Miles Hunt: A Songwriter's Tale

To cut a long story short, Malc awarded me the desired position and pretty soon I discovered that being the band’s frontman wasn’t entirely about showing off around the mic stand. No sir, the responsibility of writing the lyrics had also fallen my way and I considered the duty somewhat daunting, almost to the point of resenting the new role. I was left wondering whether leaving the comparable sanctity of the drum stool had indeed been a wise decision. But with repeated application, most often occurring as I traveled between Stourbridge and Birmingham on the number nine bus, I found that the sense of achievement garnered from these early toils was such as I had never before known. I had become, arguably by default, a songwriter… and I liked it.

I liked it so much that during the following eight years I managed to co-write and sing some seventeen Top 40 hits with Malc’s band, The Wonder Stuff. In my opinion, those songs were nowhere near the best that we wrote. Within the four albums that we released between 1988 and 1993 there are songs that I am far more proud of. It’s Yer Money I’m After, Baby may well have pricked the ears of Radio One producers, but to this day I am still utterly moved by the beauty of Sing The Absurd, to the point of doubting that it was indeed me that wrote it!

By 1994, I needed what can only be described as ‘time out’. Certainly the touring schedule had become tiring, as were the expectations of the band’s creative output even the constant company of my fellow band mates was beginning to leave me unfulfilled; but in hindsight, I was quite simply ‘outta gas, baby’, and that was a first. It’s not a pleasant feeling, wondering if that’s it. However, I truly believe that anyone who has chosen to follow their creative whims as a life pursuit has, at one time or another, experienced the blank canvas that will no longer accept the brush.

To this day, each time I’m in need of a new set of lyrics, I tend to work on the music first. I am usually convinced that the well has run dry, or whatever it is that wells have done when they no longer contain any water. Being over forty, as I can now proudly announce, there are certain subjects that I tend to avoid. The boy/girl, unrequited love motif now strikes me as an irrelevance. The new breed of writers have it covered in abundance and I suppose that’s as it always was and indeed should be. The idea of a man my age attempting catch the eye of the prettiest girl at the disco seems only to conjure up an image of utter creepiness.

Many times I have been asked where it is that I draw my lyrical inspiration from and my oft’-repeated response is ‘from my mind’. What I mean to say is that I write about the things that I think about on a daily basis. Here’s an example of something I’m toying with presently:

What is the accepted thinking on the subject of pissing in the shower?
a) Only in one’s own shower.
b) Only in someone else’s shower, or
c) Never at all, no matter whose shower you happen to be standing in.

I’m curious, that’s all. I accept that the song I end up writing that considers the matter might not be up there with All You Need Is Love when it comes to an everyman lyric, but it will be a song from the heart. That is to say that I’ll really mean what I’m singing about, as opposed to trying to pass off some nonsensical fluff concerning my soul or spirit that simply carries the tune. That’s really the crux of the matter.

I believe a singer should sing about what he, or she, truly spends their time contemplating and better still, should absolutely tell it like it is, as he, or she, sees it. My tutors have been, amongst others, Bob Dylan, Johnny Rotten, Morrissey and Charles Bukowski and I’ve tended to believe every word they’ve uttered simply because they sounded like they believed what they were talking about; and furthermore, like they needed to say it. When I hear people say ‘I don’t really listen to lyrics,’ and I’ve heard that more times than I care to recount, they may as well have just informed me that they have set fire to the entire contents of my house. It pains me so.

Songwriting is a dignified pursuit and with it comes a great responsibility, if only to one’s self. There are an infinite number of subjects to cover and similarly an infinite number of ways to express them. I don’t consider any of the songs that I have written to have achieved greatness, but that is my goal and my motivation.

Writing Home or writing this now, practice may not have made perfect in my case, but I’ve had a hell of a good time trying.