The Song's The Thing For Richard Ashcroft

When it comes to pop art, there's no contest for Richard Ashcroft — Brian Wilson trumps Andy Warhol every time.

"Pop art is in its ultimate form in pop songs," says Ashcroft. "Andy Warhol never created anything on that level.

"There's a communication on a mass level that art can't create. Now, the Beach Boys' 'God Only Knows' — that's something that will live forever."

Although Ashcroft's opinions on Warhol's legacy are perhaps debatable, there's no refuting that the former Verve singer and longtime solo musician knows — and loves — his pop music.

During a recent sit-down with CHARTattack prior to his opening gig for Coldplay at Toronto's Air Canada Centre, Ashcroft rattled off a host of songs by Al Green, Marvin Gaye and The Beatles as part of his own personal pop vanguard.

"I'm an old-fashioned guy," he says. "A tune's gotta be something you can whistle.

"And for me, the greatest songs of all time are the ones that you can still have empathy with even as you change as a person. You'll never outgrow them."

Conventional song choices aside, Ashcroft's criteria for great pop music spans far and wide. After all, this is the man who's publicly professed his adoration for the timeless tunes of Burt Bacharach.

"Good pop songs are infectious, but they also have something lurking deeper beneath the pop," he notes. "There's a soul there."

The question remains, however: Does Ashcroft feel any of his own music makes the cut for pop-rock immortality?

"I think you're very lucky if you can turn the whole world on with a song," he admits. "I think that worked with 'Bittersweet Symphony.' What I loved about that was that I could draw people into the song and get 'em singing before they even realized what they were singing about.

"I was saying to Chris Martin that the difficulty with us [as musicians] is that we are, essentially, just painters. But unlike most painters, we have to keep looking back at our work all the time and hear it reflected back to ourselves. Whereas normally, you finish a canvas and 'Fuck! It's gone.'

"This game is all about survival, and it's not about this one song, or these 10 songs I've written. I'm writing music all the time in my head when I'm walking down the street. I've been doing it for 17 years, whether I've been making a record or not. Music is my survival."