You can't have it both ways
Two live videos, 13 years apart, telling their own stories
Lionchild - live from Brielle, Netherlands, 2025
Watching this beautifully shot footage back from my recent show in the Netherlands1, an unsettling thought crept up on me. “Ooh Jakey-boy,” it said, “you’re getting old.”
Now let’s be in no doubt. I am, like all of us, a shimmering object of incandescent beauty, absolutely perfect in my imperfection, made of stardust, etc etc. This version of Lionchild is excellent. If a neurotic whinge about aging was what you’re looking for today, you will be entirely substantially for the most part disappointed here. Be content instead with this nuanced and ultimately heartwarming take on the passage of time.
I’d be lying if I didn’t find at least something to say on this though, because it is currently resonating beyond the confines of this video, with its charming fairy lights and unusually impressive stage props, and deeper into the recesses of my life.
I feel slower, more comfortable. Too comfortable perhaps. I have a house now, a family, a part-time job, friends that I mostly-just-about keep in touch with. I am loved. Failure at music seems to come at a lower cost. I still work my arse off in a highly competitive industry, but sometimes when I could be writing the greatest song I have ever written I instead practice my advanced F2L algorithms. I bake my own bread. I assemble climbing frames. I go on camping trips. I am not yet volunteering at the school summer fair but if it happened absolutely no one would be surprised.
Music - you - got me so much of that. OK so I’ve not quite maintained a fully-fledged music career, maybe a substantially-fledged one, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Fully-fledged careers, with their arts-organisation-funded folk collaboration projects that end with a hardback book and a performance at the royal festival hall, are very hard to find and harder to keep. Many excellent and talented people achieve only very modest fledging, or no real fledging of any kind.
The world took a look at me and declared me worthy of a partial-fledge. This is a huge honour. I am the bee’s femur! The cat’s toothbrush! The dog’s perineum! A dream realised. I’ve been rewarded many times over with amazing people and priceless memories from all over the world.
But years of minor-league fledging has, I think, led to a familiarity with mediocrity. An accepting of the adequate. I aimed for fully-fledged, but then I fully-hedged. A part-time model. While my standards for songwriting and live shows remain very high, I have internalised the industry’s assessment of my level of success.
Where’s the burning fire I felt earlier in my career to prove everyone wrong? Wasn’t I a lot better when I was younger?
Freddie Laid The Smackdown - live on Mariella’s Book Show, 2012
Perfectly timed, a large package of miscellaneous paperwork lands on my doorstep, sent to me by dear friend and long-time-but-not-currently manager Kerry Harvey-Piper (recently name-checked in the Guardian by the way - just because I know how desperately she loves the attention).
Nestled amongst the handwritten release plans and contracts with questionable investment vehicles, is a DVD of a TV programme I once performed on - Mariella’s Book Show.
Within it, the legend that is Mariella Frostrup declares Freddie Laid The Smackdown ‘A novel in song’ which is a literature way of saying ‘A novel in a song’. Phillip Pullman told me I was great. It was quite a memorable day, I wrote about it here:
How fresh-faced I was. A man in his prime.
Watching this significant footage back from the peak of my career, an unsettling thought crept up on me. “Ooh Jakey-boy,” it said, “what’s going on with your voice?”
Now, it is a fantastic performance, particularly under the circumstances. I’m so very brilliant etc etc. If a tiresomely negative appraisal of my younger self was what you were looking for today, well, you’ve probably got bigger problems.
But to me I sound like someone who is trying to sound a bit like someone else. Someone successful or popular, someone with an impressive or soulful voice. Can you hear it too? Maybe not.
Many artists start out by mimicking other artists, even without realising it, as if sounding a bit like how other successful people sound might mean you’ll also get the success that they successed. Every great artist has avoided this, or worked through it, to a voice that is truly, and undeniably, theirs. I’m just not quite sure I’d reached that point yet.
But I have now. I love my voice now better than ever. It’s not perfect, but it’s mature and strong and rounded and honest and it’s all my own. I’ve got interesting things I want to say and a unique perspective, and I very much want to keep offering that.
Vivid naivety or faded experience? I guess we never really get to choose. But if I could, I’d still pick me now. So there. Eat that, Frostrup.
Many Fish To Fry - Live
And if ever I needed a reminder of the impact my music has made, this is it.
Ticket sales have been incredible so far, and I’ve loved hearing all the stories of people travelling from all over the world - Australia, Canada, the USA, France, the UK - to be at Bush Hall in February 2026.
This will be an event to celebrate you and all you’ve brought to those songs over the years. We are sparing no expense to make it the most fitting possible tribute to that record.
While it’s still 9 months away, there’s a reasonable chance tickets will sell out. So if you do want to guarantee your space in the room, this is the link to click:
https://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026/
love jake
Fantastic thanks Jake. We saw Kerry at The Lowry Theatre Peggy gig in Salford on Wednesday night gone (brilliant as ever :-) and were chatting about your gig. So looking forward to it. Cheers.
Getting old? Nah, you're just hitting your stride from the sound of things. Good luck with the tour.