Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody has opened up on the band's new era alongside record label Polydor and management firm Closer Artists.
Forest Is the Path, their first record in six years, drops via Polydor on September 13 and was trailed by lead single The Beginning.
Speaking in the September issue of Music Week, Lightbody recalled penning the track on the opening day of sessions with bandmate and renowned Ed Sheeran collaborator Johnny McDaid.
“Johnny was like, ‘Why don’t you finish the lyrics now? Let’s finish the song each day,’” said Lightbody. “We both do a lot of co-writing sessions - Johnny does more than I do - where you have to finish a song in a day or there’s no chance it’s ever going to make someone’s record. So we know how to do that but I hadn’t done it for Snow Patrol, so whilst he was building the track, I would write the lyrics and we finished The Beginning on the first day. It set the tone for the whole record.”
The new LP is the former quintet's eighth overall and first as a trio after the departure of long-term members, drummer Jonny Quinn and bassist Paul Wilson.
"These things happen in bands," reflected Lightbody. "There’s only a few bands in the history of music that have lasted this long and been the same four or five people they started with.”
The most successful artists in the world have cited Snow Patrol as an influence
Ryan McDonald
Another shift saw Snow Patrol bring in Fraser T Smith as producer in place of longtime cohort Garret "Jacknife" Lee.
“It had nothing to do with Jacknife and how much we love him or respect and revere his immense talent absolutely, it’s just that it’s probably time to try something new,” stressed Lightbody.
There has also been a change on the management front, with Closer Artists' co-MDs Ryan Lofthouse and Paul McDonald succeeding Q Prime. Lofthouse stated the the aim for the campaign is for Forest Is The Path to be the group’s first No.1 in almost two decades.
“The band haven’t had a No.1 album since Eyes Open, which was 18 years ago,” he said. “They’ve been really unfortunate a couple of times along the way there, but this record deserves to be a No.1 and we’d be lying if we said that we weren’t working towards that all along the way.
"The most successful artists in the world have cited Snow Patrol as an influence. The fact that you know that Gary has appeared on Taylor Swift records and Ed Sheeran has been working with Johnny McDaid for years, all those things will be relevant to a new audience.”
McDonald, meanwhile, is hopeful the new album is recognised as “a classic, modern, relevant rock record”.
“I’d like to put the Ivors committee on notice about this being an incredible collection of songs and a wonderful modern rock record,” he said. “They should be listening hard when this record comes out. It deserves huge recognition globally.”
Gary and Johnny are timeless writers, which is why artists work with them
Ben Mortimer
Breaking through into the mainstream with their third studio album Final Straw (1,835,923 sales, OCC) in 2003, the band achieved further million-sellers with 2006's massive Eyes Open (2,537,305 sales) and 2009 compilation Up To Now (1,250,787 sales). Their most recent LP was 2018's Wildness, which has moved 141,748 units to date.
“Gary and Johnny are timeless writers, which is why artists work with them,” said Polydor president Ben Mortimer, who considers the songs on the new album to be up there with the group's best.
“The Forest Is The Path is just that good," he beamed. "Gary has worked with Johnny on Snow Patrol music for the first time and it’s reinvigorated them. It’s also the first time the band have worked with Fraser T Smith on a project and he’s done an incredible job.”
Their biggest hit single, Chasing Cars has notched up more than 1.3 billion streams on Spotify and UK sales of 3,546,745, according to the Official Charts Company. But the track's ubiquity has not strained Lightbody's relationship with it.
“I’m never going to be a person that is ashamed of any songs we’ve written,” he stated. “I understand and have respect for bands who are like, ‘I don’t want to play this song anymore’ and they have their reasons for that but I feel like it’s part of our history so you can’t hide from it.”
Lightbody also reminisced about working with Taylor Swift, having featured on her 2013 track The Last Time after being introduced to the singer by Ed Sheeran. Lightbody revisited the song, which he co-wrote with Swift and Jacknife Lee, in 2021 for its inclusion on Red (Taylor’s Version).
“I enjoyed it,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever done something like that. Snow Patrol have done new versions of songs but we’ve never done one where you’re trying to be faithful to the original. It was really great to revisit it because I love that song and it means a lot to me. Garret did the heavy-lifting on it in terms of the two of us, I just sung it again!”
Lightbody added that the success of Swift's re-recorded albums offered an important lesson to emerging artists at the start of their career.
“Getting complete control of your music, your catalogue, is fantastic,” he added. “It’s a dream for an artist and any artist that can do it, I would advise to do it, to have as much control as you can over it. I’m really happy for Taylor that she has that.”
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