Henry Moodie

Guildford, weekend sessions, and an exit at sixteen

Henry James Moodie was born on 7 April 2004 in Guildford. He started writing songs at eleven and, from fourteen, travelled into London at weekends for songwriting sessions. At sixteen he left school to take a songwriting course in Fulham and commit to music full-time. His mother is a therapist, and he has credited her with teaching him to put difficult feelings into words rather than sit on them — a habit that later became the whole basis of his catalogue.

Like most artists of his age bracket, the first audience arrived through a phone. He posted covers to TikTok, then originals, and the account took off through 2022. That summer brought a debut single, 'you were there for me', released in August 2022, which reached the UK Download Chart and earned him a support slot with The Vamps before the year was out. He has since appeared twice in TikTok's annual list of the ten most-viewed UK artists.

Moodie is unusually unsentimental about the mechanism that built him. Speaking to Rolling Stone Australia in 2026, he estimated that chasing virality still accounts for roughly 60 per cent of the job, with performance and songwriting making up the rest — while arguing that the market for gimmick-led content is closing, because listeners have tired of it.

'drunk text', two EPs and a night at the Roundhouse

The song that moved him beyond the app was 'drunk text', released in January 2023. It charted modestly at home but went to number one in Malaysia and became the foundation of a Southeast Asian following; his label lists thirteen platinum certifications across the region. A run of singles followed through 2023 — 'eighteen', 'pick up the phone', 'closure', 'fight or flight', 'orbit' — and most of them were gathered onto a debut EP, 'in all of my lonely nights', in January 2024.

A second EP, 'good old days', arrived in October 2024, built around growing up: friendship, mental health, first love, first heartbreak. He closed that campaign at the Roundhouse in London on 28 October 2024, with James McVey of The Vamps and Ben Ellis opening and a projection of eyes behind the band. The crowd sang 'pick up the phone' back at him word for word, and he covered 'Iris' by the Goo Goo Dolls. Moodie called it the most surreal night of his life; Clunk Magazine read it as the pivot point of his career, the moment the online numbers turned into a room.

By then he was also being marked as a name to watch rather than a passing chart entry, appearing on Rolling Stone's artists-to-watch list for 2025. He is signed to Robots & Humans in the UK and Columbia Records in the US.

'mood swings': the record he refused to rush

The debut album, 'mood swings', was released on 24 October 2025, more than three years after the first single — a gap Moodie has said was deliberate, because he did not want to put out a full-length before he could stand behind it. It entered the Official Albums Chart dated 6 November 2025 and peaked at number 31.

The album folds in the singles that built the audience — 'drunk text', 'pick up the phone', 'right person, wrong time', 'indigo', 'comedown', 'sunday morning' — alongside new material including 'people pleaser', 'growing pains', 'favourite mistake' and the closer 'ten years time'. Two tracks stand out in his own account of it: 'dear drew', written after a childhood bully got in touch to apologise, and 'cigarette', a collaboration with Julia Michaels that he regards as the most advanced writing he has done.

The Concert Chronicles, reviewing it on release, described a record that pairs large choruses with a plain way of naming complicated feelings, and read it as the highs and lows of being twenty rather than a set of pop singles. The frame is consistent across the album: mental health, friendship, self-doubt and the specific embarrassments of young adulthood, delivered without much armour. Moodie is openly queer, and the writing has not routed around that.

Where things stand in September 2026

The second album is already under way. Speaking to Attitude in an interview published on 16 March 2026, Moodie said he had been back in the studio within a month of the debut coming out, and that touring is the one condition under which he cannot write: being relaxed puts him in a creative space, and tour is too stressful for songs to arrive. He described starting one track on a remote island in Thailand, while travelling with the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and finishing it in Los Angeles at the start of 2026 — confirmed for album two. Another was written about being cheated on over the summer of 2025.

The first piece of that new run of material is 'miss u', released on 14 May 2026 through Robots & Humans and Columbia, a song about distance from the person you want nearest, built on live instruments and a chorus sized for a room.

The touring picture is the clearest measure of where he has got to. A UK and European headline leg ran from March into April 2026 — Hamburg, Berlin, Zurich, Paris at Le Cabaret Sauvage on 7 April, Glasgow's SWG3 on 12 April, the O2 Forum Kentish Town on 17 April — and sold out. The Mood Swings World Tour then went wide: Yogyakarta's Prambanan Jazz on 5 July, a North American run that opened at Union Stage in Washington DC on 31 August 2026 and closes at the Roxy in West Hollywood on 21 September. Asia follows immediately — Kaohsiung on 28 September, Singapore's Theatre at Mediacorp on 30 September, then Taipei and Manila — before four Australian dates in October: Freo.Social in Fremantle on the 8th, the Princess Theatre in Brisbane on the 10th, Liberty Hall in Sydney on the 11th and the Northcote Theatre in Melbourne on the 13th, which went on sale on 26 June 2026. His label counts more than 500,000 people played to across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, and over a billion streams.

The room, not the arena

The venues are the point. Union Stage holds a few hundred; Liberty Hall and the Northcote Theatre are theatres, not sheds. Moodie has been candid that stage presence did not come naturally and that live performance is the area where he has improved most — a claim the routing supports, since he has spent 2026 playing rooms small enough for the improvement to be visible.

He arrived in Australia in 2026 having already worked those crowds from the opening slot, as main support for Lauren Spencer Smith on her US and Australian dates in late 2025. Announcing the headline run, he said he had spent years dreaming of touring a debut album worldwide and wanted to hear every lyric sung back.