THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES
PAUL WELLER 66 POLYDOR
Noel, Bobby, Suggs and more help out on the Modfather’s collab-happy birthday LP. By John Lewis
NICOLENODLAND
PAUL WELLER is a composer who has always tended to write alone. With The Jam he recorded around 140 songs, all of which – apart from a few covers and a handful of Bruce Foxton originals – were written solely by him. His years with the Style Council might have been full of interesting collaborations and guest vocalists, but nearly all of the 100-plus songs they recorded – some Mick Talbot instrumentals aside – are credited to P Weller, as were his first decade and a half of solo albums.
He once viewed co-writing with a fair degree of suspicion. Talking to Uncut a while ago about his unlikely but rather good 2007 collaborations with Blur’s Graham Coxon – “Black River”, “This Old Town” and “Each New Morning” – Weller said he always wanted to avoid the cliché of “two blokes in a rehearsal room, slogging it out on acoustic guitars”. His first attempts at composing with Coxon involved working remotely, physically mailing rough demos to each other, for the other person to then adapt and send back. It’s an approach that worked well, and one that he’s since started repeating with others.