I like writing songs. I also like recording them. Recording has become an essential part of the creative process, because once you've written a song, you can record it. It's like a prize. You can try recording it before you've finished writing it if you like, but in my experience that means it ends up being five minutes too long and making no sense. Normally I get it alllllmmmmmost finished and then start recording, because you need to leave a little bit of room for the alchemy to happen. Invariably it's the very last little thing that comes to you while you're tentatively putting the track together that turns it into a proper song.

The other reason recording is so pleasurable is finally getting to hear all the elements that were only in your head while you were writing the song; the backing vocals, the little thing going bong in the background, the bit when the piano comes in - all this arrangement stuff that comes along with the first idea you can stop imagining and hear it instead.

If it weren't for the fact that songs really need words, things would move along a lot faster. I've been writing words much longer than I've been writing songs, and if anything it's getting harder. Nearly always some part of the tune you're singing will shape itself into a line. Sometimes this tells you everything you need to know about the song, encapsulated there for everyone to hear (which is great, except you've got all the rest of the song to fill up saying the same thing in different ways), and other times it's like a piece from a jigsaw you didn't realise you owned and you have no idea what it means or where to go from there. But these things haunt you. Some part of your subconscious knows you haven't sorted it out yet and worries at it unrelentingly until one day something will happen and the solution occurs to you. It has sometimes taken a year to finish off a lyric, all the while I've been aware of it sitting there, like when you get something between your teeth and you can't quite root it out with your tongue... but that's how it is when no one's forcing you to finish anything. Inspiration is pretty lazy.

No one forced me to finish this record. Or start it, for that matter. It was just something that gradually made sense as homeless songs began to pile up. I hope one day that I can make my living solely from writing songs and recording them. As I've dangled my toes into that world, I've learned that it generally calls for a different kind of song. I have a theory about the differences between rock music and pop music, which is that pop music (which is disposable and facile) can be sung by anyone, and the record sleeve will have a picture of the singer on it, whereas rock music (which is disposable and facile but has pretensions to Art) will be specific to the artist that made it, and there will be a painting of a mysterious world or gothic columns or some kind of robot on the cover. This is why you don't get too much Bob Dylan on Stars in their Eyes. Yes, I realise that Bob Dylan is on his covers, but that was pre-rock when the rules were still being made.

I started off in the Rock camp, because when I was first playing in bands I was an extremely pretentious young man who was adversely influenced by Sting and wished to put social comment into songs. For a very long time I wouldn't countenance the idea of writing a love song because it had all been done before and besides, my personal pain was of much more interest (and the pain of the Environment). Then I got a bit bored of my personal pain and started borrowing pain to write songs about, because everyone loves sad songs. Then I got bored of sad songs and wrote ones with lots of jokes in them. Finally I started writing songs about Getting It On which made liberal use of the word 'baby'. That was when I realised that I had become Pop.

The 45s had a slogan, "Is this pop?", which underlined the dichotomy. The music part was definitely pop but the lyrical outlook was a bit of both. It was pop in the sense that the singer was basically a character that wasn't either me or Matt, but rock because that character was saying some esoteric stuff that sounded specific to him. A lot of this developed from the fact that the singer didn't write the words, so there was always artifice in the delivery of the songs. In the event, the answer to the question was "I don't know. You're fired". Aqualung was certainly a reaction against this cleverness and considerably more honest, but ironically the words were still often not written by the singer. They just feel more true.

Because pop represents everybody, it deals in experiences that everybody has. It's particularly good at capturing the essential moments in your life that you know are utterly ubiquitous, yet when they're happening to you they feel absolutely unique. In perspective, there is nothing so banal as falling in love or kissing for the first time or fighting for the first time or breaking up, but there's a song for every one of these occasions, and at that moment they feel like the most important things in the world. Pop is disposable and facile, exactly like real life.

To make a living writing songs, they have to be purely Pop. They need to be as predictable and recognisable as possible. I don't particularly mind that, there's still plenty of room for brilliance within the idiom. 'Wouldn't it be nice' is a simple pop sentiment expressed so perfectly it's hard to believe someone actually wrote it; 'Easy (like Sunday Morning)' , well, the verses - the hook line actually doesn't mean anything - feels absolutely authentic. This is pop any serious person can aspire to. My problem is that every so often a little bit of Rock seeps out and there's nowhere for it to go.

I don't really want to be the Artist. This is something people don't really understand. It seems natural that if you write songs and you like performing that you should want to get out there and sing then (especially if no one else wants them). But I don't want to mainly because I'm not that good at singing. I don't mean that in the self-deprecating, John Lennon "I-can't-bear-my-voice-but-actually-it's-one-of-the-timeless-classics" kind of way, my voice just doesn't sell a song. My voice has a strange consistency - it has no edge to it, it's like it's made of cheese. It doesn't stick in your ear, it's too round and squashy. It's great at blending in with other things, which makes it perfect for backing vocals, but when it's out on its own it's alarmingly fragile. And it keeps wandering away from the notes.

After the end of the 45s, I was briefly considering starting a new band with a different singer, so I held a few 45s songs back from the 45s album and started writing some new songs. I had in mind a two guitar band which could really deliver the ROCK, but could do big harmonies and the occasional lapse into country music. I even started recording some tracks to use as a demo, but then I got distracted by being paid to play for Matt with the all-new Aqualung band (there was a period in which I wasn't sure whether Matt would want to work with me on his new project. It would have been the perfect time to make that break. Happily, he did ask me to play by the usual expedient of having no time and no alternative). I never got as far as finding the new band and the idea was put on hold.