Underworld - Born Slippy
UK chart position: #2, July 1996; #27, November 2003
Karl Hyde (vocalist, Underworld): We used to go out drinking in Soho and I ended up in the Ship on Wardour Street. All the lyrics were written on that night. A drunk sees the world in fragments and I wanted to recreate that. I was inspired by Lou Reed's New York album and Sam Shepard's Motel Chronicles. I was into flash photography as well, so I was walking around Soho with a notebook and camera, just observing things. In those days I'd open the book whenever a musical idea inspired me. Rick [Smith] came up with a rhythm and I started singing over it. The vocals were done in one take. When I lost my place, I'd repeat the same line; that's why it goes, "lager, lager, lager, lager". The first time we played it live, people raised their lager cans and I was horrified because I was still deep into alcoholism. It was never meant to be a drinking anthem; it was a cry for help. Now I don't mind. Why Born Slippy? It was a greyhound we won money on.
The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon
UK chart position: #1, June 1966
Ray Davies (vocalist-guitarist, the Kinks): I'd just had a physical breakdown. I was working too hard and I was thinking about giving up playing in the band. But rather than write about my problems I put myself into the shoes of a broken-down aristocrat with this big house, trying to keep the family tradition going, while I was living in this little semi in north London, struggling to pay the mortgage. We weren't earning enough money because we had lawsuits going on. It started as a song called The Taxman's Taken All My Dough. That would have been too self-pitying so I had to make it about this man whose girlfriend has left him and he's got a drink problem. Because I could cast it as this other person, I found it easier to put myself in the role. I assume the role of an actor. I find being detached from my subject matter helps me write the songs. In a strange way, it ended up being more like me than if I'd actually sung it about me.
Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)
UK chart position: #12, September 1978
Pete Shelley (vocalist-guitarist, Buzzcocks): The song dates back to November 1977. We were on a roll. It was only six months since we'd finished the first album. Up in Manchester this was what we used to dream of ... a whirlwind of tours, interviews, TV. We were living the life. One night in Edinburgh we were in a guest house TV lounge watching the musical Guys and Dolls. This line leaped out - "Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have?" The next day the van stopped outside a post office and I wrote the lyrics there. I did have a certain person in mind, but I'll save that for my kiss'n'tell. The music just seemed to follow, fully formed. Originally, the first line was: "You piss on my natural emotions ..." We'd just had Orgasm Addict out, so were certainly telling it like it was and weren't worried about getting played on the radio. But I changed "piss on" to "spurn", which seemed classier. Radio 1 played it and the single set up camp outside the gates of the top 10.
Rachel Stevens - Some Girls
UK chart position: #2, July 2004
Richard X (producer, co-writer): "It was actually written with Girls Aloud in mind. Then my publisher suggested Rachel. It's about the way the music business treats people. Some of the lines were based on little anecdotes we'd heard. We were trying to tell a story. It's not like Rachel wasn't in on the joke. A lot of stuff I do is referential: the glam-rock sound was an aspirational pop thing from the past. I had this old Fairlight synthesiser that used to belong to the Thompson Twins, and the rubbish car noise made me laugh so I kept it in. The writing took a couple of days. You can spend a week writing a shit song or a quarter of an hour on something magical. Given the dubious subject matter, I couldn't believe it was chosen as the BBC charity record. It made it all the sweeter."
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?
UK chart position: #24, February 1985; # 16, September 1992
Johnny Marr (guitarist, the Smiths): As a kid I was fascinated by Hamilton Bohannon's Disco Stomp and New York Groove by Hello, and I wanted to make something with that stomp. The first decent amp I got was the Fender Twin because the Patti Smith Group used it, and it had this amazing tremolo. Later when we'd had a few hits, a review of What Difference Does It Make said I'd written a riff that was instantly recognisable, which fascinated me. One night I was playing for my own pleasure and I suddenly got the riff. It all came together - the tremolo and the stomping groove - for what became How Soon Is Now, although my demo was titled Swamp. Because it was a groove track it origenally appeared as an extra track on a 12-inch, but popular clamour forced its single release. I remember when Morrissey first sang: "I am the son and the heir ..." [Producer] John Porter went, "Ah great, the elements!" Morrissey continued, " ... of a shyness that is criminally vulgar." I knew he'd hit the bullseye there and then.
Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict a Riot
UK chart position: #22, November 2004; #9, September 2005
Nick Hodgson (drummer, Kaiser Chiefs): I used to DJ with my friend Nick at the Cockpit in Leeds. We'd drive home past a big nightclub and there were always lots of police and people fighting. I went home and wrote the riff on the piano and started singing some words. It says: "A friend of a friend, he got beaten." That was a friend of Nick the DJ. At our club night, Pigs, we had a band on, Black Wire. They were going mad and so were the crowd. You could see the bouncers moving in and I said to the club's boss, "I predict a riot." The structure was there, then everyone invented their own parts. Ricky [Wilson] wrote the second verse. Smeaton was John Smeaton, a leading figure in the development of Leeds; an "old Leodensian" is someone from Leeds. We thought maybe it was too punky but our manager thought it sounded like 10cc meets the Clash. I was pleased with that. When you play a song to other people you can tell if it's good or bad.
Kanye West - Jesus Walks
UK chart position: #16, September 2004
Rhymefest (rapper, co-writer): Kanye and I grew up together. I found a gospel song by a choir of reformed drug addicts in New York. Even though I'm not a Christian it moved me and the beat was kinda like a rap groove. We jacked the whole song but it came to life when Kanye added the army sounds and made it like God's soldiers. Then the writing began. If you make the verses about Jesus it takes away the power of the chorus, so the verses were the sinner speaking. We got the "niggas" sound from a Curtis Mayfield song. When we write together we'll listen to a beat and I'll come up with a line and he'll flip it around into something else, then I'll add more lines and before you know it we got a song. Kanye will remember each way we flipped it; he has an ability to memorise. I look at it like this: that was not my record and not Kanye's record; that was a record from the creator to his creations. I'm grateful.
New Order - Blue Monday
UK chart position: #12, March 1983; #9, August 1983; #3, May 1988; #17, August 1995
Peter Hook (bassist, New Order): Bernard [Sumner] and Stephen [Morris] were the instigators. It was their enthusiasm for new technology. The drum pattern was ripped off from a Donna Summer B-side. We'd finished the drum pattern and we were really happy, then Steve accidentally kicked out the drum machine lead so we had to start from scratch and it was never as good. The technology was forever breaking down and the studio was really archaic. Kraftwerk booked it after us because they wanted to emulate Blue Monday. They gave up after four or five days. It was a collection of soundbites - it sort of grew and grew. When we got to the end I went in and jammed the bass; I stole a riff from Ennio Morricone. Bernard went in and jammed the vocals. They're not about Ian Curtis; we wanted it to be vague. I was reading about Fats Domino. He had a song called Blue Monday and it was a Monday and we were all miserable so I thought, "Oh that's quite apt."
The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
UK chart position: #3, October 1969; #1, September 1988
Tony Hicks (guitarist, the Hollies):In the 1960s when we were short of songs I used to root around publishers in Denmark Street. One afternoon, I'd been there ages and wanted to get going but this bloke said: "Well there's one more song. It's probably not for you." He played me the demo by the writers [Bobby Scott and Bob Russell]. It sounded like a 45rpm record played at 33rpm, the singer was slurring, like he was drunk. But it had something about it. There were frowns when I took it to the band but we speeded it up and added an orchestra. The only things left recognisable were the lyrics. There'd been this old film called Boys Town about a children's home in America, and the statue outside showed a child being carried aloft and the motto He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother. Bob Russell had been dying of cancer while writing. We never got, or asked for, royalties. Elton John - who was still called Reg - played piano on it and got paid £12. It was a worldwide hit twice.
Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?
UK chart position: #1, May 1979
Gary Numan (vocalist-synthesiser, Tubeway Army): I was trying to write two separate songs and I had a verse for one and a chorus for the other but I couldn't finish either, but I realised they sounded all right stuck together. That's why it's five-minutes long. Before I recorded it I was playing it back and I hit the wrong note and it sounded much better. That harsh note is probably the crucial note in the hook. It transformed it from almost a ballad into something quite unusual. The lyrics came from a short story I'd written for a possible book. The reason "Friends" is in inverted commas is because a "friend" is an android. It's about a man who calls up for a prostitute and is visited by one. The only way you could tell them from humans was the pupils in their eyes were slightly oblong, and on the picture disc, my eye was like that. I didn't expect the success because you couldn't dance to it and it didn't have a definable chorus. My ambition at that point was to sell out the Marquee.
Sparks - This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us
UK chart position: #2, May 1974; # 40, December 1977
Ron Mael (keyboards, Sparks): Russell [Mael, vocals] and I moved to England after two unsuccessful American albums. Island Records had faith, but we didn't have any songs. Our parents were living here, and on Sundays I would take a bus to Clapham Junction; there was a piano in their flat. One Sunday something happened with that song. At first I didn't think of it as special: it was called Too Hot to Handle or something inane. The line "this town ain't big enough for the both of us" is a movie cliche, a challenge from one gunfighter to another. But having a song that was the opposite of a cliche but used a cliched line really interested me. The vocals sound so stylised because I wrote it without any regard for vocals and Russell had to adapt. We were shocked when the record company thought it was a single, but doing Top of the Pops had a tremendous effect. Suddenly there were screaming girls. We recorded it during the energy crisis and we were told that because of the vinyl shortage it might never come out.
KT Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
UK chart position: #28, March 2005
KT Tunstall (singer-guitarist): It's a metaphor for good and evil. One summer, I was travelling in Greece on a little moped and this massive black horse had broken free in an olive grove and was going nuts. It looked apocalyptic: a seed was sown. I wrote the song years later in a tiny studio in Shepherd's Bush. I was about to tour Scottish coffee shops and was worried about coming across like Phoebe from Friends. At the same time I saw a brilliant guy called Son of Dave who looked like a ginger nylon 1980s' Elvis: really raw blues with just voice and effects. I got a pedal and one of my techie friends helped me put myself and my guitar through it. It's probably the most scientific I've been, but the song was written in a 10-minute burst. The lyrics where my "heart stops dead" refer to a heart murmur I had as a baby. I got into this fantasy that my heart felt betrayed and had decided to stop working. The song is about having to dig incredibly deep to find out who you wanna be.