Rick Springfield’s latest album, “Automatic,” released in 2023, marks his first collection of all-new studio material in five years. Fans won’t face a lengthy wait for his next project.
The singer-songwriter recently dropped a new single, “Lose Myself,” and is already working on another album, although a release date has not been set. “I think it’s going to be a little different,” Springfield said in an interview on the UCR Podcast. “It’s going to be a little heavier. There’s an approach I’m trying that I don’t know if it will work or not, but we’ll see.”
“Lose Myself” is featured on “Big Hits: Rick Springfield’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2,” a compilation highlighting albums from the past 25 years, beginning with 1999’s “Karma.” Springfield expressed pride in this period of his career. “I’ve always felt the stuff I did, from ‘Karma’ on, was better than anything I did in the ’80s that I’m known for,” he said. “I’ve been very diligent and I consider myself a songwriter before anything. It’s something I love to do and I’ll just continue to do it and do my best. I think the albums show a progression in my writing, which I’m happy about.”
“Jeff Moskow [who helped curate the new compilation] has said that except for ‘Working Class Dog’ and ‘Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet,’ every album has been different,” Springfield continued. “A different approach, a different writing style with different subjects. So this next one I’m working on is going to be different again.”
Springfield noted that the heavier tone of his current work is driven by his love of guitars. “But I love ballads too,” he added. “I always thought I’d be known as a ballad writer, because in the early ’70s, the songs people picked off my albums were all of the ballads. I had this soft, weepy kind of voice and I concentrated on the ballads. So I was very pleased when my first hit was a guitar-oriented, basic pop/rock song. I’ve always been guitar-based, but with the sense that you can make it a lot bigger and a lot deeper.”
“This stuff will be a mix of big guitars and also the synth stuff I love,” he explained. “You know, there are no rules. No one’s out there going, ‘You should do another “Working Class Dog”‘ and I wouldn’t anyway. I was 29 or 30 when I wrote that. Your brain changes, your attitude changes, your likes change and different ideas come into your head. You have to go with that. You can’t try and rewrite [your biggest hits]. I remember Ray Davies rewrote a ‘You Really Got Me’ type of song for the ‘Give The People What They Want’ album. It was good, but it wasn’t ‘You Really Got Me.’ So, you can’t go back and pick the bones of your past hits, really.”
Springfield will launch the “I Want My ’80s” tour with John Waite and others on May 28 in St. Petersburg. The tour is set to conclude on Aug. 10 in Henderson, Nevada.