It’s about time, indeed. Patty Smyth’s new album arrives with the subtlety of a freight train named “long-overdue,” and she’s heard all the jokes. “It is the first album in a long-ass time, there’s no question about it,” she tells me. But while the world kept turning and people kept forgetting who sang “The Warrior,” Patty was writing, parenting, occasionally touring, and quietly slipping Christmas singles under the door.
“I did put out a Christmas record, but I didn’t go to a label. I didn’t do a whole lot. I released it… quietly,” she laughs.
But It’s About Time marks more than just the official capital-R Return. It’s Patty finally getting the damn songs right. “I’d get these clumps of songs and then I’d try to figure out how to record them,” she explains. “Sometimes I wouldn’t finish them. Then I’d get distracted.” If that’s not the most relatable creative process of the past two decades, I don’t know what is.
Some of the songs go back years. “Build a Fire,” originally titled “Surprise,” is about the shocking realization that she still liked her husband, John McEnroe, after 20-plus years. “It was mind-blowing. I mean, I would have never believed that,” she says, wide-eyed. “So I wrote about it. That was probably eight years ago.”
The emotional anchor of the record is “Drive,” a song born out of accidental honesty and an old photograph. “I didn’t know what it was about at first,” she says. “But I had this nagging feeling about my relationship… I picked up an old photograph, and that was it.” The resulting song knocked something loose. “After I wrote ‘Drive,’ then I knew—this was going to be the record.”
That theme of reflection—especially on youth, freedom, and the suffocating surveillance state we call parenting in 2020—seeps into much of the album. “There was a freedom this country had… I could almost weep to think about how far we are from that moment in time,” she says. “We were just like… feral.” These days, she jokes, her kids are the ones with the GPS trackers—and still mad about everything. “They think I’m not liberal enough,” she sighs. “My generation over-parented. I keep telling everyone: benign neglect—but not neglect.”
And yet, despite her kids’ suspicion and her husband’s lyrical paranoia (“He was like, ‘Everyone’s gonna think that song’s about us!’”), Smyth is still writing about long-term love like it’s never been done before. “You can be in a relationship a long time and still get your heart broken some days, and still feel lustful, and still want to punch them in the face,” she grins. “I write love songs—but I write sad love songs.”
Which brings us to “No One Gets What They Want,” her personal favorite and mine too—a song that feels like it’s always existed. “It’s for so many people. Parenting, relationships, your mom—just the idea that you give everything you have… and no one’s happy.” It’s a songwriter’s perfect punch: poetic, universal, and bruised.
She’s got more in the vault, too—some from her semi-reunion with Scandal in the 2000s, others that didn’t make the cut for It’s About Time. One called “She Hurts Herself” is apparently a favorite among her kids. Another, inspired by a friend who said she’d never leave her rich husband because she didn’t want “someone else to have her life,” turned into “I’m Gonna Get There”—a track her husband misinterpreted 15 times before realizing, horrified, that it’s about a woman staying in a cheating relationship. “He was like, ‘Why did you write that?!’ And I was like, poetic license, buddy.”
Even “Downtown Train” gets a redo. “I love that song so much,” she says, recalling her first attempt to record it in the ’80s before Rod Stewart swooped in and made it a hit. “That hurt a little bit… although I love Rod Stewart and Tom Waits. But it would’ve been nice if it had been me.” So now, stripped back and reborn, it’s finally the version she always wanted. “Just me and that damn song.”
Will there be more new music? “It definitely is not going to be 28 years. Or 20. Or even eight,” she promises. “Maybe I’ll do an EP of b-sides. The songs I really love, even if they don’t have a big enough chorus.”
Turns out Patty Smyth doesn’t need a big chorus anymore. Just a melody, a bruised heart, and a GPS tracker on the next generation.
Watch and listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
