James' Tim Booth: 'We're not a 90s band - we're a 2024 one'

Tim Booth doesn’t consider James a 90s band (Picture: Mike Lewis Photography/Redferns)

James are on their way to number one with their 18th studio album, Yummy, 42 years – and 25 million sold records – after they formed.

If Yummy hits the top spot on Friday, it will be the Manchester band’s first number one album since their greatest hits compilation in 1998.

They are battling for the top spot this week with Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, whose album One Deep River is at number two on the mid-week charts, according to the Official Charts Company, with James currently in first place.

Although James – known for hits including Sit Down, Come Home and She’s a Star – formed in the 1980s and enjoyed massive success in the 1990s, lead singer Tim Booth disputes the ‘nineties band’ label – and says they’re more successful now than ever before, even at the height of their fame.

In a chat with Metro.co.uk, Tim said: ‘We sell more tickets now than we’ve ever sold when we were so-called famous in the 90s.

‘The only difference is that we’re older, and therefore we’re not in the media all the time. We don’t have that excitement of a young band.’

The question is then not how do they stay relevant, but why are they so relevant four decades on from their first release?

The band jammed 100 songs to make their latest album Yummy (Picture: Supplied)

He says the nine-person band are more successful than ever (Picture: Luke Brennan/Getty Images)

The band were at the height of their fame in the 1990s (Picture: Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images)

‘We’re kind of relevant as we are, but we’re more subculture and under the radar of the mainstream. That’s probably because we’re really good live,’ Tim explained.

While many bands suffered from Spotify and Apple Music bursting onto the music scene and offering low-cost consumption for fans – thus erasing the need to purchase a whole album – James were performing live and building trust with their audience.

‘Live music has become much more important,’ Tim said. Luckily, it happens to be their forté.

‘We’re exciting live: we improvise, we change the set every night, you don’t know what you’re going to get.

‘We’re not a theatre act who just repeat the same thing night after night; we’re a band that takes risks.

‘People like to come and see that,’ he added.

And people can, as James are heading off on their biggest ever arena tour in June 2024, in which they will headline in the band’s hometown of Manchester as well as London’s O2 – marking their first time in the 20,000 capacity stadium.

Every performance, James aims for an ‘ecstatic moment of unity’ which surely puts co-called TikTok musicians into a depressingly glib perspective.

‘Our way is to build a relationship and community and trust, and we’re there for a slightly longer time, and hopefully offer a deeper pleasure,’ Tim said.

‘I think [TikTok] is a very different thing. I think people are going to turn around and go, “Hang on, I’m not quite sure I want this digital copy, I want the real thing.”‘

James are looking forward to touring this summer and will be hitting up London’s O2 for the first time ever (Picture: Thomas Davis)

Tim credits their success to exciting live performances (Picture: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage)

Tim said James’ huge nine-person band are united through their love for making music.

‘On various nights, you’ll see various band members nearly crying over songs. So there’s a unity in the art we are creating,’ he said.

‘We’re in a real love space at the moment. And we’ve kind of put down some of the old indie tired ideas of tortured artist and we’re a bit more of a love bomb.’

Being such a huge band means they cannot be driven by economic success, as all their profits are split between so many.

‘We’re not Ed Sheeran who takes all the money. We’re nine people and we have families to support,’ he said.

‘We don’t mind what the cost is. We just want to create a big piece of work that we can leave behind. It’s all about this nutty idea of legacy, that when you die you want to be very proud of what you’ve left.’

James jammed over 100 songs, which they whittled down to their new album, Yummy, named as such after a brief moment in the song Butterfly when Tim repeated the word and it stuck.

Yummy is a response to the world around them, covering topics like the extinction crisis, empire, colonialism, death, ageing, and suicide. But it is a hopeful album, nonetheless.

The band’s new album Yummy is a reaction to the world as it is (Picture: Mark Holloway/Getty Images, )

Tim worries for the younger generation, and many of the songs represent this by telling love stories with almost apocalyptic backdrops (Picture: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns)

‘I’ve got kids,’ Tim said. ‘I’m just ashamed with what we’re leaving them, and deeply, deeply distressed.’

He continued: ‘We are spinning into very dangerous territories as a race and we don’t seem to be able to stop ourselves because the leaders of our countries are not democratic.

‘They don’t represent the people: they represent the interests of power and money, whether they call themselves a democracy or not.

‘There’s a real sense of despair especially among young people who realise that they are being left this mess by my generation and the generation before.’

James put this feeling into Yummy, as quite a few of the tracks are almost love songs set against an ‘apocalyptic background’.

‘It’s very romantic,’ Tim chuckled. ‘But the human race has this self destructive saboteur aspect to ourselves, that seems to be taking us in one direction.

‘James wish to provide an uplift, maybe a few answers, and definitely a load of questions.

‘But we are here to be an antidote to some degree and to uplift people so that they don’t get overwhelmed by it.

‘You have to find the positive, and that’s what we aim to. To help.’

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