Dave McCabe doesn’t know how he’d have survived financially in music if he was starting out now.
The Zutons frontman Dave McCabe says the music industry is in a “pretty grim state” now.
The indie musician – who penned noughties classic Valerie, which went on to become a huge hit for the late Amy Winehouse – has lamented the dire state of the music business with artists struggling to make a living from streaming.
He told the Daily Star: “There’s well less money flying about, I am lucky to have sold records of that time. Because I don’t know what you do now, I really don’t know what you do, apart from gigs, so you build it up and you gig.
“That’s the only way to make money is through gigs and merchandise because there is no money in streaming, maybe there is with adverts but you can’t rely on that, because that is someone else’s decision.
“And so it’s pretty grim really to be honest.”
Dave also brought up his failed attempt at a solo career, quipping about his 2015 LP Church of Miami, “the less said about that the better to be honest.”
The 45-year-old musician previously admitted Amy’s cover of Valerie was a “gift from God” as it kept his band relevant while they were on hiatus.
He told Radio X: “The way I see it, it was like a gift from God, and I was there to receive it.
“The band was there to receive it… and some people are like, ‘Were you [annoyed] when she took your song?’ And I was like, ‘Well not really, because she just immortalised the whole thing.’ Do you know what I mean? Because it was a big song anyway, but that just took it to this whole new level.
“I think it’s in the Top 10 of karaoke songs. I’ve walked past boozers, and you can hear people singing it and it’s like, we wrote that in that little room in town and here it is now. I don’t have any bad feeling about it. I did for a bit because people would ask you about money all the time. […] That’s what I’d ask if I was in the other person’s shoes, so yeah, it has made life easier and no it doesn’t do my head in.
“At the time it did my head in because we made a pretty weak third album after it and no one was asking about the songs on that, do you know what I mean? It’s just one of those songs though. It’s its own entity. It’s in the ether.”
