“ALL MY TRICKS FOR WRITING COME DOWN TO THE FACT THAT I'VE GOT A GREAT RECORD COLLECTION”

The Wildhearts frontman Ginger channels everything from Motorhead to ABBA. His advice: “Educate yourself...”

- Jonny Scaramanga

Ginger Wildheart is one of the UK’s most gifted and prolific songwriters, and his noisy band’s latest album 21st Century Love Songs has just hit the UK top ten. Speaking to TG from his home in York, he explains how to turn your love of music into genre-busting songs.

The new Wildhearts album is really heavy. What music inspired it?

I’m not sure what I was listening to made much difference. The last couple of years I’ve been obsessing about early 70s vinyl-like Little Feat and Steely Dan, none of which had any effect whatsoever on this album. When writing a Wildhearts album, The Wildhearts is the inspiration. We don’t go to areas that we wouldn’t do very well, like country and western. I was inspired by lockdown. When you were seeing the first ten thousand people die and no one was doing anything about it, that doesn’t promote very many happy songs. So yeah, heavy all the way on this album!

What were the influences when you were starting out?