Jamie Webster Looks at Home, Class and Growing Older on Running Round the Sun

Photo: John Johnson

Jamie Webster has always had a knack for making the ordinary feel worth singing about, and Running Round the Sun is no exception. Across the record, Webster explores what it means to grow older without losing the part of yourself that still wants more from life. There’s an undeniable warmth to these songs, but underneath it is a familiar tension: the desire to escape, the pull of home, the loneliness that can come with both, and the stubborn hope that things can still change.

The album opens with “Ode to Me and You,” an upbeat and hopeful introduction that looks toward the future rather than dwelling on the past. That optimism carries into “Modern Living Symphony,” a bright, cheery song about someone dreaming of getting out of their hometown. But Webster doesn’t simply romanticise leaving. “Small Town Life” slows things down, painting a dreamy picture of knowing your town, its people, and all the little things that make a place feel like home. There’s something comforting in that familiarity, even when you know there’s a world beyond it.

That push and pull becomes more complicated with “Wherever You Are,” where isolation and struggle take centre stage. Yet even here, Webster reaches outward rather than allowing the darkness to swallow the song. There’s hope in his voice and a genuine desire to lift the listener up, a quality that runs through much of the record.

“Just Begun” brings the album’s ideas about ageing into sharper focus. Getting older doesn’t mean you have to slow down, abandon your values, or stop fighting against the systems that keep people down. If anything, Webster argues that this is when you should hold onto those convictions even tighter. The message is right there in the title: we haven’t reached the end of anything. We’ve only just begun.

By the time the album reaches its closing track, “VAT,” that frustration finally boils over. Named for value-added tax, the song turns its attention toward the government and wealthy people who seem increasingly disconnected from the struggles of ordinary people. “Why must we pay the interest, when you’ve never paid the VAT?” cuts straight to the heart of that anger, while the questions of “Where do we go, are we a part of a show you’re staging?” and “Are there rules for you and rules for me?” capture the feeling of being trapped in a system that doesn’t seem to play by the same rules for everyone. But what makes “VAT” so powerful is how beautiful it is. Sorrowful cello runs through the song beneath a choir, giving the anger a heartbreaking quality. It isn’t just rage; it’s grief, frustration, and exhaustion wrapped up in something genuinely gorgeous. As a closer, it leaves Running Round the Sun on a note that is both furious and deeply human.

Even as an American listener, the album’s themes of class inequality and the struggles of working-class life resonate deeply with me. The specifics may be rooted in the UK, but the feelings behind them are anything but. The frustration of watching ordinary people work hard and still struggle to get ahead, the feeling that the rules aren’t the same for everyone, and the desire for something better are experiences that cross borders. Webster may be singing about Britain, but he’s speaking to something much bigger than one country.

There’s a genuine closeness to working-class life throughout the album that makes these songs feel lived-in rather than observed from a distance. Webster spent nine years working as an electrician on building sites before music became his career, and that history comes through in the way he writes about work, ageing, money, home, and the frustrations of everyday life. He isn’t trying to explain working-class life from the outside; he’s writing from a place of having lived it himself. That authenticity is ultimately what gives Running Round the Sun its heart. It’s an album about ordinary people trying to make something meaningful out of the lives they’ve been given and refusing to believe that getting older means they have to stop wanting more.

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