After five years away from the studio, Tommy Atkins has returned with a vengeance. His comeback single, Wild Honey, spent five consecutive weeks at #1 on Europe’s LGBTQ Music Chart in September and October 2026. It set the stage for the re-release of his debut collection Truth Be Told... as Atkins originally envisioned it, with the new recordings of Wild Honey and There Ain't Enough completing the album's story. 

 

And now, Truth Be Told… is accompanied by a prequel album of never-before-released songs: The Summer of 2016. 

 

Rather than dusting off a batch of old recordings and slapping them on Truth Be Told… as bonus tracks, Atkins wanted to create something considered and cohesive in its own right. As he revisited his catalogue, he noticed that the songs he kept gravitating towards had one thing in common: most had been written in and around 2016. The idea clicked, and a project began to take shape.

 

“A lot of millennials refer to 2016 as their ‘last great summer’, and the pink pastel-ification of everything has been trending again on social media this year. But from what I remember, 2016 was a bin fire of a year that few would pay you to re-live. And listening back to the songs I was writing in 2016, I also remember the creative frustration of that era, writing ‘to radio’ sonically, but craving something deeper lyrically. This collection of songs applies the rose-coloured filter sonically, but peeks behind it lyrically,” Atkins explains.

 

That tension is at the heart of The Summer of 2016. There's the unabashedly heavy country-pop production of Your Closet, whose story of outing a married man having an affair with the narrator didn’t win favour with publishers; the Sam Hunt-meets-Chainsmokers influences of Lucky Tonight; and then there’s Sixteen, which turns the genre's fixation with young-love narratives on its head. The song reflects on becoming a parent, while looking back on an abortion experienced with someone else in teenage years. Collectively, the album's subject matter reveals a writer who was, and remains, defiant against the stereotypes of his genre.

 

While Atkins continues to work with co-producer Dr Ford, and acclaimed musicians Tim Crouch (Dolly Parton, Alan Jackson), Tania Hancheroff (Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood), and Smith Curry (Shaboozey, Taylor Swift), he’s taken the reins on The Summer of 2016, recording, mixing and producing most of the album himself alongside EDM producer, deckos. 

 

Tommy Atkins made history in 2020 with Freedom, the first country radio hit in the UK and Europe to feature overtly gay lyrics. The single was playlisted by hundreds of country radio and pop stations, paving the way for the international success of Kiss Me, Cowboy, which earned CMA playlist support, airplay on SiriusXM and CountryLine Radio, multiple international awards—including Country Queer's 2020 New Artist of the Year—and eventually reached #1 in three countries. His groundbreaking success has since been recognised in the BBC Music documentary, Deep Dive into Queer Country. Recorded between Nashville and the UK, Atkins' debut album, Truth Be Told, originally hit #1 on the country download charts in 2021.

 

Atkins lives in the English countryside with his husband, cat and chickens.