Graffiti on the Train

Album: Graffiti on the Train (2013)
Charted: 44
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the title track of Stereophonics eighth long player, which is a part-concept album for which frontman Kelly Jones penned an accompanying movie script. "For a long time, everybody was a bit confused about what I was doing," Jones explained to The Daily Telegraph. "It's not a concept album, it's not a musical but in my head it all joins together. It's like Stand By Me crossed with Quadrophenia, the music bouncing into the story and the story bouncing into the music."
  • The album's concept came to Jones when he kept hearing youngsters on the roof of a building next to his house. "I thought they were trying to break in, and I've got kids at home, so I was freaking out a bit," he told The Daily Telegraph. "One night I shouted out the window, 'what's going on?' It turned out they were trying to get to the railway behind our house and paint the train."

    "That stuck in my head; they were going to risk all that to go and spray graffiti," he continued. "All these scenarios were unfolding. What if they were spraying a love message to a girl who catches the train every morning? So there was a story evolving, and music evolving, and things would bleed from one into the other."
  • The album's artwork was taken from an oil painting by Stephen Goddard. Jones explained to The Sun: "I bought a painting a couple of years ago by a guy called Steve Goddard. It's a bit dark, a bit weird - almost childlike. A friend of mine knew him and he started coming to a few shows. I played him some of the stuff, gave him the film script and he said he wanted to do the sleeve."

Comments: 1

  • Tc from SaDiscovered this song and album, around May 2013 at a time my marriage fell thru. Sounded like a reflection of my life. Meaning: I had been painting that train since i met her. But by the time she saw the graffiti in the way that made sense to her, I was dead.
    Slight twist of the lyrics coz in the story it is the guy who is busy planning to do it. while the mirror is, similarly, a distraction from what matters, by the time she leaves it to see the said graffiti it had better b a piece of art, or the make up.
    That's music.
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