Best of Budapest & Hungary

Tom Odell's heartbreaking and emotional songs speak to millions of listeners, offering them comfort and encouragement. With his new album A Wonderful Life, coming this autumn, the British singer-songwriter reveals a more honest and vulnerable side to his music, which his fans in Budapest will be able to experience at his biggest headline concert in Hungary on 16 November at the Budapest Arena.

    Tom Odell's new album A Wonderful Life is out on 5 September, and to coincide with the news he has announced a 27-stop tour and released his latest single Don't Cry, Put Your Head On My Shoulder too. The new song is a cinematic lullaby, during which there's a good chance that the arena will be lit by the glow of telephones.

    Fans can pre-order the new album from Tom's online store before 27 May 6pm will get access to the UK/European arena tickets first. Pre-sale starts for registered Live Nation members from 3pm on 28 May, while general on sale starts at 11am on 30 May.

    Tom Odell has been stripping back the layers, creating a prolific and increasingly vulnerable canon of work that speaks to the frailties of the human condition and the fragility of the world around us. Particularly since the pandemic and 2021’s ‘Monsters’, Odell’s songwriting has put rawness and honesty to the fore, with a whole new generation of fans finding vital solace in his music in response. Seventh album ‘Black Friday'  haunting title track has earned nearly 700 million combined streams since its late-2023 release. Meanwhile over on TikTok, Tom’s 2012 breakthrough hit ‘Another Love’ has spent the last two years going quietly stratospheric, entering the top 50 on the Billboard TikTok chart, and soundtracking millions of TikTok videos, most commonly in support of Ukraine as a sign of hope, and by Iranian women to soundtrack protest videos in response to the death of Mahsa Amini whilst in the custody of the ‘morality police’. The song, originally written by a young Tom making his very first moves in this enduring musical career, has since accumulated over 3 billion streams on Spotify, becoming one of the top 25 most streamed songs of all time on the platform.

    As Odell has become braver as a writer, pushing himself to uncover the most fragile and often painful parts of his psyche, so has he established himself as a true artist of note: a fact underlined by a pair of Ivor Novello nominations for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, in both 2023 and 2024. For the now-34-year-old, it’s been an illuminating journey. “The things that you feel slightly uncomfortable playing to your friends or your parents, they’re what you should put out because then it’s worth sharing,” he says. “We keep so much stuff inside, and that’s what tends to torture us the most - not the things we’re prepared to talk about - so I try to write about that as much as possible.”

    Though Odell first came to prominence as a Brit Award-winning new UK pop hope, it’s never been this type of shiny, mainstream success that fuels him. “I never applied to the role of pop star and I always felt like I was being perceived in the wrong way,” he reflects. And as he’s committed further to his own vision, crafting intensely personal songs dealing with mental health struggles, body image issues and beyond, he’s seen the connections spread across the globe, through his 2.4 million TikTok followers and out into the real world environs of the live stage, where he’s been supporting Billie Eilish on her European arena tour before embarking on his own tour

    ‘A Wonderful Life’ was written over nine months in 2024, on tour buses and trains, far away from the stable home life he’d created. More than any album previously, perfecting the lyrics was a true labour of love. “I laboured over every line,” he nods. “I went in on those words every day, on every plane journey, just refining and refining and refining. I can be a bit obsessive, and the obsessive part of me is probably the worst part of me and the bit that I would pay so much money for a therapist to tell me how to lose. But it’s also the bit that does not give up on songs.”

    On ‘A Wonderful Life’, he’s created a record that seeks understanding within a human existence that is, at its core, messy and convoluted and never just one thing. “I wish I could wrap it up into a nice little bow of what the mood and the message is, but these songs are the antithesis of that,” he says. “To live, and to write honestly about it, is such a profoundly important part of my life now. And I feel like if I have any duty whatsoever, it’s just to continue to do that.”

    On 16 November, we will be singing the heart-wrenching songs of A Wonderful Live with the extremely talented Tom Odell at the Budapest Arena. His support will be in Budapest the American singer-songwriter David Kushner, the opening act will be Molly Payton.