Badly Drawn Boy

After the Britpop bubble burst in the late ’90s, the UK music press found an unlikely new savior in the form of Damon Gough, the scruffy, self-effacing, perma-toqued singer better known as Badly Drawn Boy.

Born in 1969 in Manchester, Gough started out making quirky DIY recordings in the mid-’90s, and his burgeoning underground renown landed him a spot among Thom Yorke and Richard Ashcroft on Psyence Fiction, the 1998 album from James Lavelle’s all-star electronic project UNKLE.

But Gough’s full-length debut as Badly Drawn Boy, 2000’s The Hour of Bewilderbeast, recast this lo-fi eccentric as an art-pop visionary—part Nick Drakean folk diarist, part Nilsson-like piano prankster, part Beatles-esque sound collagist.