Once in my life I have to do this, and it may as well be now.
Plus a cover song for those in the expensive seats
‘Twas there I swear the sky became
A skylarks dream
Have you ever tried to explain the appeal of an artist you love to someone who hasn’t really heard of them? It usually involves a look of apparent interest on their face and an earnest intent to ‘check them out at some point’. Often in the end they don’t, or it’s not their thing. And that’s ok. But there’s that tiny chance you get to light someone else’s match and what a wonderful thing that is.
Over the next 2000 words and a cover song, I’m going to try to convince you that one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the history of music is a guy you’ve never heard of. He is not merely good, or great. He is definitively a master of the art, the equal of almost any other you could name. Not just as a matter of my personal preference, but as matter of objective fact.
I will lay out my case for why his music is imbued with the deepest possible magic, a great and underutilised gift to the world. If I have to burn through every last shred of credibility I have ever accrued in your eyes as some sort of authority on songwriting in service of this mission, then I will, and the cost be damned. In short, it is a desperate and quite possibly futile plea, such as you might hear from a street preacher, to convince you, an indifferent onlooker, that the grubby pavement beneath your feet is in fact, contrary to what your eyes are telling you, strewn with abundant and revelatory treasures, if only you could look at them from the right angle.
His name is Elton John. Nah only joking, it’s Freddie Stevenson.
When asked what my desert island discs would be, I’ve often joked that it would be impossible to narrow down all of the recorded works of human history to only eight Freddie Stevenson songs. Admittedly this is a glib and facetious response and probably not doing the project any favours. But choosing which to recommend is not just tricky, it is flawed by definition because they are all absolutely essential, and unbelievably perfect.
While I do go through phases without them, they unerringly then come back into my life again, as vivid as they ever were, or more so. For example, shuffling from room to room recently with a post-Bush Hall cold I found my wife listening to a Freddie song. As well as being swiftly reminded of why I married her, I was also immediately plunged back into their infinite expanse. I haven’t yet left, and why would I?
Freddie and I met playing songs around London in maybe 2008. Notably one night Lucy Rose booked me, him and Ed Sheeran to play to a small handful of people upstairs at Monkey Chews in Chalk Farm, where he wiped the floor with all of us. From the first time I heard him play I sensed something different, but slowly over time the many subtle layers of majesty in his writing began to embed themselves deeper and deeper into my being, until he became for me something beyond, apart the rest.
Around this time he would write and record a song in a day at home, then upload it for free download, a series of song / blogs he named Blongs. I knew this collection by the name Marginalia, though I can’t remember why now, and it grew into the masterpiece now called 50 Songs (or sometimes 58 Songs, but unfortunately not 65 Songs - we’ll get that), which he eventually released more widely in 2018.
These recordings share a kind of common musical language, the same few chords, the same handful of organ, cello, piano, melodica and accordion sounds from his recording software, the same distinctive percussive strumming technique that almost sounds like a drum, the same precise diction in his vocal delivery. Each one was to me a painting I would stand in awe of, rich with a meaning I had no capacity to explain, a mystery I had no wish to solve. They apparently would take him only a few hours to write mostly, yet they seemed to hold a truth infinitely more profound than all the very considered lyrics that I would spend months or years laboriously writing and re-writing. I’ve grown to know every single detail of these recordings as intimately as anything else I’ve ever known. The phone that rings in the background during Happy Hour, the count in before Babe, We All Die Alone that is very similar but slightly different to the count in before Searching The Heavens, the sound of him hitting the space bar of his keyboard to end the recording of Early Days.
The beating heart of everything is his language, which is to me completely spellbinding. The ambling conversation of it, the way it draws you in then confounds you, the endlessly surprising word choices and sudden scene changes, the incredible awareness of the percussion of his words.
Have you ever gone to see a singer songwriter only for them to mumble their words? That never happens with Freddie. Every single one is crisp.
Six jet planes in strict formation
Fly over this sad suburb of the heart
Frequently they are strikingly visual, his phrases conjure little vignettes and just dump you in them, flailing. Then while you’re trying to get your bearings, another arrives, and then another.
Just close the door quietly behind you when you leave
Somewhere children are sleeping
A crowd is gathering round
I’m naked except for this sceptre and this crown
Some lines feel familiar, though you’re not quite sure where you’ve heard them before. Some have discernible narratives, others are surreal and abstract, then suddenly comically literal.
I was living at the time with a Mrs Swift
It was a rent-free situation if you catch my drift
He is an erudite bar-room raconteur, a genius in the gutter, pulling you aside, whispering hours of bullshit tales that compound exponentially upon each other until you are have no idea where you are any more.
I was half-way up the mountain
When I came across a grave
With my name and my date of birth
And an empty space
He has absolutely no respect for the superficial truth of his words, only for the mood they place you in, the feelings they evoke, a kinder of deeper truth beyond their mere meaning.
Contrary to popular belief everything is gonna be alright
I’ve cleaned the dirty dishes
I made love with the farmer’s wife
I was the king’s official astronomer
In one of my previous lives
And I’m still searching the heavens for signs of life
While sometimes optimistic or nonchalant, his default condition is desperately romantic, heartbroken, lost or lonely.
I have become a speck in the distance
Another passenger on another city’s subway system
A recurring cast of characters populate his world, and over time you get to know them. The babe, the devil, the moon, the night, the city, the town, his periodic use of the aside ‘boys’ as if talking conspiratorially to huddled comrades about some failed relationship.
Well I took her by the mitten boys I held her little glove
I said yesterday’s forgiven us baby and tomorrow doesn’t care
Where should you start? Freddie himself acknowledged the futility of ranking these songs when he ultimately just listed them in alphabetical order, or perhaps he was just indifferent? So many important songs never even made it to the final release. Start Starting Again I can maybe understand, but how could he leave off Jesus Was A Hobo? Or Spare Me? The Devil Never Showed! Madness.
My suggestion, for what it’s worth, is that you buy the album on Bandcamp, hit shuffle, hold your nose and pray.
Sometime in 2009/10 Freddie moved to New York City, busking in a trio called The Dirty Urchins and holding a monthly residency at the Rockwood Music Hall called The Midnight Crisis. His NYC days resulted in 2011’s The City is King, which featured many of the incredible musicians who defined his time there. I love this record, but it also left me with the feeling that the more people you try to add to his songs, the more you try to make them sound fantastic, the more it somehow diminishes their primal essence.
He toured for quite a while opening for The Waterboys, and Mike Scott remains a fan, producing (or executive producing?) 2015’s exquisite The Darkening / The Brightening, a two-part song cycle with a concept so brilliantly conceited I only wish I’d thought of it myself. Part one descends down a semi-tone with each song, with themes of separation, loneliness and darkness. Part two goes up a semi-tone with each song, taking us back up to the light with a sense of hope and renewal. Both parts have precisely the same running time, to the second.
2022’s Midnight in America has definite echoes of his blongs era, Faith In Time, Reading The NY Times With An Open Heart and Lost in particular. I listen to this one a lot.
Time and time again throughout my life I have returned to his songs as anchors in shifting world. As a body of work they wash over me, bringing me a deep peace. I can’t think what I’d do without them.
Freddie and I still enjoy catching up from time to time, I’ve invited him to open a couple of my shows here and there. We have a kind of peer respect, affected subtly by the fact that his periodic enjoyment of my music is counter-balanced against my thousands of hours of reverential awe listening to his. He’s still writing. Songwriting for him is as essential as breathing. They just pour out of him, he couldn’t stop them if he wanted to.
Now. I do realise I’ve gone out on quite a limb here. The Freddie Stevenson Fan Club was always a modest one, with lonely, scattered members. No doubt there are local chapters I’m not aware of here and there (please say hi! 👋). I’ve certainly known others who adore him as I do, in fact a few of us used to meet up sometimes in London. It was an unbelievable feeling to be among people who got it. A little muscle that was otherwise clenched would seem to relax, and we’d bask in the glow of this part of ourselves out in the open, accepted, like some rare kink. We’d share impassioned rants, and find solace in the knowing nods and wordless shakes of the head in reply. Some were fans of my music too, but didn’t think of challenging me when I said he was on a different level. I loved them for that.
Why are there not more of us? Is this how people with fringe political views feel? Or flat earthers? Time and time again the world has taken a good look at Freddie and decided he is, in the time-honoured words of Roy Walker from Catchphrase, ‘good but not the one’. In the face of this, I must reckon with the possibility that… uggh I can barely bring myself to say it... with the possibility that the grubby pavement beneath my feet is in fact just that - a grubby pavement.
Perhaps for some reason one day I looked at a ripped mars bar wrapper and an empty bottle of Fanta and convinced myself it was treasure. Made a god out of a big rock, or the weather. It’s probably just me right? Ah well. At least I’ve given a pretty hefty plug to a small indie artist who needs the support. And you can always move on if it’s not your thing.
And then I come to my senses. Fringe political views are rubbish. The earth is round. And Freddie Stevenson is a genius and one of the greatest singer-songwriters the world has ever known. Sorry, but that’s just how it is.
Love Jake
A cover: Blind Architect
For paid subscribers, I’m sending a video of me covering Blind Architect. Look out for that in your inbox shortly x