The songwriter who made Nick Cave want to give up: “I thought I was the only one”
According to Nick Cave, writing is a precarious art that cannot be taken for granted. It’s always evolving and forever latched to former versions of itself, which, for someone as linguistically adept as Cave, is both a blessing and a curse.
It’s no secret that Cave is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. In fact, many argue that he surpasses even some of the more untouchable figures atop the songwriting mountain, like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, or Patti Smith. What often gives Cave the edge, however, is that his views on the subject matter are often as thought-provoking as some of his best songs, contemplating the lineage between the past and the future and what it means in the context of a ‘legacy’.
Many of which have been explored in his diaristic musings on The Red Hand Files. Once, when someone submitted a message challenging and questioning Cave’s position on his own legacy (when he alluded to the fact that it didn’t matter what he left behind), he argued that writing and art become unnecessarily weighed down when they’re pressured to live up to their own standards.
“I am dancing on water lilies when I write,” he argued, “And one’s heritage can have a terrifying tonnage. I must remain one step ahead of the songs, optimistically hopping from lily pad to lily pad, and doing my best to ignore the great dark wave of work that is building up behind me.”
He added: “How many artists have we seen stop and turn around to look, only to literally drown in a pool of their own legacy?”
When you detangle what he’s actually trying to say, Cave does have a point. In a world where nostalgia feels like a disease, it’s refreshing to see artists constantly moving forward and dismissing the entire idea as pointless… It’s also why he gained a reputation for one of the world’s greatest songwriters in the first place, he might revisit the same themes from time to time, but he rarely ever stays in one place.
In fact, he actively resists it. As he said in the same post, one day he might “sit back like some loony old patriarch and cast a weepy eye over my legacy”, but not any time soon, or so long as he can help it. And besides, why would he ever need to do that? He could never revisit any old material ever again, and barely anyone would bat an eyelid because, aside from some of his more controversial opinions of late, he is and will always be respected for precisely what he is.
Which also begs the question: who does Cave look up to and regard as some of the world’s biggest and most accomplished songwriters? Well, when The Smiths were gaining traction, Cave couldn’t quite believe there was someone else out there with the same knack for complex and nuanced lyrical wordplay as himself.
Morrissey was so good, in fact, that he decided not to fall too deep into his music in case it ruined his own career. As he reflected during one of his Open Forum Q&A sessions, he kept hearing songs by The Smiths but almost wrote them off entirely, thinking, “Fuck, that guy’s a really good lyric writer. I thought I was the only one.”
He went on, saying he’s glad he didn’t get too into them at the time because Morrissey’s talent probably would have made him give up on his own songwriting, claiming there was a particular bravery to his writing that Cave felt was uniquely his own.
