Nico Sykes's Wikipedia page begins in the same fashion as most Wikipedia pages of those in his field. Nico Sykes (born 1 March 1993) is an English singer and songwriter. It's a decent enough description - he's never felt the urge to make an account so that he can change it to something different which is probably a good sign - but it's certainly not a sentence that he really knows how to apply to himself. Because, well, that was never who he was meant to be.

As the seventh child born to John and Helen Sykes of Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, it was assumed that raising Nicholas would be simple. The Sykes methods were tried and tested - Charles, their eldest, was fourteen and already on his way to the accepted manner of greatness when his youngest brother was born. Five others followed in his footsteps. Nicholas was expected to do the same. This army family in suburban England was definitive in its rules and regulations, structured in its day-to-day running, polished and orderly and unsurprising in all ways.

Nicholas was none of these things.

Or, no, that's not quite true. He started out as entirely accepting of the listed traits. As the youngest he was treated with a lot less patience than his earlier siblings; expected to abide to the rules inherently because that was what his elders were doing. He was pushed around a lot more when their parents weren't looking, and sometimes even when they were. Every accomplishment had been accomplished before by one of the other six, and it had often been accomplished better, and as a result Nicholas was always left a little bit behind. In 2000, when the house next door was bought by a Greek family with a son his age, it was no wonder that Nicholas found comfort in a friend who was willing to let him catch up.

At the same time as the Scafidi influence was beginning to chip away at the Sykes family methods, the UK went to war with Afghanistan. John Sykes was too old to be called away to fight, but too knowledgeable and high-ranking not to be positioned in the Middle East for significant stretches of time. Nicholas was eight when his father went on his first tour to Afghanistan, and this pushed him further out of rank. Where his siblings had lived with the presence of their father looming over their decisions, the youngest Sykes felt his childhood more defined by the absence of that. Six months at a time would go by with a slackened grip on the familial expectations. He wasn't as definitively influenced.

And, at the same time as both the increase in the Scafidi influence and the reduction in his father's influence, Nicholas discovered music. Although it was initially considered a useful distraction from the other things going on in his life, and although he started out hating the simplified tunes that his piano teacher thrust upon him, it didn't take long for his interest to catch. Piano lessons were joined by guitar lessons, which opened the door for bass, then drums, then harmonica. He worked hard in his academics, joined the school football team to round out the triple threat of interests, but nothing ever really matched up to the way he felt about music. It helped that come puberty his voice developed into something more than a little bit ridiculous - a deep bluesy sound that always seemed to take people by surprise on first listen.

The division between Nicholas Sykes and the rest of the immediate relatives who bore the same surname only grew as he did. Somewhere along the line, in the midst of those three major turning points in his life, the boy that was pretending to be polished and orderly and unsurprising dropped the act. Nicholas became Nico, and Nico started redefining his views on the world and how to approach living in it. He still excelled - his studies were always completed to a high standard; he set out to earn money from the moment he was able; passed his driving test almost as soon as he turned seventeen; scored goals for the football team; scored roles in the school musical - but he refused to work to the standards that his parents had set. They didn't quite give up hope, especially not when his aptitude for mathematics earned him a place at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, but that wasn't part of his plan. When Nico left the house that he had grown up in at the age of eighteen, he left with the intention of traveling the world.

Embarking on a solo trip across the globe is enough of an adventure to define anybody's life, and Nico was no exception. The places he visited, the people he met, all of it was ample inspiration musically - he wrote a postcard and a song in every destination he landed in - and yet he couldn't help but feel disappointed. See, as much as he'd have hesitated admitting it to anybody, the trip was to see what else was out there, sure, but it was also taken in the hope that there'd be somewhere out there that felt like somewhere he would want to stay. As he reached the point where he had been away from home for a year and a half, Nico started to feel like the only option was to go home and scrape his way back into university; try and catch up with the life that had carried on moving forwards without him.

Luckily, the universe had other plans. Upon recommendation from a friend, Nico had uploaded one of the songs he had written (titled Angry Hill) to a BBC Introducing scheme. Young musicians across the United Kingdom submitted their work to local BBC radio stations, who then sifted through the tracks to see if there was anything that stood out. His track did. His voice did. In the last few weeks of Nico's travels he was exchanging emails with someone who was very excited about his prospects, and upon returning home it was decided that he didn't really have a lot to lose. Divided from his family, no higher education, a huge gap in his CV because of the time he'd taken getting lost... what else was he going to do?

From there, things seemed to move quite quickly. The early part of 2013 was spent gigging across the country in pubs and tiny venues where most of the time the patrons were entirely uninterested. Then the BBC Music scheme got him meetings with record labels. They got him on stage at Glastonbury. He started getting play on national radio. The coolest radio DJ in the country announced that he was one of the most compelling new voices around. People across the world latched onto his chosen debut single - Budapest - and the positive reviews started rolling in.

2014 was 'his year' according to a number of music publications. Nico's pedantry leads him to point out that it's probably far more apt to give 2014 to Sam Smith, considering his debut earned him four Grammy awards, but in pointing that out he'd be anything but bitter. Yes, give 2014 to Sam, let me bask in my relative anonymity for a little bit longer. Despite earning the third bestselling album of the year in the UK (selling over a million copies there alone); despite garnering four BRIT Award nominations (all lost, but that was no surprise); despite playing a number of sold out tours and shows across his home nation and places further afield (the most recent tour of America proving a success in a number of surprising ways), Nico Sykes definitely doesn't feel like this is a life he's supposed to be living yet. Which makes the opening sentence of his Wikipedia article that much more surreal.

Nico Sykes (born 1 March 1993) is an English singer and songwriter. Well. Maybe he'll relate to it a little more when he's got a second album to brag about.