Johnny Marr has spoken to NME about his new solo album ‘The Age Of Everything’, his love of Fontaines D.C. and The Cure, working with Damon Albarn and his hope for the future via the younger generations.
The former Smiths guitarist turned solo star will share his fifth studio record this Friday (October 2) – a project he said was inspired by “the idea of perception, and how I perceive not just the world but my own feelings and those of the people around me, to spy on them and then write songs about it”.
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Written while people-watching in London before being recorded in Marr’s native Manchester, the LP comprises 10 bright and punchy pop-leaning tracks that look at the human side of societal issues in 2026, with the guitar icon leaning into his own idiosyncrasies more than ever before.
“There was a sense of: ‘If you’ve got your own sound, do it and do it loud’,” he told NME. “There’s definitely a time for that. There are other considerations that come into play when you’re about to go into a new phase. There’s reinvention, doing something you’ve not done before, and I’ve done it several times throughout my career.”
He continued: “I’m usually quite deliberate. I went into this record with a real sense of purpose; that’s why we played eight out of the 10 songs live on the road. Pretty much every band I’ve been in, and most of the guitar bands I’ve been around, have at one point said, ‘You know what we should do before we record the next album? We should gig the songs’. It never happens, but once I get an idea that I think is a good one, I’m a little like a dog with a bone.
“I remember Brian Eno is the same in that. I’m not terribly impulsive, but I am decisive. Unless something comes along and knocks me off that course, then I pretty much see it through. Damon [Albarn] is like that too.”
Listening to old-school ambient stuff, Boards Of Canada, Fontaines D.C. and Gorillaz while making the album – as well as drawing from his own solo back catalogue – Marr shared that he took a great deal from working with Albarn for the cartoon pioneers’ 2026 record, ‘The Mountain’. “I learned to be open-minded, let some things happen naturally, keep your work ethic, don’t be waiting around for things to happen,” he said. “Don’t force anything – just chill, really.”
Check out the rest of our interview with Marr below, where we also told us about healing old rifts between fans of The Cure and The Smiths, fighting “arseholes with dodgy views”, why Andy Burnham gets a pass to listen to his music, and more.
NME: Hello, Johnny. We meet here in Camden – what does this part of London mean to you?
Johnny Marr: “I first moved down here in ‘84, and things were going pretty well. I found a place called Compendium Books where I could buy books that you couldn’t get anywhere else. You could buy cultural books, esoteric books, the few books about musicians and bands that were out back then. It really was a specialist subject. It’s gone, but it feels like it could thrive now.
“I wasn’t part of Camden as everybody knows it from the ‘90s. Electronic were doing more of a Manchester route. Most of my pals have nostalgia for Camden through the Monarch [pub and venue, now The Barfly] and places like that.”
You weren’t stumbling in and out of The Good Mixer?
“No, I wasn’t. I was hearing about it, and it sounded ghastly! Me and Bernard Sumner were looking for the lost chord and the lost Kraftwerk sample in a basement studio in Manchester. What do we know?”
Do you miss those days?
“It’s great how you take for granted those things you once considered normal, then you look back and go, ‘That was really quite special and unusual’. The Prodigy, for example – ‘Firestarter’ got to Number One. That’s just unthinkable now, for something that radical and not manufactured. It had attitude, was genuinely street, created by real people. Maybe that’s the way nostalgia works. I’m glad they’re back out there doing it, but that’s an example of why you should keep your wits about you and enjoy good stuff while it’s happening. Appreciate it for the significance it holds.”
Do you feel that way about many new bands around at the moment?
“They’ve been around for a while now, but I felt that way the very first time I saw Fontaines. I can hear when a song started out in a rehearsal room. That’s one of the first things I talked to Fontaines about when we first met: ‘Where do you rehearse?’ It’s a fact. Angie [wife] said to me years ago, ‘Do you always have to ask every support band where they rehearse?’ I didn’t realise I was doing it. That’s where I picture indie music living and being created.”
The last time we spoke was just after ‘Fever Dreams Pts 1-4’, and as you released a greatest hits album and the book about all your guitars. Was there a sense of closure to that period?
“It was a clearing of the decks, but I think it started a period of my life that has come into fruition with this album. It was definitely a bookmark to put out a ‘best of’ record after 10 years and then the guitar book. I haven’t really talked about this [new] record at all, but I’m starting to realise that the aftermath of that is why the Christie’s guitar exhibition and auction happened.
“Looking back on it now, the way I went into writing this album wasn’t about reinvention. If I had to put a word on it, my instinct was to be a bit emphatic. I felt that what I’d been doing with the records so far had a thing that I recognise now. Me and my band have got a sound that we’ve carved out. In spite of coming out with the first album pretty much fully-formed in that regard, there’s a lot of the new album that does remind me of ‘The Messenger’. My solo stuff has got a sound, and I just wanted to do the best version of that that I could.”
It feels like the pop sing-along elements of this album are really turned up to 11. Did that come out of playing the songs live first?
“Yes, they are, and ‘It’s Time’ is a really good example of that. I started singing the ‘Oh oh‘ chant, which surprised me, but the audience just went for it straight away. With my own records, I started out with an agenda to have some energy. It’s almost too easy to write introspective, reflective songs and a challenge to write something upbeat. That challenge suits me.
“I almost feel like every one of my albums sounds like a first album. That isn’t a boast, and to some people it might sound like a criticism. A friend said it to me about this one, and I took it as a compliment because I know what that means: it’s got that energy, there’s a lot at stake, and things are catchy.
“I’m able to write catchy tunes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There will be times for me to write my acoustic opus where I get miserable. I’ve taken the liberty of sounding like other things over time and I always get, ‘Oh, that sounds a little bit like what you were doing with Electronic’ or, ‘Oh, that’s a bit Smiths-y’, but really it’s no more complicated than, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’”
Songs like ‘Fire With Fire’ have a goth-y The Cure vibe to them, and there’s a touch of Depeche Mode to ‘All In A Life’…
“That’s right. There were a couple of Cure-y moments on ‘Fever Dreams’ too, like ‘Aerial’.”
You’ve done the work to erase the imagined division between Smiths fans and Cure fans…
“Oh yeah! Apparently that’s a thing. When The Cure came out, I thought of Robert Smith as a guitar player. He’s a frontman, but what he was doing on ‘Seventeen Seconds’ was really very much on his own and really on point. That was a few years before I came out. I saw them a couple of times when I was 16 or 17 and really liked them.
“I’ve actually covered Depeche Mode’s ‘I Feel You’, and when I did ‘The Tracers’ on ‘Call The Comet’, I woke up to Maxine Peake praising me because it sounded like Sisters Of Mercy. That was great. They were the first big band that The Smiths supported, so it is in my DNA.
“I remember taking a couple of fans that I’d gotten close to for a ride in the car to play them the record, and they thought the whole album was cold wave, which I thought was a compliment.”
You’ve described this as your most “cathartic” record. What were you exorcising?
“When I was doing it, I didn’t realise that there was anything that I particularly wanted to get off my chest. I’ve always got one eye on not telegraphing my feelings, but not telegraphing the obvious too much. When it was over, I was walking home from mastering it at Abbey Road at 1:30am. It’s always a big moment for me when I’ve mastered it, as it means that it’s done. I realised that [on] tracks like ‘Fire With Fire’, parts of ‘It’s Time’, there are a few things that pop up musically that I’ve wanted to get out of my system.
“Lyrically, I didn’t want to talk specifically about the political climate or ‘the perils of social media’ – all of these things that we know are in the forefront of our minds. I just don’t like being too obvious, but it’s in there. There was some stuff that’s a bit more global, like on ‘It’s Time’. It’s saying, ‘Open your eyes to know the truth’ and ‘mobilise to know the truth’… ‘Everybody ain’t makin’ it, change the weather and breaking it…’. Those sort of lines, that’s how I’ve been feeling over the last year and a half.
“It’s in ‘Fire With Fire’: we’ve all had these situations where someone we know, and have known for a long time, suddenly hits you with a viewpoint that surprises you. ‘Oh really? Is that where we’re going?’ The cathartic thing. When it was over, I realised that there are definitely some songs with a viewpoint.”
You’ve said that ‘It’s Time’ also takes on “arseholes with dodgy views”…
“People have hooked in on that, but it’s actually more of a positive thing. It’s about all of us, as well. I know I’m just talking about a pop song here, but if it’s going to be about something, then it’s about the effects of rampant unregulated capitalism and all the attendant things that it’s responsible for.
“The line ‘Feel like going it alone so recklessly/ I’ll ascend on to somewhere, trying to claim victory…’ – I was quite defiant, but I’m pointing the finger at all of us, myself included. We all really enjoy the effects of technology, luxury, comforts and aspirations, and the consequences of it are one of the reasons that people have got dodgy views: greed and fear. Social media comes into it. We all complain about it, but we don’t mind posting shit.”
So what does ‘The Age Of Everything’ mean to you now?
“When I’m asked about the album title, everyone jumps to the conclusion that it’s about overwhelm, overuse and overstimulation. That is entirely true, but because I’ve lived with it and I’m a songwriter and at heart a pretty positive person, I think about it differently. If you were telling a five-year-old what ‘The Age Of Everything’ meant, you’d be saying something very different. If you start thinking culturally about Buddhism or new age-ism, then ‘The Age Of Everything’ takes on a different slant.”
Given the optimism on the record, do you feel hopeful about the future?
“Not in the way that I usually am, and not for the immediate future. Going back to ‘It’s Time’, there’s the lyric: ‘Burning up the sun and moon/ Holding out for too much too soon’. That’s the way I feel about it. I’ve already written one song about the ecology, but that bit of the song is very much about the weather: ‘Change the weather and breaking it’. My concerns are like all of our concerns. I’m not doom and gloom because I genuinely do admire and believe in the young.”
Where does that come from?
“If I sit and people watch in major cities, you see young people en masse going about their day – young teenagers to young working people. Genuinely, I really fucking admire them, man. I admire their style, their politics. The current young generation are really switched on musically, ideologically, politically, style-wise. I’m not being too crazy and utopian here, but let’s not forget that.
“For older people who have got their heads screwed on, they’ve talked about it for years. It’s in David Hockney’s interviews, and it’s certainly in Aldous Huxley’s interviews, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag. There’s a recognition and faith in young people, and they’re the sort of people I aspire to think like.”
What do you make of Andy Burnham’s chances as Prime Minister, seeing as he’s a former Manchester mayor who seems into music and culture, and has even been playing your songs on guitar?
“Now that you’ve actually listed those character traits, I don’t think he’s got a chance at all – being into culture and music. It’s heartening to see any Labour leader last six weeks without getting absolutely piled in on by everyone.
“The North-South thing, I don’t give a shit about. There are bigger things to think about. I can see that he can post shit on Instagram, but there’s more to running a country and world politics than understanding the algorithm. Let’s start getting serious with some real issues, but we’ve got to give the guy a chance.”
And he’s not forbidden from listening to The Smiths like David Cameron?
“He absolutely isn’t, but some people are alright. I understand cool by association when I see it, do you know what I mean?”
Johnny Marr’s ‘The Age Of Everything’ is released this Friday (October 2), before tour dates in Liverpool, Mexico and South America.
