Rod Clements saw considerable chart success with folk-rockers Lindisfarne, penning their hit Meet Me On The Corner. He currently works as a solo artist, with his band, The Ghosts of Electricity, and in collaboration with other musical kindred spirits such as Bert Jansch, Michael Chapman, and Rachel Harrington. We trust you’ll enjoy the latest of Rod’s musings in which you'll find he’s NICELY OUT OF TUNE I watched and enjoyed the BBC series Secrets Of The Pop Song recently, though I found that - like a lot of other TV shows these days - it didn’t do exactly what it said on the tin. It was an interesting insight into how some people work in a specific area of the ‘pop industry’, but it wasn’t by any means the whole story, whatever the script may have wanted you to believe. For those who missed it, the series featured multi-million-selling songwriter Guy Chambers in his London studio, paired up with a different collaborator (Rufus Wainwright, Mark Ronson, The Noisettes) in each episode to produce a particular type of song (ballad, breakthrough single, anthem). They worked quickly, though mercifully we didn’t have Alan Titchmarsh bursting in to tell them they only had five minutes left and the record company’s car was just coming round the corner. Guy came across as a very nice chap who knew exactly what he was doing. Everybody got on well and there were moments of genuine inspiration, though lyrics seemed to take a back seat and were added fairly late in the proceedings, largely left to the singer to improvise. Not surprisingly, the result tended toward the generic. It all seemed a bit cart-before-the-horse to me, but what do I know? Guy was the one with the wall full of expensive guitars to which my eye kept straying. I can’t see any of the three finished tracks earning classic status, but at least they were songs in the sense that they had words and music and lasted for about three minutes, so the job was done and we all had the pleasure of watching some clever people doing what they’re good at. I took issue, however, with the script’s assertion that this was how popular music has always been made, apart from a brief aberration called The Beatles. The secret of the pop song, apparently, is that it comes off a production line. Motown, the Brill Building and Tin Pan Alley were all cited in evidence, conveniently overlooking the fact that those hit factories based their products on subject matter, lyrics and melody. The Beatles, it was implied, spawned a host of naïve imitators who filled the airwaves with self-indulgent dross until people got so fed up that they went back to buying music made by professionals like Guy Chambers. If there is a grain of truth in this, it’s hardly The Beatles’ fault. Nor is it that of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly or anybody else who had already been writing their own material for years previously and helped to shape the genre now known as ‘pop song’. Part of The Beatles’ impact was that their fresh, DIY approach made everything else look old-fashioned overnight. It was a quantum shift, like the advent of rock’n’roll or the coming of punk, when artistic authenticity is suddenly rewarded with massive popular success, leaving the professionals wondering what happened and trying to catch up. When there isn’t a major cultural upheaval going on (i.e. most of the time), the bulk of the soundtrack of our lives will always be provided by the production-line people, and good luck to them. But don’t let the media pretend that’s the best or the only way to do it. The hits created by The Beatles, Motown and the Brill Building were not just great grooves and tunes. They had proper lyrics about what we were and who we are, and the best of them will resonate forever. How they did that would definitely be a secret worth knowing.