Tim Burgess on his album listening parties: 'I like to think it’s helping in a different way'

The world might be in rest mode but Tim Burgess hasn’t been getting much sleep. Last month, the Charlatans frontman-turned-solo artist inadvertently signed himself up for a new full-time job: as a late-night party host. Every night at 9pm, #timstwitterlisteningparty starts trending again, as thousands of music fans hit play on the same album while the artist live-tweets their studio memories and backstage highlights. Members of Oasis, The Chemical Brothers and Franz Ferdinand are among those who’ve taken part so far.

“I’m on my phone the entire time,” Burgess, 52, tells me from home in Norfolk. He’s been up since 6am with his six-year-old, Morgan, who’s just discovered wrestling, and was awake replying to Twitter fans until the early hours last night. The tiredness is worth it, though, he insists. “It’s nothing like what other people are doing, but I like to think it’s helping in a different way.”

Like many people Cheshire-born Burgess is self-isolating after possible exposure to Covid-19. He is “90 per cent sure” he had the virus on a recent trip to New York, but now he’s home and healthy he’s trying not to get too bogged down in the news. That’s where the idea for his listening parties came in. The singer had live-tweeted some of his albums in the past and it had been popular with fans. “It just came to me that it might give ­people something to look forward to at 10 o’clock at night. The news is on all the time now so we don’t have to tune in then.”

Burgess launched the listening parties last month, leading the first himself on The Charlatans’ debut album, Some Friendly, and has since had to introduce an additional slot, at 9pm, to keep up with demand. “Bonehead got in touch as soon as I put the word out,” he recalls, then Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand and Dave Rowntree from Blur.

Highlights include Rowntree’s memorabilia (“it was all laminated”), Liam Gallagher forgetting to join in for the Definitely Maybe live-tweet (“we had to invite him back”) and fans reminding Burgess that he headlined Reading Festival in 1999. “Honestly,” he laughs. “I completely forgot about it.”

Burgess tries to reply to every message from fans but it’s proving a bigger task than expected: the hashtag #timstwitterlisteningparty still makes the top three UK Twitter trends regularly and most nights his tweets receive thousands of replies from across the world. “Someone was listening in Antarctica,” adds Burgess, saying he wants to start pinning all the listening locations on a map.

What touches him the most is that people are listening to albums again. “People are saying it’s been so long since they’ve listened to an album in its entirety, and now they’re listening along with the composer. Music is always there in people’s lives but sometimes it gets kicked down a peg or two. Everyone actually has time now.”

Despite cancelled festivals this summer, Burgess is trying to see this time as an opportunity. He has meditated since 2009 but insists he’s never had better meditations than the current isolation period. “There’s a certain stillness in the world.”

He currently meditates twice a day, at 8am and 6pm; the rest of the time, he’s pretty much glued to his phone. “So many people want to do it,” he says, showing me a dedicated website, timstwitterlisteningparty.com, set up by an anonymous fan to share the schedule.

Burgess still wants to get Julia Holter or Debbie Harry live-tweeting, but is thrilled to have so many of his guests on the line-up: New Order, The Libertines and Paul Weller are booked in for the coming weeks.

Aside from that, he’s got music of his own to be working on. Burgess has a solo album, I Love The New Sky, coming out in May and is rescheduling tour dates for October. Until then, “it’s just listening parties,” he laughs. “And wrestling, I suppose.”