Music careers

John McLoughlin was principal song writing tutor on the BBC’s talent school, Fame Academy. He co-wrote and produced Busted’s first album and has written hit songs including Blue’s ‘You Make Me Wanna’, which made #3 in the UK, Westlife ‘Queen of My Heart’ which was a #1 and Liberty X ‘Doin’ It’. His latest project is triplet skate punks, The Noise Next Door.

YM: What made you become a songwriter?
JM: I started out years ago in bands and eventually decided to put a boy band together and make some money and that band was 911. They went on to have 30 hit records. Through them my company got involved with Simon Cowell and wrote songs for Five and Westlife. It’s a business for me as well as a love of music and I’ve been very lucky. I realised from early on when I was playing in punk bands that I wasn’t gonna make it as an artist, so I looked for another route into the business and that was through pop music.

YM: Is songwriting a difficult area of the music industry to get into?
JM: Initially to get record companies to come to you as a songwriter, you have to launch an act so that they can see you’re keen and you’re putting some money in. Pop music isn’t necessarily the kind of music I’m into but I have an ear for it, I listen to it and I can construct it, write it and produce it. I understood about marketing and we could produce the records ourselves from our studio in Glasgow. From working with record companies I learned about marketing and how TV and radio work.

YM: How much input did you have in writing Busted’s first album?
JM: Busted are very talented young writers, when they were putting the first album (also called) ‘Busted’ together in 2002, they were only 15 or 16. They had a whole bunch of ideas, so they came to my house in Chiswick and played a few things. In the end, they co-wrote the album and we produced it for them. It has sold more than 2.2 million copies so far.

YM: What do you think is the problem most young songwriters face?
JM: Young artists write songs that come from the heart and that’s all great, but you’ve got to think – how do you get it from that to selling records? You need to get them concentrating on the overall business of writing an album and making sure you’ve got three or four hit singles on that album – which means songs with big choruses. If you don’t do that and you choose just to respect your art, you’ll be respecting your art in your own bedroom.

YM: Are shows like Fame Academy, Pop Idol and X-Factor a good idea?
JM: I think you’ve got to take every opportunity that comes along. It’s up to you how you use that. If anyone can make money out of the music industry I’ll take my hat off to them. You’ve got to use every single means available to you. Pop Idol and X-Factor are geared towards people who are not bad singers, but not necessarily artists as such. But at least they’re doing music and not working in an office – that’s the way to look at it. Things like Fame Academy and First Up have a bit more credibility – they’re more about creating artists than making hits.

YM: Is it an advantage as an artist to write their own material or is this a bigger risk for record labels?
JM: I think it’s always better if an artist writes their own material - as long as it’s good. The market is definitely moving away from out and out manufactured pop music, which I think is great. There’s some great new music around at the moment; Razorlight, The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Belle & Sebastian – people like that.

YM: Tell us about the record label you run…
JM: My label is called Us & Them. The first release was ‘Lock Up Ya Daughters‘, the debut single from triplets, The Noise Next Door. An independent label doing pop is quite unusual, that’s why we started it. People think you need millions of pounds to launch pop and actually you don’t - you need a few quid and a bit of imagination. You might need millions to get to #1 with a pop act, but I think you can go Top 10 without spending millions.

YM: What has gone wrong with Alex Parks’ career? There were great things expected…
JM: Alex Parks is a great artist, but I think maybe she was too precious when it came to what she was going to release and how she was going to do her album. That’s admirable in a way; it worked for Will Young and Lemar while the rest of the pop kids have fallen by the wayside. I think perhaps with her ‘Introduction’ album, she hasn’t chosen the best tracks and maybe not recorded the more commercial side of what she could be doing. However, everything’s easy to see in retrospect.

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