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Stephen Fretwell (born 10 November 1981) is an English singer-songwriter. He has released four studio albums and is often compared with acts such as Bob Dylan, Fred Neil, and Tim Buckley. Though receiving critical success, Fretwell has enjoyed little commercial success. His music has been described as folk rock, a genre combining mainstream Rock music and Pop music with American folk music and poetic or introspective lyrics. His song "Run" (2005) was used as the theme song of the BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey.
Fretwell attended St. Augustine Webster Primary School in Scunthorpe and St. Bede's Catholic School in Ashby before furthering his study at John Leggott College. It was in his teenage years that he started his first band, named Label.
After moving to Manchester to attend Salford University, to study English, but dropped out within a few days, he started to earn notices in NME and Q. During this period songs such as "Emily" and "What's That You Say Little Girl?" were first written.
He later released the Something's Got to Give Extended play and The Lines, both Self-published. He then supported Travis, Elbow, Athlete, Keane and KT Tunstall. Signed to Fiction Records, and while under management by Colin Lester's and Ian McAndrew's Wildlife entertainment, his debut album Magpie was released in November 2004. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. It peaked at No. 27 in the UK Albums Chart in August 2005. The first single taken from the album was "Run" and was subsequently followed by "Emily" (2005) and the Four Letter Words EP. "Emily" reached No. 42 in the UK Singles Chart in August 2005. He had previously supported Oasis at Marlay Park in Dublin on 16 July 2005.
He was described by Q as "Scunthorpe's finest export... ever". Fretwell described this as flattering but not something he actively encouraged.
His version of Jeff Buckley's "Morning Theft" appeared on the 2005 tribute album .]]
His song Play featured in the 2005 Dominic Savage film Love + Hate.
Cameron Crowe is a fan of Fretwell's work, Crowe encouraged Fretwell to write songs for the film Elizabethtown (2005) and even sent Fretwell his own personal copy of the Easy Rider soundtrack as a gift.
His song "Bad Bad You, Bad Bad Me" was featured in an episode of the ABC family drama Brothers & Sisters called "The Missionary Imposition".
His song "Run" is the theme tune to the situation comedy Gavin & Stacey and his song "Darling Don't" appeared on the third series of the teen drama Skins.
Fretwell also played bass on tour with the Last Shadow Puppets, the side project of Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner, another fan of Fretwell.
His song "Play" from the album Magpie was featured in the 2009 movie The Joneses.
On 4 April 2011 Manchester Aid to Kosovo released a charity album, Ten, to which Fretwell contributed the track "Tamarind". Also contributing to the album were fellow Manchester artists Elbow, Badly Drawn Boy, and Cherry Ghost. 2012, he quit music to focus on his family.
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