“We liked the sound of what Giorgio was doing with I Feel Love. We thought the marriage of electronics with what we were doing would be something really fresh and special”: Russell Mael on how Sparks went beyond pop to create their own sonic universe

Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks.

Cast your mind back to the golden age of music criticism when formulaic was one of the ultimate pejoratives – the caveat to give us the ick. How times change.

Pop formulas are on the syllabus at music schools. Melodies and song structures are engineered to anticipate our expectations rather than confound them. To quote Computer Music’s 2021 tutorial on Songwriting basics: how to create a modern pop song using just 4 chords, individuality is welcome, but, “if you want your tunes to fit well against the current landscape, they’ll inevitably need to conform to some extent to what your audience is expecting”. That’s just how it is.