12 exclusive photos of John Newman live at Manchester Academy

31 January, 2014: One of 2013's biggest breakthrough stars shows no sign of letting up in the new year by wowing fans in Manchester. See our exclusive photos of the gig here. 

After achieving a number one with his debut single 'Love Me Again' and featuring on a Mercury Nominated album with Rudimental, the singer is now a sought-after writer and producer but he feels that people are starting to lose their creativity, and feels the easy route of X Factor could be to blame.

"If you want to do that, it's a little bit lazy I think," he told Gigwise. "If you're a very creative person you should put all into it and the funny thing is, as an artist, as a successful writer and producer I've been getting emails every ten minutes from people saying "work with me, work with me" and you're in a bit of a world of that, people don't want to do things for themselves anymore.

"They struggle and they beg instead of just concentrating on what's good."

John Newman certainly shows so signs of struggling.