On 23 April 2025, Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox will begin their shows at the Royal Albert Hall. Mike Southon tells the story of ‘how a regular guy from New Jersey turned 1.2Bn hits on YouTube into a globetrotting musical phenomenon‘:
Scott Bradlee still remembers the looks he got when he told his parents about his plan to pay off his $100,000 student debt by being a jazz pianist in New York.
It happened. Today, Scott’s band, Postmodern Jukebox, is one of the most-watched pop-jazz acts of all time, with over 2 billion hits on YouTube and a full decade of touring the world, culminating in a headlining night at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 23 April 2025.
Like most musicians, he had humble beginnings, just a regular guy from New Jersey. His parents had unsuccessfully encouraged him into learning classical piano, but when he heard George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, he set his heart on jazz.
He hung an iconic picture on his bedroom wall: A Great Day in Harlem and took inspiration from all those famous faces staring down at him: Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young and many others.
After struggling to pay rent as a NYC jazz pianist, Bradlee contemplated giving up and going back to school for physics, having been inspired by Stephen Hawkins’ A Brief History of Time. Newly freed from the pressures of making music a career, he decided to upload a performance to YouTube, then in its infancy.
His ‘party trick’ as a teenager had been to turn contemporary hits — rap tunes, alternative rock hits and more into 1920s stride piano. He set up a cheap video camera and bashed out some 1980s classics on his red electric piano in a ragtime style.
The next day he was shocked to find his video had been viewed 25,000 times. Scott felt that he might be onto something: “for the first time in my life, I felt relevant”.
His first Postmodern Jukebox Video to go viral was a 1930s-style small group swing remake of Macklemore’s Thrift Shop, which garnered one million views almost immediately and propelled the act into popular culture.
Since then, Postmodern Jukebox has grown to feature notable singers from all genres, from American Idol stars Haley Reinhart and Casey Abrams to Broadway’s Shoshana Bean and Morgan James, to television star Wayne Brady. There’s even the “Sad Clown With The Golden Voice” Puddles Pity Party, who debuted with PMJ in their October 2013 cover of Lorde’s Royals.
Each video is like opening a miniature time capsule from an alternate universe; here, modern-day artists like Chappell Roan and Dua Lipa are writing 1960s Brill Building hits and making 1920s hot jazz records.
Having cracked the code online, Scott then sat down to the serious business of making a sustainable business from all this attention. His model is the complete opposite of how the music business usually makes money: he does not own the publishing to any of the songs, nor has a deal with a ‘proper’ record company.
Instead, Postmodern Jukebox has built a reputation as an exquisite and engaging live act — one that combines the ‘Old School’ glamour and retro style of mid-century musical variety shows with recognisable hits of today, all brought to life by a phenomenal cast of a dozen performers. At first, Bradlee toured himself but soon realised his time would be much better spent arranging the material and designing the show, rather than performing.
The live shows capture all the fun, wit, humour, spectacle, and stunning musicality of the videos — honouring the musical traditions of the past, while infusing them with a youthful ebullience. Enthusiastic fans of the act even come dressed up in a wide variety of vintage looks, to enhance the time-travelling experience.
Scott is really ‘living the dream’ for his own personal goals and aspirations, but I’m guessing even he himself does not exactly know where this will end up. Like many entrepreneurs, he may one day decide on a complete career change once he’s absolutely satisfied Postmodern Jukebox is in safe hands.
He might even dust off his copy of A Brief History of Time, work out how quantum mechanics actually works and build himself a time machine. Scott could then take us all back to the 1920s. Literally.
On 23 April 2025, Postmodern Jukebox will kick off their UK tour at the Royal Albert Hall.
Mike Southon is Editor in Chief of the World Communications Forum Association Davos (WCFA).
