Lloyd Cole - Writing, etc

Pulling together an album, hopefully

I’m sure the last thing you’d want to know, is the tracklisting for the next album. But I thought you might like to know that I’m at the ‘Post-Its On The Ideas Board’ stage. Working on a possible first song (ie album opener) today, gathering ideas from 6 or 7 notebooks, compiling them into one, as I did on the last couple of records. In that process I g…

August 4th 2026 Here’s the email I just sent to my record company friend. Paraphrased slightly. < I didn’t have any sales figures for you because they weren’t worth noting at the time. They weren’t terrible, but they were not an improvement on your figures and often they were down. It’s depressing to pay to close attention to this stuff. Which brings me to depressing… Sometimes, all of this stuff, is just too much for me, and I feel like retreating.

I thought it might be fun to compare. Whenever in think what compares to Bowie in the 70’s, I think Prince in the 80’s. I gave Bowie 28 songs, which could easily have been 40. I’m giving Prince 22, which could easily have been 30.

I’m sure some reading my thoughts on the albums will come away with an idea that my overall take is somewhat negative. This couldn’t be further from how I feel. There are so many great songs. Some artists only get to record a couple… I am a Huge Fan. I’m sure some will be horrified that I’ve not included their favourites, and there are, indeed, at least a dozen that I thought about including that are not here.

Just to be clear. When I say something I hear is terrible, and you hear the same thing and you think it’s fabulous. That’s OK. I can only report, and comment, on what I hear. I hear it from over here, at this moment. You hear it from over there, at that moment. How could we possibly expect to hear exactly the same thing? This is not an apology.

In the Summer of 1972, Bowie was instantly a huge star. Out of literally nowhere. Only musicians, rock critics and record company folk knew him, beyond a fluke 1969 hit single when he had curly hair and wore sweaters. And then he was everywhere. Starman was a hit in July, and he was already rescuing Mott The Hoople, giving them All The Young Dudes and ‘producing’ the album of the same name. The single was released a few weeks after Starman.

I’m including Scary Monsters, because it feels like the end of the series. Let’s Dance, and the rest of the 80’s, well, the less said about them, the better. Just like Starman on Top Of The Pops, nothing prepared us for Low. I have read some critics, at the time, heard side one as an extension of the Station To Station aesthetic… what on earth were they listening to?

A couple of weeks ago I was discussing Width Of A Circle with Mike Scott, on Twitter. He finds it superior to Station To Station (the song). I absolutely don’t, and at the same time I observed that I don’t think the album Station To Station is really an album, more just the 6 songs Bowie couldn’t remember recording in LA when his cocaine usage peaked and almost killed him. I think a lot about Bowie. I grew up with him.

26th May 2026 As some of you may have already heard, I decided to move thing around up here, AGAIN. And it’s been a little weird, to say nothing of the aches and pains from contorting myself to reach behind and under and over things things. What has been especially weird is the OCD aspect of things. It was my OCD which eventually demanded that I move the …