Musician wins rising star and best song musically and lyrically, continuing their success after Brit award win and Mercury prize nomination

Scottish singer-songwriter Jacob Alon was the big winner at the 2026 Ivor Novello awards, which acknowledge the best in British and Irish songwriting and screen composition.

Alon, 25, has captivated audiences with their swooping voice and imaginative alt-folk arrangements, showcased on debut album In Limerence which was released in May 2025. They won the Ivor Novello award for rising star – the second such win for Alon this year, having won the equivalent prize at the 2026 Brit awards in February, called the critics’ choice award.

An ex-offender searches for meaning and beauty in the second novel from the spoken-word performer

Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change, including gender transition. Perhaps inevitably, it is a book full of struggle and soul-searching. It is also painfully earnest: an enervating read with an exhausting intensity that neither relents nor resolves.

The publisher hasn’t helped here, bombastically announcing it as a “heart-breaking, soul-building new novel”. That’s a great deal to live up to, even for someone who established a reputation first as a blazingly fervent spoken-word poetry performer, winning the Ted Hughes award in 2013, and making Mercury prize-nominated albums in 2014 and 2017. But the grandeur of the publisher’s claims also suggests something of the melodramatic register of the book, which is all grand passion, big trauma and heroic self-discovery. What it lacks is any convincing sense of interiority or reflection.

Ten years after his debut novel, the poet and musician has written a follow-up exploring self-discovery and a life lived on the edge. He talks about sexuality, pronouns and drawing strength from the literature he loves

Kae Tempest sidles into a pub near his house on a weekday afternoon and orders a pint of mineral water. At his side is Murphy, an enormous, 14-year-old alaskan malamute dog with startling blue eyes who settles down on the floor next to his master and goes to sleep. “He’s all right,” Tempest says. “He’s very friendly. He won’t even put his nose up.” The rapper, performance poet, playwright and novelist has a ginger beard and is wearing Timberland boots, baggy jeans and a black hoodie over a blue-and-white striped collared shirt. His hair is hidden by a cap. Years ago, his dramatic russet hair was long, but he cropped it when he dropped the “T” from his first name and came out as nonbinary, a watershed moment in his gender transition. Now testosterone has deepened his voice and his journey has reached its final stage – from they/them to he/him.

As Tempest has been famous since his late 20s, showered with accolades ranging from Mercury nominations for two of his albums (including his debut, Let Them Eat Chaos) to becoming the youngest poet ever to receive the Ted Hughes award for the epic performance poem Brand New Ancients, this odyssey has taken place in public. On his song I Stand on the Line, from his last album Self Titled, Tempest vividly describes the anxiety of having to deal with the hostility of some people’s reactions to his “second puberty” (“Out in the limelight like, please, nobody look at me / I’m looking for myself, all I’m seeing is the bitterness / Coming my way when I’m using the facilities”). So is it a heavy burden to be such a visible trans person? “It’s just my life,” Tempest replies, his voice a soft south London growl, much quieter than the thrilling, declamatory style of his performances. “I’m just glad to be alive. How beautiful,” he adds. “Because you felt like you might not be at some point.”

Olivia Dean, Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, Jacob Alon, Self Esteem and Kae Tempest lead this year’s Ivors, with two nominations each

Olivia Dean, Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice, Jacob Alon, Self Esteem and Kae Tempest lead this year’s Ivor Novello awards for excellence in British and Irish songwriting, with two nominations apiece. Self Esteem’s cowriter Johan Hugo, and Tempest’s Fraser T Smith, are also credited among the leading acts.

Tempest will go up against himself in the best contemporary song category, with two nominations: one for I Stand on the Line, written with Smith, and one for Know Yourself, written with Smith and Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. Both songs come from Tempest’s fifth album, Self Titled.

Oasis, Macca and Radiohead made Help a smash for War Child in 1995. A new reboot packs comparable star power – and was partially produced from a hospital bed

When Kae Tempest was asked to contribute to a new track by Damon Albarn, which would also feature Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten, Tempest says he jumped at the chance. It wasn’t just the artists involved, nor the fact that it was for a new compilation benefiting War Child, called Help(2): a sequel to the charity’s hugely successful 1995 compilation Help. After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn’s studio and wrote their verses together, “responding to each other”. It seemed to work really well, he says: “A true collaboration.”

Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire. “Johnny Marr was on guitar, Femi [Koleoso] from Ezra Collective was drumming,” he laughs. “Plus, there was a children’s choir.”