As The Waterboys approached their 40th anniversary, frontman Mike Scott found himself writing songs in a manner brand new to him.
While Scott tends to write his music in relative solitude on acoustic guitar and piano, for the Waterboys' latest effort, All Souls Hill, Scott collaborated on every track, specifically focusing on his vocals.
"I tend to write in a room and I might have a collaborator, but usually I've written the bulk of the songs myself," Scott tells Q104.3 New York's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke. "But on this record almost all of them are collaborations with other writers. In fact, I didn't write the music — as in the chords — for any of these songs. And when we came to consider playing live concerts, I had to learn how to play them."
He says learning music that came from other writers was "a novelty."
"Working out how to play them on acoustic guitar, I had to play along with the track just like learning somebody else's record," Scott says. "The only thing I knew was the melodies, because I wrote the melodies."
Watch the full conversation via the player above!
The Waterboys' 15th studio album, All Souls Hill, is available now!
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Check out the official music video for the song "Here We Go Again" from All Souls Hill via the player below!