Paul Heaton - Jenius Paul Heaton

Ask Paul Heaton how many songs he’s written and he’ll tell you he’s not really sure. 
Perhaps that’s unsurprising: this summer it’s 40 years since The Housemartins released their debut album, Hull: 0 London: 4, peaking at number 3 in Britain. 
Subsequently, he’s released, in various configurations – with The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, solo and with Jacqui Abbot, not to mention as Biscuit Boy –another 21 studio albums, plenty going gold, some multi-platinum, as they’ve risen to the charts’ highest reaches. For each, moreover, he’ll have written many many more songs than he’ll ever include.

Now, less than two years since The Mighty Several – itself his sixth album to go Top 5 in a dozen years – this prolific, poetic observer of human nature is back with another fifteen gems.

To observers of the Manchester-dwelling songwriter, such self-effacement will be familiar. 
Few artists are as modest, a spirit Heaton carries over into his lifestyle, whether taking the tram to the studio when’s it raining or touring England by bike in 2010 (and the whole UK two years later.) 
He’s also uncommonly willing to share his microphone, letting others make his songs their own. 
This time, Rianne Downey picks up where she left off on The Mighty Several – having first covered for an ailing Jacqui Abbott on tour in 2020 after Heaton discovered her on social media – while Ireland’s Declan O’Rourke brings out her Dolly Parton side on rambunctious country bacchanal, ‘The Whisky Did’.

Jenius, Heaton’s new album’s title, is a symptom of this unassuming style.
“If anybody ever calls me a genius,” he explains, “I always say, ‘What?! With a J?!’ The spelling would obviously be wrong.” 
Fortunately, there’s nothing bashful about these songs, something reflected in the LP’s cover, the first to feature a photo of Heaton since the Housemartin’s debut album. 
Indeed, Jenius betrays the truth of his talents, and its songs – of love and loneliness, pubs and booze, community and counsel, a nod to football, the state of the nation, and the overall wisdom of kindness – are distinguished by his notably tender voice, his enchanting melodies and a meticulous, effortless craft. 
“If I can get a variety of people of all sorts of backgrounds to say, ‘Oh, that could be about me or you,’” he says, “then I've been successful”.

Such diversity isn’t restricted to his lyrics. Kicking off with ‘Can’t Get Next To You’’s rowdy three-chord rush and rounding things up with ‘A Son A Father’’s extravagant but barbed glam rock, Jenius dips its toes assuredly into rock ‘n’ roll, country, soul and ska, blues, Yacht Rock, even Latin terrain. 
Again, his duets are as charming and loaded as Nancy & Lee’s, yet, on the likes of the fragile ‘Jet Back Sky’ and bittersweet ‘Send In The Clowns’, he explores what he considers more “atmospheric” territory than ever before.

All of this is shot through with his quintessential blend of empathy, wit and contempt. 
His protagonists pine for the elusive (‘Can’t Get Next To You’) and revel in flaws (‘My Favourite Kind Of Idiot’). 
They find the best in their circumstances (‘She Ain’t Pretty’) or find themselves written out of history (‘Do Not Ask Me’). 
They commit to romance (‘I Want The Job’), watch it “screwed up or binned” (‘Sad Songs And Lawsuits’), or concede that it’s not for them (‘Good For The Bees’). 
They rail at racists (‘One Eye Open’) and berate buffoons (‘Send In The Clowns’), get pissed (‘Don’t Lean On Me’), and if at times they extol the benefits of maintaining good humour (‘Go Upstream’), at others they spotlight uncomfortable truths, like the insanity of humanity’s impatience (‘Before Before’). 
Indeed, there aren’t many chart-topping songwriters who can pack a punch with Heaton’s prowess, as when he crowns ‘A Son A Father’’s belting eulogy with “... Husband and a cunt.”

Jenius would be a remarkable album at any time, even more for a man who turned 64 this spring. 
But it’s still more remarkable because it sounds like it was a joy to make but was recorded as his ten-year marriage ended. 
There is, however, no point seeking clues to this development in its songs because they were begun in the months following The Mighty Several and penned, like so many before them, during cycling breaks in Holland. 
They were finished there, too, in a village north of Amsterdam, with guitarist Jonny Lexus. 
Having worked with Heaton since 2010’s Acid Country, this time he earned eight co-writing credits as well as helping arrange other tracks. 
“It's nice writing songs by yourself,” Heaton says. “…but it's really nice writing them with Jonny.”

Like 2022’s N.K. Pop, Jenius was recorded in early 2026 at Manchester’s Blueprint Studios with a loyal coterie of associates. 
Bassist Chris Wise, who’s done a dozen years in Paul’s band and drummer Pete Marshall, a cool 17 years, returned again, though duties with Squeeze meant keyboardist Stephen Large was replaced by Toby Chapman. 
(“They all told him, ‘Just do the opposite of what you'd expect the song would need, and Paul would probably like that.’”) 
It was also produced, like The Mighty Several, by the legendary Ian Broudie. 
“Everybody in the band said he's the best who's worked on their instrument, and I could hear the difference,” Heaton says. 

This December marks forty years since Heaton’s first number one, The Housemartins’ cover of the Isley Jasper Isley’ song’ ‘Caravan Of Love’. 
That said, despite the many hits he’s had – from exuberant anthems like ‘Happy Hour’ to poignant portraits like ‘Old Red Eyes Is Back’, from platinum singles like ‘Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)’ to number one albums like Manchester Calling – Jenius feels like a real achievement. 

Ultimately, Heaton estimates he’s now written some four or five hundred songs. 
In so doing, he’s established – though he’s too self-deprecating to state this himself – his own distinctive, if unconventional brand of quasi-English folk. 
Moreover, these singular classics not only keep coming but somehow keep getting better. 

Silly or serious, poignant or pointed, therein lies Paul Heaton’s Jenius.

Tracklisting

1. Can’t Get Next To You
2. Favourite Kind Of Idiot
3. I Want The Job
4. Sad Songs And Lawsuits
5. She Ain’t Pretty
6. One Eye Open
7. Send In The Clowns
8. Do Not Ask Me
9. Don’t Lean On Me
10. Jet Black Sky
11. The Whisky Did
12. Before Before
13. Good For The Bees
14. Go Upstream
15. A Son A Father