Before Chappell Roan declared herself "your favourite artist's favourite artist", there was Sparks - the greatest band you've never heard of.

I am completely obsessed with Sparks, and their story is amazing. They are the ultimate innovators, always moving on to the next thing just as everyone else catches up with what they’ve been experimenting with. They just keep making the next cool thing - genre to genre, decade to decade, more concerned with the play and the experimentation and the making of the work rather than fame and popularity (although they both admit that that would have been nice). Sadly, it meant that they were always ahead of their time and never achieved the level of success they truly deserved, but they did inspire almost every musical artist you’ve ever heard of - from Duran Duran to Sonic Youth!

There's something both inspiring and devastating about that trajectory. To be the person everyone learns from, but not the person who gets the credit. To be perpetually ahead of the curve in a way that reads, at the time, as simply being ‘wrong’.

I think about this a lot in relation to my own work. The artists I love the most are rarely the ones who were celebrated in their moment - they're the ones who were doing something so unique, so utterly themselves, that everyone else needed time to catch up. There’s a whole glorious tradition of artists who decided that following their own path mattered more than anything else - even if no one else gets it. A lot of the time, it’s not even a choice - the world just isn’t ready. Yet.

It's a hard line to hold, believe me. But Sparks have been holding it for over fifty years, and they're still going. I take enormous comfort from that.

I cannot recommend Edgar Wright’s documentary about them enough. It’s an incredible look at what it means to go your own way, even when it costs you, and the power of never giving up. If you do anything creative (so, all of us) you need to watch this.

Also, as a sneaky peek into the insane creativity of Sparks, I love this breakdown of creative lessons we can learn from them.

I was fortunate enough to see them live in Copenhagen a couple of years ago and it was an unforgettable experience - if you ever get the chance to go and see them, take it!

I thought I’d leave you with a few of my favourites:

Meet more amazing artists doing cool, weird shit…

Featured