Gareth: "I try to keep that unique aspect in my music. My songs aren’t Americanised"

His approach may be more ‘backgarden-country’ than ‘bedroom-pop’, but Gareth Hamilton – known professionally as simply Gareth – has, within the space of a year, clocked up the kind of online following that most aspiring musicians on social media can only dream of.

Born and raised in Castlederg, Co. Tyrone, the 25-year-old country singer found viral stardom last year, with his cover of Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season’, which clocked up 25 million views, and a further 10 million streams on Spotify alone. More cover videos, filmed in the backgarden of his family home, followed, and before long, Gareth was seeing his online success blossom into a real-world career.

He’s spent the past six months ticking off major professional milestones – including moving to Nashville, signing his first publishing deal with BMG, and releasing his Changing Seasons EP, which he’s since followed with a string of successful singles.

Next, he’s set for a run of headline shows across Ireland, the UK and Europe – as part of the aptly titled Beyond The Backyard Tour – as well as a special guest slot on American country star Kip Moore’s upcoming tour.

Although making the leap from 30-second social media clips to full sets in prestigious venues can be tough for many TikTok sensations, Gareth reckons that playing in local pubs from the age of 14 gave him “a good head-start when it came to properly doing this for a living.”

“I’d done so many bar gigs – and ones where there was no one there,” he tells me. “So when I played my first headline shows last year, in 300-cap rooms, I was nervous a bit – but I knew how to play in front of a crowd, because I’d done it before. I was used to performing.”

In fact, you could say Gareth’s been gearing up for these headline shows since the age of eight – when he kicked off his singing career with a performance of Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ in a primary school competition.

“I just said I’d go for it, just for fun,” he recalls. “It was more of a surprise to mum and dad, when I came home and told them I was singing in this competition – because they’d never heard me sing before that, even around the house.

“But ever since that competition, they were on board,” he continues. “And it’s been that way ever since.”

He may have sung Meat Loaf at that competition (his mother’s idea, he claims), but Gareth was already finding himself drawn to country greats like George Jones from an early age.

“In my grandparents’ house growing up, they had records of older country artists, from their generation,” he says. “Then, when I got to the age where I was on Spotify, I dove into newer generations of country – Luke Combs and stuff like that. And I just kept deep-diving into it, and falling more and more in love with it.”

With that foundation in place, Gareth first started posting videos to TikTok in 2021.

“I literally sat down in my room and recorded this short cover,” he says. “I wasn’t nervous, surprisingly. I just posted it. I didn’t know what to expect – because I had a new account with zero followers.

“And it didn’t go viral!” he laughs. “But back then I didn’t really care about what views I was getting. I was just posting. The problem is, when you start getting good views, you want to get that with every video. It’s a horrible mindset to be in. You feel like every video has to go like that, which is obviously not the way it works.”

Of course, there’s ‘good views’, and then there’s 25 million views – which his version of ‘Stick Season’ quickly clocked up after he uploaded it last year.

@garethmusic “STICK SEASON” out JAN 19TH (save in bio) #noahkahan #stickseason #cover #acousticcover #musicontiktok #musictok ♬ Stick Season - Gareth

“That was the one that really kicked everything off,” he nods. “It was the first video that I ever recorded in an outdoor setting – I was in a forest. Before, I was always recording videos in my bedroom. So I was like, ‘Maybe trying to do videos outside might do better?’ The first ever video that I recorded in my backgarden was Dylan Gossett’s ‘Coal’, and that went crazy. So I kept posting backgarden videos, and that just became a thing…”

Although he tries to get home to that backgarden as often as he can, Gareth officially relocated to Nashville in December 2024, following months of travelling back and forth to the so-called Music City, where his manager and team are based. He’s already crossed some major Nashville moments off his bucket list – including performing at the legendary Ryman Auditorium – and is hoping to accomplish another big goal, playing the Grand Ole Opry, “very soon”.

But he’s also seen first-hand how the industry has changed over the past few years. An early version of his latest single, ‘Answered Prayer’, was originally intended for Nashville star Jelly Roll – and when Gareth was first played the track by his co-writers, it featured AI-generated Jelly Roll vocals.

“If there’s songs Jelly Roll hasn’t worked on, he likes to hear his voice in AI on it, to get an idea of what it would sound like, with his voice,” Gareth explains. “One of my producers, Zach Crowell, also produces a lot of Jelly Roll’s stuff. They had a chorus of a song that they thought would be good for Jelly Roll. He loved it, but months went on and he wasn’t doing anything with it. So they showed me the AI version that they showed Jelly, and it was decided that day that I would take it, and finish it. It’s interesting how that one worked out!”

Another recent release, ‘Quiet In This House’, was inspired by leaving home, and missing family.

“The first time I played it for mum, she was just crying,” he tells me. “I wrote that in June last year, when I was away for ages. Mum called me and told me that the house was too quiet. We just knew it would be a song that people could relate to.”

But the emotional track is also sprinkled with shout-outs to Castlederg, and other light-hearted references – from his accent not being understood by American girls, to having to learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road.

“I wouldn’t want to be too serious!” he smiles. “People who know me, know my accent – and know I do speak a bit fast too! It took my manager ages to understand what I was saying. There’s still Americans I chat to, that have no clue sometimes…

“But I try to keep that unique aspect in my music,” he adds. “My songs aren’t Americanised. A lot of people can slip into that – thinking, because they’re doing country music, they have to say this or that. But no one else can sing about Castlederg, and really mean it, apart from me and the people from there.”

Although the Nashville establishment can be notoriously slow to embrace change, there’s no doubt that the face of country music is continuing to evolve and diversify – something Gareth is encouraged to see.

“It’s the perfect time for people to get into this genre – especially the way it’s going so global,” he says. “I think it’s only going to get bigger. There are so many pop musicians that are crossing over to country now. In my opinion, Post Malone would probably be the person who did it the best – coming from pop to country music.

“But I think it’s helping,” he adds. “These big pop artists releasing country songs is obviously boosting the genre – and in the next five years, I think it’s going to be as big as pop.”

Gareth plays Cyprus Avenue, Cork (April 24); The Academy, Dublin (25); and The Limelight 1, Belfast (26).

His Steal Your Thunder EP is out on May 2 – and is available to pre-save here.