The Art of Longevity

The Wombats have defied all UK press scepticism (and cynicism) to become one of the country’s biggest indie pop bands. Big streaming audiences, huge social media followings and a multi-generational fanbase now pretty much guarantee the Wombats will hit no. 1 on the album charts, as new album ‘ Fix Yourself Not the World ’ has proved. They also secure headline festival slots and sell out shows and...

In a warm and whimsical conversation with Yan (Scott Wilkinson) of Sea Power , I learned to appreciate just what this unique band has achieved. With the recent name change, I might suggest the band wears its status as National Treasure with a certain irony. But over the course of two decades the band has made a batch of fine songs, really solid albums, award winning soundtracks and plays sold out,...

From the earliest beginnings of 1983’s The Hurting to the band’s huge 1985 LP Songs From The Big Chair, Tears For Fears songs captured sadness, ambition, pain - confessional levels of emotional honesty. All this conveyed with the magic touch of songwriters who were also not afraid to get weird. But as the 80s music scene spun out of control so did Tears For Fears, famously making one of the longes...

After the release of a ‘best of’ collection Everything Hits at Once in 2019, Spoon are back at long last with brand new material - the album Lucifer On The Sofa - a raw, rollicking rock album (complete with new players on lead guitar and bass) recorded as near-as-dammit live. It is an antidote to Spoon’s previous (superb, but far more produced) Hot Thoughts (2017).  In 30 years, the band has come...

When it comes to longevity, Feeder keeps coming back around, and the guitar-rock scene is all the better for it. It was back in January 2001 that “Buck Rogers” reached number five on the UK chart (the song remains a radio standard even in its 21st year). Grant Nicholas originally wrote the song to impress producer Gil Norton in the hope he would be persuaded to work with Feeder. Buck Rogers contai...

When Suzanne Vega played a short residency at New York’s exclusive, super high-end Cafe Carlisle in 2019 (for the second time in her career) she wanted to put on a show, something special: “I thought, let’s make a show out of it. I wanted to make it like an old style revue, since it’s a small and very upper crust place with out-of-towners and locals as well, from all over New York. So I thought we...

Discovering a band all to yourself is the best type of music discovery there is. One day in the mid 2000s as my wife and I wandered along London’s South Bank, we were stopped in our tracks by music the likes of which we’d never heard before - jazzy, rhythmic, with a haunting steel drum but also with an element of ‘indie’. There, were four very young men (then in their late teens) busking with a co...

If one of the secrets to longevity in the music industry is simply taking your time, then Danish alternative rock band Mew are grand masters. Formed in 1995, the band took eight years before a major label deal came along, and with it, international success (the superb breakthrough album Frengers). It did not lead to a rush. Some 26 years into the band’s career, Mew has released just seven studio a...

When I sat down with Steve Berlin, the Los Lobos sax player and de facto spokesperson, I was a little more than intrigued. To most people around the world - outside of North America anyways - Los Lobos remain the La Bamba band. How wrong we are. There is a very common thread with the artists we’ve had on the show - and with longevity - every one of the artists (except so far, Laura Veirs and Maxim...

On The Art of Longevity, Fin Greenhall explained the ideas behind Fink's new project IIUII : an acoustic retrospective of some of the band's (and fans) favourite, biggest songs.  “I’m a better singer now than I was in 2005, so I feel I can do a better job of singing these songs. As a band we are much more loose, grounded and subtle than we used to be - comfortable with who we are”. As su...

Is it possible to make your best record 33 years into a career? That’s what may just have happened with Canadian legends Barenaked Ladies and their 2021 release Detour De Force. The album covers most of BNL’s styles (i.e. a long list of genres) and is a masterclass in songwriting. It starts out with three BNL bangers, before settling into something more reflective, but typically varied and never b...

On the Art of Longevity Series II, Episode One, KT Tunstall tells me that albums can feel like a ‘flash in the pan’ despite all the work that goes into them. But albums like Wax (her latest, from 2018) will stick around in the ears for a long time to come. KT Tunstall was the classic ‘overnight success’ i.e. ten years in the making, having busked her way around the St Andrews and Fife scenes since...

The Coral is a band revered on the music scene - a real artist’s band. They are very accomplished musicians who first got together at school in the small Wirral town of Hoylake. The band members bonded over their many music icons, from The Beatles and the Small Faces to Acker Bilk and Del Shannon. Listening to a record by the Coral is a dizzying fairground tour of Liverpool’s music hall pop herita...

Music critics have tried to classify the music made by North East England’s Maximo Park for the past two decades, eventually converging on the term ‘art pop’. Yet Paul Smith, the band’s singer and main co-songwriter (with guitarist Duncan Lloyd) describes their music thus as: “Odd but still pop music. Weird but anthemic. Music with a literary influence but also immediate - in some ways primitive -...

When you’ve been getting away with it as a seven piece band for nearly four decades, with 22 albums behind you - something’s got to give when it comes to longevity. Especially when, in the case of James and Tim Booth, you’re on yet another roll. The band has made another vital album (All The Colours of You) despite the backdrop of a global pandemic and, in Booth’s case, an unsettling period on the...

Success came relatively quickly to Gary Numan, when his single ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ rose to the top of the UK charts in May 1979. Without a chorus and clocking in at nearly five and a half minutes, it was an unlikely a hit record as you could imagine.  Its parent album, ‘ Replicas ’, released the month before, went to number one in the album charts, as did its successor, ‘ The Pleasure Princi...

There’s no such thing as a critical review for any of Laura Veirs ' 11 albums. But how does Laura measure her own success? The answer is, she doesn’t stop to think about it, much. Instead, as one project gets done, she’s into the next. A prolific songwriter and increasingly accomplished musician, Laura is constantly moving forward with all the restless energy of a fast flowing river.  Perhaps...

Nile Rodgers has seen and done it all. He has collaborated with the world’s top music stars including Madonna, David Bowie and Duran Duran and Daft Punk. The Chic Organisation created by Nile and music partner Bernard Edwards created a string of monster pop hits between 1977 and 1983, when they wrote and produced eight Chic albums, two for Sister Sledge, along with one each for Diana Ross, Debbie...

In the Art of Longevity, a new podcast from The Song Sommelier, we take a whistle stop tour of a classic band or artist’s career, but we break a few of usual ‘media interview’ rules (well, we break all of them). Ultimately we reflect on learnings, wisdom, battle scars and wounds and ask “what really defines success”. It’s a question many fans and fellow musicians and all aspiring musicians want to...

Dylan Jones, long time editor of GQ, writer and father, picks out his favourite New Romantic tracks as part of his “Sweet Dreams Festival” fantasy setlist.  Dylan Jones has been Editor of the UK fashion and lifestyle magazine GQ since 1999. Alongside that he has become an established author and journalist of culture and politics. Since Jones joined GQ, the magazine has won numerous awards. Dylan h...

What more can be said about U2 as a live entity? Well, maybe look at it from a personal perspective - in this case, U2’s performances’ impact on the life & times of Paul Smernicki, music manager (Hyyts, Swim School, Magnum House) and long-time label executive. And at one fleeting moment, a potential addition to U2’s management team.  Starting with Zoo Station from Achtung Baby, the opening tri...

In our first podcast - yep that’s right - we’ve done a podcast (well everyone else has, so why not us!) lifelong Dylan fan, and long term TSS collaborator, David Freer, guides us through some of Dylan’s mystery, while adding something of his own.  Support the show Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/