ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Pop stars, unlike policemen, are getting older all the time. Paul McCartney has just had a No 1 album at the age of 78. Tom Jones is so old that he was able to announce on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny that he had already had the vaccine. And now here comes a singer making his solo debut at 75.

It’s a fourth incarnation for Kevin Godley (right), who started out in 10cc, playing the drums on witty ditties such as Life Is A Minestrone. He then became a frontman with Godley & Creme, whose stirring synth-pop (Cry, Under Your Thumb) deserves to be better remembered. Still, they make a good quiz question – which pop duo’s first album was a triple?

For his third trick, Godley became a video director, which has been his day job for decades. In 2017, swerving back towards music, he invited all and sundry to send him backing tracks, to which he would add melodies and lyrics. The submissions were anonymised, to remove any bias towards celebrity, and the project crowd-funded on PledgeMusic.

The plan stalled when Pledge went bust, but another backer was found and the result is an improbably coherent album. Galvanised by his remote collaborators, Godley comes up with lines as literate as 10cc’s (but more serious) and hooks as polished as Godley & Creme’s (but less dated).

The songs are either punchy electro-pop or elegant ballads: fans of The Blue Nile may wonder if Paul Buchanan took part. In fact, the biggest name is Gotye, the author of Somebody That I Used To Know. He supplies a jaunty soundbed, which Godley turns into a deliciously vicious scoresettler called Song Of Hate. Warning: it may leave you heading out for your daily exercise singing ‘Hey, ho, I hate you so!’.

Godley’s voice is as supple and soulful as ever. He has made the second memorable album of 2021, following Barry Gibb’s Greenfields. Now we just need the under-70s to step up.