Rod Stewart Recounts Songwriting Struggles, Says New Album ‘Another Country’ Is for Fans

Rod Stewart has leaned heavily on outside material throughout his solo career, but with his new album Another Country, he continues a recent songwriting resurgence that started with his last album, 2013's Time. In a new interview, he credits the positive reception his fans offered that record with giving him the confidence to carry on writing.

"The last album did fairly well — it did really well in Europe — and it gave me the confidence to spread my wings, as it were, and just keep on writing. Writing about different things," Stewart says in the interview, which you can watch above. "Songwriting has never been easy for me — it's always a struggle." Having said that, Stewart added that while his long-running series of Songbook covers albums was enjoyable for him, "The real pleasure for me is to sing my own songs."

Asked to define his goals for Another Country, Stewart says he entered the sessions with the aim of improving on Time. "To try and be a bit more expansive with the titles of the songs and the subjects I'm singing about. Just to better it — I mean, that's all you can really do, and one of the most important things for me is to satisfy myself. In that way, I think I satisfied a few friends that still buy my albums."

Having satisfied himself, Stewart says his main concern now is making his fans happy with the new material. "Obviously I want it to do well, or else I wouldn't have made the bloody thing," he points out. "But if I get half the feedback from my fans that I got with the last one, I'll be happy. It's for them."

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