FEATURE:
Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)
IN THIS PHOTO: Paul Heaton/PHOTO CREDIT: Simon Fernandez
Paul Heaton: A Genius Songwriter Overlooked
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THIS is one of those random pieces…
IN THIS PHOTO: Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott - formerly, both were members of The Beautiful South - have recorded three albums together; a fourth, Manchester Calling, is slated for release this year
that is not related to anything happening in the music news or relevant, as such. I am peppering a few of-the-moment features and bits about artists to look out for this year. As my blog is about capturing the current and mixing that with musings, it is appropriate I give a nod to one of this country’s greatest songwriters: the sensational and always-brilliant Paul Heaton. I wrote a feature not too long ago that was about Paul Heaton as this songwriting architect and inspiration that people could learn from. As a member of The Housemartins, The Beautiful South and alongside Jacqui Abbott (a former Beautiful South vocalist who reunited with Heaton years after her departure), Heaton’s words have become anthems. Of course, like all top songwriters, there have been a few less-than-titanic songs, but one can rattle off a list of classics that proves Heaton is in a league of his own. I was sad when The Beautiful South called it a day back in 2007 because, to be fair, there is nobody around like them today. That unique combination of three lead vocalists – Paul Heaton, Dave Hemmingway and Briana Corrigan/Jacqui Abbott/Alison Wheeler – singing songs that are rich in the everyday and the extraordinary is something the music world has been lacking. There was an ordinariness to The Beautiful South’s songs that was easy to love. Rather than singing about abstract things or being too experimental, the band were about these relatable songs/sounds; Heaton’s lyrics could make you laugh and provoke a tear when they needed to.
Unbelievably Paul Heaton has never won an award for his songwriting or music. No Brits, no Ivor Novello, no Q Award. No nothing. #totp #totp89
— Complete Control PR (@pollybirkbeck) January 3, 2020
Although Heaton did some brilliant work with The Housemartins, it is the material he wrote for The Beautiful South that is my favourite. The tweet above caught my eye because, amazingly, Paul Heaton has not been truly recognised for his songwriting! Maybe he has won a few awards here and there but, when it comes to the big gongs and nods, there has been nothing. Maybe some critics feel The Beautiful South were a bit middle of the road or, as often is the way, Pop artists and big commercial artists win the big songwriting awards. Awards should go to those with the most talent and the most original so, considering that, why has Heaton been overlooked? The Beautiful South were a fantastic band whose songs were so rich and full of wonderful images and phrases. After the band split, Heaton formed the band, The Sound of Paul Heaton; he released his second solo album, The Cross Eyed Rambler, in 2008 and his third, Acid Country, in 2010. In 2014, Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott released What Have We Become?, and although Heaton was writing with his long-term collaborator Jonny Lexus and his bandmate Abbott, it is his brilliant and hugely memorable words that stay in the mind the longest.
This 2014 review of a Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott gig in London makes some great points regarding Heaton and his status:
“In his bomber jacket, librarian spectacles, crew cut and awkward grin, Paul Heaton could hardly look less like a pop star. Yet see past this unpromising exterior and it is difficult to dispute the fact he has been one of British pop's most routinely underrated figures of the last three decades.
Heaton recently returned with What Have We Become, a collaboration with Jacqui Abbott, his former co-vocalist in the Beautiful South. The album went top three in its week of release – behind only Coldplay and Michael Jackson, as he reminds us tonight with relish – and confirms that the spiky yet honey-voiced Abbott has always been his most effective musical foil.
If Heaton were a dramatist, he would surely be Mike Leigh. The songs from all stages of his lengthy career boast observational acumen, dry wit and a big heart. New track Costa del Sombre is a sensitively empathic portrait of a middle-aged woman on a package trip throwing herself into a Shirley Valentine-type holiday romance with dancefloor "steps she had been saving up since 1972".
Co-fronting their six-piece band, Abbott is vivacious and full-voiced on DIY, a sardonic country-tinged diatribe written from the perspective of a wife traded in for a younger model. When they plunge into the pop alchemy of the Beautiful South's back catalogue, as with the gorgeously melodic Rotterdam, you recall exactly why their 90s greatest hits collection went platinum five times over.
A 23-song set has virtually no filler, and they close with a sweetly harmonious revisit of the Housemartins' 1986 a cappella No 1, Caravan of Love. Paul Heaton would doubtless be horrified to be categorised as a national treasure. Sadly for him, he has no real say in the matter”.
Heaton is very normal and unassuming so, perhaps, judges and prize-givers sort of miss him out. I am out of ideas as to why Heaton’s songwriting has not been properly acknowledged and, regarding the tweet earlier in the article, Heaton himself was at a loss to explain why – and he is someone who, I am guessing, would welcome an Ivor Novello or big award. Maybe he would cringe at the notion of being a national treasure, yet Heaton is one of the greatest songwriters ever, in any genre. I heard a lot of The Housemartins when I was a child, but it was The Beautiful South’s debut single, Song for Whoever, from their 1989 album, Welcome to the Beautiful South, that really caught me. The idea – as the song explains – that the song’s anti-hero (Dave Hemmingway takes lead vocals and is this cynical and ruthless songwriter) is thankful to his other half for giving him ‘inspiration’ and making him lots of money without her knowing about it is inspired. Rather than Heaton writing lyrics about the usual stuff – relationships and dishonesty -, you hear a new angle and something very fresh. The band’s music was full of these unconventional twists, tales and nuggets that, again, makes me wonder why Heaton has not been acknowledged. Maybe there are other songwriters who have been missed out and not given proper respect. Heaton has been writing gems for decades and nobody has the same gift and imagination as him. With Heaton’s golden lines familiar to us all, it is baffling he has not been given a lifetime achievement award or something bigger. Let’s hope things change, because Heaton is still working and shows no sign of slowing down. I have ended this feature with a playlist of some career-spanning belters that prove…
WHAT a truly mighty lyricist Paul Heaton is.