John Cooper Clarke has revealed that writing ‘I Want To Be Yours’ was not his idea.
READ MORE: The full story of Arctic Monkeys’ album ‘AM’
The punk poet’s 1982 creation, which featured on his album ‘Zip Style Method’, was covered by the Arctic Monkeys for their 2013 album ‘AM‘. The Monkeys’ cover of the poem has gained global popularity, with the track earning over 1.6 billion streams on Spotify.
Appearing as a guest on Shaun Keaveny’s Daily Grind podcast, the poet told Keaveny about how the track came to be, adding that it wasn’t his idea.
“Well, it was some spare lines I had around and it’s one of those actually, that I’m grateful for the studio for. Whenever I’ve worked with musicians, you know, for a start, it was never my idea. But I couldn’t think of a reason not to,” said Clarke.
He continued: “I thought, Well, yeah all right. And we had did that, C A minor F and G chord progression, you know, beloved of most, do what numbers and pop songs generally. And so I figured that these St Valentine’s Day kinda lines would fit nicely into that. I was thinking, obviously, you know, Neil Sedaka. You know, “you’re my little valentine” and so that’s what sort of tripped my wire there.
“I thought yeah, , Valentine poem, you know, you only need one hit don’t you, you know, and if it’s on what other key days of the year, like, especially at Christmas, you’re going to be a millionaire all over again. So I figured, you know, maybe a Saint Valentine’s Day number might do this might do for me. What Merry Christmas is don’t forget the likes of Noddy..”
Elsewhere in the chat, Clarke shared that he could never be a rockstar due to his “self-doubt”.
He added: “I’ve got that in spades as well, you know, I’m being a bit disingenuous there, you know, but I think I’m a bit of a control freak. Like I say, if I can’t be top dog, I don’t want to know(…) . So once I seen Elvis, its like just forget about it.”‘
The poet previously spoke to NME about his poem back in 2013. “I wrote it along with a load of others at the time, I tend to write like that. I remember when it was – about ’83 or ’84 or something like that. It’s come to my attention that it’s the wedding favourite,” he tod NME.
He continued: “The number of people that have said, ‘I had that read at my wedding’, or ‘My husband proposed to me using that number’… It’s been very useful in the world of modern romance! It is to modern wedding ceremonies what ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ by Eric Idle is to humanist funerals. I probably go to a great many more funerals than you do, so take it from me.”
Earlier this year, Clarke spoke about ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ hitting a billion streams and becoming a global hit.
He told The Guardian in response to news of its billionth stream: “Is that a lot? An American billion is different to a British billion – and I don’t know what either of them is. But it’s a fuck of a lot of listens.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Clarke said that he was in love with Artic Monkeys’ version. Besides the cover making him “a lot of PRS” (in reference to royalties), he credits it with boosting his profile, as he tours sizeable UK venues this month.
“I was never actually on the sausage,” he added, using the rhyming slang for the dole. “This is what I do, this is my job, and sometimes I’m doing better business than others. But thanks to a great extent to the lads sticking me into the pop world again, everything has gone from strength to strength.”
Back in September, he opened Arctic Monkeys‘ gig in New York with a special performance of the poem to mark the 10th anniversary of the album.
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