James Bruner - Can't Keep Wanting You (album)

After some busy years touring in the UK, Europe & the States, Illinois born, Nashville based alt rock artist James Bruner releases his debut album Can’t Keep Wanting You – a body of work about love as the motivator that drives everything from desire to empowerment & even defiance.

Coming off the back of his EP The Otherside released last year, the album is produced by Nashville’s Shane Weisman & sees James lay his heart on the line with a collection of songs whose lyrical honesty deals with emotions we can all relate to – and it’s all wrapped up in some hi-energy rock n’ roll that’s bursting with excitement, passion & some ballsy performances that even Iggy would be proud of!

Featuring title track Can’t Keep Wanting You & other singles Wish I Could Stay, OMG & Hypnotised James explains the ideas behind the making of the record & what he hopes people will take from it: “To put it simply, Can’t Keep Wanting You is an album about lust just as much as it is about finding your voice. At its core, it’s a record about love as a catalyst fuelling everything from desire to empowerment & even defiance. That thread runs throughout the album, & it’s one of the things I love most about it. I hope that people can listen to the record & know they’re not alone & anything’s possible with love, patience & hope”.

With thoughts about the individual tracks from James below, the album release is to be accompanied with tours of the UK, the US & Germany, plus James has also been invited to perform at the opening of YUNGBLUD’s new London store B.R.A.T on 25^th Sept.

Having enjoyed playlisting on Planet Rock Radio for his singles Switchblade and Big Shot, plus Hot List and The Dirt / High Hopes features in Classic Rock mag, 2026 is turning out to be a breakthrough year for this most commanding of artists on both his records & live work.

About James Bruner:

Having come of age amidst skateboard culture in Springfield, Illinois, James was drawn towards artists like Roxy Music, David Bowie & Iggy Pop as opposed to what his friends were listening to at the time. Watching how skaters executed their craft on videos featuring Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life, Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story & Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, inspired him to get a guitar at the age of 15. He was soon to join local band Unchained as lead vocalist & rhythm guitar – but it was when he moved to Nashville that his focus on songwriting & working with top-flight musicians began to bear fruit.

Full band shows as a solo artist began in 2023 & since then James has honed his craft as a live performer playing hundreds of shows across the USA, Europe & the UK with the likes of Those Damn Crows, Orianthi, Barns Courtney, The Romana Flowers & Yonaka as well as full European tours with Nashville singer-songwriter William Fitzsimmons & The Struts. James has graced the stages of legendary venues such as The Bataclan (Paris), Barrowlands (Glasgow), The Roundhouse (London), Irving Plaza (New York) & Fabrique (Milan).

Highlights:

PLANET ROCK RADIO: 8 weeks on B-List & Evening List for singles SwitchBlade & Big Shot
CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE: ‘Hot List‘ & ‘The Dirt / High Hopes‘ features in Jan & Feb 2026 issues
200k+ MONTHLY LISTENERS during The Otherside EP campaign
500k+ STREAMS on single Big Shot
GLOBAL TOURS WITH: The Struts, Barns Courtney, Yonaka, Those Damn Crows, Orianthi

Track Descriptions (by the artist):

1. Show Me the Way: This is definitely the ‘search’ song. While it could be the search for anything, for me this song serves as the search for balance and peace, or at least for it to reveal itself. The older I get, the more I have to lose. This has always been a scary thought for me & I wanted to approach it with open arms when putting pen to paper. I’m not perfect & I’m finding out more every day that if I don’t make decisions, the world will make them for me. This song is me searching & praying for that balance & peace of moving forward / growing older with hope.
2. Can’t Keep Wanting You: is about the toxicity of wanting something that may be good for you in the short term but is ultimately bad for the long haul. This song specifically uses lust as toxicity. That “so bad but so good” feeling is totally present in this song. As humans I feel like toxicity has such a way of playing tricks & taking over our souls. There always seems to be a great feeling when chasing something toxic, whether that be a thrill, gratification, or even short-term satisfaction, there’s always a price to pay.
3. Hypnotized: lies more on the faster punky side of my artistry. At the time that it was written, I was going through quite a bit of self-doubt and over-analysing everything in front of me. This song served as the defiant ‘NO’ to those looming thoughts in my head. As an artist, it’s always been so important for me to let out any aggression in my music, so I went ahead and did just that. I wanted to lean on that firm aggression of screaming vocals & the raw energy that Jet had on their song Last Chance. It’s a classic slam over the head on the A side of the record & I am very pleased that the song turned into a fight song, for myself ironically.
4. Shine: is the first ballad of the album. To put it simply, the song is about being passed by. We have all experienced it in one form or another & it’s always heavy on the heart. I took a risk on delivering the vocals because I needed it. Delivering them in falsetto was something I had never done prior to the recording session for this song. I wanted to channel that higher register vocal delivery that I loved from artists like Lenny Kravitz & Prince. I wanted the song to have a cinematic & epic feeling as it faded out with all the emotions. You can hear it all in the fade out as I scream ‘and you will never know!’
5. Don’t Wanna Be Late: For this one my producer Shane Weisman & I wanted to go more in the direction of a 90s grungy rock song about standing your ground. I remember humming that ‘ahh ahh ahh ahh ah who hoo’ line as we had the noisy scratch guitar track looping. Shane heard me singing it & we threw down the main hook on the spot. This song is about how when something is important to you, you will go to great lengths to get it, no matter what you’re faced with.
6. SMS: I think it’s safe to say that this is the album’s unconscious ‘save me’ song. It’s about feeling afraid or silently struggling. In the writing process for this one I felt like I was losing sight of my dreams! You can hear the callback to this in both verses when I sing ‘remember the time, remember the time, the man with the dream”. The only way I could ask for help or be free of the struggling thoughts was to put pen to paper. The thoughts of me losing sight of something so important terrified me & so I had to scream them out. The title itself has a fun double meaning as well. On one hand SMS is a text message, on the other hand it’s an abbreviation for me screaming ‘save my soul’.
7. It’s Too Late: is one of the more emotionally vulnerable songs on the record. The song’s about someone I was infatuated with for a few years of my life. It was one of those things that was always on my mind, but the right timing never lined up for either of us. To this day, from time to time I will see a like from that person on a post of mine & all the emotions run back through me for a brief moment. In a section of the song, you can even hear the chanting vocals singing ‘I can see that you like my photos’.
8. Wish I Could Stay: is about realising that someone LOVES attention & while you can give it to them, you have to put yourself first. This person loves attention, any acknowledgement, & is gratified just knowing that you’ll pick up the phone at a moment’s notice. One might even say that the situation could be toxic. While one may think it’s love, it also could be infatuation burning at the core. This track lays it on the line while giving a clear way to navigate out of the situation. To put it simply ‘keep moving on’. This track has plenty of groove & dare I say a taste of funk which has been a new & exciting territory for me to get involved with musically. There’s also plenty of openness when the chorus hits. I wanted this track to have the warmth & openness of Stillness of Heart by Lenny Kravitz while also tipping the hat to Tom Petty with the acoustic guitars that lead the chorus.
9. OMG: is actually the first song that Shane Weisman & I took on together. We co-wrote it back in 2024 & it was the start of the many songs to come after. We met in the middle & steamed straight ahead with writing ourselves a song in the pop-rock realm about a guy infatuated with a girl that he saw at a cross walk… & the rest is history. Listening back to it now, I still get that giddy feeling that I had the day we laid down the ‘la la la la’ before the final chorus.
10. Only You: is a song to the person that always brings me back to earth when I feel like I’m elsewhere. My crazy life has thrown me all sorts of curve balls & while being ‘stuck in doubt’ is one of them, that’s only the tip of the iceberg to be honest. I felt it was only right to give a song to the person who’s been patient & given me some sense of stability in this life that I sometimes can’t believe I live. You can hear it on the chorus every time I sing ‘only you, could save me tonight’.
11. Getaway: is another bang over the head as we approach the way out of the album. The song’s fully cantered around post tour depression to be honest. When the song was written, I was drawing from all the feelings I was having after getting home from one of my favourite tours to date & feeling that withdrawal. Anyone who has toured extensively knows exactly what I’m talking about. You hear it eminently when the first verse comes in; ‘Got home on the weekend. Got nowhere to be, should’ve skipped the plane, this life’s deceiving, one night you’re on, the next night you ain’t’.
12. Take It Or Leave it: As the album came to a close, I knew I wanted its final message to be one of hope & gratitude. For me ‘Take It or Leave It’ became that beacon of hope. Leading up to finishing this album, there was a lot weighing on my mind. I was coming off the busiest year of my life, worried about losing the life I’d been fortunate enough to build & determined not to let anyone down after 20 songs & countless hours of work. Out of those thoughts, the direction of this song made itself known. What brought me peace was realizing that even if I lost everything tomorrow, I could always say I tried, chased my dreams, created memories with my friends that will stay with me forever, and most importantly, I would never have to wonder ‘what if’? There’s also a bit of the song’s message hidden in the music itself. My producer & I had originally written the opening guitar riff for a different track before ultimately scrapping it. Even so, the melody stayed with me & I wanted to give it another chance. That second chance became Take It or Leave It… I’d say it finally got the opportunity it deserved.

Connect with James Bruner

www.jameshbruner.com

Contact

Photo Credit: Elijah Settles

Photo Credit: Sierra Sevier

James Bruner – Can’t Keep Wanting You (album)