‘I had no plan. Just total scorched earth’: how Kiran Leonard survived teen success to make songs of full-body joy

Hailed as a prodigy at 16, the Saddleworth singer-songwriter was patronised in the press and lost his musical path.

Now courted by imaginative new bands, he explains his route back Kiran Leonard presses the tips of his fingers together and looks at me solemnly across the table.

“I don’t know if I’m doing a very good job,” he says, “But I’m trying really, really hard not to swear.” A decade ago, he explains, he was interviewed by the Guardian , got too drunk, and “swore all the way through the interview”.

When the piece came out, his grandfather was thrilled.

“But he couldn’t show any of his friends because I just sounded really aggressive,” he tells me sheepishly.

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