Episode 6 - Chris Difford

Episode 5 - Chris Difford - Songwriting for Songwriters Podcast

Joining Elijah this week is Chris Difford. Chris Difford is a Grammy nominated and double Ivor Novello Award winning lyricist who has brought us characters and sketches from everyday life, and has successfully turned the mundane into the beautiful, the urbane into the exquisite, for over 40 years.

With his collaborator, Squeeze co-founder Glenn Tilbrook, Chris has written some of the most enduring and best-loved songs of our time such as ‘Up The Junction’, ‘Cool For Cats’ and ‘Labelled With Love’, ‘Tempted’ and many others. Squeeze returned with two new albums in recent years ‘Cradle to the Grave’ in 2015 and ‘The Knowledge’ in 2017, followed by extensive world-wide touring supporting Hall and Oates in the US and Madness in the UK. The Squeeze tour Food for Thought in 2022 virtually sold out and raised over £30,000 for various food banks. The band had never sounded better.

Chris hosts songwriting retreats and has done so for over 30 years, some in Prisons, some in Rehabs, but mostly in Somerset with the Buddy Holly Foundation at Pennard House. He is one of the country’s most respected songwriters and has co-written with a host of musicians and performers that reads like a veritable who’s who of the music industry.

His autobiography ‘Some Fantastic Place’ was released in 2017 and found some wonderful praise in the UK press and with fans around the World who recognised his journey into recovery while touring with his friends in Squeeze. The book continues to be part of his solo touring and became the focus of his sell out two week run at the Edinburgh Festival. A stand up show with a bit of sit down. Chris returns to Edinburgh this year in 2023 with a brand new stand up show.

In 2023 Squeeze are writing new songs and planning tours for the future with some special treats to look forward to. Meanwhile Chris is somehow finding the time to still run songwriting workshops for the charity Help Musician’s as well as recording series 3 of his highly acclaimed Podcast ‘I never thought it would happen’.