Brett Anderson recalls making Suede's 'odd little pop record' Coming Up
Brett spoke to Absolute Radio's Danielle Perry
Suede frontman Brett Anderson was the very special guest on Danielle Perry’s Absolute Radio evening show last night to share his memories of making the band’s third studio album ‘Coming Up.’
Celebrating its 25th anniversary this September, ‘Coming Up’ saw Suede embrace a more pop-centric sound and it proved to be a huge commercial triumph for the band, peaking at Number 1 on the UK album chart and spawning a series of hit anthems including ‘Trash’, ‘Filmstar’, ‘Beautiful Ones’ and ‘Saturday Night.’
Sky Arts will also be shining the spotlight on ‘Coming Up’ as part of their Classic Albums documentary series at 9pm tonight (7th May), and Suede will embark on a newly expanded Coming Up Tour in November across the UK.
Reflecting on making the album a quarter of a century ago, Brett Anderson told Danielle Perry ‘Coming Up’ was very much of the time.
“It's a strange record,” Brett said. “It's a sort of an odd little pop record but it kind of summed up a little bit of a moment in 1996, which is nice and kind of what you do as a musician (and) that you hope to do as a writer.
“I'm kind of proud of the songwriting on it. It's good. It's quite sort of unpretentious the songwriting. There’s songs on it that don’t take (themselves) too seriously, which is kind of quite nice because I think sometimes stuff on the previous albums - on ‘Dog Man Star’ and stuff - there are elements to that record that took itself quite seriously. And ‘Coming Up’ doesn't.”
Brett continued: “I still think there's a charm to it. I think some of the lyrics are good. I'm very proud of the lyrics to ‘Trash’. I think that sometimes as a lyricist you just sort of find that right word, that right phrase, and it doesn't come very often, but when it does come it kind of drops in your lap. The phrase ‘we’re the litter on the breeze’ in that song really summed up something about Suede and our whole attitude to life. You occasionally get those moments and that was one of those moments as a writer.”
Casting his mind back to the recording sessions, Brett said: “I've got lots of memories of those times writing those songs. It was a really fun record to write because me and Richard (Oakes) wrote a lot of it very much in the same room together.
“Songs like ‘Filmstar.’ I remember kind of waking up one day with this little thing in my head (sings) ‘Filmstar, propping up the bar…’ It was just this little thing in my head, and it was really early in the morning and I remember calling Richard up and saying ‘I've got this thing, can I come round to your flat?!’ It was 8 in the morning and in those days we never used to get up at that time. For some reason I was up really early, and I woke him up and I sat him down and went ‘Filmstar, propping up the bar’. And he just sort of sat there and threaded this guitar thing and then we wrote the whole song.
“The whole song kind of came together incredibly quickly and that's quite unusual. I think lots of people assume that it's that easy because they've seen biopics about The Doors or something like that where they suddenly write ‘Light My Fire.’ It was never like that. It's always months and months of like poring over chords and changing words slightly. But this actually was really a very quick process.
“(It was) the same with ‘Beautiful Ones’ as well. That was kind of a fun thing to write. I remember Richard wrote the song, and I read this melody to it, and I just remember sitting there playing it with Richard and I had this tiny little studio in Ladbroke Grove and it was in my flat. It was a tiny box room that I’d build a studio inside and when you build a studio, you have to build another room inside a room, so it's quite a small room anyway. And then I kind of like built another room inside it so the walls were kind of six inches smaller, so there's three of us in this little rooms sweating writing ‘Beautiful Ones.’”
Originally set to take place in October 2020, Suede’s Coming Up UK tour is now scheduled for November 2021 and it features additional dates in Nottingham and Bristol. Tickets are on sale from Absolute Radio Tickets now.
See Suede at the following shows:
NOVEMBER 2021
Edinburgh Usher Hall – Wed 3rd
Nottingham Rock City – Fri 5th
Birmingham O2 Academy – Sat 6th
Bristol O2 Academy – Sun 7th
Leeds O2 Academy – Tue 9th
Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse – Wed 10th
London Alexandra Palace – Thu 11th