James Bay Talks Sex Education and His Collab With Justin Bieber Ahead Of Sport Relief

With his new version of Running selected as Sports Relief’s official single this year, James Bay has been spending some time with Body & Soul, a HIV charity based in London.

Following his visit Bay said it’s, “frustrating to know kids my age grow up with other kids who laugh about (HIV), flinch about it.”

“That taught me a lot about the state of sex education and how that needs to improve and be broadened in terms of what's taught and the different areas of sex education,” he went on.

Bay reckons we need to stop being so “British and stiff upper lip” about sex education and be more open saying, “we need to be a lot more open about it because it feels like it's the biggest and only reason why these ridiculous stigmas about HIV positive people still exist.”

He also said he thinks change is possible, “We can't be defeatist about change: it's possible, it's happening. Body & Soul are helping that, Sport Relief is helping that.”

Bay has recorded a special live version of Chaos and The Calm track, Running, for Sport Relief. "It's quite a call to receive,” he said, “When I got it I thought, 'Great! Charity football match, I love playing football!' and then it turns out they wanted to use my music. It's been an honour.”

As much as we’d love to see James in his hat and his leather jacket running around a football pitch, we’re super excited for this. He’ll also be performing on Sport Relief Night on March 18th but said Bieber probably won’t be in attendance following their BRITs collab.

“I think he's quite busy on a world tour!” he said. “It was great to collaborate with Bieber and if the opportunity came up again I wouldn't rule anything out, but he's a busy guy and I'm a busy guy.”

Props to James for raising awareness on HIV and sexual education. For more information on this topic, we just so happen to have our very own charity, the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, who’ll tell you everything you need to know over here.