Stereophonics
FROM a former mining village in the south Wales valleys to packed stadiums, multiple UK Number One albums and more than three decades at the heart of British rock, Stereophonics have become one of Wales’ most successful musical exports.
The story began in Cwmaman in the Cynon Valley, where childhood friends Kelly Jones, Richard Jones and Stuart Cable grew up within streets of one another.
They began performing around the working men’s clubs of south Wales in the early 1990s, initially using the name Tragic Love Company before becoming Stereophonics. The new name was inspired by the wording on an old gramophone belonging to Cable’s father.
The trio became the first band signed to Richard Branson’s newly created V2 Records and released their debut album, Word Gets Around, in 1997.
It was an unmistakably Welsh beginning.
Songs including Local Boy in the Photograph, A Thousand Trees, Traffic and More Life in a Tramp’s Vest drew upon characters, incidents and observations from the valleys communities around them.
Rather than hiding their origins in pursuit of wider success, Stereophonics put them at the centre of their music.
Word Gets Around eventually reached Number Six in the UK Albums Chart and spent an extraordinary 162 weeks in the UK Top 100.
A year after its release, Stereophonics were named Best British Newcomer at the 1998 BRIT Awards.
***
From the Valleys to the top of the charts
If Word Gets Around introduced the band, Performance and Cocktails transformed their career.
Released in 1999, it included The Bartender and the Thief, Just Looking and Pick a Part That’s New and became the first of a remarkable sequence of chart-topping Stereophonics albums.
Just Enough Education to Perform followed in 2001, producing some of the band’s most enduring songs, including Mr Writer and Have a Nice Day.
Then came You Gotta Go There to Come Back in 2003, an album which included Maybe Tomorrow, a song that gradually became one of the band’s best-loved live anthems.
The period also brought major changes behind the scenes.
Original drummer Stuart Cable left Stereophonics in 2003. Despite the difficult circumstances surrounding the split, his contribution to the band’s formative years remains fundamental to the Stereophonics story. Cable, who subsequently became a familiar Welsh broadcaster and remained closely connected to his home community, died in 2010 at the age of 40.
***
The song that changed everything again
By 2005, Stereophonics were already one of Britain’s biggest rock bands.
Then Kelly Jones wrote Dakota.
Released from the album Language. Sex. Violence. Other?, it gave Stereophonics something they had never previously achieved – a UK Number One single.
Dakota entered the Official Singles Chart at the top in March 2005 and went on to become perhaps the song most closely associated with the band.
Its success was particularly significant because it demonstrated that Stereophonics were capable of evolving beyond the earthy guitar rock of their early records without losing the audience which had grown with them.
The albums kept coming.
Pull the Pin, Keep Calm and Carry On, Graffiti on the Train, Keep the Village Alive, Scream Above the Sounds and Kind took the band through a second and then a third decade.
Rather than becoming a nostalgia act dependent upon the successes of the late 1990s, Stereophonics repeatedly returned to the top of the album chart.
***
Nine Number One albums
Their longevity became even clearer with Oochya! in 2022.
The band’s 12th studio album reached Number One in the UK, more than two decades after Performance and Cocktails had first taken them there.
Three years later came album number 13.
Produced by Kelly Jones, Make ’em Laugh, Make ’em Cry, Make ’em Wait was released in April 2025. Its eight songs included There’s Always Gonna Be Something, Seems Like You Don’t Know Me and Colours of October.
The album went straight to Number One, becoming Stereophonics’ ninth UK chart-topping album.
That achievement put them level with artists including Bob Dylan and Take That for UK Number One albums at the time.
Official Charts now records nine UK Number One albums, 13 Top 10 albums and 11 Top 10 singles for Stereophonics.
***
Still filling stadiums
Chart success tells only part of the Stereophonics story.
Live performance has always been central to the band’s appeal, from those early south Wales working men’s clubs to festival headline slots and enormous outdoor shows.
Their Stadium Anthems Summer ’25 tour took them around Britain and Ireland and included Finsbury Park in London before an emphatic homecoming in Cardiff.
Demand for the planned Principality Stadium concert was strong enough for Stereophonics to add a second Cardiff stadium night, resulting in back-to-back performances on 11 and 12 July 2025.
The wider 2025 campaign also demonstrated how far the band from Cwmaman had travelled. Stereophonics toured North America, including dates in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Mexico City, before playing an extensive series of European shows.
More than 25 years after their breakthrough, they were still able to travel internationally with a new Number One album while filling the national stadium back home.
***
Kelly Jones beyond Stereophonics
Kelly Jones has also continued exploring music away from the band.
His 2024 solo album Inevitable Incredible saw him writing primarily at the piano and recording with orchestral arrangements on a remote island in Norway – considerably removed from the guitar-driven sound with which Stereophonics first became famous.
Those projects have helped demonstrate the range of a songwriter whose earliest material was inspired by everyday life around Cwmaman.
Yet whenever Stereophonics reconvene, those Valleys beginnings remain part of the band’s identity.
***
From Cwmaman to the world
Few Welsh bands can match the scale or longevity of what Stereophonics have achieved.
They emerged during the great flowering of Welsh popular culture in the 1990s alongside acts including Manic Street Preachers, Catatonia and Super Furry Animals, but their career has long since outgrown the idea that they belong solely to the era labelled Cool Cymru.
Their songs have survived several generations of audiences.
Local Boy in the Photograph still carries the observational character of the early Cwmaman years. Have a Nice Day and Maybe Tomorrow became mass singalongs. Dakota became their defining stadium anthem.
And new albums continue reaching Number One.
The current Stereophonics line-up comprises Kelly Jones, Richard Jones, Adam Zindani and Jamie Morrison.
More than three decades after a group of friends began playing music in a former mining village in the Cynon Valley, Stereophonics remain one of the most successful rock bands Wales has produced.
And however far their music has travelled, the road still seems to lead back to Wales.
***
Did Ewe Know?
Before fame arrived, Kelly Jones spent around six years selling fruit and vegetables on a market stall. During quiet periods he would observe the people around him and write – experiences which helped inspire the character-driven songs heard on Word Gets Around.