Count Five: Chris Difford's Favorite Song Crafters

Posted on Jul 11th 2007 5:00PM by Steve Baltin
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As the lyric-writing half of the creative duo in pop group supreme Squeeze, Chris Difford has established his credentials as an authority on songwriting. That's why many don't consider it sacrilege to mention his and collaborator Glenn Tilbrook's names among the great English songwriting pairs such as Lennon and McCartney. Little wonder that fans of superior song craftsmanship are making Squeeze's upcoming tour one of the most anticipated reunion treks of the year. Difford gave Spinner some insight into what he might be listening to on the road via his examples of what makes good music.

1. The Beatles: Some of the first music I ever heard was the Beatles, growing up. And when I listen to 'With The Beatles' it just reminds me of getting ready for school in the morning and putting that record on the record player while I was getting ready and just feeling totally at home.

2. XTC: When I first heard them, I thought they were very deliberately complicated. But now when I listen to it I realize I don't think they're being complicated; they were just being themselves, which is a very honest way of making music.

3. Jellyfish: I was in Los Angeles making the Squeeze album 'Play' and that's when I got introduced to their music. What I really enjoyed about it was it looks into English music in a way I've never seen an American band do. They'd obviously been inspired by English pop music like 10cc and Queen.

4. The Feeling: They do a really amazing job of taking musical history and modernizing it, really. They're sort of lovingly reconstructing great songs.

5. Feist: Any track from the Feist album would be a good introduction for people to appreciate really well-constructed pop music. If somebody arrived on a spaceship and they said to me they wanted to hear something that was recent that conjured up what was good about writing songs, I think I would play them the Feist album.