Photo credit: Munachi Osegbu

When Sparks co-founders Ron and Russell Mael were mulling over what to title their long-running art-rock project’s latest studio release, they managed to sum up the current state of affairs, both politically and culturally, with a single word and a pronounced exclamation mark—MAD!

“There was an aggressive nature to quite a few songs on the album, and there are songs that aren’t in that area in an obvious way but lyrically are. We try not to make direct political statements, but you’re affected by things,” says Russell, who sports a Beatles approved mop top and plays keyboards in the group,. “Even the title of the album is a reflection of the general feeling now, both the madness and the craziness— people being irate about a lot of things to a degree that we haven’t seen in a really long time.”

As he explains the origins of Sparks’ 28th studio album, the 78-year-old Russell is sitting in a conference room at the Manhattan office of his current label, Transgressive Records, with his brother Ron, who handles lead vocals and is a year his senior. They slowly crafted the kaleidoscopic MAD!—a charged commentary on modern life that also balances out the heaviness of the day with their always satirical thoughts on branded backpacks and tattoos—at Russell’s space in Los Angeles, where they have “taken everything into their own hands” for about 15 albums now. They worked in different ways. Sometimes Ron would come in with fully formed songs; other times they’d start with a blank canvas together, noodle around sonically and make use of the studio as an instrument. At times, Russell would also send Ron some unstructured musical ideas that he would then try to turn into more old-fashioned musical forms.

“We like to broaden the idea of what a song is from,” Ron says, reclining in his conference chair, stage-ready with his trademark pencil mustache and slicked-back hair. “There are ‘songs’ on the album, but then there are things that are more pieces—you can try anything that you want and that’s kind of liberating for a song.”

The Maels like to work from a clean slate every time they begin an album in order to lean into their current mindset. They have also long had a pronounced highly visual element to their music, which Russell describes as the “icing on the cake” to crafting an album. He explains, “The most important thing is just having as strong music as we can, but we’ve always felt that the look of things and the packaging is really important—how you perceive yourself in the photos and the videos—and that extends to our live performances. We’ve always wanted it to be consistent within the universe that we have created, even on day one with our first album.”

Growing up in Los Angeles during one of California’s golden eras, Ron and Russell frequented the city’s classic venues, taking influence from the theatrical glitz of the British acts they idolized early on. “We thought they were great musically, but they were also super flashy and the visuals weren’t tacked on,” Ron says. “At the time, there were bands and artists attempting to hide their lack of musicality. And we always thought, ‘It’s all one thing.’ And we kind of carried it on since then—it isn’t something really applied, just natural.

They cite The Rolling Stones’ oft-bemoaned but surprisingly strong 1967 psychedelic opus Their Satanic Majesties Request, The Who’s more boundary testing recordings and the Kinks’ transformative work around Lola as a compass for their current sensibilities.

“There’s a positive preciousness to some of those lyrics,” Ron says. “It’s something we emulated, just the general idea of writing lyrics that are detailed and specific, as opposed to general concepts. We haven’t followed that 100% because we have too many songs, but we have in a general way. We really like to be detailed and specific about things. And then, maybe, you can make an inference from a specific thing to something larger that more people can appreciate.”

Sparks have continuously proved their ability to reach that larger audience while still nurturing a dedicated, passionate cult audience. A few years after forming Sparks in 1971, the Maels temporarily relocated to London and became pioneers of the burgeoning proto-punk glam-rock scene. From there, they partnered with disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder and remained on the vanguard of electronic music as punk morphed into New Wave and synth pop. They later explored techno dance sounds, more stripped-back, indie-approved art-rock and, in 2021, opera, writing music for the film Annette and releasing an accompanying album under the same name soon after. That project, as well as Edgar Wright’s 2022 film The Sparks Brothers, has both exposed the group to new generations and helped canonize their legacy.

“We’re having a lot more ears and eyes on us than we’ve probably ever had in our career,” Russell says. “So there’s the motivation to keep doing albums that we think aren’t necessarily sounding like a band with a 28-album-long history. We love The Rolling Stones, but you know what to expect from The Rolling Stones. It’s not going to be another Their Satanic Majesties Request. And that’s fine. But for us, we don’t want to sound like we’re a band that has had that kind of history. If someone picks up on Sparks today and the only album they know is the MAD! album, we want that to stand on its own and for someone to say, ‘Wow, this is a great album in 2025,’ and not to have it necessarily relate to anything we’ve ever done before.”

The Sparks Brothers, in particular, spotlighted Ron and Russell in a way they had rarely experienced. They have mixed feelings about the access to entertainers fans have in the current climate—the Maels believe that the social media age has taken some of the mystique out of the rock-and-roll fantasy, but they can also see its benefits. “We have our objections to some things with social media,” Ron says. “But the one positive thing is that people can instantly find everything you’ve done and categorize it as one whole thing, as opposed to release by release, and that’s worked in our favor. We won’t ever get to the point of showing ourselves cooking breakfast, but there is a feeling of connectedness that wasn’t there before.”

Russell believes that feeling carries over to their live show. There is a theatricality to a Sparks concert, despite the fact that there are no pyrotechnics on the stage. “It comes through with our personality and the personality of the songs and the lyrics of those songs come across in the live context,” he says. “So people always come away feeling that they’ve seen a show, as opposed to just a rock concert. We are not acting, but there is a theatricality in the way we are as people that comes across in the live shows. Our lights aren’t traditional rock-and-roll lighting, and all that showcases our personalities and the personality of the music.”