Tell you what – we love hearing from artists when things go right. We equally love hearing from artists when things go dreadfully wrong. A song that was a piece of piss, written in 20 minutes? Or years in the making and a bastard to write?
Whether it’s a song that came together through great duress or one that was smashed out in a short amount of time, we’re getting the lowdown from some of our favourites on the one song that they can’t stop thinking about – in their own words.
Off the back of announcing new single ‘Talk Hard‘ (out NOW on Big Scary Monsters), Jamie Lenman talks us through chords, pop clichés and taking on a new guitarist. Take it away, Jamie…
Words: Andy Hughes (Photo Credit: Jen Hingley)
“Talk Hard came to me in the way you always hope a song will come to you – floating down into my brain like a feather on the wind, more or less complete. The main guitar melody against those sad sounding chords – sad but sweet, just how I like it – just popped in there one night before I went to bed, so I quickly recorded it into Cubase (yes, Cubase) and sloped off upstairs.
I kept coming back to it every few months, playing through a rough bag of demos I have loaded up in Itunes, and I really dug it. Originally it was a lot slower, very melancholy, which is what drew me to it. I liked the way the major A# chord became a sad, wistful kind of D# just by removing the top finger – just one string changes the whole feel, and that’s the magic of the guitar for me.
I started bashing it out at rehearsals with my drummer Jack Wrench, which isn’t really his job – we were supposed to be rehearsing the King Of Clubs tracks for any number of online shows or festivals but he’s so supportive in every way and he loves music so it’s just easy and comfy to say “Hey, play this beat and sing this line so I can hear how it sounds.” Later on, in the run-up to recording, I had a few play-dates with some old friends from round my way – a feller called Sammy Lee from a band called Septembre, a dude called Iain Turner from a duo called ManDown and even Guy from Reuben – they all bundled in just to help me think it out and work out how it might sound with real musicians.
For a long time it was just those four chords over and over, stripped back to bass and then built up to full whack and down again. I was having so much fun with them I couldn’t see why it should ever depart, but as time went on I realised that we’d have to break off somewhere to build a bit of tension, so I consciously crowbarred in the three-chord ‘take a breath’ pre-chorus section. This isn’t how I usually write – I usually do whatever feels natural, even if that means just repeating one chord all the way through. But by the time that wistful little guitar scrap had developed into a big pop song I knew I wanted to give it more of a classic structure so I got a bit more scientific about it.
I agonised for weeks about whether or not it would sound artificial but thankfully as soon as I played it with other people it worked great, and now I’m not sure what I was even worried about. It even gave me somewhere to stick the ‘take the mic’ line, which seems to resonate with a lot of folks, so I’m happy about that.
I also knew (if I was gonna play this game) that there should probably be a middle eight somewhere, but really I didn’t want to spend too much time away from that chorus or take us into a whole new area. So what I ended up doing was that little walking bass-line (which just came naturally) and resolving in a cheeky key change – the ultimate pop cliché, and something which I’ve never done before. This is something that I’m often saying – for someone who’s spent their career trying to defy conventions and not write songs in a way that’s expected – to suddenly give in to all these tropes like ABABCB format or even a cheesy key-change feels thrillingly deviant. Guitar solos! Hand claps! Double-tracked vocals! For me, this is the forbidden fruit, and this is what makes the whole thing exciting.
As for the big ‘Two For Tea’ melody line that runs through the whole thing, for a long time I didn’t know if that was the vocals or a guitar or what. But since I’d played it on guitar, that’s how it stuck. Everyone knows a song where the main melody – the thing that everyone sings along to – isn’t actually a vocal line. Take The Final Countdown by Europe, with that brilliant tune on the synth, or George Michael’s Careless Whisper with that incredible sax line.
I’ve done it myself before, on Reuben’s Freddy Kreuger, which was a very earnest attempt to imitate my heroes Weezer, but it wasn’t until I had Talk Hard recorded and started playing it to other people that they began pointing out the phantom of ‘The Big W’ or the similarities to my other song. In contrast to the way I approached Freddy Kreuger, as a definite tribute, this time I wasn’t even aware I was doing it – so deeply had those influences sunk into me.
When it became clear that was gonna be a guitar line after all, I realised I’d have to get a second guitarist in the live band, which was a huge step change for me. For the last five years I’ve been playing with just myself and a drummer – first Dan Kav, then Chris Rouse from Hold Your Horse Is and Guy from Reuben, and more recently Jack (who was in Arcane Roots and In Dynamics, and currently plays for Salem and James And The Cold Gun).
Although I’d always enjoyed the challenge of paring my records down to two players and finding ways to represent as much of it live as possible, there’s no way either of us could either play or even trigger something like a main guitar part or a solo in a live situation. On top of this, Jack and I had become increasingly uneasy about the use of tracks as part of live performance by just about every band going, and even though our reliance on samples and triggers never got as far as playing the whole set to a click, we felt it would be good to abandon all synthetic/pre-recorded sounds, so getting a third member was a logical choice for many reasons.
I knew Jen from her band False Advertising – we’d played a bunch of shows with them and they’d turn up even when they weren’t on the bill so we were all good friends. I knew she could sing, I knew she could play and I knew she was cool, so getting her in the live outfit seemed like an obvious move. But I wouldn’t have even considered it without Talk Hard and that big melody line, so that really informed not only the live setup, but a lot of the new material as well. Hold onto your hats – there’s some serious shit coming your way!“
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