5. The The
Listen to the words on Soul Mining, they are amazing. I’m gonna surprise you here. The lyrics in the music isn’t such a big thing for me. I mean I love the Cocteau Twins, and I often can’t hear a bleeding word she’s singing! And, although I love poetry and reading I see the words often just as an extra instrument. So for the words to bring something extra special to a record they need to be stunning to catch me. That album, Soul Mining, it really hit home at that precise moment, it captured what the country was going through at the time. And ‘Heartland’ from the next album is very similar. Both albums have some banging tunes. I think I’d say the track ‘This Is The Day’ is my favourite, because it’s one of the few songs I know that can lift you, or you can listen to when you’re really down and you want to just wallow in it all. I used to play that song on my headphones just before I went to play a game of football. That changed throughout the years, obviously with a nineteen year career it’s going to change. But two songs, more than any other ones in the entirety of my career, have stayed with me. One is ‘Ceremony’, by New Order and the other is ‘This Is The Day’.
It also really reminds me of my time in London. The football team was fine, a bunch of great guys, and I became good friends with Peelie and a lot of really diverse people in the arts. Maybe that album came along just at the right time. For me, music has to evoke the time correctly. If I’d have heard that album maybe four years before it might not have made such an impact. The songs I’ve picked throughout are the ones that have stuck. I would urge anyone to listen to ‘Heartland’ and you’d think it was written yesterday afternoon. Lines like, “the heart has been cut from the NHS” and you think, erm, what year was this written?
