David Gray says his seminal LP 'White Ladder' "paved the way" for artists like Ed Sheeran.
David Gray
The 50-year-old singer/songwriter achieved worldwide success after the release of the 1998 record, which he initially released via his own IHT Records.
Although it failed to chart at first, over a year later, in May 2000, the record was re-released on ATO Records and debuted at number 69 on the Official UK Albums Chart, before finally becoming a chart-topper on August 5, 2001.
Gray - who released his first album in four years, 'Gold In A Brass Age', last week - has had three number one albums during his career; including 2002's 'A New Day at Midnight' and 2005's 'Life In Slow Motion' and 'White Ladder'.
He says that his success allowed the likes of the 'Shape of You' hitmaker, James Blunt, and most recently, James Bay, George Ezra and Tom Walker, to make "soul-baring" guitar music cool.
Speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, he said: "When I started out, a man with a guitar baring his soul wasn't in vogue at all. Suddenly, it's everywhere!"
On how influential the album was on his successors, he said: "'White Ladder' paved the way for a lot of stuff that's happened.
"Its success came from nowhere, and it changed how the business thought about what music should be.
"Since then, there have been lots of artists who've taken it on and done their own thing."
Despite his recipe for success, the 'Please Forgive Me' hitmaker says that his comeback album needed to be different.
He explained: "When you're in a creative process, you have to shake it up.
"If you go the same way, you just wear a rut in the road.
"That's never going to work indefinitely, so you have to find a new path to walk."
Gray teamed up with producer Ben de Vries, the son of composer and studio wizard Marius de Vries - who has worked with the likes of Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Kylie Minogue and Bjork - on the tracks and he said he brought in the "weird electronic" sounds on the LP.
The 'Babylon' hitmaker - who worked with Marius on-and-off since 2005 - explained: "Ben had the confidence not to be intimidated by me. He was playing some weird electronic tracks, and I thought, 'This is exactly what I want.
"I don't want to hear my guitar playing softly away on this record."
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