N.K Pop

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The marriage of melancholy and twisted nocturnal synths on Grace suggests the 29-year-old has improved as a songwriter, as she powerfully concedes: “My aunt just died from cancer, don’t ask where my smile is / I’m still inside that furnace.” In the past the artist has felt a little distant, seemingly afraid to let people in. Yet here she wisely grounds her celestial rap persona in something more human and relatable.

So, what’s the plan for 2032? Paul will be blowing out 70 candles then, but you feel that even that day will be celebrated with the giddy enthusiasm of someone turning 21. “Oh, I can’t tell you yet,” he teases, “but I’ve got a really good idea!” Sometimes we don’t even record them but we start rehearsing them for the next album and realise, actually I can remember why I didn’t particularly like them. It might be an awkward key change into the chorus. Abbott Paul writes the songs with Jonny [Lexus, guitarist]. He goes somewhere very sombre or rainy to write the lyrics, then somewhere sunny like Spain to do the music. That’s why the lyrics can be dark or sullen and the tunes are lovely and flowing. I love seeing it happen and then helping bring it all to life.Abbott is very much the junior partner in their double act. Heaton himself has a beautiful plangent voice, to which Abbott’s lovely tone and timbre is perfectly matched, so that she effectively sounds like a female version of the frontman. They harmonise delightfully, and occasionally Abbott takes the lead, or provides a second character for split narrator interactions. This approach shines on Baby It’s Cold Inside, a punchy zinger about sexual harassment, but proves confusing on Too Much for One (Not Enough for Two), a song written from a singular perspective then artificially divided in two. No, absolutely never. I would say that’s because I'm writing... not all the time, but I just wander around and ideas come into my head and I write them down, so I'm fortunate in that way. I would perhaps argue there's been a fallow period where the tunes haven't been brilliant, or perhaps have been weakly produced and haven't blossomed properly, like maybe Acid Country – the tunes were all right, but we never worked properly on trying to get them to sound like singles. Maybe also [2008 LP] The Cross Eyed Rambler. But there hasn’t been a period when it's gone dry, so to speak.”

Heaton I still prefer to put it in songs or the odd humorous comment on stage. Social media is like Speakers’ Corner, everyone shouting at each other.I once saw the Beautiful South support Pere Ubu on Morecambe Bay. Any chance of playing live on sand again? LeeBirch

I know it sounds funny to say but I didn’t have any problems with her passing,” he says, matter-of-factly. “She’d reached the age of 90 and she was still happily belligerent and argumentative and causing the nurses no end of bother in the hospital, which was fairly amusing. What is your writing relationship? Does it come together in the studio or is it created elsewhere? karlcronin Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. Too Much For One is another example of a great conversational/argument songs between yourself and Jacqui. How would you define the chemistry the two of you have? Heaton seems remarkably unmoved by money and success: he lives a modest, neighbourly existence with his wife in a terraced house in Withington, Manchester. “I’m determined that money won’t rule my decisions. Because money is controlling, and it’s incredibly discomforting for some people. And it can be for me. So I try not to let it control me. So what probably comes across as socialist, is I actually get quite angry about how much I’m paid, and think I want to do something about it. And what I do is try to make other people happy with what I’ve received. It sounds a bit corny and cliched. But it’s a more positive thought about what you can do with your money.”Not a lot, really, but there’s quite often one scene in my mind and it spreads from there. On this one, I had a really vivid image of a pub with a fireplace, and I fleshed it out by having a conversation with myself. I thought about what might have happened there, and the landlord running the place on his own after his wife has gone. Sometimes I think of a song as an unfinished crossword puzzle and it’s my job Smith, Carl (14 October 2022). "Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott secure second Number 1 album as a duo with N.K-Pop". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 15 October 2022. For many people hitting the big six-o, like Heaton did in May this year, thoughts of mortality are omnipresent. But Paul clearly isn’t the sort to give into that kind of age-related gloom. Lastly, your 1989 No.2 single Song For Whoever contains the line: “I love the PRS cheques that you bring.” You must be the only songwriter to have worked ‘PRS’ into the lyrics of a hit song, right?

But they realise that and so they’re going for a rowdier and more populist view to pull more people in. What they’re doing, though, is pulling less people in, but making them angrier. Although he’s primarily a storyteller, Heaton does delve into more personal songs this time round, sometimes with devastating effects. Still is easily the highlight of the record, a beautiful ballad about miscarriages and still births. Lines like “still feel your heartbeat, the tiniest drop…your departure destroyed us but we’re so glad you could come” are stark, poignant and affecting. Paul Heaton is on the crest of a wave ahead of the release of N.K-Pop - his fifth album with Jacqui Abbott - via EMI today (October 7). Jacqui Abbott I’m not generally into remakes. When I heard there was going to be a Blade Runner 2 I thought: “Oh, my God.” When I joined the Beautiful South, we did Everybody’s Talkin’ but I was only 20 then. Now I’m older I’d think: “A Harry Nilsson song – what if I get it wrong?”

You’ve always been capable writing from unusual perspectives, but who are the lyricists you most admire yourself? Still, it was something of a belated correction for the way The Beautiful South – never a critics favourite – have been somewhat airbrushed out of the 90s music story. “It feels a little bit like history’s been rewritten,” Heaton says. “We’d never be in one of those 200 best albums of the 90s lists. But we didn’t particularly sound or look like bands that you associate with the 90s. And it can be quite helpful not to have a sound that dated. It can be limiting if you sound like a band from the 90s. It’s though you’re doing a permanent revival”. Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott perform at the Royal Albert Hall (Photo: Christie Goodwin/Redferns via Getty) Earlier this year Heaton spoke to NME about how he and Abbott had played a number of free concerts for NHS staff as a thank you for their efforts throughout the COVID pandemic. He also discussed giving away free pints at 60 UK pubs to mark his 60th birthday, and why he thinks the British Royal Family should be privatized. Jacqui, have you had the opportunity to perform other people’s songs outside your partnership with Paul, and if not is that something you’d consider? AlanCambourne