Paul Weller has gotten more daring and experimental with his music the older he’s got.
The Modfather is set to mark his 66th birthday (25.05.24) with the retrospective collection, ’66’, which is due for release the day before he reaches the milestone, and he has admitted he’s “more open-minded” creatively later in life.
He told Record Collector magazine: “I don’t want to keep going on about my age but one thing that is very nice about getting older is that you can experiment
The older I get, the more open-minded I get.”
The former Jam frontman has dubbed the follow-up to 2021’s ‘Fat Pop (Volume 1)’ his “crooner album”.
On how it came about, he said: “This is my crooner album! I wasn’t really thinking overall what it was going to be, I was just recording individual tracks.
“I’ve been working on it for two or three years, in between tours, and whatever else.
“There was this big buildup of songs, at least 20; I then thought, what am I going to do? Am I just going to keep on recording? Is there an album here?
“So, I just pulled out 12 of what I really liked. It was then a question of seeing what worked together and how the album would flow.
“I wasn’t conscious of what mood it is or what mood I’m in because it was written over the course of three years at different times with different people.”
The star-studded collection features Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, Madness frontman Suggs and former Oasis rocker Noel contributed to ‘Jumble Queen’.
Weller’s pals Dr Robert, Richard Hawley, Steve Brooks and Max Beesley also make appearances.