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.

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.