The legacy of Tim Burgess’ listening parties lives on
Over a decade ago, British actor Riz Ahmed impulsively provided play-by-play commentary on his Twitter feed while Four Lions was on television. Ahmed’s analysis provided viewers with an extra dynamic to their experience, and unbeknownst to him, it sparked an idea within the mind of The Charlatans singer Tim Burgess to start Tim’s Listening Parties on the social media platform.
Burgess had already used his listening parties as a mechanism to delve into his work with both The Charlatans and as a solo artist before the pandemic struck. However, it was nothing more than an innovative way to reflect on his career and share fascinating insights into the recording process. While these early listening parties were essential events for fans of The Charlatans, they didn’t cause a ripple effect outside his bubble. But amid a global lockdown, it wouldn’t take long for others to use his platform and buy into the magic of Tim’s Listening Parties, dominating the trends on Twitter almost nightly.
Burgess has always remained humble about his part in the spontaneous movement. He was merely the orchestrator, and the listening parties would have been nothing without its participants, whether a legend like Paul McCartney or fans engaging online from the comfort of their homes.
After 1366 albums, Burgess decided the time was right to call an end to Tim’s Listening Parties on Twitter in September 2023. However, while it may no longer exist in its original form, Burgess devotes himself to keeping its legacy alive. He has turned the event into a radio show for Absolute and created a new compilation album, released through Demon Music on March 15th.
Despite calling a day on the Listening Parties, Burgess remains as busy as ever. As our conversation commences over Zoom, his latest collaboration with Hikerdelic has just gone on sale, and Burgess’ phone is pinging throughout our chat as he receives confirmation of sales and messages of congratulations.
As somebody who never stops moving, the pandemic presented an unwanted opportunity for Burgess to sit still. With his thumbs twiddling at an alarming rate, he wanted to provide a distraction for himself and others. “It was supposed to be one a day at ten at night to counteract the terrible places that your mind went to,” The Charlatans singer said of his initial intentions with Tim’s Listening Parties in 2020 as the world waited for the next terrifying update on a disease that seemed intent on wiping out civilisation.
During the first week, Burgess called upon favours from his phonebook from Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, Bonehead from Oasis and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree. Things grew rapidly. Suddenly, it had become all-encompassing, with Burgess admitting to first finding the scheduling aspect “impossible”, noting, “I had post-it notes on my forehead, doing it all in pencil and pen, apologising to everybody for double booking, then it all came good.”
Practice makes perfect and it eventually became a well-oiled machine. In addition to nightly playbacks, in lieu of festival season, Burgess’ Twitter feed turned into a carnival on weekends, boasting eclectic line-ups which should have been taking place in fields across the United Kingdom but found their place online, with seemingly the same amount of eagerly awaiting fans.
Reflecting on the ingredients that helped make it a recipe for success, Burgess proudly states: “I think it was a two-way street. I think it was great for the artists to get involved as well and do a bit of research on their own stuff that they’ve forgotten about.”
While the series began with Burgess’ friends talking about albums he loves, as it grew into a life of its own, even his eyes were opened to new records, recalling, “I’m now a big fan of True by Spandau Ballet, and it wasn’t on my radar when I was younger. It’s just something about Gary’s (Kemp) stories, him being a kid and writing all the songs that everybody knows, these worldwide smashes, and he just wrote them when his only audience was his mum and his brother.”
When Burgess dropped the needle on The Charlatans’ Some Friendly to begin his listening party adventure, he couldn’t have predicted that Paul McCartney would one day participate. However, it became a reality on December 21st, 2020, when McCartney provided the low down on McCartney III.
“I was getting really confident,” Burgess says of booking the Beatle. “It’s right in the middle of it, and I just had a phone call from Kylie Minogue saying she really wanted to do one, and I saw that Macca was putting out McCartney III, and I just cheekily asked, ‘How about a listening party?’ Usually, people would come back within a couple of hours, but I got nothing, you know, nothing. And then, about six weeks later, I just got an emoji from him and thought, ‘Okay, well, there we go’. A few weeks later, it happened, and it was one of the best, of course.”
Despite securing a Beatle, a couple of names evaded Burgess. “I still dream about interviewing RZA about Wu-Tang Forever and the one I’ll probably never get, Kate Bush. Peter Gabriel has come close a couple of times, and that would be amazing,” he reveals.
The timing of the end of Tim’s Listening Parties also coincided with Twitter becoming X and changing as a platform into a fertile breeding ground for the alt-right rather than a place where a warm, positive community like the one built by Burgess could thrive.
“I think we got it in its heyday,” he says of the social media platform before its takeover by Elon Musk. “I found that it was a really positive thing, and I had a good experience with it with the listening party. Now, it has changed, but things always change, so you just have to roll with it.”
The new compilation album sees Burgess pay homage to the artists who participated in the listening parties on a 62-track release featuring everyone from Iron Maiden to Kae Tempest. “It’s just great that people are all very supportive of it and what and it’s legacy because it has a legacy already,” he says of the project.
While Twitter has changed, and the listening parties are no longer in their original form, Burgess isn’t slowing down. At the start of the year, The Charlatans enjoyed a co-headline tour of the US with Ride and wrote a “brilliant” new song that Burgess says is “one of the best” the band have ever penned.
Additionally, this summer, Burgess is teaming up with one of the few people in Britain with a more action-packed schedule than himself, Gary Neville, for a DJ set at Kendal Calling. Burgess explains the bizarre pairing: “Gary is always looking for new things to do, not that he’s busy enough, and I just asked him if you’ve answered DJing.”
Burgess adds: “I spoke to him for my second book, Vinyl Adventures. He’s always been a big music fan, and he talked about ‘The Only One I Know‘ being a big dressing room song for (Manchester) United when he was in his heyday as a player.”
While Burgess has many different plates spinning, and Tim’s Listening Parties is no longer occupying the forefront of his mind, it’ll never entirely disappear. For most of us, there aren’t many memories to savour from the pandemic, but The Charlatans frontman enabled a beacon of light to glisten through into our lives, and this new compilation album is a celebration of how he helped unite the music community in a moment of hopelessness.
For an artist who can look back on a career that has defined eras and benefitted generations of music lovers, there will always be one special moment in time when he transcended the confines of the grooves of his own work and celebrated the unifying nature of music at large.
Tim’s Listening Party is out now via Demon Music and available to buy here.
