Song Stories: Blossoms: Additional Driver

A minor bump outside Manchester’s Apollo, an insurance policy, a fan asking for a selfie and the 192 bus should not really be the ingredients for one of Blossoms’ best songs. Then again, ‘Additional Driver’ could probably only have been written by Blossoms.

Featuring Declan McKenna, the fifth track on ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ takes one of the least glamorous experiences imaginable and turns it into a five-minute indie-pop banger. Beneath the humour, it also tells us plenty about the band Blossoms have become: increasingly collaborative, comfortable writing about the smallest details of their lives and still unmistakably tied to Stockport.

For me, it is one of the highlights of the album. The refrain of “should have got the 192” has been stuck in my head since the song was released, but the story of how they arrived there might be even better.

The bump that started ‘Additional Driver’

The story begins with Tom Ogden driving his wife Katie’s car around Manchester. Approaching the roundabout near the O2 Apollo, Ogden became involved in what he has been careful to describe as a minor bump rather than a serious crash. Police happened to be nearby, turning what might otherwise have been a straightforward exchange of details into something considerably more conspicuous. Ogden was asked to show that he was insured, which is where the song’s title comes from: the car belonged to his wife, and he was listed on the policy as an additional driver.

As if that was not strange enough, somebody recognised him while all of this was happening and asked for a selfie. There is something very Blossoms about that image. Ogden is standing beside his wife’s car, dealing with police and exchanging insurance details after a bump, while somebody decides this is still a perfectly reasonable opportunity to get a photograph with the singer of ‘Charlemagne’.

The whole incident happened only days before Blossoms were due to spend time writing with Declan McKenna. Rather than disappearing into the category of mildly annoying things that happen and are quickly forgotten, it became a song.

It also fitted perfectly into the world of ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’. The album is full of ordinary details from married and domestic life: arguments, television, trips to The Range, falling asleep in taxis and growing older alongside somebody. Even ‘Additional Driver’, for all its absurdity, belongs there. Ogden was driving Katie’s car and later joked that the incident had cost her no-claims bonus.

Writing with Declan McKenna

‘Additional Driver’ really began taking shape when Blossoms spent a week writing with Declan McKenna in Anglesey. The location was already significant. Blossoms had previously visited the same Airbnb while working with CMAT during the making of ‘Gary’, a collaboration that produced ‘I Like Your Look’. Ogden has spoken about that experience as helping to loosen his approach to songwriting, particularly his willingness to use very specific and sometimes strange references.

One evening, after the group had been working and having a few drinks, Ogden brought up the incident near the Apollo. The bump had happened only a couple of days earlier, so the details were still fresh. They began throwing ideas around and building a song from it, eventually reaching the point where some of the vocals were recorded from a hot tub. It sounds about as serious as the subject matter, but that is exactly the point.

‘Gary’ seems to have taught Blossoms to trust an idea before worrying about whether it looked sensible on paper. Its title track was inspired by the story of a stolen fibreglass gorilla, while working with CMAT and Jungle’s Josh Lloyd-Watson widened the creative circle around the five members.

'Additional Driver’ carries that freedom forward. Blossoms did not invite McKenna onto a completed song to add a guest verse. He was there while it was being created, helping turn Ogden’s story into something that belonged equally to both singers.McKenna is particularly well suited to this version of Blossoms. Both artists know how to place eccentric ideas inside immediately melodic music. Ogden and McKenna trade vocals rather than dividing the track into an obvious Blossoms song and a Declan McKenna feature, their voices bouncing off one another as the music moves through funk, disco and art-rock, even making room for a knowing reference to The Beatles’ ‘Drive My Car’.

For much of their career, Blossoms operated inside a deliberately close circle. Ogden has described this current period as their “sociable era”, with the band becoming increasingly comfortable inviting other people into their world. ‘Gary’ started that process; ‘Additional Driver’ shows how naturally it now comes to them.

“Should have got the 192”

Then there is the line that brings the entire thing home.
“Should have got the 192.”

The 192 runs between Stockport and Manchester, making it one of those references that means something slightly different depending on where you hear it. You do not need to know the route for the line to work. After five minutes of trouble caused by driving, simply concluding that he should have taken the bus is funny enough.

But if you know Stockport and Manchester, it lands differently.

Ogden has explained that the 192 is the bus from Stockport into town, something he and countless other people from the area would have used regularly. The line does not reach for a generic bus because there is no reason for it to. Blossoms have never needed to scrub the Stockport out of their music in order for somebody elsewhere to understand it.

For me, that specificity is exactly why the refrain has been lodged in my head since the single came out. ‘Additional Driver’ could have finished with a broader joke about public transport. Instead, it finishes on a number immediately recognisable to anybody who has spent enough time travelling between Stockport and Manchester.

That local detail is also particularly appropriate on an album called ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’, itself named after the nickname for Stockport Town Hall.
Even as Blossoms move towards arenas, Stockport keeps finding its way into the songs.

The great trick of ‘Additional Driver’ is that none of its humour would matter very much if the music did not work. At 5 minutes and 12 seconds, it is given far more room than the average tightly constructed Blossoms single. The groove settles in rather than rushing, giving Ogden and McKenna enough time to trade lines and let the story become increasingly ridiculous.

There are traces of disco and funk running underneath it, but the song never settles completely into either. That restlessness suits the story. It feels like several ideas being thrown together in the same way the lyrics were, only for them to somehow form something coherent.

Shawn Lee’s production helps. ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ is Blossoms’ first studio album without James Skelly behind the desk, and Lee arrives at a point where the band already seem comfortable testing the edges of what they sound like. ‘Additional Driver’ is probably the album’s clearest example of that confidence.

It is funny without becoming a novelty song. The collision, the insurance language, the selfie and the bus are all genuinely amusing details, but they are carried by a song strong enough to exist beyond the joke. That balance is difficult to get right.
Blossoms make it sound easy.