The Art of Longevity

From his early days with proto-punk pop band Slik, through his tenure with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock’s Rich Kids, the creation of Visage, and touring with Thin Lizzy, to his major league success with Ultravox, and then his pivotal musical role in Band Aid and Live Aid, Midge Ure was a constant and significant force in the evolving music scene of the late seventies and eighties. 2026 sees his first release of new material in twelve years, a double album entitled A Man Of Two Worlds. 
In this episode of The Art Of Longevity, Midge talks to Fenner Pearson about his long career in music, his bold decision to release an album of instrumental music as part of his new double-album, and his plans for taking it on tour with a full band. Along the way, they discuss changes to the music industry and technology over the last fifty years, and how his Mum made egg and chips for Phil Lynott the first time he and Midge met.
There is little doubt about it, Midge is a British music legend and modest to a fault. A typically understated and delightful chat. 
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The book of the podcast, Riding the Rollercoaster, is now available. 
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Ladytron have never followed a conventional path to longevity. That’s good, because there isn’t one. This band has worked through cycles - creative surges, enforced pauses, patches of momentum, a hiatus, and reinvention. The unglamorous realities of sustaining a working band across decades. Daniel Hunt has been through these cycles a few times and knows how to press reset. “Every record has its own story,” he says, adding, with understatement, that “every record has to involve someone having a breakdown.” 
Generally true, except not this time around. 
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The book of the podcast, Riding the Rollercoaster, is now available. 
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Ólafur Arnalds reflects on creativity, the changing music landscape, and the deeper emotional connection we risk losing in a hyper-digital world. This conversation unfolds less like a traditional interview and more like a meditation on what music is—and what it could still become.
Arnalds speaks candidly about the role of streaming platforms in his career. Algorithms have elevated his genre (neo-classical) to global visibility, but they’ve also introduced fundamental creative pressures (he recalls feeling compelled to include more “streamable” tracks on his 2018 album re:member, particularly solo piano pieces, simply because of how they perform on playlists). Over time, Arnalds has became wary of how easily those expectations can seep into his own creative thinking. 
More broadly, he gently critiques the culture of passive listening. Playlists designed for focus or relaxation often generate vast numbers of streams, yet little real connection between artist and audience. The result is a strange disconnect: access without identity - a sort of weirdly tuned-out form of listening. 
So, with host Keith Jopling, this conversation looks to find ways to place music back where it needs to be: nourishing, useful, enabling artist to tell their stories, break down emotional barriers and build community. We discuss how Ólafur's new groundbreaking world tour "Falling Apart Together" aims to achieve just that! We also test some of the themes of longevity as written about in Keith's new book Riding The Rollercoaster: how artists survive the music business to become the legends we love. 
Possibly the best episode yet. 
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In an era dominated by playlists, TikTok, Reels and Shorts, reduced attention spans and endless content, Karnivool doubled down on the album as a complete statement - the album as the antidote. As Drew Goddard says. “In the age of content, I thought it was even more important to release an album.”
For Karnivool, the album remains more than a collection of tracks. It is a long-form quest (in this case, lasting 12 years), both for the band and the listener. “I struggle with focus,” Goddard explains, “so committing to a long-form thing was important. Something that could hold people captive for a little bit. Stop them in their tracks.”
At this point, it hits hard just how much work goes into the making of an album, especially one as epic as In Verses. With each passing year, Karnivool fans' patience was tested and their expectations, inevitably, notched upwards. 
I don’t think anyone will be disappointed, but perhaps it would help for the band to crack on towards the next album…soonish. 
Despite the long wait, the band insists they weren’t consciously responding to external pressure. “We weren’t really thinking about the stakes,” Jon Stockman says. “We were so embroiled in the process itself.” 
After 12 years, the achievement is not just the record itself. “We’re still friends,” Stockman notes. “We’re still enjoying it.” 
In a career defined by patience and precision, simply arriving together for a new album and what many may see as a career-defining tour, may be Karnivool’s greatest artistic statement yet. And that may be an understatement. 
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[full article on website]
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I gave Sean Rowley a call after writing up an article on “Unguilty Pleasures” (see Chill Gonzales episode 64) - Gonzales' campaign against music snobbery and treatise on the pleasures of Enya's music. It became clear that the story of Rowley's own creation, Guilty Pleasures, was very much a candidate for the Art of Longevity. 
Guilty Pleasures became that wonderful thing - a content brand (before we called them that) that grew octopus arms. The club nights quickly grew by word-of-mouth, expanding to multiple venues, festivals, and international events, and becoming a fixture of the UK nightlife scene. Then came a series of successful compilation CDs, at a time when compilations still did big business in music. It went on to radio, live tours, and special events (including opening for George Michael at the new Wembley Stadium), helping to popularise nostalgia-driven and feel-good music culture. In Rowley’s own words “nostalgia is a fucking wonderful thing”. Well, he did make a career out of it, so he would understand. 
For an idea to build the way it has, and to last so long, it needed to be something deeper. With Guilty Pleasures, Rowley challenged prevailing ideas of musical “taste” and helped normalise the celebration of mainstream pop, even in alternative spaces. He gave music snobbery a good clobbering and in doing so, established a legacy on DJ culture and the wider acceptance of joyful, communal music experiences. 
The evidence is everywhere: the enormously popular Despacio Disco launched by James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem) and the Dewaele brothers (of Soulwax and 2ManyDJs). And then James Gunn of course, with the Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack, which mined similar territory. The pandemic brought us Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco. Tik Tok has of course done wonders for the “genre”- famous for making Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride” a sensation, now with 500m streams on Spotify. 
And on it goes, the sprawling influence of a simple idea that is underpinned by the even simpler concept of the joy of music. 
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