Singer finds his voice on talent show

When Elliot James Reay first stepped onto the stage of Singer 2026, one of China's most popular music competition shows, he found himself experiencing something he had not felt for quite some time: nerves.

The young British singer had already built a substantial online following with his distinctive retro sound. But Singer 2026 was different. It was live, competitive and placed him alongside accomplished singers, with audiences voting on their performances.

"I'd never been in a competition before, especially a talent competition," the 23-year-old singer-songwriter said in Beijing on Aug 14.

Yet the unfamiliar pressure brought an unexpected feeling.

"It made me feel like I just started my career again," he says. "It gave me a bit more hunger and a bit more fire."

For Reay, China became more than another stop on an increasingly international career. It offered an established online artist the chance, in a sense, to become a beginner again.

The invitation came while Reay was in the United States working on new material. His manager told him about the opportunity to join Singer 2026, and his first reaction was excitement. China was a place he had long wanted to visit.

Before becoming a full-time musician, he had traveled widely. "I went everywhere but China," he says. During his recent trip to Beijing, he also visited the zoo, where he saw pandas. He shared his trip on Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, receiving warm feedback from his fans in China.

Now he had finally arrived to do what he had dreamed of doing: making music.

Reay came with few expectations. He was entering a music market he did not yet fully understand and joining a competition unlike anything he had experienced. The language barrier and the intensity of the live performances made it a leap into unfamiliar territory, especially as he sang one song in Chinese.

But that uncertainty became part of the attraction.

Reay's musical identity, after all, is built on a journey across time. His music draws on classic rock 'n' roll and early pop, sounds that evoke nostalgia for some listeners while offering younger audiences the discovery of something new.

The same collision between old and new can be found in the way he built his career.

While his music looks back several decades, his first major platform was TikTok.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, Reay found himself with a choice: focus on writing songs or building an online audience.

"I feel like I was quite blessed in the timing of when I started social media," he says.

Some of his friends concentrated on songwriting. Reay chose to build a following.

But the transition in the other direction — from online personality to a full-fledged musician — has proved more difficult.

"I've found it quite hard to go the other way — from making TikToks to writing songs and learning how to do that properly," he says.

Reay is grateful for the platform that introduced him to a global audience, but he does not want his story to end there.

"I love TikTok. It's a great platform," he says. "But I'm a musician at heart."

His goal is to become "a touring musician" — an artist who can bring people together in concert halls and venues, rather than simply accumulate views on a screen.

That desire is closely tied to another lesson he learned before finding his current musical direction. For a time, Reay experimented with pop music and tried to make what he believed other people wanted to hear.

Eventually, he realized that approach was taking him further away from the artist he wanted to become.

"I figured out that I needed to just do what I need to do," he says.

That experience shaped his approach to China as well. Asked what advice he would give to other international artists hoping to enter the Chinese market, his answer is simple: "Be yourself."

"It's very easy to want to try to change yourself to fit into a market," he says, "but at the end of the day, if you stay true to yourself, you'll be happy."

For Reay, authenticity is something learned through trial and error.

"If I didn't do that, I wouldn't be sitting here now," he says. "I wouldn't have done the show. My whole journey would have been different."

That philosophy was tested throughout Singer 2026, where the pressure to chase the next successful performance could easily lead an artist to lose sight of his own identity. Reay, however, was determined not to do so.

The competition also gave him an opportunity to reveal another side of himself. Each week brought the possibility that it could be his last, making his journey to the grand final all the more significant.

There, Reay chose to perform I Think They Call This Love, a song with a particularly personal place in his career. It was the first song he wrote that he truly believed in and felt ready to put out into the world.

It was also a love story.

Reay wrote the song with his girlfriend, inspired by the moment when, as he describes it, they both realized that they had fallen in love.

"So that song was not just a song," he says. "It's a true story."

When he performed it in the grand final, his girlfriend was there. Afterward, the two walked off the stage together, a moment that quickly attracted attention online.

For Reay, however, its significance was more personal than viral.

"She wrote it with me," he says. "We spent a lot of time making sure that it was perfect for the stage."

Having her there, he adds, brought him comfort.

China, meanwhile, is not a chapter Reay sees as ending with the final episode of Singer 2026.

For him, building an audience in a new country requires more than returning home and maintaining a presence through social media.

"To establish myself here, you have to be here," he says.

As an artist with Universal Music Group, Reay came to China as part of the company's initiative, "Go East", which was launched early this year to offer a bridge connecting international artists with the Chinese market. This is a reflection of China's growing importance as the world's third-largest music market and its booming live performance scene, which continues to attract artists worldwide.

"The rapid development of the Chinese music market and the creation of the new initiative will help guide overseas artists in establishing a lasting presence in the country," said Timothy Xu, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Greater China.