Warm up your winter with the playlist from our latest issue

The perfect accompaniment to SW37, lend your ears to classic tracks, old favourites, and new treats…

We thought you might like to listen along as you read our Winter issue, packed with all your favourite interviews, features, reviews, and more. Therefore, we’ve put together 20 songs that represent the songwriters and musicians found within the pages of SW37. Featuring icons like Ryan Tedder’s OneRepublic to rising stars such as Bex and Emmeline, there’s something for everyone. Hit play and enjoy!

Take Your Mama

“I went and got in my shower and the chorus of Take Your Mama just came out of my mouth – I started singing in the shower, and it just came out of my mouth. In that moment, I immediately knew there was something there. I jumped out, and I had a tape somewhere. The lyric was there, and the melody. So I jumped out and recorded the melody in that first lyric.” — Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters)

Symphony

“We started off in a session with Steve Mac, who we did Cry Baby and Rockabye with, and Ammar Malik, who’s a very talented songwriter. The song was very different when we first started. After that first day it was called The Music Sounds Better Without You. Symphony was in there, that word, but it was all about how, now we’re not together anymore, I can hear music again. That was the original concept.” — Jack Patterson (Clean Bandit)

Pages

“I wanted to pull people in right away, but again, it was a stream of consciousness. I added the little guitar-picking part at the end, because I’m not the world’s greatest musician. I’m trying to incorporate instrumental hooks after the song is written to give it something extra. It took a while to write it, but I’m really pleased with how it turned out.” — Nina Nesbitt

So Real

“The melody was so gorgeous and majestic. And that lyric about the simple city dress, I thought that was one of his [Jeff Buckley] best lyrics he had come up with. It was really magical to witness that, and then he did the whole outro bit too. We drove home that night in a taxi, very close to where I live now. I was living on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. Now I live one block away on Mott Street. I remember that cab ride, and feeling like my life was gonna change.” — Michael Tighe

There Goes The Fear Again

“I remember doing the lyrics. I used to have a lyric book and I had a very basic studio; I couldn’t even call it a studio – I had a keyboard and a Portastudio. On my stereo in the front room in Chorlton, I just kept playing the tape. I started writing lyrics and I’d rewind it. I’d write and rewind, again. Then I’d have a Dictaphone and I’d sing words to it. A bit more deliberate than [stream of consciousness] but just fine-tuning it all the time.” — Andy Williams (Doves)

Metamorphosis

“There are two different soundscapes on the song, one that reflects something that you’d hear from The Cranberries, or Smashing Pumpkins, a more melancholic side – not just lyrically, but sonically. And then there’s the part that reflects America, The Bee Gees, or Fleetwood Mac. Sonically, it really does transition from dark to light. Even Nirvana was an inspiration on the early part.” — Abraham Boyd (Infinity Song)

Conspiracy Theory

“Being fresh off of Covid lockdown times, I think the whole idea of “conspiracy theorists” must have been circulating at the time. As a songwriter, I think it struck me as a metaphor for just how wild our brains can run and grasp any sort of confirmation bias we can grab onto, so long as it leads us to the desired conclusion. I thought it could be applied to interpersonal relationships as it typically is to the world at large.” — Makena Hartlin