(Credits: Far Out / W. Punt / Dutch National Archives)
Fri 26 September 2025 16:30, UK
If you write songs as a profession, or even formerly did so in your day-to-day, does that not make you a songwriter? Rod Stewart seems to think not.
When asked in a 2011 interview with journalist Dean Goodman which song of his he feels most proud of and tends to think about when he wakes up in the morning, Stewart’s response was surprising, to say the least. “I didn’t think about that this morning,” he retorted, adding, “I couldn’t wait to get up and work on my model railway, that’s why I’m not a songwriter!”
Despite the circumstances of the interview arriving shortly after he’d picked up his lifetime achievement award from The American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), it was clear that by this point in his career, his priorities were clear: he’s not that interested in writing new material, and would much rather tinker away at his miniature recreation of Stevenson’s Rocket in the garage, neglecting to think of his former glories as a world-renowned songwriter.
Perhaps he’s still strutting his way around the gaff in a leopard-print leotard humming along to ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ as he potters away on his latest locomotive project, but it’s also fair enough that he’s put his halcyon days behind him and would rather focus on a hobby. His half-arsed karaoke set in the Glastonbury legends slot in 2025 should only serve as further proof that he’s not too bothered about continuing his legacy. If people only want to hear the hits, then that’s exactly what he’s going to deliver, and he’s going to have as much fun doing it as possible without exerting too much effort.
That being said, Stewart still has a vast back catalogue of material that he can look back on and be proud of, and considering he was asked the question of which song he still feels the most proud of, he was obliged to answer seriously without going off on a tangential riff about trains. After a short period of consideration, the (former) songwriter concluded that a socially-conscious song from the peak of his career in the 1970s was perhaps his crowning achievement.
“If I was to say one song I was really proud of it would be ‘The Killing of Georgie’,” he finally proclaimed, “because it dealt with a very difficult subject in 1976, which is a long time ago.”
This two-part song, which featured on his seventh solo album, A Night on the Town, deals with the issue of homophobia, something which was rarely discussed in popular culture in such a frank and honest fashion at the time, and tells the story of a character who was brutally beaten and murdered for his sexuality.
Stewart has previously claimed that the subject of the song is loosely based on the death of a close friend of his, and that although he used some poetic license when telling the story, it’s understandable why he would feel compelled to tell such an important tale of something he felt deeply affected by. He may not consider himself as much of a songwriter these days, but when you’ve got important works like this in your back pocket, it’s hard for him to dismiss the notion that at his high point, he was up there with the best.
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