After Matt Johnson released “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming” in 2017, the first song with The The in 16 years, it shifted everything for him after filling nearly 20 years composing soundtracks, which was documented in the 2017 film The Inertia Variations. Inspired by British poet John Tottenham’s 2005 book of the same name, the Johanna St. Michaels-directed film reveals the self-doubt, disenchantment, and grief that kept Johnson from writing.
By the end of the film, he’s seen performing “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” a tribute to his older brother Andy, who illustrated the cover of several The The albums and died in 2016 from brain cancer. The song was the spark that led Johnson to The The’s first album in nearly 25 years, Ensoulment.
A collection of songs poking at the political on “Kissing The Ring Of POTUS,” love and its consummation with “I Want to Wake Up with You”, and mortality through “Life After Life” and “Where Do We Go When We Die,” the latter written for Johnson’s late father, Ensoulment also explores the impediments of an AI-led life, the strange world of online dating, and other hallucinations and truancies.
“I tried to make this a hopeful, warm-sounding album, and there’s a lot of hope and positivity,” Johnson told American Songwriter. “There’s a great quote that I’ve often used, which Nina Simone said about all artists having a duty to reflect their time (“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”) I’m just trying, in a way, to sort of capture the zeitgeist. On the one hand, in the background of some songs, there’s the rise of AI that’s going to become more prevalent and the increasing censorship. So there’s the political and the personal that are all bundled up.”
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Johnson chatted with American Songwriter about his musical journey since The The’s 1983 debut Soul Mining and hit “This is the Day,” making music for the movies, writing in “bizarre times,” and the best advice Tom Waits once gave him about songwriting.
[RELATED: How Matt Johnson Found His Way Back to The The and the Band’s First Album in 24 Years]
American Songwriter: You’ve said that you often collect ideas and experiences for songs. Has this always been how you piece songs together?
Matt Johnson: There could be a lyrical idea I had a week ago that connects with a lyric that I had 10 years ago, but I hadn’t published yet, and so there’s a large pool of material that I’m always adding to. Many years ago on the Infected project (The The’s 1986 album), I was going to work with Tom Waits on it, funny enough, and I met up with him in New York. We were going to work together, and it didn’t work out in the end, but he gave me some very good advice. We were having a drink, and he [Waits] reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little notebook and said, “This is your butterfly net. As soon as you get an idea or hear a lyric, you got to write it down.” He said, “If you don’t commit it to paper and write it down, somehow it will fly away.” That advice always stuck with me, and I always carried little notepads.
Now, of course, the iPhone is easier, but that advice stuck with me, because, as many creative people know, whether it’s with dreams or thoughts, something you overhear or read, if it resonates with you, you have to write it down. If you think of the amount of information we’re all exposed to each day, there’s only a tiny percentage that resonates and makes you prick up your ears and think, “Oh, that’s interesting,” so as a songwriter, I’m always on the lookout for things, internally or externally. I might have an interesting thought, and jot that down, or overhear something, which means I might have to stop in the street and get out my notepad or phone and jot it down. It’s really important to get into the habit of doing that and building up that archive of interesting ideas. When you look back over time, some of them do stand the test of time.
AS: You’ve see-sawed between music and film throughout your career. Is there a side you prefer?
MJ: I like them both. I’ve just finished a new soundtrack for my brother’s (Gerard Johnson) new film Odyssey so I’ve just come out of the studio doing that. It’s a different experience because it’s very collaborative. I enjoy working with my brother because we’ve got very similar aesthetics and tastes in things, and it’s an easy process. Because there are no lyrics involved, there’s more freedom in some ways. On the other hand, you’re restricted by the images, and it’s quite incredible how the piece of music changes the atmosphere.
You can make something comedic or tragic or melancholic or lighthearted, just by changing the music, and it gives me a chance to experiment with more instrumental pieces. But I love writing lyrics, and I love singing. I like playing with a band as well, so I wouldn’t choose one over the other moment. I’m lucky enough to be able to do all of them. You can cross-pollinate those ideas that I take to the soundtrack world what I’ve been doing within the band and vice versa. There are techniques I’ve used on the soundtracks that I’m now bringing over to the other side.
[RELATED: The 1983 The The Hit “This Is the Day” Became a Reality for Matt Johnson 40 Years Later]
AS: There was a long break from The The since the band’s sixth album NakedSelf (2000). How did it feel going back?
MJ: Well, I had the benefit of having 25 years off. I think I’ll be going, God willing, until I’m 95 or something, so there’s plenty more inside. And that was a good period of time. I was very busy outside of music, so it wasn’t like I was sitting around, staring into space, but at the same time I wasn’t writing any new lyrics, so I still feel very inspired from within and out. There are endless things to write about and create, and only a minority of my songs are political. I get labeled as being a political songwriter, but I’m not really. I write about politics, but I also write about love and life and loss, just being alive is the main subject matter, because there’s so much richness surrounding us to write about.
AS: You did manage to slip some politics onto Ensoulment with “Kissing The Ring Of POTUS.”
MJ: Yes, I was pleased with that one (laughs), but you feel that you’re just preaching to the converted, I suppose. It was one thing in the ’60s for someone like Bob Dylan and John Lennon, when this particular form of expression, this popular music, was so powerful that you felt you could change things. But nowadays, music has generally been absorbed back into the mainstream, and I don’t think it can change much. I don’t know if you can change minds, or just reinforce what people feel already.
I still feel compelled to make a commentary on certain things, but I’m certainly not kidding myself that I could change things. You just want to reach people and communicate. And we’re all together living through these bizarre times, so it’s nice to feel the kindred spirits around you know that feel the same, I suppose.
Photo: Courtesy of SRO PR
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