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It’s Monday night at London’s Alexandra Palace and emotions are running high, both inside and outside the 10,000 capacity venue. “Please,” says one fan, weeping as security guards explain that no ticket means no entry. Inside, Romeo Beckham, his model girlfriend Mia Regan and a sea of mainly Gen Z cohorts are moshing out, brows sweating, phones aloft, singing along as a tall, gangly bloke in a baggy white Uniqlo T-shirt crouches over his mixing desk with an expression halfway between agony and ecstasy. 

They’re watching Fred Again – real name, Fred Gibson – a 30 year old South London composer, DJ and producer whose emotional brand of electronic dance music has turned him into a global superstar, with a cult following that only grows by the day. When Selena Gomez recently posted a photo of her and Fred to her 429m followers, she sent the rumour mill into overdrive. Other high profile fans include the actresses Jodie Comer and Emma Corrin. They’re not the only ones. So vast was demand for his four London dates that tickets sold out in under two minutes, as they did for all 22 dates of a tour that will see him play in cities including Paris, Berlin, New York and LA. 

His critics would opine it’s fitting that Fred has chosen to start his tour at Alexandra Palace. After all, “he’s basically King Charles”, according to one Reddit commenter. For Fred – full name, Frederick John Philip Gibson – is the son of King’s Counsel barrister Charles Anthony Warneford Gibson and Mary Ann Frances Morgan, both members of the British peerage, and the great-grandson of Ann Fleming, wife of Bond author, Ian Fleming. That he was educated at Marlborough College, the £40,000 a year private school whose alumni includes the Princess of Wales, has led to charges that he is a “nepo baby”, his success handed to him on a silver mixing desk by his well-connected parents. 

Granted, Gibson benefitted from the same advantages as every other privately educated child, but where Lily Rose Depp followed her father Johnny into acting and Lila Moss followed her mother Kate into modelling, Gibson chose a career path as far removed from his father’s as it’s possible to be, though if anyone would like to explain what sway a KC has in the world of dance music, feel free. 

The only charge of nepotism Gibson’s critics can levy is that he had an early mentor in Brian Eno, the legendary producer whose a cappella group he joined aged 16, and who was a nearby neighbour. Nepotism or opportunism? Wham’s Andrew Ridgeley equally had a nearby neighbour in Mark Dean, owner of the Innervision record label, to whom he gave an early demo tape, launching the band’s career. Never has Ridgeley been called a nepo baby. 

Even if Gibson did have the best possible start in life, his success has been earned rather than given, and arrived at via a combination of hard graft and talent that transcends his posh beginnings. It’s salient that Brian Eno has described their relationship as “more of a two-way street”, a sentiment with which Gibson’s many collaborators would agree. His first major success was with the song Shotgun, co-written with George Ezra in 2018, which reached number one in the charts, and remained in the top three for 12 consecutive weeks. The same year saw him co-write songs for Clean Bandit and Rita Ora; he’s also worked with Stormzy, FKA Twigs, BTS and Little Mix. Such is his heft that he had a hand in one third of the UK’s No 1 singles in 2019. His most long-running collaboration is with Ed Sheeran, for whom he wrote and co-produced 12 of the 15 tracks on the singer’s fourth album, 2019’s No 6 Collaborations Project. In 2020, Gibson won producer of the year at the Brit Awards, the youngest ever to win. 

None of these banner names, however, are the reason that people love Gibson. “I don’t want to s--t on something that matters to people, but it’s just not why I do it,” he said in an interview, alluding to the production work that led to his Brit Award. People love Gibson because he is sincere. In the frequently po-faced, serious arena of electronic dance music, he DJs with a smile on his face, preferring to be at one with the crowd rather than above them on a platform. At one point during Monday’s gig, he eschewed the stage, the crowd parting as he made his way to a space in the middle of the auditorium. He has the temperament of a Labrador in the body of a whippet, constantly interacting with fans on Tiktok and Instagram in a genuinely collaborative way. Case in point: he recently asked his 1.7m Instagram followers to send him specific video footage, currently being incorporated into his tour visuals. 

He also likes to post snippets of tracks he’s working on, asking followers to name their favourite. It’s what led him to release his current single, adore u (sic), his highest charting solo single to date (it reached No. 10). Searingly emotional (“I want this played at my wedding” was a common fan response), it showcases not only Gibson’s skill as a composer, but the vocal talents of the Nigerian artist Obongjayer (real name: Steven Umoh), without whose skills the record couldn’t exist. 

As the parent of two teenagers, I’m older than Gibson’s core Gen Z fans. But dancefloors should always be a broad church, and his music is the first in a long time to feel as urgent, euphoric and visceral as the house music I grew up with as a teen. It also connects me to my own teens’ world in a way that fascinates. They live their lives on Snapchat, talking animatedly to their friends’ faces on their iPhones, the lack of physical proximity almost irrelevant, so accustomed are they to forming emotional connections at the remove of a screen. Gibson incorporates this digital discombobulation into his shows in a way that feels original. 

One of the nicest things about Gibson is that he pays it forward. What you sense he truly loves isn’t collaborating with successful names, but with those for whom success has proved more elusive or slow. His collaborations aren’t fleeting, but ongoing, as well as being fully credited. In an era when too many borrow and steal, and accountability is often sorely lacking, Gibson’s integrity feels important. So does his gratitude: Monday’s gig was full of heartfelt “thank yous” to the crowd, as though he couldn’t believe his own good fortune in being there. He’s also assiduous in sharing the love he receives, asking the crowd to shout out (thank) Tony Friend, his mixing / DJ / sampling partner. 

While his fanbase swelled after last year’s performance at Coachella, and further soared after this year’s performance at Glastonbury, the bulk of his fans forged their love affair with Fred over lockdown, at a time when human connection was short and distant behind a screen. It’s hard to explain the significance of his Actual Life albums among those left lonely and disenfranchised by the pandemic: suffice to say they touched a nerve, or rather, an artery. But if the songs were deeply emotional, so too was their presentation. 

In a 2022 interview with Zane Lowe, he explained how he was interested in taking “very fleeting moments and trying to expose as much beauty as is in them.” He collects audio and video samples with forensic obsession, tracking down the owner of clips he’s seen online and asking for permission to use them. He’ll also video record people he meets, such as Carlos, a construction worker whose “we gon[na] make it through” became the foundation of a song, and whose words became a rallying cry over lockdown and beyond – so much so that some fans went on to have the phrase tattooed on their flesh. 

However fancy his background, his intentions are humble. Fred just wants to give people a good time.

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