Was there any little kernel of thought that went on to become a big concept in a particular song or theme on the album? Which was the most fun and interesting to do?
“Yeah, the last song on side A, which is called Broken Up Now. I had this album and it was all ready except for one song. I started off and I had about twenty songs and they were all dark, dark, dark. I said, ‘okay even if I pared this down to ten songs, there’s still too much darkness, too much intensity on the listener’. Not enough positivity to keep them listening I don’t think. It wasn’t a true representation of me either because I am positive as well as negative. So I kept staying up nights and working during the day as well trying to find this song that would properly represent the way I feel positive about negative things. So anyway I recorded this one and I think it’s an okay song, a pretty good song, but it didn’t fit with the rest of the album. So then, just when I thought I had it finished, I didn’t, so I kept working away and then one night I just came up with the song, four tracks, all in one night. Pretty much there and then, by the end of that night, I was like: the album is done. That’s the end product. That’s a very long winded answer isn’t it? But yeah, that was a surprise to me, that it was so difficult and yet so easy in the end.
“I think the third song Seen Me Blue was really fun because it came really fast and it’s a cheesy Eighties song and I’m singing in a half-Elvis, half-Depeche Mode voice which isn’t my own. I took on a different character for singing it. Everything about that song was fun, even programming the drum beats was fun. Everything seemed to come naturally, like all wrapped up in my head at once I had this cross between Toto’s Africa and Chris Rea’s Driving Home For Christmas. Then the message of the song is really simple, so the lyrics came quite quickly as well. That was a lot of fun to do.
“I got to the point where I couldn’t add any more to it than I had already done. A cut-off point. I’m pretty happy with it. It ties together better I think. All the tracks have a similar feeling of kind of disco pop, synth pop elements. I’d like to say it’s not pop, but it is. Sometimes I find myself wanting to make a more electronic album so it could be played loud in a club or a live venue, it could be played really, really loud with heavy beats. I would like to do something really, really simple but really good at the same time.”
What constitutes a good pop song? The genre is often written off as lacking in substance but the best pop songs have the best messages: simple and to the point.
“Shit, that’s one of those questions I’d have a great answer for in an hour. I’m really liking Chris Rea, I Can Hear Your Heartbeat, which I have on single, I just bought it the other day. But that wouldn’t be my favourite pop song. Ryan Paris, La Dolce Vita, that’s one of the best ever. I can play it for you after, I have it here.
“But sure yeah, like Altered Images. Even Madonna has really good personal messages. I find solace in Madonna and stuff like that, those kind of pop songs help me with my life, as well as more introspective stuff or what would be called more serious music. All this album is all 4/4 beats, there’s no cleverness to it at all really. Most of the songs have no more than two or three chords.
“At the moment I don’t experience music the way I did a few years ago. I used to listen to things over and over again and study the lyrics and bring them with me through the day, all the time. Now I kind of skim through, like I’m skimming through a comic book or something. I listen to music and go, ‘that’s great’, and I maybe buy an album. There are certain things I’m still really getting into but I guess I’m more self-obsessed now, I’m more concerned with my own musical career and bullshit like that. I don’t spend enough time listening. For example, Joanna Newsom, her second album Ys, I used to put it on the CD player… This is really obsessive and stupid, but I used to put it on the CD player and play a song and if I missed a word I’d go back and hear it again. I really wanted to digest every little turn of phrase that she would use, or every kind of analogy, and really hear it and then let it settle in. Then more often than not, a week or so later it’d occur to me what she meant by that. I haven’t had that experience in a while, I’m more kind of tipping around, barely keeping my head above water music-wise.”
