The Writer’s Block: Sparks’ Ron and Russell Mael

Taking some cues from the Marx Brothers, the Mael Brothers have remained rooted in all manners Sparks. With Ron’s stone-faced Charles Chaplin-like facade and Russell’s flamboyantly delivered falsetto, the pair channel the essence of the early 20th-century sibling comedy troupe. More than 50 years since the release of their eponymous 1971 debut, the Maels still convey some of that Vaudevillian flair. They’ve mastered delivery, and still know how to elegantly stitch addictive pop ditties with natural witticism and thought-provoking lyrics.

All along, Sparks have remained a pop-art enigma. From their 1974 hit “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us,” along with “The Number One Song in Heaven,” to the new wave beat “When I’m With You,” and deadpan liaison of “Shopping Mall of Love,” right into their 26th release, The Girl is Crying in Her Latte, the band continues to release more eccentricities, while demonstrating its endless versatility.

“So many bands start with a big issue, either like love or world peace, and then work kind of down,” Ron Mael previously said of the depth of their lyrics, often hidden behind more abstract titles. “We start with a detail, like, with the song ‘The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte,’ just with a view of a coffee shop and a girl by herself — the loneliness and the question about why she appears to be in the state that she’s in, and just a song around that.

“I think that sometimes people think that we’re a bit cartoony in the lyrics, and sometimes in the music as well, but there’s another aspect to the lyrics, at least if we’re succeeding in what we’re attempting to do, where there’s kind of some sort of emotional depth to it,” he added. “And that’s what we’re always pursuing.”

Sparks also saw a resurgence in 2021 with the release of the Edgar Wright-directed documentary, The Sparks Brothers. The siblings garnered a César Award win for Best Original Music and the Cannes Soundtrack Award for Best Composer as screenwriters and composers of the Leos Carax-helmed musical drama, Annette, which starred Marion Cotillard, Adam Driver, and the Maels.

In between an extensive worldwide tour, and the release of The Girl is Crying in Her Latte, the Maels, Ron and Russell, recently spoke to American Songwriter. They broke down how songs come together for them now, after more than 50 years, and the eternal magic of Sparks.

AS: It’s been more than 50 years since you released Sparks. How has songwriting shifted for the two of you? Do songs tend to come together differently now?

Ron Mael: It’s expanded a bit with us having our own studio for the past six or eight albums. In the past, with earlier albums, they were all written either with a keyboard and singing over it, or occasionally on an acoustic guitar, in a more traditional way. And some of the songs were written on the keyboard, not even thinking of it having to be sung by somebody. They would be melodies that maybe were not as natural, but part of our sound.

Of late — if you can call the last eight albums of late —having our own studio, we can just go in sometimes and fool around and not have an idea of where we’re going with things. Or Russell can come up with a background, and I could try to figure out the melodic line and figure out how to maybe restructure what is there. So we have more ways of writing than we had in the past. It really is important, when you get stuck in one way of working, then it is really good to have other means of writing songs. 

AS: It sounds like it’s still a new adventure each time you go into a new album.

Russell Mael: We’re not lazy. There are fans of Sparks and then there are people who are yet to be fans of Sparks. We want to lure them into our camp, and the only way to do that is to come up with material that is provocative in some kind of way—not politically provocative, but provocative at they force you to react in some way, hopefully.

We approach each album like that. We don’t discuss it in those kind of terms, but we know that we have to do stuff that’s atypical for a band with a long career. We still want to engage the people that have followed Sparks for so long, but we also want to engage new listeners as well.

Ron: Also, the internet for all its many faults, really has been something that evens out an artist’s body of work, so people can access things from all different periods. It’s almost like you have this one kind of mass of music as opposed to, “Here’s a new album that you have, and that’s all you’re focusing on.” So I think all of our songs get put into this blender for a lot of people that they don’t even think of where they’re from. It’s all one thing.

AS: Describe how the many “storylines” gel together on a Sparks album.

Ron: We really don’t think in those terms. After we finish writing and recording individual songs, we want to make sure that it works as a unified thing. But we also want there to be a difficult-to-define theme through all the albums in a way, so they’re not concept albums, but there does seem to be an underlying thread to the album. It just makes sense as a whole album.

AS: With streaming, it’s easy for anyone to get lost in a rabbit hole of music, and find a new band in the process. This may be to blame for Sparks having such a diverse fan base.

Russell: For those reasons, I think for Sparks, it’s really been a big help. The movies and the documentary pointed out that this band called Sparks exists for a lot of people that didn’t know. But then because it was so rich and detailed, people were able to go back and go online and find all those albums, or hopefully even take the bigger step and go into a record store and buy an actual vinyl or something like that to see artwork that’s not postage stamp size.

In that sort of way, obviously, we can also list 10,000 reasons why the internet is terrible, but for this reason. I think as far as social media, we’re really active on it. We have people helping with our social media but with our spirit, so it’s not appearing like a corporation behind us that’s just being given a gig to get a paycheck. It’s people that are as passionate about Sparks as we are, that are doing our social media.

AS: After more than five decades, what seems to be the magic “spark” of Sparks?

Russell: Despite our chronological ages, I don’t think we come across as people of another era for whatever reason. I think our spirit and the spirit of our music, and the spirit of our personalities and the spirit of our artwork, our album covers and our videos, don’t read as being from people that are tired and from another generation.

I think that they read as something that speaks to people now. I think it speaks to a lot of young people now, too, so I think that’s a big part of it.

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Read our full 2023 interview with Sparks HERE.

Photos by Munachi Osegbu / Courtesy of Big Hassle Media