The Subways Interview at Y Not

Not many bands can celebrate 20 years together. English rockers The Subways however can, releasing their debut album Young For Eternity in the summer of 2005. They have consistently put out acclaimed music, including their fifth effort, Uncertain Joys (2023). The Gryphon sits down with bassist Charlotte Cooper to discuss the rise of social media, the origins of The Subways’ name and more.

Gabe: So, I’m here with Subways at Y Not. How are you? 

Charlotte Cooper: I’m very good, thanks. How are you doing? 

Gabe: Yeah, can’t complain, really good. You guys have been around for over 20 years now. Since then, we’ve seen the advent of social media. Do you think it’s changed how you operate as a band, and what would you say is the biggest change between starting out and now? 

Charlotte Cooper: There’s been a lot of things that have changed, like you said, social media, but also the fact that when we first started out, Spotify, things like downloads weren’t a thing. People bought CDs. The way that music works has changed in many ways. I think the way that people appreciate music is probably still similar; people still love to go to a show, people still love to buy a band t-shirt, and you know, you wear your band t-shirt as part of your identity. You go and lose yourselves in a show. So that side of it’s kind of, the core kind of values of it are there. I think just the way people consume it is quite different. 

I think social media has become something you can’t ignore. I think when it first came out, I was a bit in denial. Like, oh, do we have to? But I think we probably do have to. And yeah, but also it’s a nice way to, like, when it first came out, when we had like MySpace and things like that, we used to quite like it actually, because you could connect with people and you could send people messages. And that was actually really nice because you couldn’t really do that before. So there are a lot of positives with it as well. 

Gabe: We just spoke about you guys being around for over 20 years. You put out an album in 2023, Uncertain Joys. It was met with overwhelming praise and saw the next evolution of your sound. I’m just curious as to what keeps you guys motivated after so long?

Charlotte Cooper: It’s kind of quite simple, really. We just absolutely love it. We love being on stage, we love making music, and as we’ve got older, there are more challenges with that. Everybody’s kind of got different commitments in their lives outside of music and with families and things like that, so it’s harder to make it work, but that makes us appreciate it even more. I think having the opportunity to play and still have people want to come and watch us after all this time, it’s amazing, it’s a real privilege. 

Gabe: So when I was doing some research, I found out you actually wrote your most recent album, Uncertain Joys, whilst one of you (Billy) did an English degree at Cambridge. Do you think that it affected the writing process in any way, with one of you guys sort of being separate? Or, do you think not much has changed? 

Charlotte Cooper: So yeah, it was an interesting album for a few reasons. Like I say, Billy, our singer, guitarist, and main songwriter, was at Cambridge University. So I think it’s got to have, and he was studying English as well, so it’s got to have a huge impact for him lyrically, and he was exploring all these new texts, and yeah, definitely had an impact in the way that he writes lyrics. But then, we were kind of doing things a bit kind of separately. So he was at Cambridge, I live in Sheffield, and our drummer at the time, Josh, was living in Paris. 

We kind of all kind of did things remotely. And then also then we started recording, we were really happy with how it was going. And then Covid happened, so then we did actually record separately as well. I sent files to Billy over Dropbox, and he produced them. So we kind of had to find it, because we were really kind of inspired at the time, we really wanted to keep going, we didn’t want to just stop. We obviously couldn’t physically be together. We found a way to make it work.

Gabe: So, with Uncertain Joys, it was your first album in 8 years. You’ve already touched upon it, but how did it feel to keep that going, particularly during Covid and whatnot? 

Charlotte Cooper: It was kind of amazing that we could. I think everybody had a weird time in Covid, didn’t we? So to have something positive that we were looking forward to was really good and something that was based in the future, like releasing an album, working on songs and thinking about tours and things that were gonna happen after this, after this bad time was definitely something really, really important for us.

Gabe: You mentioned in previous interviews that obviously 8 years was never planned because of the degree, because of Covid. Can fans of your music expect another long wait, or are there plans to release new music anytime soon? 

Charlotte Cooper:  So, later this year, we have a 20-year celebration coming out. It’s like a compilation of all our favourite songs, live favourites over the past 20 years, with 2 new songs on it. Then hopefully next year, if not maybe the year after, there’ll be an album six. We are quite far into that now. We’re quite busy with shows, but we are fitting in recording around shows. So yeah, new music is coming. 

Gabe: The Subways, I personally think, is a great name for a band. I’m just curious as to where it came from.?

Charlotte Cooper:  So Billy used to hang out in a subway, as in the pass underneath the road. We saw a lot in Europe, and everyone thinks the subway is the train, but it’s not. It’s how you walk underneath a road. When he was at college and it had a sign up saying Subway, and he was like, ‘What do you guys think of The Subways?’ We’re like, yeah, sounds great. We had some names before which were really bad, so this was better than that. 

Gabe: Obviously, you’ve toured with some all-time greats, including guys like Oasis, ACDC, Foo Fighters, and more. Who was your favourite band to share a stage with and why? 

Charlotte Cooper: Oh, that’s such a hard question because I feel like, actually, some of the bands that have supported us I’ve really loved watching them every night. There were certain bands that were like, we need to have dinner really, really quickly because I need to get back and I need to watch their whole show, even though I’ve seen it 30 times already. I need to watch it again. 

So off the top of my head, bands like PINS, ​​CATBEAR, Gaffa Tape Sandy, they were all amazing. And in terms of who we’ve supported, I think, you know, getting to play with Foo Fighters was an amazing experience. I think Billy would probably say ACDC because his first gig was ACDC, which his dad took him to, so it’s very important for him. 

Gabe: Really cool. Well, thank you so much for your time. 

Charlotte Cooper: Thank you very much. 

Interview by Gabe Morrissey-Limb