Time & Perspective Quote by Roy Wood

There is a particular kind of musician candor in Roy Wood admitting his “best song” didn’t arrive with trumpets, liner-note mythology, or even the band people associate with him. It’s lodged in the in-between: written under one banner (the Move), officially released under another (Boulders), and remembered as a private high-water mark more than a public career milestone. That tension is the point. Wood isn’t selling a legend; he’s exposing how contingent “the canon” really is.

The subtext is about authorship versus machinery. Bands become brands, and brands decide what counts as essential. Wood’s phrasing - “we didn’t actually record it as the Move” - carries a quiet shrug at the way timing, lineup, label priorities, or sheer chaos can reroute a song’s destiny. A track can be perfect and still miss the moment it “should” have belonged to. When he says he “subsequently” put it on Boulders, it sounds less like strategy than salvage: an artist making sure the work survives, even if it has to change passports.

Context matters here: Boulders is a largely solo statement, a one-man studio universe. Calling “Dear Elaine” his best song frames that album not as a side project but as a place where his songwriting could breathe without committee decisions. It’s also a reminder that pop history is full of near-misses and reassigned masterpieces - not because artists don’t know what they’ve made, but because the industry often doesn’t know what to do with it until later, if ever.