Elbow’s Lessons in Life

My brother recently gave me a copy of Elbow’s album ‘The Seldom Seen Kid.’ It contains some great songs, but there’s one in particular I can’t get out of my head: ‘One Day Like This’ ... what my niece calls “the holy cow song.”

I confess I hadn’t heard of the band before. I’ve become desperately out of touch musically since moving to Spain six years ago, and now rely on my much-more-with-it 40-year old brother to tip me off to the new releases.

Elbow are hardly a new sensation though – The Seldom Seen Kid is their fourth studio album. Yet it is only as a result of winning last year’s Mercury Music Prize that it has brought the band a level of commercial success to go with their long-standing critical acclaim.

As such they are an object lesson in the value of persistence.

After forming the group as schoolboys in 1990, they recorded their debut album with Island Records in 1997. However, it was never released. Instead they put out EPs in 1998, 2000 and 2001 before their first album, ‘Asleep in the Back,’ eventually came out that same year, earning them both Mercury Music Prize and Brit Award nominations.

Despite apparently being well-received critically though their third album didn’t sell well. So the band was dropped from V2, its record label, in 2006.

But instead of giving up Elbow signed with a new label, and recorded, mixed and self-produced The Seldom Seen Kid, which has proven to be their breakthrough.

In addition to the album’s Mercury Prize success, the song ‘Grounds for Divorce’ was used in the trailer for the Coen Brothers’ film ‘Burn After Reading’ as well as in several TV adverts, while One Day Like This was used by the BBC in its coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and has featured in adverts for the film ‘The Soloist.’ And Elbow went on to win the 2009 Brit Award for Best British Group. Not a bad list of credits.

I don’t know, but I’m guessing the V2 label bosses are feeling a bit stupid right now.

More importantly though Elbow’s long-awaited time in the sun is a testament to the group’s love of music, belief in themselves and sheer determination – and that is something from which we can all take heart. For they are a real-world demonstration that if you dare to cherish a dream, believe in it and (crucially) keep working towards its achievement, the rewards eventually will be yours.

So if your dream is to move abroad then why not go for it? Work out what you need to do to make it a reality and take the necessary steps, one at a time. It’ll be easier than you think.

And the same goes for all life’s ambitions.

It’s easy to lose sight of your ultimate goals in the current economic mess, when many people – myself included – have been scrambling just to survive. But, if you’ll excuse the cliché, you’ve got to ‘keep your eye on the prize.’

That’s what’s happening to me with the upcoming publication of my book, ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The Truth About Moving Abroad And Whether It’s Right For You’ – and that is the essential message within it ... work out what you really want from life and start living it.

I’ll finish with a quote I was sent yesterday as a subscriber to Simpleology (a series of courses I highly recommend by the way). It’s from that great British writer Rudyard Kipling:

“If you don’t get what you want, it’s a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.”

Words we’d all do well to remember.