How Tim Burgess and his Twitter Listening Party kept music alive during lockdown

On December 17 2020, the official Twitter account of Sir Paul McCartney tweeted a wordless message containing only an image of Macca’s trademark greeting and affirmation - a thumb's up. It came in response to a tweet on November 13 from Tim Burgess.

“Hey @PaulMcCartney – just wondering if you fancy doing a @LISTENING_PARTY for McCartney III. Give us a shout if you do ;)”

“I might have been pushing my luck,” Burgess reflects now with a laugh. But The Charlatans frontman and solo artist’s message paid off: on December 21, McCartney took part in the 604th instalment of Tim’s Twitter Listening Party, delighting listeners and social media followers with real-time, track-by-track revelations about McCartney III, the one-man-and-his-mellotron album he wrote, played, recorded and produced while quarantined at home in Sussex. And if Burgess has learnt anything over the last year, it’s that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And if you do ask, and ask with fannish enthusiasm, artists big and small will reply positively.

Tim’s Twitter Listening Party launched a year ago today, on the first day of the UK’s first national lockdown. The idea was simple and gloriously lo-fi. On March 23 2020, Burgess told his Twitter followers – at the time hovering around the 100,000 mark – that if they all began spinning or streaming The Charlatans’ 1990 debut Some Friendly simultaneously that evening at 10pm, he would tweet comments, insights and revelations about each of the album tracks as they played.

Reading (and playing) along was Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos. The frontman did what many listeners, famous and civilian, would ultimately do: tweeted his own tuppenceworth. His was that he bought Some Friendly when was 17. So Burgess suggested Kapranos do a Listening Party for his own band’s self-titled 2004 debut, which he duly did the following day, using Burgess’s Twitter platform.

"When I listened to that Some Friendly party, it did immediately bring back some lovely memories of the place I was when I bought it and the person I was," Kapranos tells me. "And when Tim asked if I would do it, it evaporated some of my naturally anti-nostalgic sentiments. I generally hate looking back or regurgitating things, and I don't like the current trend of bands touring their biggest album and living on past glories. But when I saw what Tim did, it felt like a good thing, and a communal thing.

"And at that time, at the start of lockdown, when we had no idea what it would be like and everyone was feeling trepidatious and lonely, it felt like a great way of connecting with people."

Kapranos wasn't the only musician taking note. “Then Bonehead saw it, and Dave Rowntree saw it,” Burgess says of, respectively, the onetime Oasis guitarist and the Blur drummer. Cue Listening Party #4 for Parklife and Listening Party #6 for Definitely Maybe. The musicians chipped in by posting memories and memorabilia. “Dave set the bar high with his laminated Parklife lyrics," says Burgess.

“Then I asked Wendy Smith from Prefab Sprout because I wanted some inside information on the making of Steve McQueen because Appetite is one of my favourite songs of all time. So at first it was just lots of people whose numbers I had in my phone.”

Twelve months on, Burgess’s phonebook and direct-message timeline are bulging. Over 700-plus parties have roamed far and wide, some way from his Britpop-era peers, and have lifted the lid on considerably more than just canonical rock albums from days of yore.

Celebrants and celebrated albums have included Sixties legends Love and Graham Gouldman; Seventies landmarks David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols; Eighties pop heavyweights Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Frankie Goes To Hollywood; electronic acts Disclosure and The Chemical Brothers; personal Burgess fave raves Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Smiths, New Order and The Cure; and hundreds more besides.

The concept is broad and sturdy enough to encompass contributions from band associates (Bowie himself obviously didn’t participate in the Diamond Dogs party) and not-strictly-LPs projects. Tim Pope did a TTLP for his videos. Coldplay hosted one for their A Head Full of Dreams concert film. Then came McCartney, a musical star of a wholly different magnitude, who hosted his party three days after his album’s release.

One year on, Tim’s Twitter Listening Party stands as a pandemic positive, if that’s not too crass a term. Over (at time of writing) 743 parties, hundreds of thousands of music fans around the world have listened in and chatted along. And no matter if you missed the nightly 8pm, 9pm or 10pm party kick-offs – via an ingenious “replay” function available on the TTLP website, you can watch each party’s tweets come in as if they were freshly minted.

“The replay thing was a game-changer, and that happened quite early on, within about a month,” says Burgess. “That was three guys: Mat with one ‘t’, Matt with two ‘t’s and Andrew with no ‘t’s’. I’ve never met them and they don’t know each other either, but they were just fans who came to me and said they could do this. And they have jobs and families, so they start work on this about 10 every night, after the kids have gone to beds, and they do it just out of absolute pleasure. And the software or programming to me is like witchcraft. I don’t even pretend to understand how it works.”

That gesture and effort, he says, speaks to the socially-minded goodwill and connectivity that powers his idea. “Everybody all over the world starts listening to an album at the same time. There’s a global call to arms, so you feel part of something. Then you hear one of your favourite records, or something new to you which is equally exciting. And you get to listen to it with a community. And this past year, who hasn’t missed all that?”

I’m talking to Burgess on the shingle beach at Salthouse on the north Norfolk coast, an hour or so from his home. He first had the idea for listening parties a decade ago, while watching director Chris Morris’s Four Lions on TV. “The reason I watched is because I was intrigued – Riz Ahmed said he’d tweet along as the film played. So he tweeted things like: ‘Before I got into the car, Chris was getting very annoyed by how much I was laughing. So this version you see is the take where I laughed the least.’”

The Cheshire-raised musician, 53, who’s led his band from the glory days of Madchester and onwards, ever onwards, loved the idea. So he thought he’d do one for The Charlatans’ first album. He put a shout out to his followers, all 6,000 of them (“I was just starting out on Twitter”). He ending up doing all the Charlatans albums, and all his solo albums, “about five times each over the span of the years”.

Then, a year ago, as coronavirus’s first wave made everyone retreat indoors, he wanted to do his bit. Yes, he could in theory livestream a DIY performance from his bedroom/bathroom/living room, as multiple musicians would do over the ensuing months. No, he couldn’t help feed NHS workers or offer support to furloughed workers. But he could do something uniting and uplifting.

“There were all these stories of proper people doing proper things to help. And I thought I could add a little bit to that. People weren’t allowed to go out. People were potentially on their own. Lots of gig lovers were going to be missing out. So I thought listening to records together with other fans and bands would be a nice thing.”

As his idea went viral amongst the international musical community, Burgess found himself working alone 10 hours a day, organising everything himself, surrounded by “lots of Post-Its and lots of things pencilled on bits of paper”. He has some help now, but last spring, “I didn’t know how to use the calendar,” he admits sheepishly, “so I’d have five people booked in at the same time on the same day, and I spent all my time sending millions of emails saying I’d made a mistake!”

Then there was the time spent doggedly chasing down stars. “My Bloody Valentine just came through for Isn’t Anything,” he says of a band known for their reclusiveness and the inordinate time they take over making their music. “But I’ve been working on that for a year. I found out that [frontman] Kevin Shields has been watching, without me knowing it, and loving it. And now it’s finally gonna happen. So it’s lots of texts, lots of waiting around – for Paul Weller! – then working on a date, then a time, then confirming it, then promoting it.”

Burgess has always been a multi-tasker. As well as his band and solo careers – he found time to release his fifth solo album, the lovely I Love the New Sky, last spring – he co-runs a label (O Genesis), has written three memoirs (Telling Stories, Tim Book Two – Vinyl Adventures and One, Two, Another), launched a coffee brand and festival diner (Tim Peaks) and practices Transcendental Meditation. He even developed, in partnership with Kellogg’s, a breakfast cereal, Totes Amazeballs.

But hosting an international hang-out on Twitter – nightly – was a pivot of a different magnitude. “At first I was really jittery, doing these 10-hour days, trying to make it all work and get it all right. And now I have done a Listening Party at the bus-stop,” he admits somewhat sheepishly.

Which one? “I’ve done a few actually. Is it disrespectful to way which was the first? No? OK, the first one was OMD’s Dazzle Ships. But no, it didn’t suffer at all, because it’s got to the point now where I just blow the kick-off whistle, and the artists do it all on my platform. I ask where people are listening from – we’ve got every continent covered, including Antarctica – and I’ll ‘like’ certain things in my timeline. But it’s actually over to the artists, who are tagging Tim’s Twitter Listening Party. It’s their moment in the spotlight.”

The numbers speak for themselves. Cumulatively, there have been just shy of one million replays of the parties. Spotify have told him that records from the Eighties that barely had any streaming traction have seen their plays go “from nought to a 100 per cent increase” around their makers’ parties. At the start of lockdown Burgess had just over 100,000 followers. Now he has almost 250,000.

“But I lose a lot as well. They follow me [rather than TTLP], so if there’s tonnes of tweets about a band they don’t like, they unfollow. So you gotta build ’em back!” he says cheerfully.

Twitter prominence, of course, also brings out the trolls from under their bridges, and Burgess weathers churlish gripes from followers who don’t share his enthusiasm for this or that band. When we meet, he’s just had his first Covid vaccination; before he knows it, the anti-vaxx pitchfork-wielders will be sending him social media abuse. Nonetheless he remains a champion of the ego-free, democratising nature of Twitter.

“It’s an amazing way to get in touch with people,” he notes, as proven by his shout-out to the aforesaid former Beatle. It’s social media doing what it should be about: socialising.

“Exactly. In the dark days and nights of the lockdown, you could sit with your headphones on, looking at your favourite artist talking about a record you’ve already connected with – but now you’re connecting even more deeply. And for the artists it’s like playing a gig,” he adds by way of part-explanation for why so many musicians, big, small, resting and retired, have been keen to take part. “There’s a build-up to the party. I tell them to prepare in the afternoon, listen to the album and make notes, because those 45 minutes will go quick.”

And then, come the 8pm stage-time, he reminds them: “Don’t get caught up in answering everybody’s questions and then forget to write about the next track.”

To be clear: Tim Burgess is not making money for marshalling this herculean crowd-sourced effort. Nor has he succumbed to the blandishments of radio or TV producers wanting to make broadcast versions of Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties. He’s doing these 10-hour days for nothing, other than the pure love of music, and talking about it. “It has brought a lot to me. I hate not doing anything, so the fact that I was doing it in a time when I could quite easily not have done anything, made me happy.”

Has it been good for his mental health? “It has,” he replies firmly. “And just listening to other people’s music I find really inspiring, no matter what it is. I dunno whether it’s ’cause I’m getting older but I like everything. Or I can see some good in it, at least. And it’s also amazing to see the amount of effort people put in – for themselves, yeah, but for other people who are devouring as much as information about their favourite bands as possible.”

One year on that, ah, covidend has found brilliant form in multiple ways. Burgess made TTLP badges, featuring his stylised likeness drawn by an artist fan, with the proceeds going to the Music Venue Trust campaign to protect independent venues, another of his passions. He’s also partnered with Flare Audio to make earphones, again featuring his likeness.

“People want to join, and they want to bring their own creativity,” he says, adding that that includes “people with tattoos of my face”. What are we talking? Arms, boobs, bums? “Certainly those places,” he squirms. Tim Burgess has, he nods, slightly mortified, “created a monster”.

A fan in Japan created a pixel version of him, in the style of very early computer games, then expanded on that by creating sequences featuring the pixelated adventures of Burgess and other Listening Party artists Blossoms and Badly Drawn Boy. They’re soundtracked by eight-bit recording versions of Charlatans classics ‘The Only One I Know’, ‘One To Another’ and ‘North Country Boy’.

“The latest one is a nightmare where the Twitter bird is trying to steal my records,” he says, adding that all eight of these clips are being released today to mark the first birthday. He’s now working on making them playable games, selling them “for a few pounds”. And, throughout, his age-defying blonde bob is keeping the brand on-message, the better to amplify and cohere the charitable fundraising. “I went jet-black for the album release and that definitely didn’t look right,” he reflects ruefully. “It didn’t match my complexion.”

Also announced today is a book. The Listening Party, to be published by DK in September, will feature the tweeted stories of 100 of the past year’s albums. As with the badges, headphones and computer games, royalties will go to support the embattled live music sector. As he puts it: “People want to buy something that’s gonna help them go to gigs again in the future.”

And that’s the power of the party. In these 12 months that have crushed the arts as a live, communal, collective, participatory experience, Tim’s Twitter Listening Party has become a cultural phenomenon, one led by an unassuming people’s champion and musical folk hero who won’t thank you for calling him any of those things.

“I just want to keep doing it. Someone asked me the other day if I was proud. I’m not proud – I’m just really happy with how it’s gone. And I want to keep going the idea of what it is. I don’t want to monetise it. I don’t want to sell it down the river. I want to keep it as it is: really basic.”

The simplicity of the idea is the source of the magic, agrees Alex Kapranos. "But also, a lot of it is to do with Tim's personality," adds the Franz Ferdinand singer. "There is nothing about him that is in any way snide, or judgemental, or trying to say one artist is worth more than another, or promote his own sense of coolness. He's just got a universal sense of positivity which makes the entire thing work."

So, if push comes to shove, which ones have stood out, and which didn’t work? A gentle soul who’s keen to keep his big tent as welcoming as possible, Burgess won't name names. Pressed, he mentions one British band who didn’t come with the right attitude, and one American musician who was woefully unprepared. But generally he’s found magic in all of them.

“I’m such a massive fan of The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshess and New Order, they were great, and Lol [Tolhurst], Budgie and Stephen [Morris] were fantastic contributors. It’s amazing that you get so much more information from the drummers! They’re sat at the back watching everything, and they remember everything.

“Simon Le Bon was another game-changer,” he continues, “because when I was growing up, he was the biggest pop star around.” Ditto Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp. “He put so much into True that it blew my mind. We spoke about 10 times on the phone before he did it, because he wanted to be clear, and we got on really well. The stories about him writing True in a council house in London with just his mum and his brother as the audience – mindblowing.”

At the other end of, well everything, were The Libertines, who’ve done 2002 debut Up The Bracket and its eponymous 2004 follow-up.

“The great thing about their Listening Parties is that they’re exactly like the band are on stage. They all had to be involved, and Pete [Doherty] and Carl [Barât] are arguing and bumping into each other. And Pete wrote his comments on a typewriter then tweeted those.”

Perhaps surprisingly to those who thought the band were a legend in their own leather-jacketed lunchtime, in terms of replays their Libertines Listening Party has been the fifth most popular over the last year. McCartney is a couple of thousand ahead of them but, ironically, a couple of thousand ahead of him is Liam Gallagher. His event for his MTV Unplugged album had 17,288 replays, the second most.

And top of the pops? Iron Maiden, with Powerslave. Their recent party for their 1984 album was, of course, TTLP #666, and it attracted 77,133 replays, a whopping 60,000 more than the next-placed Liam. Which just goes to reaffirm the diehard enthusiasm of metal fans.

“Unbelievable,” Burgess marvels. “They put a lot of effort into it, everybody in the band took part, and they were trending at Number One on Twitter by the time of the second song. And within three hours, the replays were bigger than the whole Top Ten combined!” he giggles.

Beat that? Tim Burgess doesn’t think anyone can, but he does tell me of a super-secret, super-special artist who’s coming in spring who might come close. Beyond that, he’s continuing his dogged efforts to land RZA for Wu-Tang Forever, “all two hours of it”, and also Debbie Harry and Chris Stein for Blondie’s Parallel Lines. “And if Stormzy or Dave is reading, come aboard. I’d love that.”

And how will he be celebrating today’s first birthday, apart from blowing the whistle on four blockbuster parties discussing Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, Prefab Sprout’s Jordan: The Comeback, Edwyn Collins’ Gorgeous George and Joy Division’s Still?

“A Diet Coke, the book announcement and some Zoom interviews!” laughs this formerly hard-partying musician who’s been sober for a dozen or so years. “To be talking a year on about this thing that was only meant to last a little while – I’d joke it would be Christmas, maybe… And now we’re doing a book, and about to get [name redacted],” he marvels. “It all makes me feel good. I’m celebrating every day.”

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