A session guitarist from Muswell Hill who scrapped an entire album

Michael Kiwanuka was born in the Muswell Hill area of London in 1987, the son of Ugandan immigrants who had escaped Idi Amin's regime. He finished at Fortismere School in 2005 and went on to study at the University of Westminster. Before anyone knew his name he worked as a session guitarist, playing with Chipmunk and Bashy, and his first proper gig as a solo artist came at The Oxford in Kentish Town when he was twenty-two.

Things moved quickly after that. Communion Records released his first two EPs, beginning with Tell Me a Tale in June 2011. He supported Adele on her 2011 tour, signed with Polydor, and was named the winner of the BBC's Sound of 2012 poll in January of that year. His debut album Home Again arrived later in 2012 to positive reviews, peaked at number four in the UK and went gold.

Then came the hard part. Kiwanuka scrapped an entire second album, to be called Night Songs, after an A&R man discouraged him. What replaced it was Love & Hate in 2016, produced by Danger Mouse, which reached number one on the UK albums chart and gave the HBO series Big Little Lies its theme in “Cold Little Heart”. He added a track with UNKLE for the Roma soundtrack and a single with Tom Misch before releasing Kiwanuka in 2019. He has said the title reflected his growing confidence in being himself, and the record won the Mercury Prize in 2020.

Since then he has co-headlined a tour with Brittany Howard, played the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury in June 2024 and released Small Changes that November, led by “Floating Parade”. Illness forced him to cancel European festival dates in 2025. A fifth album, Fudge, is announced for 23 October 2026. For many listeners the door in was still the debut, and “Home Again” remains the place to start.