Corey Sanders, aka Dirty Blond, stepped up to the mic at a recent sold-out gig with a grin and a warning.
“Are you having a good night? Good — because I’m going to ruin it.” The crowd laughed. Then he played.
And instead of killing the mood, he tightened it —a roomful of strangers locked into the same feeling,
singing back every bruised lyric like it belonged to them. That’s the trick: the heavier the heartbreak, the
stronger the connection. In Corey’s hands, melancholia doesn’t isolate, it unites.
That tension — sorrow turning into connection — sits at the heart of Dirty Blond. The songs are bruised
and vulnerable, but in a live setting they feel expansive, even euphoric. There’s comfort in the candour,
in the shared recognition of something difficult but true. It’s no surprise that audiences keep growing,
both in rooms and online.
Hailing from Wales — “the land of music and magic,” as he fondly calls it — Corey has been steadily

building towards this moment. With an album due later this year, he’s been sharing a run of stripped-
back sad songs on TikTok, quietly amassing tens of millions of likes and an increasingly devoted

following. The online rise tells one story. The real one, though, is happening in real time, in packed-out
venues where heartbreak somehow makes everyone feel a little less alone.
The John Lennon adage “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans” landed hard for Corey
after his relationship fell apart. He had bought a home and a ring while his partner was quietly making
plans of her own, ultimately leaving for the United States.
Facing the collapse of the life plan he believed he was building, Corey returned to the one constant that
had always sustained him. Guitar in hand, he began writing — channelling loss, love and disillusionment
into a body of work that would come to define his voice as an artist. The rupture powered the writing,
but the songs resist autobiography; they trace the collective rituals of heartbreak — the reckoning, the
replaying, the slow reassembly — that follow every ending.

Radical in their emotional nakedness, the songs are a deliberate attempt to write the kind of classic
break-up records that document the aftermath of love; the disillusionment and the autopsy after the
dream has failed. “I hope I’m writing forever songs,” Corey explains — music where raw emotion and
concept drive the craft, where heartache becomes so tangible it feels character-driven, like someone
you could talk to, argue with, or mourn.

This yet-to-be-released debut album explores the fallout in all its forms. Empty of You captures self-
recrimination and emotional exhaustion — “I’m sick in the heart and it’s all ’cos of you / You’re living

inside it and all a wanna do is cry ‘til I’m empty of you.” Elsewhere, Emily and James inhabits a different
register of regret, as Corey compares himself to friends who have secured the future he once imagined
— “They’ve got a house and kid on the way / We could’ve been like Emily and James.”
Perhaps the most devastating track is So Long Baby, which grieves not only a lost relationship but a lost
future, imagining the daughter they might have had: “She would have been an angel, a devil in disguise /
She would have had your kindness, and my own mother’s eyes.”
For the first time since his teens, Corey decided these songs needed a band. He brought in his brother,
Tommy Sanders, on bass, and close friend Mark Prendergast of Kodaline on piano. The music had to be
lived in and shared.
Raised in Bridgend, Corey describes a happy childhood, loving parents, and a close bond with his
brother. Yet he still refers to his hometown as “a place where there are monsters under the bed.”
Though the coal mine closures occurred long before he was born, their impact rippled through
generations, compounded by more recent tragedies that cast long shadows over the community.
At school, Corey wasn’t academically inclined, but music offered a way out. He taught himself piano and
guitar, writing songs from the age of twelve. When a teacher explained he could earn a GCSE through
song writing, it was revelatory. “Until then, I felt like there was no way of getting out,” he admits,
reflecting on the creative constraints of a working-class town weighed down by low expectations.
At fourteen, he formed his first band. By seventeen, he had signed a publishing deal. At eighteen, he
moved to north London, living in a garage for two years on stacked mattresses while friends occupied
the house above. After a breakup with his school sweetheart, he wrote You Are the Reason — the
cinematic tearjerker that would become a global hit for Calum Scott.
Many song writing successes followed. Today, Corey’s songs have amassed more than nine billion
streams, but now he’s ready to step out from the studio and into the spotlight.
So why the sadness? And is it personal, or cultural? “It’s the DNA of where I grew up — trapped in its
melancholia,” he says. “In Wales, people sing in pubs, but they don’t jump around like they do in
Ireland.”
Reflecting now, Corey sees his roots differently. “I spent my whole life trying to escape. Now I see it as
something beautiful and damaged. I want to write songs for the people — to give them new songs to
sing in the pub, after they’ve finished Delilah.”
Healed from the end of his last relationship, Corey has since found love again. Alongside the sadness,
the album also holds space for songs that don’t deny the damage — but still dare to open the door once
more.
Ultimately, these songs are about storytelling as catharsis: shared pain, nostalgia, healing — and the
hope that quietly emerges in the aftermath.