After You're Gorgeous, Stephen Jones (aka Babybird) retreated from the limelight. Now he's back, he tells Tony Clayton-Lea.
Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but when someone effectively disappears from view you're never really sure whether they will return. Such was the case with Stephen Jones (aka Babybird), who has suddenly decided to come back in from the cold.
Of course, Jones hasn't really been away. It's just that some people assume former big-time pop stars are dead if they're not propping up the charts or peering out of the pages of Heat/OK/Now. Isn't that right, Mr Babybird?
"Absolutely. We had the moment 10 years ago, when we had a big success with You're Gorgeous and the record company wanted to repeat that, and I didn't really want to. I just wanted to work the way I'd done before, when I was quietly releasing EPs, but it didn't work out that way. When there's too much pressure for you to write a certain type of music, that's a problem. Having a break for so many years, I didn't come back to writing songs that I thought would be successful in monetary terms, but rather of wanting them to be as good as possible.
"It's tricky, because you ideally want your music to reach a lot of people, but there's a fine line between that and saying you want a number one hit. Everything's gone fame mad at the moment, and that's something I never wanted - I just wanted to be successful at what I worked at, which was songwriting."
From Sheffield (via Wales and New Zealand), the 44-year-old Jones had a defiantly DIY beginning; truly, he was the bedroom geek working in a vacuum of his own making. From the early 1990s he contented himself with obsessively writing and recording more than 400 songs on a lengthy series of four-track demos. These were then compacted and compiled across four self-released albums (I Was Born a Man, Bad Shave, Fatherhood and The Happiest Man Alive) between July 1995 and August 1996. The critics raved at such quality-ridden output, and before long Jones's songs (naive, simplistic über-melody pop coupled with quite knowing, sordid lyrics) came to the attention of major record labels.
There followed the major label debut, Ugly Beautiful (not as lo-fi and not as good as the DIY material, noted the critics), and humungous hit single You're Gorgeous (not as pretty a pop song as the title would have you think). Which is where the problems started.
"The major record labels promise you longevity," says Jones, "but after that single hit everyone between the eyes, they wanted to release a follow-up song that would repeat the success. Which in my case didn't really happen, because I'd always written different kinds of songs. I don't write to formula."
You're Gorgeous, he says, is the one Babybird song everyone always talks about. He isn't complaining. Its success and its radio plays around the world, its part in certain advertising campaigns, means that he doesn't have to worry unduly about paying the bills. But the success of the song, for better and for a while for worse, changed Jones's life. Following a few more albums and their accompanying promotional tours, he became, quite literally, talked out. So he decided to step away from the centre of attention and fall back into the shadows from whence he had arrived.
SOON AFTER, BOOKS and soundtrack work took the place of pop music; the latter (notwithstanding writing the theme tune for chef Gordon Ramsay's show, The F-Word) afforded a level of anonymity he had craved from the first time some oik shouted out 'Oi, Babybird, you're bloody gorgeous' at him. Writing fiction (2000's The Bad Book and 2003's Henry and Ida Swap Teeth) gave him a chance to explore and expand on far darker themes than his songs would allow.
"You can express yourself a lot better through books, right to the extreme. I like to write about a lot of things in a song, but occasionally you have to tone it down, whereas in books you can go as far as you can."
Yet the call of the wild nature of edgy pop refused to stop, and so we have, after eight years of silence (1998's There's Something Going On barely scraped into the UK Top 30), a new album. Between My Ears There's Nothing But Music is a major creative success that bubbles over with cracking tunes and, lyrically, microscopic attention to detail.
"I like the gritty, dirty edge of things," Jones says. "Pop music is all about being conservative, and the lyrics rarely move away from losing your boyfriend. I wanted to make a direct anti-comment on that kind of scenario. I think You're Gorgeous has a good twist - a lot of people bought it because of the title, for their loved ones, but I wouldn't want the song sung to me."
Jones is now at a point in his career and life where he has discovered that major success isn't necessarily an essential ingredient of what makes life worth living. But isn't having a Top 10 hit - let alone a number one smasheroonie - supposed to be fab? Not according to Jones. It is, he says with an air of one who knows to his personal cost, somewhat overrated.
"If I were to have a hit song now, which I don't think will happen, I would be able to look at it differently. The success of You're Gorgeous happened so quickly I couldn't catch my breath; I was writing at home, a band was put together around me, and we re-recorded a number of songs to put on Ugly Beautiful. If it happened again, I know I'd enjoy it in a different way, a better way.
"I mean, I lived in Manchester at the time, and every day I went out I'd get people shouting out 'you're gorgeous' at me. Every day, several times a day! That kind of takes away the enjoyment. It was nice in some ways, and occasionally quite funny but, really, I couldn't go anywhere. In fact, it became unbearable."
Which is, we reckon, where we came in.
Between My Ears There's Nothing But Music is on Chrysalis/Pinnacle