Creator · Manchester
Antony Szmierek taught English, wrote two novels and read at Manchester open mics, then set the poems to dance music and took his debut album to number one on the UK dance chart
Antony Szmierek
Put his poems over house beats and went to number one on the dance chart
A man talking over a dance beat is a hard sell. It usually means a poet who wanted a bigger room, or a producer who wanted a lyric, and either way somebody is visiting.
Antony Szmierek's first album went to number one on the UK dance chart. The year he played Glastonbury twice, he did not have a record deal.
The teaching is the technique
He did the English degree at Manchester, then the PGCE, then years in schools, including a college for school leavers with special educational needs. On the day that clicked he is unguarded about what it gave him: "I felt for the first time like I had a purpose and like a reason to be doing stuff."
And he is exact about what the job actually was. "Really, the skill you have there is you're a communicator. You communicate with people en masse and teach them something." Which is the job at four in the afternoon on a festival stage, in front of a few thousand people who came for something else and are deciding, sentence by sentence, whether to stay.
That is the part he carried, not the part he left. A teacher cannot lose the room and try again next term. Neither can a man reading a poem over a four-to-the-floor kick, and he does not.
Sincerity Overdrive
The phrase is his. It is the setting the whole thing runs at: say the true thing, say it at volume, do not put a joke in front of it to be safe. Dance music is full of writers hiding behind a hook. He walks straight at it, which is why the tunes land in a field at midnight and also hold up read off a page, and they are on a page, because Faber Music put out Roadmap in 2025.
The route there ran through two novels he published himself, open mics around Manchester, and an electric piano bought in lockdown. Then The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Fallacy got on 6 Music in March 2022, Poems to Dance To made him one of the station's artists of 2023, and Service Station at the End of the Universe arrived in February 2025 and went straight to the top of the dance chart.
Decoding Birdsong came in August, written mostly on tour, and it is a harder listen than the first: "It's about luck and loneliness and what happens if you get really lucky, which I kind of feel like I did a few years ago." The title comes from watching a heron on the Mersey. Number thirty in the country, number two on the dance chart, and a headline tour that now fills the Manchester Academy.
Go while a ticket is still a thing you can casually decide to buy.
Really, the skill you have there is you're a communicator. You communicate with people en masse and teach them something.
Antony Szmierek, on what teaching actually trained him to do
The Rundown
The things Antony has actually shipped.
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Service Station
The debut album, February 2025. Number one on the UK dance chart, from a poet nobody had signed.
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Sincerity Overdrive
His own name for the setting: say the true thing, at volume, with no joke in front of it.
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Decoding Birdsong
The second album, written on tour. Luck, loneliness, and a heron on the River Mersey.
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Poems to Dance To
The 2023 EP that made BBC 6 Music name him one of its artists of the year.
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Roadmap
Lyrics, poems and sketches, published by Faber Music. The words hold up off the beat.
Common questions about Antony Szmierek
- Who is Antony Szmierek?
- Antony Szmierek is a poet and musician from Hyde, on the edge of Manchester, who performs spoken word over dance music. He was an English teacher before music, and released his debut album Service Station at the End of the Universe in February 2025 and Decoding Birdsong in August 2026.
- What is Sincerity Overdrive?
- Sincerity Overdrive is Szmierek's own term for his approach: saying the true thing plainly and at volume over a dance track, rather than hiding it behind a joke or a hook.
- How well did Service Station at the End of the Universe do?
- It reached number one on the UK Dance Albums Chart, number three on the UK Independent Albums Chart and number sixty-eight on the main UK Albums Chart after its release on 28 February 2025.
- What did Antony Szmierek do before music?
- He took an English degree at Manchester and a PGCE, then taught in schools, including a college for school leavers with special educational needs. He also self-published two novels, The Albatross and The Hypocrite, and read spoken word at Manchester open mics before setting his poems to music during the pandemic.
- What is Decoding Birdsong about?
- It is his second album, released on 21 August 2026 and written mostly while touring the first. In his words it is "about luck and loneliness and what happens if you get really lucky." The title came from watching a heron on the River Mersey. It reached number thirty in the UK and number two on the dance chart.
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