“Budapest” by George Ezra

"Budapest" was George Ezra's breakout, and it took the long road there. It first surfaced on his 2013 EP Did You Hear the Rain? and then anchored his debut album, Wanted on Voyage, going out as a single in Italy that December and in the UK in June 2014. Ezra wrote it with Joel Pott, and Cam Blackwood produced, trading guitar, keys and percussion with Ezra and adding a rubbery bass synth underneath.

The trick is how little there is to it: a strummed, sunny shuffle and that improbably deep voice, easy enough to whistle after one listen. It reached number three in the UK, topped the charts in Austria, New Zealand and Slovenia, and finished 2014 inside Britain's 10 biggest sellers of the year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.