Interview: Simon Taylor

Songwriter Simon Taylor’s songwriting has grown out of a life marked by late‑night melodies, hard‑won clarity and a deep love of the classic storytellers of the ’60s and ’70s. Now based in Newcastle, he’s spent over a decade shaping rock, pop and Latin‑tinged songs, with his new EP Stars revealing a gentler folk‑jazz side crafted with producer Ziad Jabero at Chilli Studios.

Stars moves from the spacious, Devotchka‑esque piano and pensive guitar of the title track, to the atmospheric intimacy of The Day You Swallowed The Sun, the bright music‑box charm of My Private Beach, the warm rhythmic shuffle of Bella Señora, and finally the campfire closer Postcard From Paradise. Each moment is tied together by Simon’s engaging delivery and storytelling lyricism.

We caught up with Simon to find out more…

What first drew you to songwriting, and how did it become a creative outlet for you?
Songwriting for me evolved out of writing a lot of poetry when recovering from a psychotic breakdown in 2000. It became my good luck in 2002 that as soon as I began to take playing guitar seriously at the age of 24, fresh melodies came to me almost straightaway. So to an extent, it was good luck that songwriting became a means of expression for me just as having a mental health condition, such as I was diagnosed with, was perhaps less so.

The answer to the second question would be “slowly” in the respect that it took me a couple of years or so before I was able to finish my first song. This was time very well-spent learning my craft in retrospect. It took me 35-40 attempts before I finally completed a full song. So I would say to anybody starting off as a songwriter and experiencing a similar issue – try not to get too downhearted. Just keep at it, and you’ll work it out. The more short-cuts you take the less your creative muscles are getting tested and conditioned in my personal opinion so this time is crucial in one’s development as a writer.

You’ve mentioned Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg as influences — What is it about their work that resonates with you?
Leonard Cohen’s lyrics are ridiculously good, drawing from his background as a poet and also his intense work ethic. What perhaps resonates with me about his work is its unflinching honesty and ability to look at the darker aspects of life in the eye while maintaining a wry sense of humour. What I really admire about Serge Gainsbourg’s career is that he was experimenting with different genres throughout his whole career and usually very successfully so. If you check out his last album from (1987’s funk-influenced “You’re Under Arrest”) it sounds absolutely nothing like his first release nearly thirty years’ before (French chansons on the whole). I’m also assured by my Francophone friends that his lyrics are very clever and literate too. Neither had particularly great voices technically, (draw your own parallels, folks), but managed to transcend these limitations through their songwriting ability.

How has your diagnosis shaped your relationship with music, both creatively and personally?
I was diagnosed with the mental health condition schizoaffective disorder in 2001. In 2002, I found that I could write music whereas previously I hadn’t shown the same capacity to do this. So there seems to be possibly some kind of connection. There again, I finally got diagnosed with autism in 2020 so who is to say this hasn’t been a factor in me writing music all along as well? In terms of my personal life, music has given my life meaning, whereas before it had very little due to my near-lifelong depressive tendencies. It has given me a drive and purpose that I was singularly lacking beforehand. The flip side is that due to my perfectionist tendencies, I have a tendency to push myself too hard and have had a few breakdowns over the years. So music can get me into trouble and then to get out of it – I write and play more music(!)

How do you balance catharsis and craft when writing?
I like to write in a flow-state if possible and not obsess too much over minor details when the words are pouring out. You could say this is the catharsis in that you’re connecting to your true emotions and feelings. However, you learn over time that some things are going to work better than others in terms of songwriting craft. For example, I recently woke up with the words “Oh Lord, have mercy on my soul” in my head and a clear melody with it. A powerful experience, whether you have faith or not. That was clearly the chorus, so I needed to write some verses. I wrote a couple of verses and thought to myself: “That sounds OK”. Through experience, I was then able to say to myself: “Yes, but the chorus will hit even harder if you have four verses instead of just two” (i.e., a longer build-up to it). You learn these things over time. Ironically, from a commercial point of view, that was probably not the right thing to do as people’s attention spans are limited nowadays. But I don’t care, ultimately I’m trying to make the best music I can for people and for myself for posterity.

You’ve described waking up with melodies in your head. What’s your process for capturing and developing those ideas?
I make sure to sing the melody into my phone as soon as I wake up whatever time of the night it is. If it’s a promising melody I’ll immediately add lyrics to it and try to write the whole song there and then. If I’m not writing lyrics to it within a few minutes the chances are that that voice recording will just end up taking space on my phone. In terms of developing the ideas I’ll work out the chords on my guitar and change the key as and when necessary to suit the rather limited range of my voice.

Tell us about your new EP Stars. What are some of the themes that run through it?
It would be pretentious of me to suggest there was some big theme to this particular EP There’s one simple word that describes it really and that is “acoustic”. I had just undertaken quite an expensive EP project, (Northern Star, which had been funded for the most part by Help Musicians to be fair), and wanted to record some songs in a more budget-friendly manner. I looked in my old songwriting folders and found five songs that I had forgotten about for years, that I thought I could record more cheaply as an acoustic project. I suppose a theme of a few of the songs is travel and my experiences overseas and overall the viewpoint of being a romantic depressive autist.

How did working with Ziad Jabero at Chilli Studios shape the final recordings?
My recording career has coincided with a time when so much music is recorded to a click track. My musical output has been no different in that respect to be honest. I think Ziad and I were both happy for this EP to be different and recorded without this artificial aid like they would have done back in the 1960’s and 70’s. It was challenging initially for me and I had a nightmare recording session in 2023 trying to record this way after I’d had a bit of time out of playing music due to ill health. But I think it worked eventually. It’s an old-fashioned kind of EP There’s no autotune, no AI, it’s more folk music than a lot of my more funk-rock releases recorded to a click with other musicians. I couldn’t have made this EP without Ziad’s help and he was fantastic to work with. He knows what he’s doing with the mixing and mastering. I just made the odd suggestion here and there at Chilli Studios when I thought it was appropriate.

There’s a mix of folk, pop and jazz balladry in the EP. How do those styles come together in your writing?
I’m just fortunate that melodies come to me and they pretty much dictate whether a song is going to be more folk-pop or jazz-pop or Latin-pop. But you can see the connecting word there is “pop”. I see myself as a writer of popular music and was brought up watching “Top Of The Pops” when there was loads of great music in the charts in the mid ’80’s and that programme was quite an event. So I think that had a big impact and even influence on me, 80’s pop. Never Gonna Give You Up, 80’s pop(!).

What’s next for you?
I’m boring my friends rigid, telling them I’m planning on getting a band together, although it’s currently a slow process. I used to have a band from 2012-2018, and I’m missing that bigger sound live. I’m also excited about a mental health-themed e.p I’ll be working on at Blank Studios in the Spring. The lyrics to those songs should be, ahem, interesting and I think they’ll be the aural equivalent of Marmite. Some are going to love what they are saying, some are going to hate them, but I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer on subjects of some importance politically.