toured extensively from April 2016 to August 2017, covering the UK, Canada, USA, China, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and throughout Asia (e.g., Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia).

Albums Gratitude, To Carry A Whale and Some Things Break followed in 2019, 2021 and 2024 respectively. As of 2024, Leftwich has more than 749,000 monthly listeners and more than 312,000 followers on Spotify.

As well as writing and recording his own music, Leftwich co-writes with other artists and has collaborated with The 1975, Holly Humberstone and CMAT amongst others.

Personal life
Leftwich has admitted to previous problems with alcohol and drug addiction but has been sober since 2019.