I don’t think it’s unreasonable at this point to say that Taylor Johnson is a mainstay of the music scene in Northern Ireland. A ball of enthusiastic energy and optimism, Taylor has spent over 10 years relentlessly championing music from these shores. That can do attitude has seen him turn his hand as a music journalist, gig promoter, radio producer, publicist and of course an artist in his own right with Brand New Friend.
2025 marks an exciting new chapter for the North Coast native as Taylor becomes the presenter of the recently launched BBC Introducing in Northern Ireland show. We caught up with Taylor to find out about this new challenge as well as the long journey to reach his dream job.
You’re coming from a varied career – between music and between broadcasting – what was the journey for yourself?
It is a crazy journey! It’s very unconventional, I’ll tell you that. My career started when I was at school. I was 16 or 17 in my first band, playing away everywhere that we could, every toilet in Ireland. We would play it. Alongside that, as I kind of had my eyes opened to the world of local music, I was really fascinated by the idea that there were so many kids my age writing songs, giving me windows into their lives. That was the thing that I found so fascinating about it, that I could see into their world a little bit through these songs and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to contribute to that in some way and I wanted to do it as a musician so I started writing songs. But also, I want to broadcast!
I thought “Right, well, how am I going to do that?” because I have no ins to any radio station. No one in my family’s ever done it before. It’s not something somebody like me would be expected to do, I suppose. I don’t know if I’d recommend this but I googled who the head of music was at the BBC, a guy named Mike Edgar. Now, I love Mike Edgar. He started Across The Line back in the 1980s. I suppose he was Northern Ireland’s John Peel. I went into Broadcasting House in Belfast. I was about 16 at this stage, I walked into the reception of the BBC and said to the woman behind the desk – I’ll never forget this – I said, “Hi, my name’s Taylor Johnson. I’ve got a meeting with Mike,” She went, right, OK, take a seat over there.
I just sat there. He was on his lunch and he happened to walk back in to broadcasting house as I was sitting there. And the woman in reception said “Taylor Johnson’s here for you.” And he was like, who? I just waved at him, I was like, “Yes, it’s me, Mike. I’m here for our chat!” and he went, “Oh yeah, yeah, Taylor Johnson. Yes, of course, come on.”
He brought me into his office, right? And he sat me down and he basically went, right, who are you and what do you want? I said my name’s Taylor and I’m obsessed with music and I play in this band and I want to be a broadcaster. How do I do that? He basically said you’re cheeky, I like that and he put me in touch with a guy called Paul McClean, who’s now a senior head at the BBC.
Paul, at the time, was the producer of Across the Line. Rigsy presented it then and I liked Across the Line. Mike said I’m going to give you Paul’s number. I want you to call him. Tell him that I put you in touch, tell him that you want to be a presenter. I did that and Paul gave me my shot, really. Brought me in off the street and got me to start making mini documentaries, features, gig reviews, interviews, just basically all the stuff other people didn’t want to do. I was like, give it to me! I’ll do it and I’ll do it for free. So that was it!
I did that since I was 16 and just worked my way up. It literally took over 10 years of grafting and doing stuff for free. I eventually went from being a freelancer to an assistant producer, not just new music. I did every shift across the station, from the Stephen Nolan show to Gardner’s Corner and everything in between. I just kept going and kept going and kept going. I started my band, Brand New Friend, alongside that. Spent a couple of years living on the road and that stunted my radio career for a little while but that was fine, I just wanted to live my life in music.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s what I’m still trying to do now. After many, many years of graft, I got the opportunity to present the show that I had always dreamed of presenting, which is BBC Introducing, which was, it’s the new name for Across the Line. It’s essentially the same show, but it’s more tightly linked across the water.
It’s a hell of an Ocean’s Eleven kind of start to your journey!
It has! It’s the long way of doing it because I wanted to go to uni and I studied journalism for about three or four months and while I was there Brand New Friend got offered our first record deal. And I was like, okay, do we sign this? Because if we sign this, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to finish my degree. Or do I finish the degree and I put everything else on the back burner?
I thought, no, I’m doing what I want to do. I’m following my heart here. I don’t regret it at all. I never got my degree so it took me a long, long time to achieve what I wanted to achieve. I’m still trying to figure it out! But yeah, it’s all going well.
There’s a lot of graft, there’s a solid sense of discipline there.
Yeah, thanks, it’s the only way I know how to do things. I’ve never had anything handed to me and it’s all been hard. I remember whenever I first started doing the assistant producer work on Radio Ulster, I was getting paid literally nothing. I got a job working in the Centra in Cathedral Quarter in Belfast to subsidise it. So I got up at about half five in the morning in Castlerock, got the train to Belfast, worked all day in Centra and then went to Radio Ulster and did the night shift there. I’d be coming home, sleeping for a couple of hours and then doing it again. Even then, I was only just about breaking even.
The money that I earned just went into me going from Castlerock, back to Belfast and back again. Anything I got was given to Translink the whole time. My parents have a lot to answer for, though. They encouraged me on this journey and they’ve allowed me to stay at home and not have to rent. And I have rented different houses in Belfast and stuff. But the majority of my life I’ve lived at home and not had to pay rent. And I couldn’t have chased this dream if they didn’t allow me to do that. I’m grateful to them.
Take me to the moment when you found out you’d be doing BBC Introducing. How did you find out?
What a lovely question to be asked, ‘cause it was a very, poignant moment for me. I was working in town doing a totally different job and I got a call from Paul McClean, funny enough. It’s weird the way things go full circle. Paul phoned me and just said “Listen, we want to give you a chance at your own show,” after years of me like doing everything else and so I said “Okay, cool, what do you fancy?” and I kind of thought, you know, if it’s a half-hour thing on a Sunday doing whatever, you know, something about wind farms, I don’t care – I’ll do it.
And he said “No, it’s, uh, it’s BBC Introducing.” And I went, and I just, I kind of laughed and said, yeah, dead on. Okay. What is it really? And he says, “No, no, that’s the truth. Do you want to think about it and get back to me?” and said, “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. I’m in.”
There was no “Maybe, I’ll sleep on it.”
There was no debate! Then I came home and God love my parents, I’ve put them through the wringer with all this. There’s been countless times over the years I’ve been promised the world, from record companies or booking agents or from producers in radio and the things you get promised almost always never happen so for this to be like a coffee offer on the table I came home and I told my parents and my dad like, he had tears in his eyes, you know?
He didn’t cry but very nearly. It was really beautiful, ‘cause my dad’s not that type of person. As much as it meant to me, it meant a lot to them as well. So that was great, then I think we had a Chinese that night and sat out in the garden and listened to music. And that was it. And then I went back into work the next day, just because I got that job didn’t mean that I’d made it. I was back in Centra the following day until the show kicked off.
Congratulations again! It’s great, given how much BBC Introducing and Across The Line means to yourself – you can see there’s so much passion coming from you.
Definitely. With Brand New Friend, I remember very, very clearly the first night we ever got radio airplay. We all piled into the back of my wee Hyundai, it was a wee lunchbox of a car. We were all piled in the back and listening to Across the Line and they played us right in the middle of the show. It was like, that band sounds a lot like us, they’ve ripped us off!
We turned it up and were like oh my god, no, it is us! We celebrated like we won the World Cup, you know? We jumped out of the car and we’re all hugging each other, punching the air like we made it. To be the person who’s giving that moment to other people means a lot to me because I know how it feels – I’ve been there.
Coming from your background as a musician, do you think you have a unique edge in broadcasting?
I think it means that I can relate to them a lot. I’ve been there, I understand how they’re feeling. Like, when you’re playing them, you can be promoting their gigs – can I maybe sell a couple of extra tickets for them? It’s wee things like that. Plus I think about what I’m saying very carefully, because I’m like, can a band use this? Can they stick this in a press release? Will it look cool if BBC Introducing says X, Y, and Z about a band?
I like to just think it means that I’m on a level with them. I’m not in any way above or below. We’re exactly the same. I think bands and artists respect that. You know, when they send me messages on Instagram or whatever they’re asking me, do Brand New Friend have any shows coming up? Are you dropping any new music soon? That’s a really lovely thing because it means suddenly we’re just two musicians having a chat. I love that kind of conversation.
I think that’s something that we’re uniquely privileged with in Northern Ireland, It feels like a big community. You don’t get that as much when we’re talking on a large national scale, like if we’re talking about the whole of the UK or the whole of Ireland.
I had a meeting with Kelly Betts – she’s a content producer, like everything Introducing goes through Kelly. She came to Belfast and she was chatting with me about the show and she’s a fan, which is so lovely for me. She said “what I love, listening to your show, it feels as if you know everyone that you’re playing,” and well, I do! I’ve either gigged with them or been to their shows or they’ve come to my shows and I’ve met most of them, you know? It creates that lovely community.
There’s nobody above anybody else. We’re all just in bands or we’re all writing songs trying to do it together. I’m going to go to their show because they’re great and then they’re going to come to mine and we all just want everyone to do well. It’s just helping each other and that in turn helps the scene, you know? You’re right, I think that’s part of who we are as Irish people and Northern Irish people. We want each other to do well.
Writing reviews and writing the pieces in the way that I do, it’s very tempting to be a bastard and to do harsh, hyperbolic critique because it’s easy to be funny and entertaining when you’re being scathing. In the communities that we’re in though, with a lot of people who have fledgling careers, you can feel like you’re smothering careers in the cradle.
Totally, I mean we all want to raise people up, we don’t want to pull anyone down. It would be very easy to say something isn’t good, yeah, but that band that you think isn’t up to much could be headlining Glastonbury in five years. At that stage, you’re not gonna get them to come on your show anymore, you know? It’s too late then to say they’re class!
It’s not to say that I don’t think in journalism you shouldn’t be critical, because I think that’s important as well. It’s just, it’s the way you do it and it’s the way you treat people that matters. People never forget how they’ve been treated. Equally someone will never forget if they’ve released a single that hasn’t got a lot of airplay and you play it. They’ll never forget that as they get better and better (because people do get better, you know?). When they reach the level that they want to reach, they’ll think “that person helped me when I was in the pits.”
I always think that positivity is more powerful than negativity. Life’s really hard and bad things happen, it’s very easy to be negative and sometimes it’s really hard to be positive. I try to be enthusiastic and optimistic and positive as much as I can.
How much freedom would you get to choose what is played on BBC Introducing?
110%. The new structure of the show compared to when it was Across the Line is I’m producing it and I’m presenting it. Our editor is Rory McConnell, and Rory’s just a radio genius. He’s like the mob boss. I go to him and I’m like, Rory, is this okay? Do you like this? We have meetings every week, so he’s very much involved in that way, but he trusts me to do the graft and find tracks, and I love that. It’s a huge privilege.
So it’s kind of like a curator sort of role you’re taking on, so to speak. You’re gathering and displaying this music.
Yeah, exactly. There’s not a producer the way there was traditionally. Normally, a presenter just presents and has a producer in there as well. On this occasion though, I pick the tracks, I write the script, I bring it all together and then I present the show. It’s great because it means if I hear a band and they’ve uploaded something to the BBC and it’s like literally, off an iPhone because they don’t have enough money to go in the studio and they send it in to us – if I can hear a quality song in it and it’s coherent enough that I can say “this is a great melody,” or ‘this lyric is really good,” or whatever, then I’m gonna still play that band.
I’m gonna just do it because I feel like John Peel would have done it. I feel like Dave Fanning would do it. I feel like Alice Levine would have done it. I’ve been that kid who’s had no money but still been writing songs. If I can hear a song in it, it doesn’t have to be Abbey Road. I’m going to play it. I’ve been given the trust to pick the songs and play them because you believe in them.
With Across the Line coming to an end, BBC Introducing would be one of the main outlets for local music. Does that bring with it a sense of pressure and responsibility?
The only kind of pressure is just to reflect the scene as well as I can. It’s something that I’ve always felt but to be honest, it’s less of a pressure and more of a pride. It’s not pressure, it’s a joy. I understand the weight of it and I understand the responsibility but I just feel so lucky to be doing it. I feel like it’s an immense privilege to be able to hold these songs up and say “Listen, this is class, you need this in your life.”
When I was around 16, 17 doing the early stuff for ATL, I started my own music blog called Encore NI. I wrote for Chordblossom as well – all I was trying to do then is the exact same thing that I’m trying to do now and that was to shout about stuff that I loved. I’m just doing it on the radio now. There’s no real change. I feel like I’m doing the same thing that I did when I was 16. I’m just finally getting paid for it, you know?
Yeah, that’s the dream. It seems like a lot of radio presenters are less wholesome than your story – like they’re there to lend some brand recognition to a program rather than passion or knowledge.
I’ve seen it myself. It’s a common debate in the radio world, nurturing people versus getting someone who’s got a million followers. I don’t agree with it personally, but I can totally understand why they would pick this person because there are certain transferable skills in media, but obviously being a radio fanatic, I feel like it’s something you have to bide your time with and show how much you love it first of all. I get it from both sides. It’s tough.
What’s your method to find new music?
To be honest, there isn’t one. I primarily use the BBC Introducing Uploader. That’s where our tracks live. Any band from Ireland, North or South, can create a profile on that and upload their music. That system tells me a little bit about you which is all really helpful to me. The music is the main thing but I’m also interested in who you are as a person. I’ll normally go through and listen to all the tracks – there’s hundreds every week so it takes a long time. I’ll listen to all the songs then I’ll whittle it down from there.
Normally I can get 14, maybe 15. In an hour I’ve worked out that I can play about 14 songs if I don’t say that much, which is why I keep it about the music. I go off gut feeling and I go off like what I love and I try to have a balance. So I try to have everybody represented from the full spectrum of human beings and genres as well. Like, I’m obviously an Indie boy but I don’t want to do an Indie show, like last night we played Gemma Dunleavy’s Up De Flats. Incredible track! What an artist. Yeah, I keep it balanced, but it’s always quality above everything else. That’ll always be reflected in my shows.
When Brand New Friend release new music, will we hear it on BBC Introducing?
That’s a great question. Probably not, to be honest. Not on my show, anyway. It’s called A Conflict of Interest. That said, if somebody like Jack Saunders picked it up on Radio 1 – Jack’s actually played us before, I think – that would be fine.
So long as you’re not creating the opportunity?
Yeah, normally someone like Jack will get tracks from shows like mine, any that he or his team love will get filtered through. It doesn’t mean he couldn’t play us. For example, if he found it his own way and loved it, I would have to just say nothing, it couldn’t come from me.
Brand New Friend will be releasing new music and the new stuff we’re working on. We think it’s really good, but you won’t be hearing me play it. I think I’d be cringed out to be honest! I don’t think I could press play on our song, I’d feel like “Hey listen to me! Hey everybody, listen to me, I’m brilliant.” Like, no, they’ve heard enough of me over the course of an hour-long programme. They don’t need another three minutes of me!
Who are you excited about at the moment?
Love that question. Charlie Hanlon is one of the best songwriters in Ireland at the moment and I don’t think enough people realise that. There’s a band called The Girlfriend Complex who I really love. They’re like 1975 meets Rilo Kiley. They’re really good. Becky McNeice is really good, I love her voice. I think Young Spencer‘s great and has an amazing attitude.
There’s a band called Red Eye Pariah who are doing really cool things and just came off a massive UK tour. There’s Casual Riots – their new EP’s great. There’s an instrumental post-rock band called The Wild Infinite who are just so good. They’re like And So I Watch You From Afar meets Me Without You meets Pantera but it’s cinematic like Explosions in the Sky – I really believe in them.
Obviously Gemma Dunleavy is so sick, as are Beauty Sleep and Bui, who are maybe my favourite band at the moment. Leo Miyagee too, his last record is huge. Then there’s Winnie Ama and Katherine Timoney who write jazz-inspired songs, a young band called Reflect who seem to have something special as well. Then there’s the dance scene, artists like Caoimhe who are pushing boundaries, Le Boom as well. I think we’re in a really exciting space at the minute and it’s a very diverse scene. I think we’re the best in the world.
You’ve mentioned John Peel, Alice Levine. Are there more people who you’re hoping to emulate or take inspiration from?
I think every radio presenter will kind of say the same thing. You want to be yourself; you want to be totally authentic. I think when I open up, I just want to be who I am. But also, the people you mentioned there, for sure. Mike Edgar is my hero, not just because of what he did for me personally, but also because he’s just the best. Mike broadcasts on a Saturday night as well, I do a show six to seven and then I do Introducing from 7 to 8. Mike goes from 10 o’clock to midnight so sometimes when I’m leaving the station he’ll be coming in and we get a wee chat.
There’s also Zane Lowe, pure energy, pure passion, Jack Saunders has that as well. Siobhán McAndrew from 6Music, what a broadcaster, she’s brilliant. I think Stephen McCauley’s show is transcendental, I never miss it. Not only a brilliant broadcaster, but one of the loveliest people you could ever hope to meet. Oh man, I love Sarah Cox as well. She has just got such a natural, lovely way about her.
I would probably say Mike Edgar, Annie Mac, Stephen McCauley, Dave Fanning and obviously John Peel are my foundations, my radio Mount Rushmore. If I could do a quarter of what they’ve done, 1% even, I’d be pretty happy.
In terms of BBC Introducing then, are there any sort of plans for expansion or anything similar? Will we be hearing live sessions, for example?
I’m really glad you asked that. I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say but there’s plans afoot. This is going to sound like a band teasing ‘big things to come’, but I’m not allowed to say any more at this point!
What’s the uptake since you started with BBC Introducing?
It’s going really well. It’s building, which is so important because it’s an institution that needs to be protected. And thankfully, we’re going the right way. Week on week, steps forward, which is a really positive thing. Build it and they will come.
Good to hear! I had gone into the BBC a little while ago, I was chatting to them about ATL. It seems like sad faces all around that ATL has come to an end.
Absolutely mate. As I’ve said, I grew up on that show and it literally raised me as a broadcaster, so my gratitude is eternally there to ATL. I like to think that the soul of that program has carried on through this one, we’ve the same ethos and sense of community. I just want to do a good radio show and help artists from this island, exactly the same as Across The Line. The tighter link to Introducing now, sharing that branding in our name, has been a huge help as well. It raises the profile, particularly across the water. So, the journey continues.
There’s BBC Introducing stages in Reading and Leeds and Stendhal for example. Does what you play on your show go anywhere towards pushing artists onto those stages?
Yeah, it does actually! Kelly had this conversation with me a few weeks ago. It looks like I’m going to get the opportunity to push artists to Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, and hopefully Transmit as well. This year Chalk went to Glasto, which was, you know, a very obvious choice because they’re brilliant.
Next year they’re hopefully going to give me a little bit of freedom to choose who I want and I’ve already got ideas. I mean, it’s a long time between now and next year, a lot will happen. A lot of music will come out. If you asked me to choose now, I know who I would send to every festival. I don’t know how I’m going to feel this time next year, who knows what will happen?
They’re giving us opportunities to push people to big festivals. My band’s been a beneficiary of that, you know, we played the BBC Introducing Stage at Big Weekend years ago and it was our first time playing outside of Ireland. I’m really looking forward to giving artists a taste of that.
So that would be Reading, Stendhal, Glastonbury, Transmit and then Big Weekend?
And then maybe ones in Wales as well. Kelly wants to do it UK-wide. So as many opportunities as we get to create chances for people, I’m going to give it to as many local artists as possible. I’m going to fight to get more slots for our artists. I’ll try to take ones in Scotland, take ones in England, and be like, no!
Give it to us! We want it all!
Find Out More
You can catch Taylor Johnson hosting BBC Introducing in Northern Ireland on BBC Radio Ulster and the BBC Sounds app every Saturday night between 7pm and 8pm.
If you are a band or musician based in Ireland, you can submit your music for consideration on his show via the BBC Introducing Uploader. It is completely free!
You can keep up to date with Brand New Friend over on their socials.
