Songwriting tips from Brian Kennedy and Therapy?'s Andy Cairns

Andy Cairns welcomes The Music Show's audience into the world of Therapy? songwriting as follows:

"I'd love to go into a little den every day and write a song. But I get up in the morning, play jazz scales, listen to obscure German noise. Have a panic attack, decide to leave the band. Then wake up at two in the morning and say to my wife, 'Where did I put that pen'?"

The guitarist and vocalist added that he finds it hard to write when he's happy, prompting Hot Press' Jackie Hayden to suggest that he'd be unlikely to write, say, a 'Lady in Red'.

"Eh no. 'Corpse in Red' maybe," Cairns muses.

Asked by Jackie Hayden about the essence of a really great song, Cairns proffers that he detests 'Lady in Red' - but he's heard an obscure electro version of that very track that has moved him to tears, which just shows that there are no hard and fast rules.

Brian Kennedy, meanwhile, had this reaction to the same question: "I grew up in a funny little place called the Falls Road in West Belfast and music had a really hard time getting through to us so they had to be unbelievably uber-famous to just get through that soundtrack of war.

"I'm thinking of 'Bat out of Hell' - you couldn't hide from that song. The songs had to be brilliant."

Picking up on Cairns' point, American songstress Ashleigh Flynn said that the production values could sometimes be that extra something that makes a song great.

Flynn added that she has never succumbed to the pressure to write a song with commercial success, or radio-friendliness, borne in mind.

But Kennedy said the pressure from within the music industry was intense to follow one radio hit with another made to the same formula. However, you can never really know what's going to be a big success and what won't.

"Mine's been a rollercoaster ride. I've had records played a lot and some that I hope will be played and aren't. I would never try and second guess what some DJ is going to play. And often DJs don't get a choice of what they play. It's more and more controlled by the invisible powers that be," said Kennedy.

Asked whether he suffers the same pressure to write for commercial radio's limitations, Cairns burst out laughing.

"That's not really a problem for us!" said the Therapy? man, adding that his music was only friendly to rock radio, which is to say, "angry loners at two o'clock in the morning."

On a more serious note, Cairns said that the band's most successful records, in the 90s, lead to serious pressure from the major label to which they were signed at the time to create more of the same. The band met a wall of opposition when they tried to release a single that ran to a very radio-unfriendly six minutes, and Cairns regrets the fact that Therapy? backed down.

"Then Radiohead released 'Paranoid Android' which ran to nine minutes and went to number one, which goes to show you have to stick to your guns. It's like Thom Yorke said, once you get a taste of success, there's managers pecking at you all the time. You need to have a stoic resolve not to buckle," said Cairns.

So what would be a song the panel heard that really made them think, 'yes, that's a hit.'

"That song 'Teardrop'. I remember the first time I heard it and everything just froze and I just thought, 'What is that'?" said Kennedy, adding that Joni Mitchell's 'A Case of You' was his idea of a truly great song.

"The first time I heard that my eyes welled right up. She has this way of singing that it's like she's speaking only to you."

Flynn said her top tune was 'The Crane Wife' by The Decemberists, while the first single Cairns fell in love with was 'Ever Fallen in Love' by The Buzzcocks.