Motown had Detroit. Stax had Memphis. Good Boy Records apparently began with the Boss standing in the hallway staring at a framed Father’s Day poem like a man receiving instructions from the dead.
The poem was written by his daughter Poppy, who arrived from Yorkshire carrying the framed piece under one arm and, although none of us realised it at the time, the complete collapse of domestic stability under the other.
It was called “My Dad’s Favourite Colour is Yellow.”
Mrs Boss took one look at the Boss silently studying this thing on the wall three or four times a day and immediately recognised the warning signs.
Now, to be fair, Mrs Boss has known the Boss a very long time. She understands the rhythms of these situations. The narrowing eyes. The pacing. The muttering. The sudden appearance of notebooks. The look of a man who has accidentally wandered into another “phase.” Her exact phrase, I believe, was: “Oh Christ. He’s starting something.”
And she was absolutely right.
Because around the same time, the Boss became convinced that a stranger in the park had delivered some sort of cosmic instruction for him to stop moping about and start writing songs again. Personally, I remain deeply suspicious of any spiritual awakening that takes place within thirty feet of a duck pond, but there we are.
Then one evening, while once again staring at Poppy’s framed poem like a retired sea captain studying naval charts, the Boss remembered seeing one of those AI music demonstrations online. Now this is normally the sort of thing the Boss watches for six minutes before loudly declaring civilisation finished and going off to make tea.
But this one lingered.
Mostly because the poem was already doing something strange to him. Not in a mystical way. Nothing so dramatic. More in the sense that he kept reading it aloud under his breath like a man trying to work out why a melody was hiding inside the words.
Most people would have tried the AI thing once, laughed nervously, and returned to normal society.
Not the Boss.
Because here is the important bit: he never wanted to rewrite the poem because the poem already worked. Poppy had instinctively repeated the line: “My dad’s favourite colour is yellow.” And the Boss heard it immediately. Not as poetry.
As a hook.
So he fed the poem into the machine, pressed play, and accidentally detonated the entire Good Boy Records universe. That was it.
My Dad’s Favourite Colour is Yellow
© 2026 Good Boy Records / Poppy Gillman
Floodgates. Not because “AI started making music,” which is the sort of sentence people say on LinkedIn before being quietly unfollowed by their families. No. What actually happened was far stranger.
The Boss suddenly started hearing songs again.
Old demos. Half-finished lyrics. Southern rock ideas. Country songs. Abandoned fragments from the Magic Ship years. Strange little scraps buried in drawers and old cassette tapes turning up like emotional unexploded ordnance.
Within weeks, the house was full of guitars, coffee cups, muttering, late-night mixes, studio jargon, alarming quantities of MP3 files, and a fictional chimpanzee in leopard print called Chip Martini demanding recording budgets.
Mrs Boss, meanwhile, stood in the middle of all this unfolding chaos with the exhausted expression of a woman whose husband’s real hobby has always been collecting hobbies.
She knew. She always knows.
I suspect the exact moment she realised the situation had become critical was when Poppy casually said: “Well, it’s not like any of it is on Spotify, is it?”
This turned out to be an extraordinarily dangerous thing to say to the Boss.
Because shortly afterwards, there were releases. Then albums. Then even more albums. This was followed by Substack essays, the creation of a fictional studio in Memphis, and before I could look up, an entire imaginary record label mythology appeared at such a speed that even I began struggling to maintain the paperwork for all the catering.
Now, the whole peculiar thing has come full circle in the nicest possible way.
The Boss first wandered into Stories from the Jukebox, reminiscing about Southern rock, Melissa, guitars, and the general musical chaos of growing up in West London.
And now, somehow, wonderfully, Poppy herself has stepped into the orbit with a lovely piece of writing of her own, responding to all of it from the other side of the living room.
Mrs Boss, meanwhile, maintains this was merely another example of the Boss collecting hobbies at industrial speed, and frankly, her version of events is becoming rather difficult to challenge.
Codsworth C. Gleason, Esq.
Assistant to the Boss,
Head of Everything Else,
Currently watching the hallway for early signs of the next phase.
More good music from Good Boy Records on Spotify below
Very amusing little tial and a different genre then you usually create. Very cool
What a beautiful gift. Isn't it wonderful!