Justin Vella grew up between two worlds, East End London until age seven, then Essex from there on, and country music wasn’t even on his radar until his teens. That changed at 15, when a chance encounter with Garth Brooks’ “The Dance” turned into a genuine obsession, one that had him singing Brooks covers at karaoke nights for years afterward before he ever thought about writing his own material.
That obsession eventually became The Cockney Cowboy in 2023, and the project caught on fast around Essex, Kent, London, and Buckinghamshire, backed by a full band. His first original, “City Boy Singing Country Songs,” was built around the actual feeling of performing rather than any outside story, and “Five” followed it up with something more personal, a loving, slightly chaotic tribute to raising five grown kids who still know how to cause trouble.
Waterloo Road
His most recent single, “Waterloo Road,” arrived in June 2026, a warm look back at his council estate childhood. There’s real fondness in how it handles the trouble he used to get into as a kid, treating those messy, chaotic years as the thing that quietly built the person he ended up becoming rather than something to be embarrassed about. The track features Toby Wilson on pedal steel, and comes with a companion line dance choreographed by Michelle of Monterey Liners, a line dance group based in Harlow, Essex. It is a very confident track by someone who has made him his own lane in the UK. Check out the track below!
Final Thoughts
The Cockney Cowboy has built a genuinely distinctive lane in UK country, East End roots filtered through Nashville-leaning songwriting, and “Waterloo Road” is a warm, personal entry in a catalog that keeps getting more confident.
You can find The Cockney Cowboy on his official website, on Spotify, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, and on YouTube. Stay tuned to MusicOnTheRox.com for all your music news and reviews.
