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10th Dec 2016

Here’s what Noel Gallagher thinks about the state of modern songwriting

"How do eight people write a song? If I try to write a song with someone else, it freaks me out..."

Carl Kinsella

Noel Gallagher has never been one to keep his opinions to himself.

And few things tend to get the former Oasis songwriter more riled up than the music of other people.

Speaking to BBC Radio 6 Music this week, Gallagher launched into a tirade about modern songwriting, inspired by a time he saw Emeli Sandé’s Next To Me win Best Song Musically and Lyrically at the Ivor Novello Awards in 2013.

“Eight people got an award for it. Eight people? I was sat there saying to Ray [Davies], ‘How do eight people write a song? If I try to write a song with someone else, it freaks me out.’ I was compelled to go to [their] table and say to them, ‘How have eight of you wrote this song?’”

“Well, two of us do the beats, two of us do the chords, two do the lyrics, and then there’s thing called a topliner – do you know what a topliner is? He’s the guy that when they’ve done all that, he sits there humming the melody and then someone else does the words.”

“And I’m saying, here’s a question for ya, ‘What’s Emeli Sandé doing when all this is going on?’ ‘Oh, she’s at the White House.’ It blows my mind.”

You can see how it might upset the man who wrote Supersonic in a single day.

Catch up with this week’s episode of Football Friday Live