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Uniquely honest conversations with famous and renowned musicians. We talk about how these artists have navigated the mangle of the music industry to keep on making great music and winning new fans after decades of highs and lows. We dive into past, present and future and discuss business, fandom, creation and collaboration. What defines success in today's music business? From the artist's point of view.
The Guardian: “Making a hit record is tough, but maintaining success is another skill entirely. Music industry executive Keith Jopling explores how bands have kept the creative flame alive in this incisive series”.
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1“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.” Those words were spoken at one time by David Bowie, and thus are gospel to us here on The Art of Longevity podcast. Fortunately, some bands still live by that same philosophy. For evidence, we revisit the world of Suede. Suede has refused to become boring. Somehow, this band of 40 years have gone the other way - more exciting and visceral than ever. Suede are not hanging about to become their own echo! Albums li...
Now well over a decade in the music industry, Tom Odell is motoring through a successful second phase as an independent artist. His recent albums have leaned into more introspective, personal material that has resonated so much that he now attracts bigger audiences to bigger shows (an arena tour is forthcoming), and continues to grow a very large base of listeners on the streaming platforms. Indeed, he sits comfortably (and ironically) within Spotify’s elite of Top 200 streaming artists...
Singer-songwriter Amy MacDonald has never been one to chase trends - an impressive show of resistance for an artist whose music journey began with teenage stardom (the streaming monster hit “This Is The Life” was all over the radio when she was just 19). Macdonald could be forgiven for trying to stay in the spotlight, but she was never that bothered about industry fuss in the first place, protected as she is by a finely tuned bullshit detector, a birthright for anyone born in the vicinity of ...
In the intervening four years since Olly Knights first joined me, the band has been on something of a creative roll; two fine albums, a successful acoustic tour and something of a collective raising of the game. To my mind, this is how established bands of longevity should operate; to hell with the mainstream and gatekeepers, just do the very best work you can and keep those fans happy. The new Turin Brakes album Spacehopper saw the band going back to the start - recording the album at ...
Estelle is old school. With a modern twist yes, but nonetheless, if this most eclectic of artists leans in any particular direction it is towards ‘classic’. She even says it in one her own songs; "I'm not of-the-moment. I am a classic, yeah, I live at the MoMA” (The Life, opening track of her 2012 album All of Me). She is quite the proverbial eclectic artist - edgy but not (un)necessarily shocking, traditional but modern enough to make her point in the era of precision-tool song production, a...
During our live interview with Skye Edwards and Ross Godfrey of Morcheeba, I found myself at one stage scrolling through my notes to find a description of the band’s sound I’d queried using Chat GPT. I couldn’t find it at the time but here is what it said: “Morcheeba’s signature rich, mellow music became the soundtrack of the suburban homes and chillout rooms of the late 90s and early 00s”. That’s a composite of much that has been written about the band over some 30 years, and it doesn’t real...
Light, fire, water, fruit, and worms; “just the basics”, are Matt Berninger’s recurring themes, and these emerge again on his second solo album Get Sunk. One of life’s sponges, Berninger is constantly observing and recording the world around him - on paper scraps, whiteboards, garageband files, notes-to-self via text messages and even on baseballs. The sketches of songs ideas, lyrics and poems are transcribed from his brain to his fingertips, ready to go when the songwriting process gets unde...
Valerie June’s journey to what we might call ‘cult stardom’ hasn’t been easy. “I was cleaning houses while playing bars & clubs at night. And I had a vision that I would not make it - my music wouldn't reach its audience through regular means - it would reach its audience through musicians. My friends would help me. I’m a musician’s musician”. Working through a talented community of musicians that has included Booker T Jones, Brandi Carlile and none other than Mavis Staples, e...
With the album’s reduced commercial clout and declining role in music consumption, a dilemma crops up for all long-established bands involved in the endeavour of making a new LP record. Put simply, why bother? Why toil for four years on a body of work that distils 100 song ideas into ten tracks, spending a fortune in the process, only to see it flash across the charts and then evaporate into the mesh of 100 million songs? It’s an existential question for Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue, who told me...
Great bands and great records shouldn't come down to a competition, but by way of bringing it to your attention, Tindersticks’ Soft Tissue was my choice of 5th best album of 2024. I’m touched that Stuart Staples seems genuinely pleased to be on the list. Alexi Petridis’ review of that record in the Guardian was so good I read it a few times. “If the overall message seems to be about noticing beauty in small things as a bulwark against the ghastliness of 21st-century life”. That ca...
Doves have yet to have a big 'moment', but in the music business of 2025, those moments no longer even exist. Instead, bands of ‘modest success’ must crack on, do their best work, put it out in the world and hope people take some notice. If, as a result, they can reconnect with fans, get out on the road, and make another record, then that is what counts as success. Carrying on regardless. But, Doves have also had success by any hard industry measure. Hit singles (two UK top 10), sold out tour...
If the route to longevity is to be bendable into the music industry’s rules for success, The Lumineers really shouldn’t be here at all. It makes no sense. Their stripped back, rootsy ‘Americana’ (if that’s what we can call it) took hold for reasons not usually listed in the music industry rulebook. Instead, their unlikely ascendancy into the realms of being a major league band, by any measure, has happened through the real route to success: trial and error, hard graft, writing songs from the ...
This episode is brought to you in collaboration with War Child. This is a special episode of The Art of Longevity celebrating vinyl and the ongoing importance of vinyl and the album form to artists and to music fans. In this short audio documentary you’ll hear some thoughts and stories from renowned musicians like Ben Folds, Gaz Coombes, Interpol, Laura Veirs, Alela Diane, Crowded House, Eels, Ron Sexsmith, Tindersticks, Feeder, Goo Goo Dolls, John Grant and Brett Anderson of Sued...
There are always some central pillars to a great party playlist - songs that just work. One of those is the Joan As Police Woman song Holy City. The song is always an instant hit at parties, guaranteed to elicit excitable inquiries as to “who is this?”. That instant reaction. The song is a #1 hit in my family - one of those multi-generational family life tracks. But if Holy City is instantly likeable, with a great beat and a strong poppy hook, it’s somewhat uncharacteristic of Joan’s music,...
Of all the bands to grace our company on The Art of Longevity, Keane have ridden the music industry rollercoaster through all the stations of the cross: struggle, success, excess, disintegration and if you’re lucky - enlightenment. Tim Rice-Oxley doesn't hesitate for a moment: “Yeah, absolutely. Our struggle was quite long and our disintegration was quite quick, although we clung on effectively for quite a while. I feel like now we are in a more positive and exciting place than the day befor...
What happens when you are a cult band (indeed when Pitchfork refers to you as “the ultimate cult band”) and you make the most accessible, most ‘mainstream’ album of your career? It’s a relevant question for many bands these days, because emerging from cult status to the mainstream (what’s left of it) is a very valid path to longevity and success. Look at Nick Cave for example. He’s done alright. But I can’t think of a better example right now, than Los Campesinos! With All Hell, they hav...
Artists have a duty to claim that their most recent project is the best work they have ever done. But what if it’s true? I’m so taken with David Gray’s new album Dear Life (released January 2025) - and so too is David of course - that it seemed churlish to dwell too much on his earlier career success, no matter just how definitive that was. “I’m always all in with the new stuff. If I wasn’t I would just retire. It’s always a moment of total commitment. I like the danger of writing and recor...
In this day & age of abundance, you can easily forget what’s precious - like your favourite bands. If you are anything like me the question “what’s your favourite band” now has an official top 40. As in I have a rolling 40 favourite bands. Making a welcome return to the top 40 is Nada Surf, the ‘New York’ (now firmly remote) indie band that first hit my favourites list way back in 2005. I always remember how I discovered a band, in the case of Nada Surf it was on a Mojo or Uncut free “c...
In Mark Oliver Everett’s autobiography “Things The Grandchildren Should Know”, the author, otherwise known as E, the frontman and band leader of Eels, wrote of Bob Dylan’s self-proclaimed destiny as a musician: “I wish I had something like that, but I didn’t. At all. All I had was an aching sense of desperation. I didn’t have any idea what the hell I was doing and was only doing it out of not knowing what else to do”. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, E simply continued to keep on kee...
Marika Hackman's Big Sigh is everything a 4th album should be. Really good songs, good scheduling, sophisticated arrangements (brass and strings accompany many tracks). The album has variety - from the mysterious instrumental interludes of The Ground and The Lonely House (opening sides A and B of my/your bottle green vinyl copy) to stand out singles (Slime, No Caffeine) to epic album tracks (Hanging, The Yellow Mile). It has an impressive musicality and most of all, it has real depth. A truly...
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