I write longhand. I love using pen and paper. There’s something slow and intimate about the process that allows you to creep up on the subject. I can pursue an idea for years. If there’s one gift I have as a writer, it’s patience. Sometimes, I think that I just out-patience the idea, and after four or five years, it just comes out with its hands up. “You’re still fucking here? I surrender.”
— Mike McCormack, from "Mike McCormack: ‘If I’ve one gift as a writer, it’s patience’", interview by Killian Fox. (The Guardian, November 11, 2023)
In the second instalment of our interview with Universal Music Publishing Group’s UK MD, Mike McCormack reflects on the success of Harry Sty
Universal Music Publishing Group UK managing director Mike McCormack has spoken to Music Week about the global success of Harry Styles as a solo artist.
Earlier this week, McCormack delivered his message to rivals including Hipgnosis with the words: “We’re building the catalogues of the future”.
Harry Styles is central to that mission at UMPG, along with co-writer Kid Harpoon who’s also signed to the company, which was recently named Publisher Of The Year category at the Music Week Awards.
Although Fine Line by Harry Styles was released in late 2019, it still finished at No.7 in the US last year based on digital and physical sales (317,000). It was the fourth biggest seller of 2021 on vinyl in the US (256,000).
In the UK, Fine Line was No.12 overall last year (178,527 including streaming equivalent sales). It has total sales to date of 543,797.
In his exclusive interview for the latest issue of Music Week, Mike McCormack said: “A bugbear of mine is that we produce so much great, innovative music in the UK, but where are the superstars? Where is the next Adele or Ed Sheeran? And [signing Styles] was one of the first decisions made when I got here. Jody [Gerson, UMPG chairman and CEO] was instrumental in the deal as well. We just went, ‘The guy is a superstar, and they are so few and far between that we have to do everything we can to convince him to sign to us.’ Thankfully, he did.
“[Fine Line] has proved he can stand on his own two feet and be an original artist in his own right. I hear [his next record] is coming together very well and hopefully, it will be even bigger, better and more successful than the last, which was an extraordinary success. He’s very much in charge of his destiny.”
there is no denying the gravitational pull we feel in everything around us now, the instability which thrills everywhere like a fever, so tangible you have to wonder
how come we never noticed those tensions building
were we so blind to the world teetering on the edge that we never straightened up from what we were doing to consider things more clearly or -
“That’s the great comfort of the novel in many ways. The novel would seek to have us believe that we are people among other people and that possibly we might only be human when we are with other people. The short story is very different to that. The short story says, You’re only codding yourself, you’re on your own. That’s why so many short stories end in existential loneliness, in cosmic loneliness. The two greatest Irish short stories both end in different kinds of loneliness, ‘The Dead’ and ‘Guests of the Nation’. One of them looks out and sees the barren tundra of his own soul and that. The other narrator, at the end of ‘Guests of the Nation’, he looks out at the bog and he sees the stars and he says nothing was ever the same again. He has infringed human law, cosmic law, and everything like that. That’s why the short story is much stronger medicine, much tougher medicine. It’s short with good reason. Small doses.”
-Mike McCormack, in a conversation
Being primarily a sports blog, the RIP series on Dubsism tends to live along those lines…eulogies for those who impacted me from their various playing fields. But, there are exceptions; welcome to the latest one.
Elvis was a piker compared to Mr. McCormack
Something that’s been said plenty on this blog is some of the best people in the world come from North Dakota. While John “Mike” McCormack…
