Word In Your Ear

A milky tea, a jam sponge and this week’s news served on a tin tray with a steam train painted on it points our very English conversation towards the following …

… what connects the Monkees and a British Prime Minister?

… when are you too old for Indie?

… A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi? A Bar on The Piccolo Marina? Noel Coward or Neil Tennant?

… the Move, the Streets, the Kinks, ELO, Ian Dury, Anthony Newley, the Jam, Herman’s Hermits, Cat Stevens, Arctic Monkeys and other acts with a sense of Englishness

… Girl in the Thunderbolt Suit: when Marc Bolan went science fiction

… how London Zoo could have put the tin lid on the Beatles

… the daft story of Randy Scouse Git

… how Michael Caine cooked up the name Harry Palmer

... the most English pronunciation of a songword ever

… Black Crowes, Byrds and the allure of misspelling

… Roxy, 10cc, the Hollies, Manfred Mann, Human League
and other original line-ups we want to reform

… plus Angine de Poitrine, Kaleidoscope rebooted by Jimmy Page and birthday guest Jonny Wren.

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Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following …

... the first song he ever wrote

… auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975

… does songwriting have rules?

… how Chris Lowe tamed his inner “musical snob”

… rap, Brecht-Weill, Betjeman, Noel Coward, My Fair Lady and the art of “speak-singing”

… the decades of lyrics stored in our brains

… the Songwriting Bootcamp that produced What Have I Done To Deserve This?

… the essence of melancholy (and the chord that expresses it)

… “the sound of words is often more important than the sense”

… whether Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature

… West End Girls and whether to rap in English or American

… the writing of King's Cross, Cricket Wife, Odd Man Out and I Made My Excuses And Left

… “Robert Maxwell stole my pension!”

… and the “geology of my life” in diaries that one day might make a memoir.

Order ‘One Hundred Lyrics And a Poem’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571397891-one-hundred-lyrics-and-a-poem/

And ‘Pet Shop Boys: Volume’ here: https://shop.petshopboys.co.uk/gb/pet-shop-boys-volume/9780500027479.html

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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At the age of four, Steve Nieve drew pictures of piano keys and pretended to play them. He joined Elvis Costello & the Attractions when he was 19, the start of a life that involves having to find a flight case for a Steinway Grand. He talks to us here from his Paris apartment about Stiff package tours, recording remotely, his upcoming shows with the French singer Kessada and …

… being a teenager as fond of Stravinsky as Alice Cooper and the Carpenters

… playing in a mid-‘70s Top Forty covers band

… the ad for a “rockin’ pop combo” that changed his life

… touring with Costello and Ian Dury and how he got his stage name

… playing the Thunderbirds theme as a chat show bandleader on the Last Resort

… a giant Klavins piano “that has stairs leading up the seat”

… working on Morrissey’s Kill Uncle

… the 40,000 audience that watched his online Lockdown shows

… unreliable stage pianos and the story of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert.

Tickets here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/westhampsteadartsclub/2059256

The “About Love” album: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/about-love/1834791707

Steve’s new album: https://stevenieve.hearnow.com/piano-night-2026

Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveprofessornieve/

Kessada’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkessada/

www.stevenieve.com
www.kessada.com

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Watering the scented hedgerows of news to see if any green shoots appear. And they do, in the form of …

… the most effective protest song ever written

… the commendable box-ticking life of Country Joe McDonald

… the Timothée Chalamet ding-dong: is it still safe to voice an opinion?

… Harry Styles’ 67 dates in just 7 locations: how ‘Destination gigs’ throttle the competition

… was Wings a worse name than the Beatles? And McCartney as a shepherd: discuss

… what makes a song work as a football chant?

... the most unusual things we've heard sung by crowds

…. Stormfront, Gothic Serpent, Midnight Hammer, Rolling Thunder … album title or US military campaign?

… why we love improv theatre

… when Champion Jack Dupree lived in Halifax and Kid Creole in Rotherham

… plus barrelhouse blues piano, ‘inflicting’ music on people and birthday guest Avi Chaudhuri & rock music as community singing.

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Pointing the scanner of inquiry at the baggage carousel of news to see what gets the lights flashing, which this week includes …

… we know what’s making Morrissey miserable

… bands that can get a whole stadium singing

… the rock star who misses the music press most

… “a Likely Lads for the rave generation”, anyone?

… the speed at which news now travels

… Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson, Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, Steve Martin and Martin Short … in praise of inseparable old pals!

… Anfield Rap (Red Machine in Full Effect)! Lift it High (All About Belief)! Whatever happened to football singles?

… I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, Trouble Over Bridgewater: albums you bought because you liked the title

… “English radio stations won’t play new music!” Really?

Plus birthday guest Adrian Ainsworth on the Sensual World, Us, Monster, the Rhythm of the Saints and other great experimental sequels to big-selling albums.

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.