"HOW THE F**K DID I DO THAT?"

Steven Wilson’s enduring solo masterpiece.

The title and closing track of Steven Wilson’s nostalgic magnum opus, The Raven That Refused To Sing was more than just a highlight of his career. It gave progressive music the kind of spotlight (the kind of ‘pop hit’, effectively) that shouldn’t have been impossible this side of the 70s. The lovingly created, Poeesque darkness of Jess Cope’s animated video added to the song’s mystique. Seven years and two more albums later, its reverential impact in rock and prog circles – and, to a degree, beyond that – is still felt.

“I love that song so much,”Wilson told us in 2017, shortly before the release of his most recent album, To The Bone. “I think it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever written. When you write a song like that it’s like: ‘How the fuck did I do that?’ you know. And there’s two or three songs I’ve written over the years like that.”

We’d just spent an hour or so with Wilson, browsing vinyl for a Record Store Challenge feature in this magazine. Albums pored over had included those by Aphex Twin, Neil Young, Throbbing Gristle, Frank Sinatra, Sonic Youth, Prince, Miles Davis… the sort of crazy-diverse mixture that could indicate a chaotic approach to music. And yet the beauty of The Raven – a song that he has continued to play routinely at live shows – lay in its relative simplicity. It encapsulated the sort of purity that’s difficult to explain, and which sidestepped the fuss and frills that can come with prog rock.

“I just almost think it came…” He searched for the words. “You know that cliché that ‘the song came to you’ from some divine intervention, because you can’t understand how you could [do it]? And that’s one I’m so proud of. How the hell did I write that song?”