Art of Listening #17 with Keith Jopling
In this edition of The Art of Listening, Keith explores In this piece, Keith explores the fragile reality of being a working band in today’s music industry, from the internal dynamics that hold groups together to the external pressures that can ultimately pull them apart.
His book Body of Work: How the Album Outplayed the Algorithm and Survived Playlist Culture is out now.
“A working band is a contentious team that makes its own rules, unites incongruous personalities, works beyond (or revels in) limitations, aims for improbable synergies and makes a lot of noise along the way. There’s friction, but there’s also purpose; there’s instinct along with calculation.”
Who Says Rock Is Dead? Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 2026.
That quote says so much about the complexity and challenge of being a working band today - and yet the dynamics described are entirely internal. The quote doesn’t touch on the array of external pressures on a working band - the many strange machinations of the music industry that remain mostly entirely out of an artist’s control. Put together the external challenges and the internal pressures and you have the ultimate challenge i.e. how the centre of a band can hold to produce an effective working band.
When You Me At Six announced their break-up in 2024, the outpouring from fans was a clear public display of collective grief. The Surrey band's frontman Josh Franceschi told NME in February 2024 what was behind the band’s decision:
“But the thing that mattered the most is longevity, getting closer and closer to that 20 year mark. We don’t need this band for self-indulgent reasons. We’re all really satisfied with what we’ve done, let’s just tie a nice little ribbon or bow around it. You don’t want to be the last ones hanging around at the party. We want to be a band that bowed out, not one that was kicked out.”
It sounded fair enough. In the end, quitting while you’re ahead is understandable. Noble even. But - as demonstrated by the fan response - it does leave a gaping hole in people’s lives, as well as cutting off any future possibilities to go on to create something remarkable and find a new lease of life (of course, bands can always reform, but the assumption has to be that this is not on the cards at the time the break-up happens).
In my forthcoming book, Riding the Rollercoaster: how artists survive the music business to become the legends we love, one of the 20 themes for achieving longevity is to “keep in mind that your best work is ahead of you”, something that bands of longevity do go on to prove time and again. And yet, there are many cases (and let’s face it, we can expect more as music careers get harder)
Sundara Karma, Porridge Radio, Grizzly Bear, Wild Beasts - are some of the bands that spring to my mind that either formally announced a split, or just quietly never made another record, despite some significant success and establishing an audience for themselves. One of the small tragedies of these cases is just that - after the miracle of forming in the first place, a band that finds its place in the crowded music scene and gets to make records that attract critical acclaim as well as an audience, not only provides meaning and pleasure - but also provides promise of more to look forward to - in the form of more records, live shows and a shared journey through life. All that hard work feels cut short.
As fans, bands become part of our identity and provide a level of connection, even protection, in our lives. We become slightly haunted by a future that was promised but is now no longer possible. The thrill of hearing a brand new album by a favourite band, the bonding experience with total strangers at shows - snatched away in an instant. Even the band’s catalogue may be put to one side, somewhat reduced in power by the fact that this band no longer creates, no longer performs, no longer exists in the world.
I was thinking about this for a few reasons. Firstly, a new song by Delphic popped up on my Spotify feed. The first song in 15 years from a band whose debut album (Acolyte, 2010) I really loved (it was my running album for a year or two). Secondly, I had tickets to a show by Held by Trees this weekend, with a support slot from Catrin Vincent, previously the frontwoman of Another Sky, now about to release her first solo album after that band split last year. This was a band I grieved for.
Another Sky was a rock band from London consisting of four enormously talented musicians, including the “once in a generation voice” of Vincent. They had great songs and had made two highly promising and well-received albums. The band were an exciting live act with an enormous, widescreen sound, something that attracted them to Fiction Records - part of the world’s biggest record label Universal Music. Another Sky were very much a “working band”, committed to their project and to each other for 10 years, never giving up, even when their momentum was crushed by the COVID 19 pandemic. They had dedicated fans, critical respect and a major label record deal - real buzz - edging ever closer to the cusp of success.
Most importantly, Another Sky had the potential to be the greatest rock band of a generation - a reason for Gen Z to listen to something new along with Nirvana, Alice In Chains and 90s rock. Another Sky played great, looked great, and sounded great. They were indeed “my new favourite band”. At the end of 2024, one of the things I most looked forward to was seeing them play a live show at London’s Scala. But the gig was postponed, and then never happened. And then came the announcement of their break-up on social media.
When a new favourite band splits, it feels like a distant planet somewhere in the galaxy has gotten blasted by the Death Star. It’s a small tragedy and very much a first world problem, but it still hurts. The Scala show was to be the kick-off to a rocking winter for me. That summer I had quit my job and had begun writing the book that became Riding The Rollercoaster. Celebrating bands of longevity has become part of my professional life as well as the joy of fandom itself.
Another Sky had come to the edge but didn’t fly. The hardships of making a band work, the pressure of expectations, the disappointments attached to the outcomes of many months (or years) of struggle and hard work, crushed a band of real promise. Another Sky didn’t get the chance to go out on a celebratory note in the way of You Me At Six, or even reach the point where the project “came to its natural conclusion” in the way expressed by Porridge Radio.
In the end, many more bands fall by the wayside than those that achieve ongoing, longevous success. The remains of bands that didn’t make it across the music industry Rubicon are scattered all around. They are largely forgotten, but I often feel they should still be celebrated. Too little too late maybe, but then who gets to make a record at all? To make one album, to play a tour, to win over a fan base is success itself. A legacy left behind no matter how small. Most of us are never that brave in the first place, and never make it that far.
The saying “better to burn out than fade away” is a rock cliche, somewhat outdated in today’s hyper-saturated music scene. We still worship the legacies left by the too-short careers of Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Joy Division or Sex Pistols, but so many potential superstar talents of today simply never manage to cut through the clutter to leave a permanent mark. Yet to their fans and followers, they indeed did make a meaningful ding in the universe. We should sometimes do a better job of celebrating those more recent bands with shorter legacies.
Learn more about Keith Jopling:
Keith Jopling is a music strategist, author, podcaster and mentor. He has worked for IFPI, BPI, EMI, Spotify and Sony Music. In 2021 he started the music podcast The Art of Longevity.
He has published two books on music, business and culture:
Body of Work: how the album outplayed the algorithm and survived playlist culture (February 2026)
Riding the Rollercoaster: how artists survive the music business to become the legends we love (May 2026)
As an educator, he has lectured in music business, strategy and innovation at Henley Business School, NYU, BIMM, ACM, Belmont, Syracuse, Westminster and the University of Krems, Austria.