The Jam song Paul Weller wrote in “10 minutes flat”
There is no clear formula for songwriting, and following a set of rules isn’t going to lead to a hit single. Paul Weller has likely attempted a million different songwriting methods throughout his career, and no approach guarantees success. Remarkably, for The Jam, Weller penned a fan favourite in “ten minutes flat” on one drunken occasion.
As a songwriter, Weller sits firmly in the pantheon of British greats. For over 40 years, the musician has continued to reinvent himself, writing a steady stream of modern classics in the process.
On his songwriting philosophy, the former frontman of The Jam once told Another Man: “I might have an idea, however vague it is at the time, of where I want to try and take the music. Sometimes you get there, sometimes you don’t – and sometimes you end up with something that isn’t what you set out to do, but is something else again, and something that surprises you because you didn’t realise you could go there. But it’s a question of setting yourself a certain amount of challenges, too. Otherwise it’s too easy to get caught in a cycle of doing the same things over and over again.”
Weller has never reached his destination quicker than on ‘That’s Entertainment’, which unexpectedly clamoured out of his brain in a drunken haze after a heavy drunken session. The track laments the state of British society, which was collapsing in front of Weller’s eyes, and his words captured the feelings of the nation.
The raw nature of ‘That’s Entertainment’ proves how Weller hastily arranged it. This facet plays into the appeal of the track, which is filled with genuine anger. Although it didn’t go to number one in the UK like The Jam’s last two singles, ‘Start!’ and ‘Going Underground’, the acoustic-led track remains one of the band’s most cherished offerings.
“It’s one of those list songs really. It was so easy to write. I came back from the pub, drunk, and just wrote it quick. I probably had more verses, which I cut,” Weller told MOJO (via SongFacts) in 2015. “It was just everything that was around me y’know. My little flat in Pimlico did have damp on the walls and it was fucking freezing”.
He added: “I was doing a fanzine called December Child and Paul Drew wrote a poem called ‘That’s Entertainment.’ It wasn’t close to my song, but it kind of inspired me to write this anyway. I wrote to him saying, Look is it all right if I nick a bit of your idea, man? And he said, It’s fine, yeah.”
Meanwhile, during an interview with Absolute Radio, Weller said: “I wrote it in ten mins flat, whilst under the influence, I’d had a few but some songs just write themselves. It was easy to write, I drew on everything around me.”
Although the writing process for ‘That’s Entertainment’ only took Weller a matter of minutes to complete, he’d subconsciously absorbed the world around him and tapped into those experiences to fuel this classic creation.
Why is ‘That’s Entertainment’ so good?
A minimalist, almost entirely acoustic offering, ‘That’s Entertainment’ is something of a rarity within The Jam’s repertoire, but that only serves to make the offering all the more special. With lyrics that virtually every ordinary person in Britain can relate to, “Pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday, Watching the news and not eating your tea, A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls,” the stream-of-consciousness lyrics give the song an organic feeling.
There is also a strong sense of romanticism in the proceedings on ‘That’s Entertainment’, as Weller talks about “Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight.” As such, the track blends multiple core elements of The Jam’s appeal: Weller’s knack for social realism, catchy hooks, and effortlessly romantic imagery are all on full display here. In that sense, it could (and should) be argued that ‘That’s Entertainment’ is The Jam’s defining work.
Closing out side one of Sound Affects, the song formed a major highlight of the record and helped to cement the album’s position among The Jam’s greatest work.
