On paper, Pete Kirtley has had a f*cking brilliant life. Seven number one records, an Ivor Novello Award, millions of records sold and a Wikipedia page that makes him look considerably more successful than he feels.
The other Pete has been in debt, painted fences for cash, spent six months homeless, and wasted an unreasonable amount of his life wondering how the bloke on Wikipedia managed to get so far ahead of him.
Nobody F*cking Cares is the autopsy of what happened in between. Success, failure, family, money, ego, ADHD, grief, terrible decisions and the increasingly uncomfortable possibility that Pete has spent far too much of his life worrying about what everybody else thinks.
And if you ever meet him at a party and ask what he does for a living, don’t be surprised if he tells you he’s in the biscuit business.
It isn’t a comeback story. He hasn’t got any answers. He’s still here, though.
If you’re old enough to know better but still making it up as you go along. If your life looks considerably better from the outside than it sometimes feels from the inside. If you’ve had successes that didn’t fix you, failures you still think about, or wonder how everyone else seems to have their sh*t together.
But you might feel a bit less alone reading it.
Pete Kirtley has spent more than thirty years in the music business. He’s also spent a fair chunk of that time wondering whether he actually belongs there.
He’s a songwriter, producer, serial starter of businesses and world class overthinker.
Nobody F*cking Cares is what happens when the bloke behind the credits finally starts talking about the bits no one wants to talk about. The money he lost. The deals that nearly happened. The businesses that didn’t. The ego, the insecurity, the family, the grief, the ADHD, and the frankly exhausting amount of time he spent trying to look like everything was going brilliantly.
Some of it was brilliant.
Some of it was a f*cking disaster.
Most of it was somewhere in between.
“I thought success would complete me, and that once you’re up, you stay up. Did it fuck.”
This book contains the word “f*ck” 172 times.
If that bothers you, this may be a very long read.
No spam. Not yet, I promise. Just one email when the book comes out. Unless I lose my Google password, then we’re both fucked.
No spam, just the one email when it’s out.