Middlesbrough-born musician Jamie Dickinson talks new music, neurodiversity and Berklee College of Music
Written by Lily Ballentine on 25th September 2025
From West End Tours to ITV’s Starstruck, talented Darlington-based pop artist, Jamie Dickinson, is a musical force to be reckoned with. Having recently released two new singles and with his third EP due out in November, I caught up with the singer-songwriter.
“I wasn’t really able to express myself in a way, prior to starting to write music”.
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On Friday, September 19th, 24-year-old North East musician, Jamie Dickinson, released the second single of his latest EP.
Bursting with emotion, his latest track, That Door, focuses on a breakup – a situation which many of us can relate to.
Allowing listeners to relate in a different way, just over a month ago, Jamie released his “modern romantic earworm”, Loving Me Right. The first single of the EP captures that fuzzy feeling of being cherished by another – something quite different from his latest release, yet still relevant to many.
Despite this, as a neurodiverse person, Jamie wasn’t always able to voice his emotions in such an open, honest and personal way. I spoke to the pop singer about his musical journey, his time as a Berklee student, and what neurodiversity means for him and his music.
“I’ve always had trouble expressing myself and when I found out that music was almost like the gateway for me to express my feelings and kind of get my thought out in a really creative way – it just opened my eyes completely”.
Having been born to a musical family and been a singer himself growing up, participating in musical theatre and opera throughout his childhood, Jamie Dickinson has certainly never been a stranger to music.
Originating from Middlesbrough, Jamie was born with several physical deformities. To help with this, his parents took him to various classes – singing being one of them.
As a child, Jamie performed on several pro-opera and West End tours, including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Oliver! and ABBAMANIA.
However, it was whilst he was doing musical theatre at The Susi Earnshaw Theatre School in London that Jamie started “figuring out a passion for music”.
Although his passion had been ignited, it wasn’t until Jamie was around 18 years old that he started seriously considering music as a career.
The album cover for ‘Loving Me Right’ (Artwork credit: Jamie Dickinson)
At this time, Jamie’s parents decided for the family to go on holiday for the summer. As sitting around sunbathing isn’t really Jamie’s thing, his parents settled on Valencia, Spain, as it meant that Jamie could attend a summer camp at Berklee College of Music’s Valencia campus.
Much to his surprise, during the camp, a representative of Berklee’s Boston campus came and held auditions. Feeling unprepared, but willing to “just give it a go”, Jamie auditioned, earning a place at the American campus.
“I can’t express how life changing that initial experience was”, he said.
At the time when he was offered a place at Berklee, the pop artist was doing his performing arts degree at a college in Leeds. After deferring his place to finish his degree, Jamie started at Berklee in 2020.
As this was the year that COVID hit, he completed his degree online, finishing his four-year course in three and a half years.
However, this didn’t come without sacrifices.
Noting the impact of the time difference, the singer said: “Sometimes I’d be up at three o’clock in the morning going to a class – but it was so worth it. My teachers wouldn’t care, they were like, ‘you’re coming to a class at 3am, you can come in your pyjamas if you want’, I was like, ‘thank you!’.
“It was worth messing up the sleep schedule now and again”, he added.
Since then, Jamie has gone on to graduate from Berklee with an undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Music Studies and is currently doing an online master’s degree in Songwriting at the prestigious institute. He even made it into the Berklee songwriting handbook as a case study.
Praising the university, Jamie said: “I just hope that, I don’t know, my story can help inspire other Berklee students, as well as other people in general because I’ve had such a great experience with Berklee and I’ll honestly shout it from the rooftops how amazing the experience has been with Berklee”.
He added: “It’d be nice to kind of be an ambassador for Berklee, but an ambassador for neurodiverse people, being neurodiverse myself and kind of understanding the difficulties”.
Thanks to a Berklee tutor, Jamie was introduced to the Ultimate Artist Release Program. This was coordinated by the highly respected UK songwriter and producer, Martin Sutton, who has worked with the likes of the Backstreet Boys and Celine Dion.
As part of this, Sutton co-produced Jamie’s single You Give Me Hope, which was released in January. The track was also co-written by Canadian songwriter, Elizabeth Rodrigues, whose songs have been covered by an array of famous artists – including Pitbull and Eminem.
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Helping to bring his latest EP to life, Jamie has been working closely with Quiet Crown Music founder, Henry Carden, as part of the Sonic Futures Breakthrough programme.
The programme aims to support artists in the Tees Valley area by providing them with mentorship from music industry experts. The project focuses on guiding the artists through the processes involved in releasing music.
Commenting on the North East’s music scene, Jamie said: “I do think there’s definitely a lot more opportunities now […] I hope my story can prove that there is opportunities out there for people”.
Jamie’s latest EP, which features Loving Me Right and That Door is being distributed by Apollo Music and is set to be released in November.
Speaking about Loving Me Right, which came out on Friday, August 22nd, the singer told me that the track was the second or third song that he’d started writing for the EP.
He said: “I remember just feeling so loved, and I don’t know why. I mean, I do know why – because of the people – but I don’t know why I woke up like that”.
“I remember literally making the bulk of the song in like 40 minutes because I just let the emotion take over the song […] It was just a really simple song, but effective and I love that, like just something kind of summery for people to sing along with. It’s got a lot of emotion to it, so people can relate on that front as well”, he added.
Although Loving Me Right was released in summer 2025, for Jamie, “summer vibes” are not restricted to one season.
“I think that’s what’s good about music, is you can feel different feelings, no matter what time of year it is”, he said.
In November 2024, Jamie released his “summertime banger”, Overdrive.
He said: “I think people still want to listen to summer vibes, even in the winter and that’s kind of what I wanted to bring […] I just thought it would be a nice little change to have a summer song brought out in the winter, so people could still feel like it’s summer, or even get ready for next summer when they’re going to party, wherever they’re going, etc.”.
Commenting on the “feel-good vibe” of the song, he said: “that’s kind of the aim with all my music really, to tell personal stories, but at the same time, create music that people can relate to and dance to and just have a great time – but also feel something”.
Talking more about the relationship between emotion and songwriting, Jamie said: “I think it’s fair to say that a lot of my songs are personal and they do come from some sort of emotion”.
In reference to his latest EP, he went on to say: “Most of the songs on this EP have definitely done that, like at least the starting point was made from an emotion”.
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Relating to his struggles with self-expression as an autistic person, he said: “Honestly, I think that’s the best way to write, in my opinion, particularly for someone like myself […] it kind of helps me get my emotions out in a way that is good, really, and really helpful”.
Reflecting more on his neurodiversity, Jamie commented: “I really do hope that I can inspire people because, you know, I can safely say I’ve definitely had my fair share of difficulties amongst other people, so if I can inspire anyone, I’m really happy”.
“It’s hard for, I think, anyone with any sort of like difficulty, whether it be autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc., to maybe find work or find ways in life and I just hope that showing people that I can do it, that other people can do it too”, he later added.
Proving to be unstoppable, Jamie appeared on season two of ITV’s Starstruck, performing on Team Justin Bieber.
He said: “I had an absolutely fantastic time […] even saying it and talking about it now – it still doesn’t feel real”.
When he’s not up for a class at 4am or working on songs, Jamie currently performs in a 90s boy band tribute act named “3 (THR33)”. Having recently performed at Flamingo Land Resort in North Yorkshire, the band tour the UK, performing songs from Westlife, Take That, and Boyzone.
I asked Jamie what we can expect from him for the rest of 2025. In addition to his upcoming EP, he mentioned that he was working on getting different content on his social media, allowing people to get to know him better.
He said: “I think there’s a lot of elements of my life that I think the public don’t, don’t know too much about yet […] I just kind of want to take my fans with me and kind of just allow them to kind of see what else I do in general”.
I asked Jamie if his neurodivergence is something that he’d like to share more about with his fans.
He replied: “That’s kind of the question that I’ve been asking myself personally. I’m not ashamed of it, like, I don’t think anyone should be ashamed of it because it makes a person what they are, and it is a big part of my life. I mean, obviously I’ve had it since I was a kid, so it’s always been a part of it and I think it’s fair to say that with anyone with neurodiversity has probably had their fair share of negative reactions, but we are moving in the right direction, which is something that’s really like, as someone who is neurodiverse, is really happy to see […] I definitely think that is something that I do want to kind of cover at some point and kind of just find the right way to do it. I don’t quite know how that would be yet, but it’s definitely something that has been on my radar for a while”.
He added: “I don’t think it’s something that I should hide, and I don’t think it’s something that anyone should hide”.
He went on to say: “I think that’s what kind of offers a bit of uniqueness with my music, is the way I see things, and I think that’s kind of cool to think about without even realising”.
As Jamie continues to develop as an artist, adding to his already impressive CV, one thing’s for sure – we can expect great things from this North East musician.
Loving Me Right and That Door are now available on all major streaming platforms.
For Jamie’s website, click here.
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