In a recent interview with MOJO magazine, Nick Cave said he finds songwriting hard and often puts it off if he can.
The rocker reflected on how he feels about writing songs:
“I don’t like writing songs. To write a song is this deeply mysterious, abstract, anxiety-ridden process that’s just not fun. Playing around with the kid is fine but to get the kid out is a f*cking nightmare. So I put it off until I can’t put it off any further.”
During the same conversation, Nick also talked about his ‘Ghosteen’ album, which many believe was inspired by his late son Arthur, who died in 2015. The singer noted:
“I’m happy that it exists but it was a painful thing to make. I f*cking hate hearing bands talk about the pain of making a record because I don’t believe them. But 2Ghosteen’ had its attendant agonies for sure, and not something I’d want to repeat.”
Cave Believes In Creating Meaningful Art
Although he finds the songwriting process challenging, Cave still has the motivation to create new music. The rocker told Dazed last year:
“Sometimes you think about giving this stuff up. I’ve been doing it for a really long time. The world doesn’t need another Nick Cave record. It doesn’t need another Nick Cave film. And it probably doesn’t need another Nick Cave Red Hand file.”
He added right after that:
“But what I fall back on is that I think doing something of value has some knock-on effect. It has some meaning. [And that’s why] I keep doing it.”
Cave Has An Upcoming Album
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will release their 18th studio album, ‘Wild God,’ on August 30. Cave talked about the album in March:
“I don’t want to say much about the album itself until it is released in August and you get to hear all the songs, but I can tell you that it is a record full of secrets. It is made up of a series of complex and interlinking narratives, the title song ‘Wild God’ being the primary point of propulsion, with the songs all feeding off each other – not so much to tell a story, but to rally round an acutely vulnerable and mysterious ‘event’ that resides at the heart of the album’s central song, ‘Conversion.’”
The band dropped the title track as a single on March 6, 2024. A second single, ‘Frogs,’ came out on May 31.