FEATURE: Deep Breathing: How No Kate Bush Albums Endures Because of One Song, and Why New Fans Need to Explore Her Work More Deeply

FEATURE:

 

 

Deep Breathing

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

How No Kate Bush Albums Endures Because of One Song, and Why New Fans Need to Explore Her Work More Deeply

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LAST month…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush alongside Lindsay Kemp in the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve (1993)/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

I was a bit annoyed when reading a feature ranking Kate Bush’s songs. I have said how much I love what Spectrum Culture are doing. They are ranking her songs and writing a lot about each. However, I took issue with this part, and specifically what they wrote about The Saxophone Song. That is a track from 1978’s The Kick Inside. Kate Bush’s debut album. Apart from ranking it scandalously low at 106, they also said this: “James and the Cold Gun” appeared on The Kick Inside, the debut record on which the singer-songwriter was evidently finding her feet. The longevity of the album may well depend on THAT Emily Brontë tune. Bush, guided by her influences, was beginning to discover an individual voice in the chasm of British pop. “James and the Cold Gun” does not shy away from Bowie’s shadow, but it still proves a fairly rewarding listen on its own terms. – Eoghan Lyng”. A couple of points with what Lyng said about The Saxophone Song and The Kick Inside. I will broaden this out. That idea that Bush was “evidentially finding her feet” on The Kick Inside. There is no evidence to suggest that. Like she was stumbling and patchy. Instead, she was hugely confident and she found her voice right at the start. The Saxophone Song is a brilliant cut that would be heralded today if a modern artist recorded it. This idea that Kate Bush only got good after a few albums. Her debut seen by some as inessential and a little weak. What annoyed me is that idea that The Kick Inside only endures because of Wuthering Heights! Not to mention The Man with the Child in His Eyes, Moving, The Kick Inside, and Kite. There are gems-aplenty on The Kick Inside! This insane notion that there is only one brilliant song on that album. That people discuss and love it because of Wuthering Heights. Very few albums endure decades later because of one standout song. The Kick Inside is loved because it is a brilliant album with a lot of great songs.

That is one person’s opinion about The Kick Inside. Though it applies to all her albums. No Kate Bush album endures and survives as it has one great song. A couple of her albums are not so widely loved. Lionheart arrived in 1978, nine months after The Kick Inside. Even so, it has a few real treas. Wow, Kashka from Baghdad and Symphony in Blue. Hounds of Love certainly does not endure solely because of Runing Up That Hill (A Deal with God), so it seems insulting that her unique and hugely impressive debut gets acclaim and fandom now because of Wuthering Heights. Patently ridiculous! Look at any of her albums, and they all have a series of brilliant song. None of Bush’s albums dependant on one track alone. The Sensual World has The Fog, The Sensual World and This Woman’s Work. Never for Ever has Babooshka, Army Dreamers, Breathing, and The Wedding List. The Red Shoes has Moments of Pleasure, The Red Shoes, Rubberband Girl, and Lily. Aerial has Mrs. Bartolozzi, Nocturn and, well, you get my point! I do think that the Spectrum Culture feature is not a one-off. As I have said, I do love what they are doing and opinions are subjective. But this notion that one of the greatest debut albums of the 1970s remains fascinating, or barely loved today, is because of Wuthering Heights. It did bother me a lot. Nobody who is discovering Kate Bush’s albums is skipping all the tracks for that one golden one. Well, I hope not! Bushy is such a respected and influential artist because of her consistency. That all her albums, whilst not all universally loved, do have more than one remarkable song. Some artists write albums with singles in mind. They have one commercially huge song and struggle elsewhere. I don’t think Kate Bush ever thought like that. She is and always has been an albums artist, so she ensures that there is this consistency and evenness. She did not write Wuthering Heights knowing it to be a work of genius and then spend little time with the rest. She cared about everything and was committed to making an album strong. It is strong and, as highlighted, there are several brilliant tracks. All of this contributes to its modern legacy and importance.

In fact, are there are any other major artists where an album depends entirely on the grandeur or brilliance of one song? I think about works by David Bowie, Madonna, The Rolling Stones or whoever, and their classic albums are not beholden to one song. In fact, even many of their less essential records have a few terrific songs. It is dismissive and insulting for anyone to say that The Kick Inside rests everything on Wuthering Heights. It’s another reason why, when the album turns fifty in 2028, I am going to write as much as I can. Get people together to celebrate an album that has this incredible endurance. Because of everything on it, and not just her debut single! But that goes for all Kate Bush albums. If many do not admire The Red Shoes, the fact that it gets written about or people even mention it today goes beyond one track. I think all of her albums, perhaps except Director’s Cut (2011) endure now because of how different they all are. Each has a few diamond songs. All of them compelling in their own way. Some may not bur as bright and have as wide a fanbase as others, but they all have endured, because we discuss them and Kate Bush. It makes me wonder two things. When you get articles like the one early where it is short-sighted or uninformed about a Kate Bush album, is there this feeling that people are not listening to the album? Surely anyone listening to The Kick Inside in full appreciates how there are so many songs that contribute to its strength. It is not one amazing song and the rest are average. Streaming figures suggest that many might go for the obvious songs and do not really have great knowledge of entire albums. Unless you are an established fan, will you spend time with a Kate Bush album, and therefore get a greater appreciation of each track and how they go together so well? People like me who have been fans for decades know and love the albums. We understand why they are important today. Yet there are generations who may even only know about Hounds of Love as Stranger Things used Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 2022. Do people think that Hounds of Love is such a respect album because of one song? You would hope not. It does implore me to keep writing about Kate Bush, as there is some truth in many skirting her albums to go for obvious songs. If deeper cuts are not played on the  radio and people do not write about the albums, in a digital age where many handpick tracks and skim through albums, does this somewhat distort or weaken Bush’s obvious greatness to young listener who have a narrower or less informed views of the whole picture? The fact that C.D. and vinyl sales are rising means that younger people are buying albumns.

I feel a lot of this might be new music and not necessarily classic and older albums. Maybe I am wrong. It did get to me how, granted people are entitled to their opinion, that a debut as seismic as The Kick Inside is only worthy because of its sixth track. I explore all of her albums and there is not one where I am only waiting for one track. Knowing that the reason I respect Kate Bush s much is because of the consistency of her albums. Indeed, if any of her albums were seen as credible today because of one song, we would not be discussing her in such esteemed tones. It does make me curious how her albums are being digested today. Whether people spend enough time with them. As it is almost Christmas, anyone new to Kate Bush really does need to invest in her albums. Start out by buying one and then listen to it in full. It is tempting to stream everything and listen that way. Though committing to buying an album makes you listen in full. Only then can you appreciate the true depth of that album. That’s what I reckon. No artist like Kate Bush could endure and have such a legacy today if many of their albums had only one exceptional song. And as The Kick Inside is one of her best, I think we are safe to assume that Wuthering Heights is one of many great tracks. And that Never for Ever boasts several smashers. Even an album that requires patience and demands your full investment like 50 Words for Snow (2011) has quite a few astonishing tracks. Nobody listening to it and thinking that there is one song that is brilliant and the rest are forgettable. And I think this album will be seen in years to come as one of her best and most important – even if some critics now feel it is below par. I will always fight to show why Kate Bush is one of the greatest artists ever. How all of her albums, in their own way, warrant huge love. Her debut is a masterpiece. As is, say The Dreaming. These albums will be talked about decades from now because there is so much to love and explore. A debut album does not sell over a million copies because one of the singles is extraordinary and the other tracks are not worth much. Similarly, all the commercial success and affection future albums received is because of the whole. Even the imperfect moments added something. It made the album somehow more interesting and intriguing. So we do need to show her more respect and give time to listen to her albums in full. Only then can we appreciate all of the song and get a clearer and bolder impression. Cherry-picking songs or listening to the albums in chunks is a hollower and less satisfying experience. If you are one of those people who only knows Hounds of Love or Aerial because of one song, then go and change that. This Christmas, make sure that you listen to Kate Bush’s albums…

IN their full glory.

FEATURE: Struggling Heights: Does Modern Pop’s Limits and Restrictions Mean We Will Never Hear Anyone As Diverse Yet Universally Loved as Kate Bush?

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Struggling Heights

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith

Does Modern Pop’s Limits and Restrictions Mean We Will Never Hear Anyone As Diverse Yet Universally Loved as Kate Bush?

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PEOPLE might shoot straight back…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the German T.V. show, Rock Pop, on 13th September, 1980 performing Babooshka

at me with names of artists who are diverse and accomplished as Kate Bush. What worries me is, more and more, how it is harder for artists to take time between albums and craft something different yet highly accomplished. There are incredible greats like Charli xcx who are prolific and produce these amazing albums. What strikes me hardest about Kate Bush is how she has recorded these albums that do not repeat the last, yet are all extraordinary in their own way. Looking around modern music, I cannot readily think of many artists who are adored and highly influential who have recorded albums that chart wide-ranging sonic territories. Look at the waves of Pop artists emerging. I think there is still a need for them to be accessible and digestible. A reliance on music that can be shared on social media and make an impact instantly. This often means that music that is more explorative and uncommercial is pushed to the fringes. These artists are more interesting, though they are not exactly as celebrated and spotlighted as Pop artists making music that is more mainstream and similar. There is a lot of homogenisation in music. I grant there are some modern icons forming. Stunning artists who do evolve between albums. Though none quite like Kate Bush. Think about how The Kick Inside (her 1978 debut), The Sensual World (1989) and 50 Words for Snow (2011) are all vastly different. Her albums were released over a period of three decades and more, so we are talking about someone long-running. Yet, I struggle to think of a modern artist quite as diverse and innovative as Kate Bush. Are we to blame modern tastes and expectations? The dominance of streaming and trying to make music instantly memorable in a time when attention spans are short?

I do think people have an appreciate for music that is not poppy and same-sounding. Interesting artists who are making sounds that are unique and fascinating. But I do wonder whether they are going to be supported and spotlighted enough so that they are recording and releasing albums years from now. I feel there is an expectation for artists to releasee albums quite close together. That pressure to allows be making stuff and out there unless they are forgotten about. Kate Bush had a slightly luxury where she could take increasingly longer gaps between albums. Over fifteen years since her most recent album, 50 Words for Snow, we have no immediate expectation of a new album. I feel these gaps mean she can take time to push herself and go past the normal. An artist who has traversed so many distinct and diverse sounds, can modern artists achieve this with greater pressure on their shoulders? I have so much love for modern artists. Of course, that is not to say there are no artists who are as interesting as Kate Bush. A few have released a series of albums that cover a number of genres and canvases. But anyone I think of that I can compare to Kate Bush are artists from decades ago. Giant modern artists who are widely adored and acclaimed, I feel, could not be afforded the time and luxury of recording an album as genius and ambitious as Hounds of Love (1985), three years after releasing something as experimental and out-there as The Dreaming (1982). We could say because Kate Bush is unique that it would be unfair to compare any other artists to her. Discount them. My wider point is that there are these restrictions today on young artists. Maybe a lack of money or ability to gestate ideas and spend years between music does stunt some of their potential. Think about a double album like Aerial. Kate Bush’s 2005 masterpiece, it may be considered the type of album that falls outside of Pop. That maybe should be made by an older artist. Not trendy or the kind those on TikTok and Instagram would listen to.

This is the same woman who released Never for Ever, which I feel would very much be accessible to social media user now. Can you name many artists who have released a series of albums as broad as Kate Bush’s? Not many spring to mind. Money might be a reason. Bush could afford to build her own studio to a point, which meant she could afford to take time producing an album where she was not watching the clock and worrying about cost. She also has this curiosity for various genes, cultures and music that is a result of her generation, relatives and time she was young. Today, are young artists being exposed to classic albums and a selectin of music as variegated and wide as I was when I was young? Is the art of the album undervalued and important now? I feel one of the major reasons Bush is so influential and admired is because she could be a bit eccentric and experimental for one album and then a little bit more restrained and subtle for the next. The beauty and sensuality could sit with the wintery and expansive. One might also argue there are modern artists who have released a series of albums that are more consistent than Kate Bush’s work. Albums like Lionheart (1978), The Red Shoes (1993) and 50 Words for Snow (2011) not as respected as Hounds of Love or The Dreaming. But it is the fact that there are these instant masterpieces and more underappreciated gems that makes her discography so rewarding, rich and nuanced. You could say that Beyoncé is more consistent. She has released more masterpieces than Kate Bush, but I would argue that Beyoncé’s discography is not as eclectic and compelling as Kate Bush’s. Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpneter and Charli xcx. All queens of the highest order, though their albums are less genre-hopping or varied as Kate Bush’s. Bush did not perform live music, so she could dedicate more time to writing and recording. Also, if a modern giant recorded something Pop-centric one moment and was critically acclaimed, could they follow up with something like The Sensual World or even The Dreaming and keep that momentum going? Do we expect them to release an album pretty similar to the last?

Something I have been thinking about. Whether we will see anyone as enduring and endlessly interesting as Kate Bush. That is not the fault of artists. Things have changed. I do feel that social media, streaming and the contemporary landscape and the pressure artists are under means we might not see anyone quite like Kate Bush. But is it possible to deliver albums as different as The Kick Inside and 50 Words for Snow without there being this giant gap? Those albums released over thirty years apart. That does raise other questions and considerations. The legacy Kate Bush has is immense. Her work affecting and impacting artists and people across multiple genre and sectors of society because each of her albums has its own skin and sound. You cannot compare them. She could be quite mad and boundary-pushing on one album. The next a bit more introspective or slow-burning. I am not sure whether many artists could take that risk. When I listen to contemporary innovators, they do switch things up between albums. But they are releasing them a year, two or three since the last, so it does mean that they have not had enough time to mature and experience life so that their next album is as big move forward. That need for fast turnaround. But you can be a modern genius and be widely admired if you have a natural genius that means, even if your albums are fairly similar, they are still important and affecting. I am thinking of a Taylor Swift, ROSALÍA or Bad Bunny.

This might be too complex or big a subject for me to do justice to. I was thinking about this when listening to The Red Shoes beside The Kick Inside. If a modern artist released albums like this, in terms of how worlds apart they are, I wonder if that would be a huge gamble commercially. I am not saying that a modern artist can never be as good as Kate Bush. That is not true. Though her albums all distinct and so compelling in their own ways. A body of work that I don’t think has been equalled when it comes to their breadth, width and depth of lyrical and sonic inspiration. Can we blame modern Pop and an industry that does not always allow artists longer pauses between albums and the opportunity to craft albums that are distinctly different? Do modern artists want to. Plenty of artists do release albums that are different to their previous ones, but I have yet to find too many that are in the same ballpark as Kate Bush. If Kate Bush continued to make albums like Hounds of Love after 1985, I don’t think she would be seen now as brilliant and progressive. She could release genius replicas. But it is the fact that her subsequent albums were not like that, faults and all, that makes her so much more brilliant and bold. She did not comprise or want to do the same thing, which could mean she risked alienating some fans and critics. Modern artists can take these leaps, but I feel there are too many risks and fears of losing traction and momentum. I might be wrong. It would be interesting to hear what people think on this and why, decades from now, the best of the current age will not leave behind a catalogue quite like Kate Bush’s. It is a shame in a way. I feel few artists will be as enduring, because their music does not quite have the same depths and layers as Bush’s. How we need to reappraise some of Bush’s work rather than see them all as faultless. If a modern artists puts out six or seven wonderful albums that are broadly similar, will that be as impactful decades from now as if they put out wildly different albums that take a bit of time to appreciate? It seems that, alas, there could or will never be another artist quite like…

THE sublime Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Sub-headers and Snapshots: Do We Give Too Little Focus to Music Photographers and Journalists?

FEATURE:

 

 

Sub-headers and Snapshots

PHOTO CREDIT: Wallace Chuck/Pexels

Do We Give Too Little Focus to Music Photographers and Journalists?

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WE can broaden this out…

PHOTO CREDIT: https://kaboompics.com//Pexels

to label managers, venues and pretty much everything beyond the artists themselves. Music is very much defined by more than the people who create the songs if you see what I mean. In terms of the glory, focus and discussion, we really only talk about artists themselves. We read articles by wonderful journalists, see these amazing shots and marvel at them. But do we take enough time to appreciate their work? Sure, some people do. Journalists boosting their fellow journalists. People shouting out these skilful and hugely talented photographers. Yet it is nothing compared to what artists get. It is good that there are music photography awards. Abbey Road’s annual celebration. Perhaps journalists and photographers do not particularly want to be interviewed and showcased. Yet I feel their contributions to the music industry is vital. Wonderful and passionate journalists are the ones who highlight and write about artists. Bring them to a whole new audience. Their insightful and invaluable reviews. I am a huge fan of Laura Snapes, for example. She has been writing for The Guardian for many years. Their Deputy Music Editor, I feel she is one of our most important journalists. Her colleague, Alexis Petridis too. Other music journalists I have a lot of love for are CLASH’s Robin Murray – one of the most prolific and hardest-working journalists out there – and Laura Molloy. It is impossible to name every journalist around the world who deserves more focus, yet we do forget how much they give us. Their hard and tireless work, I feel, is as important as music itself. Artist Nadine Shah did a brief series called Payback, where she got to interview music journalists. She spoke with journalists and broadcaster including Matt Everitt and Laura Snapes. It was a brilliant idea. Rather than it being this revenge thing where those responsible for grilling artists get the tables turned, it was a chance to find out more about those who produce these incredible features, interviews and pieces.

PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Ambience/Pexels

I do not have a single favourite music journalist, though it may be Laura Snapes. Yet I also love Robert Christgau. One of the most prolific journalists ever, this America icon has written so many features and reviews. Books too. I believe there is a film being made about him or featuring him. I would love to see and read more interviews with him. It is not only useful for those who want to get into music journalism. Hearing the stories and backgrounds of these amazing people. I also am fascinated to learn about their music tastes, upbringing and lives. All of that intrigue and celebration goes to artists. Kate Hutchison, Rhian Jones, Kathryn Bromwich and Roísín O'Connor are among our best journalists. NME’s Andrew Trendell, Elizabeth Aubrey, and so many others deserve their flowers. They have social media followers and they have these careers that see them meet and chat with amazing artists. And yet, I do get the feeling that they deserve more. Some people sneer at music journalists. That they are failed musicians themselves or they are inessential. That journalism is pointless, as social media and streaming means they are redundant. That their words and worth has run its course. This could not be further from the truth. Even if independent journalism especially is dwindling or is struggling in some regards, I think it is as important as ever. Websites like Drowned in Sound, The Forty-Five, CLASH, DORK, and The Quietus are invaluable to me and so many others. Perhaps it is just me who wants to know more about these incredible journalists. Though I don’t think that is the case. Maybe there needs to be a new series or articles where music journalists get a chance to speak and be interviewed. It is wonderful that the artists they write about are discovered and adored. Though we cannot overlook how essential and brilliant these people are. I have only named a few of the hundreds of music journalists around the world who are so important. Hannah Ewens, who I have written about before, and so many other are so essential. All the work they do. Tomorrow (15th November) marks fifteen years since I started my blog, Music Musings and Such. These people I have named are inspirations and people I have definitely taken lead and guidance from. Without music journalists, I literally would not be able to of what I do, as I am research-heavy, and words from others forms the majority of what I do. I guess I am a little unconventional. The stuff I share on social media has been edited and is in its as-perfect-as-possible state, yet there is new stuff on my website I have not been through with a fine toothcomb. I will do that just before I share the feature, so there is a combination of edited/checked and stuff still in a rougher form, though you can get a sense of what I am writing about and my style.

IN THIS PHOTO: Arlo Parks/PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana

The same kudos needs to go to music photographers. Again, we see these phenomenal images of artists. Whether portraits or live shots, it is not the case amateur photographers or anyone with a phone can do what they do. In terms of their knowledge and creative brilliance, this is not something any layperson can achieve. It takes years or work and dedication. I marvel at modern greats like Lucy Aitken, Pooneh Ghana, Phoebe Fox, and so many others. In terms of the legends, there is RANKIN, Danny Clinch, Jill Furmanovsky, and Ross Halfin. Some of them have written books, and there have been interview. In terms of the younger photographers whose stunning work is gracing websites and music magazines, I do feel that they should have the lens turned on them. Get some insight from these amazing people. I have, again, named only a few people. That is the thing. There are countless wonderfully important music photographers, so it may be a task interviewing them all. Look at this directory and all the brilliant music photographers around the world. I guess, as I look ahead to fifteen years since I published my first piece, I wonder whether we value music journalists and photographers enough. Again, they might not want to be interviewed and have attention come their way. It is true that modern technology and changing ways in which we discover and digest music makes us a little blasé and ignorant towards music journalism. How it can never be replaced or die. Yes, there are fewer very small music blogs than there were when I started in 2011, though the value of music journalism is immense! Music photography is an artform in itself. Annual award ceremonies recognise their work, and yet we tend not to want to explore their careers and beginnings past that. My music blog would also not be what it is without music photographers. I cannot afford to hire a photographer. My blog is very visual. So these photos are also a major reason I can exist! In the same way a beautifully crafted review or feature can blow the mind, so too can these perfect and unique shots. I love long reads and detailed interviews. I also adore great photography. To all these amazing, passionate, immensely hard-working and talented professionals, I, and so many music fans offer out…

ETERNAL thanks.

FEATURE: Spotlight: SHHE

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Zachariah Mahrouche

SHHE

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THERE are people…

who do not know about the brilliance of SHHE. Her new album, THALASSA, is one I would encourage people to listen to. SHHE is the musical moniker of Su Shaw, a Scottish-Portuguese artist and producer based in Dundee, Scotland. There are some interviews with her that I want to get to. I will end with a review of the tremendous THALASSE. I am starting out with Magazine Sixty and their fascinating interview with SHHE. I am a new discoverer of her music, so it has been amazing learning more about this wonderful artist:

“Welcome to Magazine Sixty, Su. Tell us about your relationship with the label One Little Independent, how it happened and why it continues?

Hello Magazine Sixty, thanks for the invitation.

My relationship with One Little Independent began in 2018. I had just returned from a residency in Iceland, where I had started research on a new project. In one way, the residency had been a failed experiment – I had attempted to sonically ‘map’ the Dýrafjörður fjord in the Westfjords of Iceland – but an unexpected storm meant that it was impossible to leave Þingeyri, the village that I was based in. So, I left Iceland with lots of ideas but very little material, knowing that I needed to find a way to return immediately. While I was there, I self-released Eyes Shut, which went onto become the first track from my debut album. A friend – wondrous Davie Miller from the band, Finitribe – shared the track online, and OLI contacted him to ask if we could be introduced. A few weeks later, I met the label in London, and we began working together soon after. As you know, their roster is deeply embedded in Iceland, which made it possible to keep developing my project, which years later became my second album, Dýra – which was released by OLI in 2024. So that first meeting felt very serendipitous in many ways. I’m grateful that the relationship continues – I can’t think of another label where I would feel more at home.

What drew you to electronic music in the first place? Was there a lightbulb moment via a certain record or hearing a performance?

I grew up in a small village in the countryside and spent a lot of time outdoors, listening to natural rhythms and patterns, so perhaps my interest in electronic music was born then, subconsciously. When I was a kid, I would ride my bike in circles around the same cul-de-sac for hours, losing perception of time, until it got dark and my parents called me home. I can’t remember the first record that drew me in – some of my favourite records I have only discovered in the last few years – but perhaps those feelings of losing track of time, are synonymous with the feelings I experience when I listen to certain records now.

When you perform live, how does it feel different to recoding music? What instruments do you use to accompany performance?

I’m always trying to find ways to bring the process of recording and performing closer together. Performing with my modular encourages me to let go of control. As nothing is programmed in advance, no two performances feel or sound the same. To me, performing live should feel as alive as possible. Working with modular and voice encourages me attune to the environment that I’m performing in, to work with the space, instead of simply performing in it.

Outside of music, are there any particular artists, writers, cinema, etc., that have inspired you the most over the years?

Rachel Carson’s writing was a huge inspiration to me during the creation of THALASSA. I was first introduced to Carson through David Horvitz’s Last Billboard project, in 2016. I carried a copy of Carson’s seminal book, The Sea Around Us, around with me for three years during the album’s development and had a chance to visit some of the locations she wrote about so beautifully, including St. Malo in France – home to the largest tidal range in Europe. I was thrilled to find an early print of The Sea Around Us in the Rare Books sections of the historical Bibliotheca Alexandrina”.

Let’s come to The Skinny and their chat with SHHE. There are so many tremendous artists out there that are maybe not as discussed and spotlighted as much as they deserve. I feel more should be written about SHEE and THALASSA. This has been a busy year for SHHE. I wonder what she has in store next year in terms of shows and new music. I wonder whether we would class THALASSA as an album or E.P. As it has six tracks, I guess it is an E.P. In any case, it is this body of work that is utterly entrancing and immersive. You close your eyes and lose yourself in the songs. Perhaps its opener, Pneuma, is my favourite track, though every one of them is captivating:

“It’s not the first time water has been at the heart of your work. What is it that you find so fascinating and inspiring about water, and the sea in particular?

I have lived on either side of the River Tay my whole life. When I’m in Dundee, visiting the river is part of my morning routine. I always need to be in proximity to water; wherever I go, I always seek it out. But I’m also fearful of it. I’m fascinated by our relationships to water – especially the tensions between our dependency on it, disregard for it, and the sense of being drawn to it; especially at a time of ecological and political crisis.

I love the way you use your voice on THALASSA to capture the unpredictability of the sea, from its unsettling calm to its dramatic urgency, and believe some of that came from breathing techniques you learned when freediving. It really does feel full of emotion, so I’m keen to learn more about the process and how you went about giving a voice to the Mediterranean?

When I was in Alexandria, I had the chance to visit CMAUCH (Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Underwater Cultural Heritage), an institution/diving centre which is dedicated to preserving and documenting Egypt’s underwater artifacts. I contacted them looking for sonic documentation of their dives, as I was interested to hear what the Mediterranean sounded like. They didn’t have any, but it opened up conversations about the sonics they encounter when doing their research – both passive sounds and profoundly important ones for ensuing their breathing apparatus is working properly. I wasn’t able to dive myself, but I spent a lot of time researching freediving and breathing techniques as a means of physical boundary pushing – bringing this into the studio.

Of course, THALASSA isn't solely made up of your voice; you designed a custom-built modular synthesiser, developed alongside Ben Chatwin. What was it about your design that made it different from a pre-existing modular synthesiser?

I had no experience of working with modular synthesisers, so it was important for me to learn from the beginning. Soon after Ben and I began to develop ideas together, one of the decisions I made was to work with analogue modules as much as possible, which welcomed in a level of uncertainty and unpredictability into the work. Another decision was to remove the safety net, and to perform live using only the modular and my voice. As the analogue modules naturally respond to their environment, this means that every performance is different.

Finally, what does the rest of the year look like for SHHE?

Alongside album launches at the end of May, THALASSA will be presented at IKLECTIK in London, alongside a performance at Glasgow’s Sonica festival later in the year. It’s been an honour to work alongside Cryptic to programme part of Sonica this year, and a dream to invite artists who I believe are making some of the most exciting and crucial work today. I’m also thrilled to be working with Hospitalfield, to curate Ecologies of Listening, a study day on sound, this July. The programme will bring together artists from diverse genres and geographies, exploring deeper modes of listening, and broader forms of sonic inquiry across performances, discussions and workshops”.

I did want to source quite a bit of CRACK’s interview with SHHE. Su Shaw travelled to Egypt to record the Mediterranean Sea for THALASSA. The E.P. “turns underwater recordings and unstable electronics into a meditation on water, climate and our changing planet”. I find everything about SHHE fascinating. In terms of how far and wide she has travelled to devote time to exploring bodies of water through sound. This incredible human has “self-exiled to Icelandic fjords, tracked Brazilian rivers and staged exhibitions about drought in the Kurdistan region of Iraq”:

“THALASSA was conceived as a response to pollution and limited access to water in parts of the MENA region. During the recording process, Shaw was based in Alexandria, a city defined by its relationship to rising sea levels. “There are two Alexandrias already underwater,” she says. Shaw initially intended to conduct a series of sound walks across the area, but the region’s militarised coastline made this impossible. “That was the first time I was standing in front of a body of water but unable to hear it,” she says. Shaw had to record the sea covertly, slinging her microphone into the water on an arranged boat trip while pretending to listen to music on headphones.

“I think because Alexandria is such a cacophony of sound, that was the part that was so surprising to me: this relationship, or lack of relationship, with a sea that is right there,” she says. “The idea for the whole project was: how do you give voice to this perceived silent water body?”

The restrictions meant that the only material Shaw came away with was the shrimp recordings. The rest of the project was created with a modular synth, developed in collaboration with Scottish musician Ben Chatwin, that was built to generate random instabilities and unpredictable voltages.

For Shaw, themes of randomness are a way of representing the natural world. On tracks like Pneuma and Anodos, she implements near-rhythmic breathing sounds that evoke the feeling of being submerged in the Mediterranean, while also humanising the water. The record’s title, THALASSA, which relates to both the Greek word for sea and a primordial Greek sea goddess, speaks to this idea too. “I wondered that if you personify something, i.e. a water body,” she says, “do we think about it differently? Do we care for it more?”

With ever-divisive global politics distracting from the climate crisis, the interconnectedness of Shaw’s music and broader worldview feels vital. “Everything is connected,” she says, “especially with water bodies.” The estuary in her home city, Dundee, is part of the same network as the Mediterranean. Shaw’s art makes a wider call for ecological action, with its central message: simply hearing the planet isn’t enough. It’s time to start listening”.

Somewhat more important than calling this an E.P. or project, THALASSA seems to be this mandate or statement. Not in a preaching way. It is just that it is seems to transcend music and sound. Higher Plain Music delivered a hugely positive review of THALASSA. Anyone new to the genius of SHHE really needs to find her music. It is astonishing. I am looking forward to seeing where her career takes her:

“The album is a six-part narrative built around SHHE’s breath and the idea of sinking, submergence, and eventually emergence. SHHE is Scottish-Portuguese, and in their hometown of Dundee, Scotland, parts of it are expected to be underwater in the coming decades. Dundee’s plight mirrors that of Alexandria in some ways, a city twice sunk and expected to be partially sunk again by 2050. With this context in mind, ‘THALASSA’ is like a sonic scuba dive.

‘Pneuma’ opens the album with a beautifully haunted soundscape of slow, deep breaths that give way to tonal vocal notes. They sound cavernous and never-ending. At times, the higher-pitched vocals remind me of the ringing in the ears you can get when pressure changes. The sounds are dramatic but left with space to echo. There’s a gothic enchantment about it that fans of dark folk music will enjoy. ‘Katávasi’ takes over seamlessly, introducing a pulsing kick drum, strange slow-motion synths, and an elegant chorus of SHHE’s vocals. The opening few minutes allude to a majesty and grandeur… like a shoal of fish that dance effortlessly. As the bass and more synthetic instruments creep in, the elegance grows in power, and the tone shifts towards a dangerous majesty. It’s still slow and plodding, but now each kick drum thumps in with a gulp rather than a flutter. It is a fantastic example of subtle tonal shifts creating a world of imagination.

By the time ‘Katávasi’ ends, we’ve hit a tense and sharp cut from gnarly bass into micro sounds with ‘Allásso’. Watery, icy bubbles fizz and crackle under sparks of vocalisation that cut in and out like a cry from another world. Lacking immediate melody, the track embodies the emotions of a cinematic last cry from a dying civilisation. The second half transitions into unsure, glitchy beats and synth hues, but the air of mystery never leaves. The taut, constricted density of submergence comes into full effect with ‘Emfánisi’. At seven and a half minutes, the track has several phases. Its opening introduces a downward trickle of synths over swooshing waves of distortion. Hypnotically, this cascades lure the listener into a numbing emergency before other thick, bulbous synths take over with a cyclic chord progression that builds tension and danger. ‘Emfánisi’ then loses its bulbous sound and becomes like sandpaper. Chords, keys, and voice are gargled razors as yet again SHHE balances beauty and danger with aplomb. This is a track that rewards patience.

Clocking in at close to eight minutes, ‘Peras’ is the most outwardly melodic track on the album. Evoking the endless depths of the sea, the track leans into modular synth trappings. Short melodic buzzsaws slowly twist their form through lots of knob twiddling and filter tricks. The first three minutes ramp up each synth engine before SHHE pitch bends different parts of the soundscape, like we’re experiencing either the bends or an escalation back up to the surface again. I love how the track shifts from small sizzles to bleeding metallic chasms via bleep bloops without changing its melody. ‘Peras’ shapeshifts every few seconds, making it a dynamic and expansive piece. With our dive back at the surface, ‘Peras’ ends with a huge gasp, before ‘Anodos’ brings us back full circle to the breathwork. There are moments in ‘Anodos’ that are almost entirely silent except for the last trickles of oxygen. Whilst the track mirrors the ideas of opener ‘Pneuma’, the sounds and vocalisations are clearer, more urgent, and carry stains of previous songs with them.

SHHE has created a clever narrative with ‘THALASSA’. The ambient soundscape is an inviting, unsettling metamorphosis. By subverting the obvious and using strange sound samples and synths to create a sonic dive into the unknown, it lets the listener layer their own interpretations on top. This is an album that I find endlessly fascinating, and I recommend playing it in the dark or with an underwater screensaver on. You’ll find the audio more immersive, but you may just have a metamorphosis of your own, too. Fabulous”.

I really love SHHE. Maybe she does not want the sort of focus and hype that mainstream artists get. Yet I feel that her music and what she is doing warrants greater applause and affection. A magnificent producer and artist, make sure that she is on your radar. A wonderous and awe-inspiring woman who I have so much respect for. The stunning THALASSA needs to be…

HEARD by everyone.

__________

Follow SHHE

PHOTO CREDIT: Zachariah Mahrouche

Official:

https://www.shhemusic.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/shhemusic/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUTDEVF6PFpR9hhbN9t2dvw/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6ZGz2mPPtMaFVKxMzjd8Pd?si=mY7AkxCkTz6Lhd2y51qfbw

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Willie Nelson

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

Willie Nelson

_________

MAYBE it is impossible…

PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Buck/August (via The Guardian)

distilling the best of William Nelson into twenty songs. He is one of the most prolific artists who has ever lived. In terms of the number of albums he has released in his lifetime. Dream Chaser was released this year and is the seventy-ninth album from the Texas-born artist. I will end with a mixtape featuring twenty wonderful songs from this legendary artist. Prior to getting there, I will bring in biography from AllMusic. They are always helpful when it comes to

“Few songwriters and performers have played a vital role in post-rock & roll country music as Willie Nelson. Although he didn't become a star until the mid-'70s, he spent the 1960s writing songs that became hits for stars like Ray Price ("Night Life"), Patsy Cline ("Crazy"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls"), and Billy Walker ("Funny How Time Slips Away"), as well as releasing a series of records on Liberty and RCA that earned him a small but devoted cult following. During the early '70s, Nelson abandoned Nashville for his native Texas, setting up shop with the redneck hippies in Austin and taking control of his music on the landmark Shotgun Willie (1973) and Phases & Stages (1974). He found a kindred spirit in Waylon Jennings and, together, they spearheaded the outlaw country movement that finally made him a star by 1975. Following the crossover success of that year's Red Headed Stranger and "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," Willie became a genuine success, as recognizable in pop circles as he was to country audiences; in addition to recording, he also launched an acting career in the early '80s. Even when he was a star, he never played it safe musically. Instead, he borrowed from a wide variety of styles, including traditional pop -- his biggest album was 1978's Stardust, a collection of interpretations of the Great American Songbook -- Western swing, jazz, traditional country, cowboy songs, honky tonk, rock & roll, folk, and the blues, creating a distinctive, elastic hybrid. Nelson remained at the top of the country charts until the mid-'80s, when his lifestyle -- which had always been close to the outlaw clichés with which his music flirted -- began to spiral out of control, culminating in an infamous battle with the IRS in the late '80s. Nelson's hit singles dried up by the early '90s, but he kept performing and recording at a prodigious pace, both on his own and in a variety of collaborative settings, including the country supergroup the Highwaymen. Occasionally, one of Willie's albums would garner attention from a wider audience, such as 1993's Don Was-produced Across the Borderline or 1998's Teatro, but by the 2000s, he was a beloved figure in American pop culture, embraced for his music, humor, and hippie lifestyle. Nelson wasn't one to rest on his laurels, either. During the 2010s, he struck up a fruitful collaboration with producer Buddy Cannon, who helmed a series of relaxed, mortality-minded albums over the next decade, a string that continued through 2024's The Border. He also recorded several wide-ranging genre covers projects with his sons, Lukas and Micah, the latter of whom produced 2024's Last Leaf on the Tree. Nelson's habit of honoring other songwriters continued on 2025's Oh What a Beautiful World, which consisted entirely of Rodney Crowell songs, and Workin' Man: Willie Sings Merle, featuring eleven Merle Haggard tunes, which was also issued in 2025. 2026's Dream Chaser was a thoughtful set of tunes with a personal feel.

Nelson began performing music as a child growing up in Abbott, Texas. After his father died and his mother ran away, Nelson and his sister Bobbie were raised by their grandparents, who encouraged both children to play instruments. Willie picked up the guitar, and by the time he was seven, he was already writing songs. Bobbie learned to play piano, eventually meeting -- and later marrying -- fiddler Bud Fletcher, who invited both of the siblings to join his band. Nelson had already played with Raychecks' Polka Band, but with Fletcher, he acted as the group's frontman. Willie stayed with Fletcher throughout high school. Upon his graduation, he joined the Air Force but had to leave shortly afterward when he became plagued by back problems. Following his disenrollment from the service, he began looking for full-time work.

After working several part-time jobs, he landed one as a country DJ at Fort Worth's KCNC in 1954. Nelson continued to sing in honky tonks as he worked as a DJ, deciding to make a stab at recording career by 1956. That year, he headed to Vancouver, Washington, where he recorded Leon Payne's "Lumberjack." At that time, Payne was a DJ and he plugged "Lumberjack" on the air, which eventually resulted in sales of 3,000 -- a respectable figure for an independent single, but not enough to gain much attention. For the next few years, Nelson continued to DJ and sing in clubs. During this time, he sold "Family Bible" to a guitar instructor for 50 dollars, and when the song became a hit for Claude Gray in 1960, Nelson decided to move to Nashville the following year to try his luck. Though his nasal voice and jazzy, off-center phrasing didn't win him many friends -- several demos were made and then rejected by various labels -- his songwriting ability didn't go unnoticed, and soon Hank Cochran helped Willie land a publishing contract at Pamper Music. Ray Price, who co-owned Pamper, recorded Nelson's "Night Life" and invited him to join his touring band, the Cherokee Cowboys, as a bassist.

Arriving at the beginning of 1961, Price's invitation began a watershed year for Nelson. Not only did he play with Price -- eventually taking members of the Cherokee Cowboys to form his own touring band -- but his songs also provided major hits for several other artists. Faron Young took "Hello Walls" to number one for nine weeks, Billy Walker made "Funny How Time Slips Away" into a Top 40 country smash, and Patsy Cline made "Crazy" into a Top Ten pop crossover hit. Earlier in the year, he signed a contract with Liberty Records and began releasing a series of singles that were usually drenched in strings. "Willingly," a duet with his then-wife Shirley Collie, became a Top Ten hit for Nelson early in 1962, and it was followed by another Top Ten single, "Touch Me," later that year. Both singles made it seem like Nelson was primed to become a star, but his career stalled just as quickly as it had taken off, and he was soon charting in the lower regions of the Top 40. Liberty closed its country division in 1964, the same year Roy Orbison had a hit with "Pretty Paper."

When the Monument recordings failed to become hits, Nelson moved to RCA Records in 1965, the same year he became a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Over the next seven years, he had a steady stream of minor hits, highlighted by the number 13 hit "Bring Me Sunshine" in 1969. Toward the end of his stint with RCA, he had grown frustrated with the label, which had continually tried to shoehorn him into the heavily produced Nashville sound. By 1972, he wasn't even able to reach the country Top 40. Discouraged by his lack of success, Nelson decided to retire from country music, moving back to Austin, Texas, after a brief and disastrous sojourn into pig farming. Once he arrived in Austin, Nelson realized that many young rock fans were listening to country music along with the traditional honky tonk audience. Spotting an opportunity, Nelson began performing again, scrapping his pop-oriented Nashville sound and image for a rock- and folk-influenced redneck outlaw image. Soon, he earned a contract with Atlantic.

Shotgun Willie (1973), Nelson's first album for Atlantic, was evidence of the shift of his musical style, and although it initially didn't sell well, it earned good reviews and cultivated a dedicated cult following. By the fall of 1973, his version of Bob Wills' "Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)" had cracked the country Top 40. The following year, he delivered the concept album Phases and Stages, which increased his following even more with the hit singles "Bloody Mary Morning" and "After the Fire Is Gone." But the real commercial breakthrough didn't arrive until 1975, when he severed ties with Atlantic and signed to Columbia Records, which gave him complete creative control of his records. Nelson's first effort for Columbia, The Red Headed Stranger, was a spare concept album about a preacher, featuring only his guitar and his sister's piano. The label was reluctant to release it with such stark arrangements, but they relented and it became a huge hit, thanks to Nelson's understated cover of Roy Acuff's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain."

Following the breakthrough success of The Red Headed Stranger, as well as Waylon Jennings' simultaneous success, outlaw country -- so named because it worked outside of the confines of the Nashville industry -- became a sensation, and RCA compiled the various-artists album Wanted: The Outlaws!, using material Nelson, Jennings, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter had previously recorded for the label. The compilation boasted a number one single in the form of the newly recorded Jennings and Nelson duet "Good Hearted Woman," which was also named the Country Music Association's single of the year. For the next five years, Nelson consistently charted on both the country and pop charts, with "Remember Me," "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time," and "Uncloudy Day" becoming Top Ten country singles in 1976; "I Love You a Thousand Ways" and the Mary Kay Place duet "Something to Brag About" were Top Ten country singles the following year.

Nelson enjoyed his most successful year to date in 1978, as he charted with two very dissimilar albums. Waylon and Willie, his first duet album with Jennings, was a major success early in the year, spawning the signature song "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys." Later in the year, he released Stardust, a string-augmented collection of pop standards produced by Booker T. Jones. Most observers believed that the unconventional album would derail Nelson's career, but it unexpectedly became one of the most successful records in his catalog, spending almost ten years in the country charts and eventually selling over four million copies. After the success of Stardust, Willie branched out into film, appearing in the Robert Redford movie The Electric Horseman in 1979 and starring in Honeysuckle Rose the following year. The latter spawned the hit "On the Road Again," which became another one of Nelson's signature songs.

Nelson continued to have hits throughout the early '80s, when he had a major crossover success in 1982 with a cover of Elvis Presley's hit "Always on My Mind." The single spent two weeks at number one and crossed over to number five on the pop charts, sending the album of the same name to number two on the pop charts as well as quadruple-platinum status. Over the next two years, he had hit duet albums with Merle Haggard (1983's Poncho & Lefty) and Jennings (1982's WWII and 1983's Take It to the Limit), while "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," a duet with Latin pop star Julio Iglesias, became another major crossover success in 1984, peaking at number five on the pop charts and number one on the country singles chart.

Following a string of number one singles in early 1985, including "Highwayman," the first single from the Highwaymen, a supergroup he formed with Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson, Nelson's popularity gradually began to erode. A new generation of artists had captured the attention of the country audience, which began to drastically cut into his own audience. For the remainder of the decade, he recorded less frequently and remained on the road; he also continued to do charity work, most notably Farm Aid, an annual concert that he founded in 1985 designed to provide aid to ailing farmers. While his career was declining, an old demon began to creep up on him: the IRS. In November 1990, Nelson was given a bill for $16.7 million in back taxes. During the following year, almost all of his assets -- including several houses, studios, farms, and various properties -- were taken away, and to help pay his bill, he released the double album The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories? Originally released as two separate albums, the records were marketed through television commercials, and all the profits were directed to the IRS. By 1993 -- the year he turned 60 -- his debts had been paid off, and he relaunched his recording career with Across the Borderline, an ambitious album produced by Don Was and featuring cameos by Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, Sinéad O'Connor, David Crosby, and Kris Kristofferson. The record received strong reviews and became his first solo album to appear in the pop charts since 1985.

After the release of Across the Borderline, Nelson continued to work steadily, releasing at least one album a year and touring constantly. In 1993, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but by that time, he had already become a living legend for all country music fans across the world. Signing to Island for 1996's Spirit, he resurfaced two years later with the critically acclaimed Teatro, produced by Daniel Lanois. Nelson followed up that success with the instrumental-oriented Night and Day a year later; Me and the Drummer and Milk Cow Blues followed in 2000. The Rainbow Connection, which featured an eclectic selection of old-time country favorites, appeared in spring 2001. 

Amazingly prolific as a recording artist, Nelson released The Great Divide on Universal in 2002. A collection of his early-'60s publishing demos for Pamper Music called Crazy: The Demo Sessions came out on Sugar Hill in 2003. Later that year, Nelson released Run That by Me One More Time, which reunited him with Ray Price and kicked off a relationship with Lost Highway Records. It Always Will Be and Outlaws and Angels both appeared on Lost Highway in 2004, followed by the release of Nelson's long-delayed attempt at a country-reggae fusion, Countryman, also on Lost Highway, in 2005. You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker arrived the following year, along with Songbird, Nelson's collaboration with alt-country singer/songwriter Ryan Adams and his band the Cardinals. The double-disc Last of the Breed, an ambitious project that paired Nelson with Merle Haggard, Ray Price, and Asleep at the Wheel, was released by Lost Highway in 2007, followed by the Kenny Chesney/Buddy Cannon-produced Moment of Forever a year later in 2008.

Also in 2008, Nelson paired with jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis for the live album Two Men with the Blues, and with harmonica player and producer Mickey Raphael for some serious-repair remixes of vintage Nelson releases from RCA originally recorded between 1966 and 1970 called Naked Willie. Lost Highway, an album of duets with country and pop singers ranging from Shania Twain to Elvis Costello, appeared in 2009. Also appearing in 2009 was the jazz-inflected American Classic from Blue Note. Country Music followed next from Rounder in 2010. Nelson reunited with Marsalis again for 2011's Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles, which was recorded live on February 9 and 10, 2009, at the Rose Theater with Norah Jones also on board. An album drawn from the shows appeared on Blue Note in the spring of 2011 and in the fall, he released a covers collection called Remember Me, Vol. 1. He then signed with Sony Legacy and released three albums in quick succession: Heroes appeared in mid-2012, followed in early 2013 by Let's Face the Music and Dance, then To All the Girls..., a collection of new duets with female singers, later that year.

Nelson kept to a rigorous touring schedule despite the fact that he turned 80 in 2013. Though he'd been recording mostly covers for well over a decade, Nelson re-engaged as a songwriter while traveling. Band of Brothers, issued in June 2014, featured nine originals (co-written with producer Buddy Cannon) among its 14 new songs. Six months later, Nelson launched a projected series of albums (given the collective name Willie's Stash, devoted to music especially close to his heart) with December Day, a low-key collaboration with his sister Bobbie Nelson, in which they performed a set of old standards and lesser-known tunes from Nelson's songbook. In 2015, Nelson teamed up with his old friend Merle Haggard for the country chart-topping Django and Jimmie, their first collaboration in 20 years. Early in 2016, he issued Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin, and later that year he saluted his early inspiration, Ray Price, with For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price.

Nelson returned to original songs in April 2017 with the album God's Problem Child, which was again co-produced by his now-regular collaborator Buddy Cannon. Later that October, Nelson released the second volume in the Willie's Stash series: Willie Nelson and the Boys, a collection of classic country covers recorded with his sons Lukas and Micah. That same month, Light in the Attic issued two catalog projects by Nelson. Teatro: The Complete Sessions, produced by Daniel Lanois, included seven previously unreleased tracks and a DVD of director Wim Wenders' documentary of the live sessions for the album, which took place in a picturesque vintage movie theater. The latter volume was a Record Store Day reissue of the more somber 1996 Island Records' release of Spirit on gold vinyl. Undercelebrated at the time of its release, it has become among the most treasured outings of his late career, featuring the legendary fiddler Johnny Gimble among its personnel.

In April 2018, Nelson and Cannon were back with another studio album, Last Man Standing, followed five months later by My Way, a tribute to Frank Sinatra; it took home the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2019. He issued his next studio LP, Ride Me Back Home, in June 2019. Its tracks were a mix of new material, co-written by Nelson and Cannon, and covers of songs from Mac Davis, Billy Joel, and others. The title track was co-written by Sonny Throckmorton and was the first single issued from the album; it went on to win the Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance. Nelson followed Ride Me Back Home with the mellow and elegiac First Rose of Spring, which relied primarily on covers, including versions of Toby Keith's "Don't Let the Old Man In" and Johnny Paycheck's "I'm the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised."

Nelson released the Grammy-nominated That's Life, his second album of Frank Sinatra covers, in February 2021. Later that year, he issued The Willie Nelson Family, a collection of spiritual tunes recorded with such family members as his sister Bobbie, his daughters Amy and Paula, and his sons Lukas and Micah, who both play in Promise of the Real.

Nelson's sister Bobbie died on March 10, 2022, roughly a month and a half before Willie released A Beautiful Time. The album found Nelson addressing his mortality on such original tunes as "I Don't Go to Funerals" and "Live Every Day," and it also featured covers of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" and Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song." A Beautiful Time won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album in 2023, the same year Nelson won a trophy for Best Country Solo Performance for "Live Forever," a cut from the Billy Joe Shaver tribute album of the same name. Nelson saluted the great country songwriter Harlan Howard with I Don't Know a Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard, which appeared in March 2023.

Five months later, Nelson delivered Bluegrass, in which he played several selections from his songbook in a bluegrass style aided by such musicians as Dan Tyminski, Rob Ickes, and Aubrey Haynie. It was the first album where Nelson didn't play his signature guitar Trigger since he acquired the instrument in 1969. At the end of the year, he released Long Story Short: Willie Nelson 90, a CD/Blu-ray documenting his celebratory birthday concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in April 2023. He settled back into dusty Texas country with The Border, a 2024 album that featured four Nelson originals and a pair of songs co-written by Rodney Crowell. After a collaboration with his son Micah on Last Leaf on the Tree, he recorded an entire album of Crowell's songs that was released in 2025 as Oh What a Beautiful World. Nelson paid homage to another songwriter of note, his late friend Merle Haggard, on Workin' Man: Willie Sings Merle, where he covered eleven songs from Haggard's catalog. It was released in November 2025. In May 2026, Nelson issued Dream Chaser, a collection of low-key songs with a personal, introspective feel. Nelson co-wrote six of the LP's twelve selection, most in collaboration with Buddy Cannon and Bobby Tomberlin; "I Can't Read Your Mind" included a songwriting contribution from Bob Dylan”.

You get the feeling this ninety-three-year-old will continue to release music for a while yet. The incredible legacy of Willie Nelson means he is one of the most important artists ever. The fact he is still recording into his ninety is hugely inspiring. Not only has Willie Nelson released so many albums. There is this consistency too. His latest album has won a lot of praise. Some people might not know the music of Willie Nelson. I would urge them to explore it, as it is so broad and fascinating. Nelson is truly an American icon. You can read more about his legacy here. This legendary songwriter is…

WITHOUT equals.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Naisha

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Naisha

_________

THIS time out…

PHOTO CREDIT: Malik Gist

for my Spotlight feature, I am included the brilliant Naisha. This year has been busy for Naisha. I am going to come to some interviews with her. I am starting out with CRACK and their conversation from earlier in the year. They spoke with an artist who was born in Odisha, India, she was raised across multiple cities - including Mumbai, New Delhi, New York. She is now based between Los Angeles and Mumbai. If you have not discovered Naisha yet, then do follow her. Her E.P., 911, was released in August. Included was the huge single, CONTRABAND:

“In India, we have these cargo trucks that carry goods on the freeway, and they’re really janky,” Naisha explains, logging into our Zoom chat from her studio space in LA. She’s looking less glam than in the Contraband video but just as radiant, with a white T-shirt draped over flawless skin and her long, wavy mane of black hair piled in a bun on her head. “I always wanted to dance on top of one of those trucks. You always see people doing that in movies, stopping traffic to dance on top of cars. But India is so chaotic, it feels like that could be real life, you know? I wanted to bring that same energy, but elevated.”

“That same energy, but elevated” could serve as a manifesto for the kinetic mash-up of pop, Indian playback, dancehall and hip-hop that Naisha has meticulously crafted over the past few years. It’s a cliché to suggest that an international artist blends influences from the east and the west – and at this point, that binary is increasingly outdated: language and regional cultural cues are no longer barriers to mainstream crossover, as the global rise of reggaeton and K-pop demonstrates. Of Indian and Trinidadian heritage, Naisha sings in English and Hindi, while her debut album – a tight collection of pop, electro, reggae, playback and hip-hop, due out later this year – also moves into Brazilian Portuguese and Jamaican patois. Her upcoming single Daddy Money swerves from a 90s R&B electric piano riff into the shuffling beats and stuttering vocal edits of UK garage. This fluidity feels intrinsic; rather than diluting her sound for a global audience, Naisha invites listeners into a musical universe that is distinctly her own.

“Growing up in India, you can’t escape from it,” Naisha says, diving into how the sounds of her childhood have crept into her songwriting as an adult. “It’s movies and music all the time. Now that I’m spending so much time in the studio, I keep going back to everything I heard around me as a kid. Bollywood is a core memory for me – Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar are still some of the most sampled artists out there. Charanjit Singh was from India, and he dropped this insane early 80s album called Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat that sounds like acid house. But I was also listening to Rihanna, Aaliyah, Whitney – those are other core memories. As you get older, those memories come back in flashes: ‘Oh my god, what was that song I heard when I was five?’ So I’ve been blending those two worlds much more recently.”

While she might be hunkering down in the studio with world-famous producers now, her journey to this stage in her career wasn’t necessarily an easy one. While India’s music culture is vast and storied, local promoters often rely on booking international acts, which can crowd out smaller homegrown scenes. Her first exposure to electronic music came when she started trying to DJ herself, having travelled abroad at the beginning of her modelling career and spent a handful of sweaty nights at clubs in London and New York.

“Growing up, there was an electronic scene happening around us – as kids we were listening to, like, Avicii and Skrillex, but I didn’t really pay that much attention because I was very Young Money at the time,” Naisha says with a chuckle. “But then I started modelling, and those worlds are so connected. At the same time, a few local promoters started bringing DJs to India: DJ Stingray, DJ PayPal, Nina Kraviz. Then I did my own deep dive and found Aphex Twin, Burial, Four Tet. But I realised I wanted to play my own records when I DJed – I wanted people to dance to my own stuff! So I found a guy who owned CDJs, gave him $100, and taught myself how to use them with YouTube tutorials.”

Serendipitously, it wouldn’t be long before Naisha was collaborating with some of the same producers who inspired her to put out music in the first place. After DJing around local clubs in her hometown, she started teaching herself how to use DAWs like Logic (“I didn’t know shit,” she exclaims). If you’re familiar with Naisha’s voice – which, depending on the vibe she wants to emit, can range anywhere from a breathy soprano to a throaty, spoken-word alto – it may be because she’s already made a name for herself as a featured artist on tracks by heavy hitters like Four Tet (on his effervescent, bouncy 2024 mid-tempo banger Talk to Me). On her own music, though, Naisha is able to marry her unique life experience and perspective with her considerable worldbuilding skills to create tracks like 911’s jaana, in which she deploys both full-bodied sexuality and a razor-sharp ear for more experimental production”.

There are a couple of other interview I am covering before finishing. One of India’s brightest and most talented rising artists, EE72 spoke with Naisha about her bright and brilliant debut E.P., 911. This is someone who is getting some press and airplay in the U.K., though her talent deserves more. Even though I am quite new to her music, she has this established fanbase. She is demand around the world:

“Her upbringing was inherently musical, with her father and mother, who was a singer, filling her home with the sounds of Pakistani artist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Bob Marley alike. Following a string of single releases since 2024, Naisha is culminating her musical dexterity and influences in her new project.
After a chance encounter with DJ and producer Skrillex in London, a creative partnership was born, most recently coming to fruition on the EP’s production and track CONTRABAND, the hero release from 911. 
The drama synonymous with the “chaos around her” not-so-subtly informs Naisha’s sound and visuals elsewhere on the EP, including track so then featuring Ty Dolla $ign. “My family is dramatic. My friends are dramatic. My country is dramatic in the best way possible,” she says. The colors are vivid and theatrics are unapologetic, reminiscent of a Bollywood epic, making Naisha’s world truly immersive. With the artist confirming this EP is “just the appetizer”, you can expect even bigger.

Talk us through your journey into music. When did you know this is what you wanted to do?

Music has always been part of my life. My mama used to sing on the radio in India when she was younger, and my grandmother made sure I learned about Hindustani classical music. When I was a little kid, someone put this crazy interview on my iPod with R. D. Burman, Gulzar and Asha Bhosle, who are legends in the music industry. They were talking about how they made their songs. To this day, I don’t know who put it there, but I was so obsessed. I listened to it over and over, so intrigued by the writing, production and the thought and sound behind every song. Looking back, I think that was the moment I fell in love with making music, and not just listening to it. Even when I took detours into modelling and film school, I always found my way back to music. One night during Covid, I downloaded Logic because I just wanted to create. I taught myself to produce, and everything since then has happened pretty organically.

Who were some of your earliest musical influences?

Most of my early musical taste literally came from my parents. My mom was always playing Whitney Houston, Fantasia Barrino, Asha Bhosle, Grace Jones, Bob Marley and the Wailers, ABBA and so much more around the house. My dad loved Qawwali, so I grew up hearing Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Guru Dutt and Geeta Dutt all the time. That was just normal life for me… Even if I didn’t love a song, there was always something I connected with: a melody, a drum pattern, a lyric, a production choice. I’m influenced more by curiosity and life than by any one artist or genre. I just genuinely love music, wherever it’s from.

Can you explain the inspiration behind the EP’s title, 911?

For me, 911 is more of a feeling than an emergency number. It took me a long time to get here. Like many people, I have been through a lot to finally get to a place where I can release music that feels like me. By the time this project was finished, getting it out felt like a matter of life or death. I couldn’t keep it inside anymore. Even though 911 is American, it has become a symbol that people everywhere understand. I have always felt like a child of the world, so it felt right to take something so globally recognised and make it personal.

You pushed your EP’s release back by two weeks out of respect for India’s recent protests. Talk us through that decision.

It came from my heart, and it was spontaneous. I’m only able to do what I do because I had the privilege of an education. Watching young people peacefully stand up for what they believed in and seeing the pain and violence around that really affected me. Releasing music didn’t feel important at that moment. I just wanted to be present with my people, even if I was physically far away.  I know what it feels like for opportunities to be harder to access depending on where you’re from. Everyone deserves to have their voice heard and their rights protected. India will always be a democracy because that’s written into the very first words of our Constitution. Young people asking for change and a better future isn’t going against the country. They’re doing it because they love it, and I am them”.

A couple of shorter interviews before wrapping up. In July, Interview spent time with Naisha. It was a quickfire interview and we get to know more about this stunning artist. I do think that Naisha is going to have a very busy and successful future. You can tell that she is going to absolutely dominate in years to come. A world tour cannot be tour far away:

“At 4 in the morning at a London rave, Naisha met Skrillex. By the next afternoon, they were in the studio, which tells you everything you need to know about how the Indian-born, creatively restless singer operates. A former model who also studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York, Naisha is someone who follows her artistic curiosity to its logical conclusion. In this case, it’s 911, a borderless debut EP where Hindi melodies and Caribbean patois share space with rave-indebted production and Bollywood drama. Consider this your introduction.

What’s on your mind?

Aliens and my EP, 911.

What time do you wake up?

My dad said the early bird gets the worm, so I am that bird.

What’s your summer about?

It’s all about dropping my music.

What does it feel like to be you?

Overwhelming at times, but iconic.

What do you do when you’re nervous?

Pretend I’m not.

What’s a hill you’ll die on?

Authenticity.

What are you over?

Being nonchalant. Bring back the chalantness.

What doesn’t make sense?

The cycle of life.

What do you love?

My family and the people who found me by chance and stayed like they were meant for me.

Who do you miss?

My grandmother, all the time. And to be honest, I miss everyone close to me, even when I’m with them. It’s this weird awareness I have of not having enough time with people, because life doesn’t make sense.

What’s your favorite taste?

The taste of class.

What’s your greatest temptation?

Comfort.

What are you allergic to?

Inauthenticity, and maybe pollen.

How do you get around?

This way or that way.

What’s the last thing you bought?

Groceries from Erewhon.

What happens when we die?

I like to think we reunite with our loved ones and then run it back”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chessa Subbiondo

I will end with this interview. I do think that next year is going to be massive for Naisha. 911 is a magnificent E.P. I would love to see Naisha live one day, as I can imagine that she is a truly wonderful and unforgettable live performer. I would urge everyone to connect with and listen to 911:

“The rising vocalist, producer and songwriter has released her debut EP, 911, via Interscope Records/Desi Trill — marking a new chapter for an artist who has spent the past few years giving listeners tantalising glimpses into her world.

Arriving alongside the EP is the music video for “CONTRABAND,” shot on location in India and brought to life through Naisha’s own creative direction and vision. Directed by Ruby and Colin Tilley — whose credits include Kendrick Lamar, Justin Bieber and Post Malone — the visual throws Naisha into the exhilarating chaos of Mumbai, moving through streets, crowds and dance sequences as the titular contraband.

But “CONTRABAND” is more than a visual accompaniment to the music. It captures something essential about Naisha herself: an artist increasingly uninterested in being contained by a single genre, language, culture or creative role.

Executive produced by Naisha alongside Skrillex and Dilip Venkatesh, 911 pulls seemingly disparate sounds and influences into one fluid sonic language. Collaborations with BEAM and Ty Dolla $ign sit within a project that moves effortlessly between English, Hindi and Caribbean patois, the latter paying homage to Naisha’s Trinidadian heritage on her mother’s side.

At the centre of it all is Naisha’s own production.

“For the last few years, people have heard me through collaborations and features, but those songs were only a glimpse into my world,” she says. “With 911, I finally get to share a project that feels completely mine. My melodies, my influences, my perspective start to finish.”

That sense of ownership extends far beyond the recording studio. Naisha isn’t simply the face or voice of 911; she is actively constructing the world around it.

“Visual storytelling is such a big part of how I express myself,” she explains. “It’s my way of translating who I am and the beautiful chaos I exist in. The same chaos lives in my music too.”

It’s a fitting description for an artist whose identity has always existed at the intersection of different worlds.

Born and raised in India and now based between Los Angeles and Mumbai, Naisha grew up absorbing music from across cultures and eras — from Aaliyah and D’Angelo to Bob Marley and classic Bollywood soundtracks. Her Trinidadian heritage adds another layer to that musical vocabulary, creating a cultural collision that feels instinctive rather than calculated.

Before fully immersing herself in music, Naisha explored modelling and trained as an actor. Then came the kind of meeting that sounds almost too perfectly chaotic for her story: she met Skrillex at a rave at 4 a.m. and found herself recording in the studio the following day.

That encounter developed into an ongoing creative relationship.

Naisha has since emerged through a string of collaborations with Skrillex, including “Diwali” from SOMA, as well as “Talk To Me,” his 2024 collaboration with Four Tet and Champion. Tracks including “Diwali” and “so then,” featuring Naisha singing in her native Hindi, have already demonstrated her ability to bring clashing melodies, unexpected rhythms and far-reaching influences together without sanding down their edges.

Meanwhile, she has been building another side of her universe behind the decks, DJing internationally, appearing on festival stages and introducing her Naish To Meet Ya party series.

With 911, however, the supporting role disappears.

This is Naisha on her own terms: vocalist, songwriter, producer, performer and visual storyteller. Rather than separating those identities, she lets them collide.

“911 is authentically me. Every part of it,” Naisha says. “I am excited to be at a stage where I can make things imperfectly perfect and trust myself enough to put them out into the world”.

I am going to finish here. If you have not discovered Naisha, then go and follow her now. I am going to follow her career, as she has released some of the most distinct and brilliant music this year. I do love what she is putting out. Everyone needs to spend time with…

THIS future icon.

_________

Follow Naisha

PHOTO CREDIT: Chessa Subbiondo 

Official:

https://www.naisha.tv/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/naishabhargabi

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@naishawaters

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/naishabhargabii

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRD4kHZl9n3DUv4HvNWA3e3JeAhu4KHf

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4t4tIl2hE43qSpYeYnUxuI?si=0TPKP6lNS0WQee113m-b5w

FEATURE: Winter: Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Winter

Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes at Thirty-Five

_________

IN terms of big…

PHOTO CREDIT: Cindy Palmano

album anniversaries, many of them happen in the spring and summer. You get some autumn ones too, though very few in the winter. Tori Amos’s debut album, Little Earthquakes, was released on 6th January, 1992. I wanted to mark thirty-five years since the release of one of the greatest debut albums ever. Even though it was not a massive chart saves upon its release, it did receive positive reviews. Its legacy is huge. In the way Little Earthquake started and guided the female singer-songwriter movement of the 1990s. The soul-baring album was a highpoint for Amos. Even if future albums were hugely acclaimed, there is something about her debut that stands out. To celebrate thirty-five years, I am going to get to some features and reviews about Little Earthquakes. Before getting to them, there is a 1992 interview with Anil Prasad that I want to bring in:

“Was writing Little Earthquakes a cathartic experience for you?

[long pause] I used it as a way to completely reconstruct the way that I think. So, if you want to call that cathartic... I just feel, that for me, having a pizza can be cathartic, you know? So, what I did was try to recondition myself. I have to try to work on that every day, but we're brought up to think a certain way and we're not even aware of it. There's always a subtext running beside the conversation that's happening at the same time. Like right now, both of us at this table are trying to plant our positions. This is not normal. We're trying to find enough self-worth to come to the table, me included, but it's a bit different, because you can interview me, and I understand that relationship. But what happens, everytime you have dinner with somebody, you think you're having a date and there are many things going on at that table. This is with absolutely everything, so, writing these songs, believe it or not, taught me what it is that I'm really thinking and it gave me the keys to my subconscious.

The subconscious is where we mostly work from, but yet, none of us really know how to get to the subconscious, so what you do is bring your little credit cards of how you want me to view you and I bring you mine of how I want you to view me. That's not necessarily who you really are, because we've decided what we want people to see of us, so we're not really dealing with "How do I know who you are?" I don't know who you are! I'm sitting here trying to have a conversation with this person that maybe I'm on the road with for two weeks. Maybe they come and jump on the road, but if they can't admit they're a control freak, if they can't admit that what they're trying to do is break everybody down... the real war is with thoughts these days. The weapon is distraction. You can get your blood and your skin ripped off, but the real war is breaking you down here, and here [points to her heart and head], so that's what I've tried to do—write so I know what I'm really thinking. So, if I want to strangle you, I know why I want to strangle you instead of just "what is it you've said that could be affecting me so much?" I have to go deal with me instead of strangling you.

You spoke about getting in touch with your subconscious. Describe the process.

There are some wise women that I've run into who have given me some tools, but one of the biggest tools that started it was, 15 minutes a day—that's how it started. When my first record bombed, I had to deal with a self-worth problem. It's very easy to feel good about yourself when you have your job and you have your friends and girlfriend and all that stuff, but if you had it all stripped away from you, it would be interesting to see what your view of yourself would be. So, I was stripped of many things. So, [long pause] I ended up on my kitchen floor really and I was told that the first step in finding out how you think is to spend 15 minutes a day, because you can't handle more than that at the beginning of honesty with yourself. Fifteen minutes is a lot of time to be honest with yourself when you've rarely done it in your life. So, it usually would be in the bathroom, because that's the most intimate place—much more so than the bedroom. I mean, if you can be in a bathroom with somebody, and really be in it, that says a lot more than being in the bedroom. So, I would spend the time in the bathroom for 15 minutes being honest, no censorship—that means not how you should think, not what you think you think, because we don't really think what we think—almost anybody could be broken down if somebody is good and you have them in a room alone, especially for two days. You can have them talking circles around themselves because so few of us really say "I'm scared, yes, I have the potential to be violent."

Very few people are willing to admit anything that in their mind is a weakness. So, I started being honest for 15 minutes a day and it was excruciating—how I really felt when I felt like I was strong and being clever, what I was really doing was being totally intimidated, trying to make another person feel bad about themselves. I mean, I would rationalize everything. You can justify anything. So, that's how it started and then after the first six weeks of that 15 minutes of honesty, I was shocked to see what I was really thinking and really feeling. That means if you don't want to talk to your mother on the phone, you say "I'm so sick of my mother calling me" or whatever it is. No censorship! [animated and emotionally] If you feel like you want to jump somebody's bones, I don't care how old they are, I don't care what sex they are, if you're turned on, you say, "I had these feelings" and you might be so horrified! But you must admit things to yourself because they don't necessarily mean what you think they mean. You have to start thinking and open up this tunnel and it's very scary because we suppress what we feel with such judgement and once I worked through that I would start asking questions—but not at first, you don't question anything, not at first and I did this alone. So, it was almost as if I was my own teacher—I was my own conscience. And that's how it started.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cindy Palmano

You once said "your life went wrong when you stopped talking to the fairies and lost the magic." How did you get it back?

[long pause] When I'm really the person that I feel I am without trying to be what those around me want, then I am closest to things that aren't in body. I believe in things that aren't this. [points to her stomach] I think they're all around us. I think it's kind of arrogant to think that just because you have a body, that's the only consciousness there is—that's really small-minded. And if you wanna look at mythology from the Celts to the Native Americans, to the Native peoples here, you can go to any culture where they believe in the spirit world and if you don't believe it, you don't believe it. How can you even comment on it if you don't believe? But if you do believe, then you're rewarded, because you're working off instinct. It's not just what you see—what we see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears is very limited. We don't see far, we only hear so much.

If we didn't have microscopes, we wouldn't know what was going on with the whole other world that's smaller than what we can see with our own eyes. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. That whole thing about "if a tree falls in the forest and you don't hear it, does it make a sound?" A head of a record company said to me "Of course it doesn't!" And I just smiled, because there you go... [starts yelling] Of course it doesn't—500,000 people get blown up and you don't know about it? Does it mean they didn't get blown up? It's the same thing! [long pause as she calms down] The world just doesn't revolve around you and me. There are so many universes and that's so exciting, but what happens in here [points to her head] is a reflection of what I'm capable of understanding out here. You don't have a shit planet because you have clear thinking people—it doesn't happen. And you don't have shit people and a healthy planet. It will not happen. We're reflections of each other. That's all that is.

Your songs have brought some social and political issues to the forefront that many choose to ignore.

You speak well. You'd make a good politician. And where are the real visionaries today? Everybody is encouraged to listen to our dying leaders, dying meaning their ideologies are dying. Instead of running to Christianity or running to Islam or running to whomever, we have to move forward. You bring the truth, you glean it like you separate the pits from the fruit and you take with you what you've learned. We don't know how to think for ourselves or how to reason. [starts yelling] What this generation needs to do is stand up and instead of passing the sickness to our kids, because, please tell me—what is the difference between us and our great grandparents? Believe me, when we're 50 years old, there's gonna be a young generation going "those fucking old farts, they're so closed minded!" [resumes normal tone] Where's the new thought going to come from? When are men and women instead of blaming each other going to look at ourselves? You see, what happens with blame is, if we're married [she grabs Innerviews' shirt and pulls closer] and you withhold from me, I'm gonna get you back if you can't honor me! [starts yelling] I'm going to get you back if you can't honor me! You know how I'm going to get you back? I'm to get you back sexually! I'll withhold there! [resumes normal tone] So, what happens is, we have a son and I put certain things into my son—my relationship that allows he and I to develop something.

How many men have a relationship to their mother that's very involved? With four out of five men I run into, it's very involved. There's so much going on in this dynamic, and then what happens? That son marries a girl, they go and have a son. We have to stand up and say "Hang on a minute!" We have to look at the sickness—what have I taken on from my parents, from the teachers, from those that are running the media? I have to make my own belief system, my own ideology. I have to stand up and say "I have to admit that I'm basically sick" and I have to find my own thoughts. When you go to Alice Miller—the student of Carl Jung who wrote The Drama of the Gifted Child and The Untouched Key—you see how to go in there and not become our parents. We've all become our parents who have become our parents who have become our parents. We just have Manolo Blahnik shoes—that's all that changes. We put it into a different slant. What have the '60s children become? Let's be fair about this. [starts yelling] I don't give a shit that they all smoked pot in 1968 or did mushrooms! I don't care! Half of them are right wing now! You see, it doesn't matter what you did when you were 22! Where do you stand today? These parents now—many of them—they look at their kids and it's "win the swim team competition" or this, that, the other thing. They have become—many of them—that which they were fighting against when I knew them as teenagers. And we'll become the same thing!”.

In 2022, Merry Go Round Magazine looked inside Little Earthquakes thirty years after its release. It is one of the most impactful debut album ever. I wonder if Tori Amos will mark thirty-five years. She is still recording and touring, and songs from her debut album feature in her sets:

“Born Myra Ellen Amos to a Methodist minister in Maryland, Amos performed under her middle name until taking her new one from a friend who told her that she looked like a Torrey pine tree. Her abilities had been evident from a very young age—she taught herself to play piano and could recreate songs by ear as a toddler, composing her own material by the age of three. She was accepted into the Peabody Conservatory of Music at John Hopkins University as a five-year-old, studying classical piano before being asked to leave when she was 11 due to “musical insubordination.” Even as a child, her artistic personality was plainly apparent: prodigiously talented, uncompromising, unwilling to play by the rules of others. After spending her teenage years playing in piano bars around D.C. and stockpiling demo tapes, Amos eventually landed a six-album record deal with Atlantic, moving to Los Angeles to pursue her career.

Despite having “made it” in a sense, things still did not come easily to her. Her career got off to an ignominious start, with her first venture, the atrociously named synthpop group Y Kant Tori Read, floundering commercially to the point of being abandoned by the label after just a couple months. The early days of her contract with Atlantic held no shortage of friction between Amos and the label, with the ever-headstrong Amos constantly fighting for her own creative vision. And not long after moving to California, she was approached by a stranger for a ride home, and after obliging the request, was raped at knifepoint, an event that she has said she feels lucky to have survived.

Out of this extended period of personal adversity and creative conflict eventually came LITTLE EARTHQUAKES, a record that channels all of her pain and growth into a single richly nuanced and explosive package. “Crucify” sets the tone perfectly, a powerfully reflective take on faith and self-examination that features more than a few breathtaking musical moments—the descending phrase that accompanies the word “chains” at the end of each chorus still never fails to send me into a stupor. Even more importantly, it established Amos as utterly unafraid to tackle any subject in any way she chooses, trafficking in outright blasphemy before we even reach the first hook: “I’ve been raising up my hands, drive another nail in / Just what God needs, one more victim.” Of course, as with any Amos song, it’s never so simple as just one thing, as her relationship with Christ vacillates between resentful and restorative with every line: “I know a cat named Easter, he says ‘Will you ever learn?’ / ‘You’re just an empty cage girl, if you kill the bird.’” Her imagery is vivid, literary, and just a little bit surreal, transporting the listener into a realm where even the most self-loathing thoughts are expressed with a romantic and cutting flair.

She only doubles, triples, and quadruples down on her unabashedly contradictory femininity in the subsequent tracks, from the rueful refrain of “Girl” (“She’s been everybody else’s girl / Maybe one day she’ll be her own”) to the righteous fury of “Precious Things” (“He said you’re really an ugly girl / But I like the way you play / And I died / But I thanked him / can you believe that?” or “So you can make me come / That doesn’t make you Jesus”). The topics she chooses to address, the intensely direct manner in which she addresses them, and the multi-dimensional expressiveness of her vocals provide the blueprint for an entire generation of alternative singer-songwriters that would follow throughout the course of the ‘90s. It’s impossible to hear the venom dripping from Amos’ voice when she sings “So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts / What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? / Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon / How’s that thought for ya?” in “Silent All These Years” and not imagine that the Alanis Morissettes and Liz Phairs of the world were paying attention.

For as visionary as the rest of the album is, its last two songs are perhaps its most affecting. “Me and a Gun” is a harrowing retelling of Amos’s sexual assault, performed entirely a capella to strip her voice of any and all affectation or room to hide. It’s nothing short of a songwriting masterclass and a profound depiction of the various ways in which one processes immense trauma, with paranoia, rage, and deflective dark humor, all simmering underneath the surface of her unaccompanied and even-keeled, almost numb, vocals. The record concludes with its title track, a shifting and slow-burning song that renders personal turmoil on the grandest possible scale. Using images of birds being shot from the sky, vampires dancing in graveyards, immolation and disintegration, Amos meditates on the fragility of interpersonal relationships and the nature of hatred, a cleansing and forceful final word that helps to contextualize the remainder of the record. LITTLE EARTHQUAKES is nothing less than a divine exorcism, the banishment of meekness and restraint, the embracing of one’s own voice and vision, an all-time great charting a course for her future on her own terms.

Of course, the story only begins here. Never one to rest on her laurels, Amos embarked into even more structurally adventurous ground with UNDER THE PINK just two years later, the more experimental and entirely self-produced BOYS FOR PELE two years after that, and the daringly electronic FROM THE CHOIRGIRL HOTEL after, you guessed it, another two years. Always pushing her sound into unexplored territory, Tori Amos was a defining voice of the ‘90s, but often saw far more critical resistance than many of her contemporaries. Reading through old reviews of Tori Amos records can be an infuriating venture; you’ll see her lyrics described as “attention-seeking” and “indulgent,” her vocals described as “girlish” and “overly sexualized,” her songs described as “precious” and “melodramatic.” It’s long past time to leave the gendered pretension behind and re-examine her body of work to appraise it for what it really is: one of the most ceaselessly creative and exploratory discographies of our time”.

There is another interview I want to include. In 2015, Tori Amos spoke with Sound & Vision about the legacy of Little Earthquakes, and her follow-up album, Under the Pink (1994). How she thinks about them all of these years later. I do think that Little Earthquakes is one of the best albums that has ever been made:

“Tori Amos has always been an artist who knows what she wants, and knows how to get it. “Music was always first,” she says. “The records you hear, whether you like them or not, you can blame me for, because I was fighting all the time that the songs were represented in the right way.” For Tori, the “right way” meant staying true to the core of her quite personal songwriting, piano-driven arrangements, and unique vocal character, all of which are on fine display on the just-issued two-disc Deluxe Editions of 1992’s Little Earthquakes (1992) and 1994’s Under the Pink (both on Rhino). Songs like Earthquakes‘ emotionally raw bookends “Crucify” and “Silent All These Years” and Pink‘s drolly dramatic “Pretty Good Year” and hard-charging “Cornflake Girl” show Amos’ conviction for how best to get across her artistic message. “I’ve taken a pretty firm stand about being a woman in control of my destiny — for good or ill, you know?” she admits. “People know that I fight for the art, and the music. I’m not going to back down.” That unbridled spirit is also well in evidence on her most recent studio project, 2014’s Unrepentant Geraldines (Mercury Classics).

Here, Amos, 51, and I discuss the hard-fought genesis of Earthquakes and Pink, how her sound-quality goals shifted in the transition from the ’80s to the ’90s, and how she forged her artistic identity. She may have once been everybody else’s girl, but today, she’s her own. You bet your life she is.

Mike Mettler: I have to say, it’s been quite satisfying to revisit the legacy of both Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink all these years later to see just how well they hold up.

Tori Amos: It’s been enjoyable. Jon Astley remastered them. We made a complete representation of the time, adding the B-sides and some live performances from that time to make it an honest time capsule.

Mettler: I like that phrase, “honest time capsule.” In terms of the sonic qualities of Little Earthquakes, which took a number of years for you to get together, what was your overall intent for how you wanted this record to sound? What was most important?

Amos: Well, we were coming out of the ’80s, which, as you know, had a lot of experimenting going on from the electronic side of things. Synthesizers really were being explored in all kinds of ways. For quite a long time, they replaced pianos, Hammonds, Rhodes — even though sampled Rhodes started to happen, and things like that.

Mettler: With the Fairlight, and all that kind of stuff.

Amos: Yeah, all that stuff. Oberheim [synthesizers] and the Yamaha DX7 [digital synthesizer] started to come into being. From the technical side, all of my demos were made on a [TASCAM] Portastudio. I’d been working with that since I was a teenager. Everybody had a Portastudio in L.A. at the time, producing their own stuff with their own drum machine. A lot of things started out that way.

In ’88 or ’89, after Y Kant Tori Read [Amos’ ’80s synth-pop band that released an ill-fated self-titled album in 1988], I started to move things over to a Yamaha CP80 [electro-acoustic grand piano], which Eric Rosse, who I was working with on the demos, had. And then I got an upright piano, and started to realize a lot of things needed to be tracked on the piano. When [co-producer] Davitt Sigerson got involved with Little Earthquakes, he felt that acoustic piano needed to be the center. When he was producing, that was very much what was going on.

 

Mettler: I agree that having your piano at the center of the arrangements gave those songs additional weight. In general, your albums are known for having a high standard of sound quality, which we audiophiles really appreciate.

Amos: Thank you. People who are audiophiles — I welcome them, because that excites me. In the studio, we’re checking things on the PMCs [studio monitors] and then we switch over to the Genelecs. So I’m open to audiophiles and people who love high-quality sound — those who really care about the sound. And then you realize, too, though, that sometimes people are listening to their boxy little speakers on their computers. That’s how some people are choosing to listen to music. You have to say to yourself, “Well, we still have to be able to breathe when we’re coming out of the different forms that people listen to.”

In the early and mid ’90s, a lot of people would listen in their cars. We would make sure we were checking our mixes in the car, making sure we were aware if the speakers were hyping the bass. I don’t usually check records in the car anymore. Instead, I’m checking them on different sets of headphones, being cautious that if a certain make of headphone is boosting something, then we have to go back to the PMCs, which are sometime vicious — vicious as in, naked. You really need to hear what’s coming out of the speakers. You hear what music you’re making, without the hype of a certain type of speaker or headphone.

Mettler: What was the reaction to Little Earthquakes the first time you played it for other people?

Amos: [Co-chairman and co-CEO of the Atlantic Recording Group] Doug Morris, his first reaction was, he didn’t get it. People had advised him to take all the pianos off and put electric guitars on.

Mettler: Well, that wasn’t going to work for this music.

Amos: No. But to his credit, he and I had a long conversation, just the two of us, and we cut a deal. If I would turn in four more songs that had more production on them — with the piano not being the center but them being more synth-based — then we would talk again. Fair enough. So I had four tunes, which were “Precious Things,” “Girl,” “Tear in Your Hand,” and “Little Earthquakes.” He had since gotten the original [intent], but we both agreed by then that we couldn’t turn back, so these songs became part of the next step of the album.

Mettler: Right from the outset of the record, “Crucify” is the perfect template and statement for you as an artist and how the record is going to sound. The emotionality comes from you, the piano, and the lyrics all working together. Without capturing it that way, a lot of it might have been lost.

Amos: You’re right. This is before the Internet, so I think it’s difficult for people now, growing up in a world where piano is much a part of the palette in commercial records, to understand how you had to get signed by a record label, really, to get out there. An acoustic piano was not something A&R guys or record heads felt would be embraced by the commercial market. They felt that it was left behind in the ’70s with Elton John, Billy Joel, Carole King, and all that.

Nothing against those people, but they were superstars, and it’s very different when you have Elton and Billy touring in the early ’90s, and you’ve also got the grunge movement happening. It was very different to try to fit in with the grunge movement. You’ve got Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana, and you’ve also got PJ Harvey and Bjork — and then I turn in this record. They did not feel that it was fitting in anywhere, so Doug had to be very brave. He looked me in the eye after I had turned those next four songs in and said, “Ok then. If you’re going to do this, then we need to make sure somebody is really the quarterback of this record. There needs to be somebody on the day-to-day who we feel will get it.” He believed it needed to be somebody from the European side. The reason this is important is that’s when he brought in the head of East West, their sister label in England. He said if Max [Hole, East West’s managing director] gets it, we need to bring him in as part of the think tank.

When Max did come into the picture and in the frame, he felt a lot of the songs needed to be remixed. A lot of them were, and I don’t think that hurt them. He brought in Jon Kelly, who had worked with Kate Bush, and a few other people, like Ross Cullum, a British remixer, and Ian Stanley, who had worked with Tears for Fears. Ian came in and did a version of “Crucify,” that was the single, not necessarily the album version.

The next stage began to happen with the album with Max’s stamp on it, which is how you hear it today. And I would say to you that it was Doug Morris and Max Hole who embraced it and said, “Ok, we’re going to stand behind you all the way, but you have to be able to deliver this live!” (laughs) “And you have to do it all on your own, because we can’t afford to get a band behind you for this.” And I said, “Oh, I can do this by myself. I’ve been playing clubs since I was 13.” If those guys hadn’t supported it, this music probably would have been lost.

Mettler: I’m glad you got their support, then, because Little Earthquakes sounds like what you wanted it to be, where you were able to juxtapose the character of your voice and the piano in the studio, and how it all came across in the final mix. In some cases, there aren’t even any effects on your vocals at all, like the a cappella stuff with “Me and a Gun.” But occasionally, you have an echo on a line like “Where I stand” in “Silent All These Years,” which is kind of stark and drives the point home even more. Did you make the choice as to how your vocals had effects or no effects?

Amos: We were in conversation about it. I played live for Max, and he sort of demanded that before he’d take it onboard. He believed the mixes had to represent what I could deliver live. They had a little more sparkle to them. I mean, there is compression on the record and they did use electronics, but in a way that didn’t overshadow the performance”.

I am going to end with this article from 2021. British artist Eliza Shaddad. Ahead of the release of her album, The Woman You Want, Shaddad reflected on an album that shaped her understanding of music. I do think that we will get more features around Little Earthquakes ahead of 6th January. The introduction of a singular and extraordinary artist:

“I was introduced to Tori Amos by my sister; she listened to loads of great music which became absolutely seminal for me.  Mostly it was a lot of powerhouse female singer-songwriters – the likes of Tori Amos and, Jewel and later bands like Hole, and The Cranberries. Little Earthquakes was the artist’s debut and an absolute triumph in my opinion, and that record in particular was one we would sing along to at the top of our lungs in her room on family holidays, getting out every bit of emotion needed during the ups and down of growing up.

I love that you’re into full drama within 3 seconds of the first song Crucify – and after about a minute it’s pretty clear the combo of melodic piano, stark drums, and clever winding melodies sit devastatingly with the utterly confessional lyrics.  It’s a mix of poignant vignettes and acerbic one-liners. Barbs like ‘Just what God needs – one more victim.. and later ‘got enough guilt to start my own religion’ – are sprinkled throughout and this album contains some of my absolute favourite songwriting lyrics.

Silent All These Years is the third track in and possibly my favourite on the record – that first line ‘Excuse me but can I be you for a while’ hit me so hard as a teenager and the song is barely a whisper but has such gravitas.  Precious Things is the driving song for me – from the mad breathy intro.. I just feel like you’re immediately caught up in the excitement – it’s just such a dark mood – and again led by lyrics set to make you kind of uncomfortable but utterly engaged with the songs.

A favourite line in that song is ‘So you can make me cum that doesn’t make you Jesus’ – Ha! Again as a teenager this was just a complete blaster of a line to hear. I sung this song at a school function in front of 4000 people and nearly laughed as I sang it wondering if they could make out what I was singing at them. :-)

Writing and listening now I realise there were a actually a couple of songs I usually used to skip – Happy Phantom, and Leather – but somehow that didn’t ever detract from the brilliance of the whole. I think those two struck me as extra-theatrical and less cutting – or I just identified less with them maybe.

Mother is another song that blew me away and that I used to sing in school music competitions – haha they must have thought I was taking the piss when everyone else was singing Brahms but I just loved singing acapella and a lot of Tori’s songs suit that – they’re so full of melodic intrigue and tangible lyrics. Clearly demonstrated by the acapella song on the album; Me and a Gun – a devastatingly raw account of rape, which again, and especially as a teenager – completely stopped me in my tracks.

It’s so interesting to listen to this record after 10 years of working in music and studying jazz …t’s kind of theatrical pop but with all these undertones coming through, from classical to grunge.  And I think it sound like she’s always having fun with her voice, pushing it to it’s extremes – using weird turns of melody and vocal techniques; I adore the vocal production which is ever changing and the harmonies that flit in and out are so subtle but effective.

I just love it. It’s been a constant companion to me over the years and I think her work has had a big effect on the kind of music that I make, and want to make.  If somehow you’ve missed it, and especially if you need to blow off some emotional steam – I highly recommend listening. Thanks!”.

On 6th January, the stunning Little Earthquakes turns thirty-five. If you have not heard the album, then I would strongly encourage people to do so. It is definitely one of my favourite albums from the 1990s. So powerful still. The songs have endured through the years. I wanted to write some words about…

THIS debut masterpiece.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Mary Ann Alexander

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Mary Ann Alexander

_________

WE are getting to the time of year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Lekha Rathnam

where websites are declaring their artists to watch next year. There are some names I have already covered, but there is talent that I am quite new to. I do think that Mary Ann Alexander is going to be a huge name. She is an incredible artist I am interested to know more about. Having released a series of brilliant singles this year, I wonder what is next for Alexander. I will come to some interviews from this year. There is not too much instant biography. What I mean is, I have been searching for a sort of potted biography about Alexander’s background and musical influences, and it takes me to interviews. So I will present a few, so that we can get a picture of her. I am going to start out with Rolling Stone India and their interview from last year. Born and raised in Kerala, India, Mary Ann Alexander’s spellbinding music is resonating with people around the world:

“When Mary Ann Alexander was still in college studying visual communication in Bengaluru, seasoned guitarist-producer Sanjeev T reached out to her for his song “Take My Life With You” from his lo-fi project Future. They were on a serene hill outside of the city shooting the music video when the producer played her the full version of the track, revealing that the second verse features star R&B, Carnatic and film singer Sid Sriram.

Alexander recalls over a Zoom video call, “First of all, he only told me when we’re shooting. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ There’s this part where Sid comes in harmonizing and ad-libbing over me and then he starts singing. For me to hear both of our voices at the same time was surreal.”

A fan of Sriram’s, the Thiruvananthapuram-raised, Bengaluru-based singer-songwriter says the bluesy “Adiye” (from 2012 Tamil movie Kadal, composed by A.R. Rahman) is her go-to song for most occasions, from soundchecks to close gatherings to intimate gigs. “Day before yesterday was my friend’s birthday and they asked me to sing, and I sang ‘Adiye.’ It was one of the songs that made me realize how much I like R&B and blues because of the style. I would sing it and feel like, ‘This is what I want to do,’” she recounts.

Born into music: Alexander’s father is a seasoned voice in the Malayalam music industry and took her along to recording sessions right from when she was five years old, while her mother held down an office job. Whenever there was a part in the songs that needed a child’s voice, she got a chance to record, starting out as a studio artist as early as seven years old. “Just standing still, singing correctly, delivering everything right, felt natural for me,” she adds.

Moving on up: Although she was surrounded by an encouraging family who were passionate about the arts, her mother did express doubts about her making a career out of music. Alexander knew she always wanted to be an artist, but first took the step to move out of Kerala to Bengaluru to study and even began doing an internship as a graphic designer and illustrator. “I [did] not grow up around people who had the guts to do what they what their heart desired; they would do what they thought [society wanted them to do]. I’ve seen so many people abandoning their dreams. But when I came to Bangalore, I was surrounded by people who, without knowing, inspired me to be who I am,” she says.

Alexander blew up after uploading unreleased snippets of “lovey-dovey R&B” songs and a heartbreak tune produced by the likes of Kerala beatsmith Parimal Shais. She’s aware that these songs are not out yet. even after millions of views on Instagram Reels over the last year. “I feel kind of bad that I have a reputation for not releasing the songs that I tease people with on Instagram,” she admits. But she doesn’t expect people to understand the pace that she works at with producers and her own team. “A lot of new opportunities have been presenting itself to me and I’m kind of trying to decide what’s the best way to go, and what would be the best thing for this song,” she says”.

There is another interview from last year I will get to before moving forward. This incredible chat spotlighted an artist who knows where her roots are and they are part of her. She does not need to wave a flag about it, as she says. Even so, there are few emerging artists from Kerala who are being given this sort of exposure. Mary Ann Alexander is redefining India’s R&B sound globally. She has collaborated with some major artists (including Anderson .Paak), though she is very much at her very best (I feel) when going solo. A distinct and utterly phenomenal artist that everyone needs to listen to:

“Born amidst the monsoon lullabies of Kerala, Mary Ann was seven when she first walked into a recording studio: a place that, for most children, might have felt intimidating. But for her, it was an extension of something already familiar. “Music was just around me,” she says. “The stories, the songs, the rhythm of Malayalam itself... it all seeps in when you grow up there.” Kerala gave her a language that curved and softened like melody. Bengaluru, where she moved to study Visual Communication, gave her a space to experiment, collaborate, and shape sound into identity. “I think college was where everything clicked,” she says. “I met people who were just as obsessed with sound as I was. We’d write, jam, make weird things that sometimes didn’t work but when they did, it felt like magic,” she tells ETV Bharat.

The magic soon found form. Still in college, she sang Take My Life With You for Sanjeev T’s lo-fi project Future. Then came Over the Ocean for the Malayalam film Kolambi, and later, the smooth, honeyed confidence of her 2022 debut single In My Zone, produced by Pranay Parti. Since then, she’s been in steady motion — Bling Bling, The Lovey Dovey Song, Round 2, Good Girl, and two haunting film tracks, Sthuthi (Bougainvillea) and Ulfat (CTRL). Somewhere between these, she’s shared credits with the who’s who of India’s indie scene: Dot, Nate08, Tarang Joseph, and the neo-hip-hop collective Till Apes.

Her music feels like that moment in the evening when the lights dim but the energy doesn’t drop. The warmth of early-2000s R&B (think Alicia Keys and Brandy) meets the slick bounce of modern pop. There’s room for melancholy, but also mischief. It’s intimate music for people who overthink in the dark, then dance it off under fairy lights.

When you’re a South Asian woman making English-language R&B, there’s a good chance someone will try to explain you to yourself! Mary Ann is aware of this but she’s also gracefully uninterested in being explained. “There’s definitely still a perception gap,” she says. “People don’t always know where to place you if you don’t fit into a neat cultural narrative. But I’m not trying to make ‘Indian R&B.’ I’m just making music that feels honest to me. My roots are part of me, I don’t need to wave a flag about it for them to show.”

That refusal to be boxed in is both her rebellion and her creative freedom. Her songs sound like the product of someone who’s figured out how to be entirely herself. “The song tells me what it wants,” she says simply. “If it needs space, I let it breathe”.

There was an interview from this year I was going to include, though it prohibits people from copying and pasting it, which is very annoying. However, I would advise people to read it. I am still going to take from it what I can, as Alexander is working on her second E.P. This follows her debut E.P., Love or a Lesson, that came out in March. The Bengaluru-based musician, acceptance is taking shape in her upcoming work. She is looking to and referencing the past without getting stuck in it. A lot of visual memories from her childhood are in the E.P. Alexander wants to feel like she is doing it for her inner child. The E.P. Alexander said to tmrw, that it is for girls who feel like they are too much. “Emotional beings, like me, that have a lot of feelings”. It is an interesting conversation. I have only just discovered her music, but I am already in love with it. Reading her interviews too is stunning. I would love to interview her one day:

“Love has long been one of her ways of making sense of the world. "I feel like I naturally have a tendency to write a lot of love songs and write about love," she says. "I feel like that's one way that I understand myself and learn about myself, by being in love and being a student of love."

"I've always had such big feelings," Alexander says.

That openness to feeling has roots in the music-filled household in which she grew up. Raised in Kerala in a Malayali family, Alexander encountered music through a wide range of cultural traditions, from Malayalam and Tamil film music to Hindi Bollywood songs and the international pop that reached her through artists such as Michael Jackson, Ne-Yo, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers.

"Growing up, I have listened to a lot of Tamil music, a lot of Malayalam music, which is my own language, a lot of Hindi, like Bollywood music," she says. "We have so many languages and so many music industries. It's so vast."

“Alexander is already working on a future album that she describes as emotionally more mature and darker in sound. The songs reflect thoughts she had not previously known how to articulate, or feelings she was not yet ready to accept.

"It's directly correlating to how I am growing as a person," she says. "I can feel it exploring sides of me that I really would have loved for it to happen before, because I didn't know how to write the right words for it or the right sound for it, or whether I was ready to accept those thoughts and realizations."

When asked what she would tell the younger version of herself who was trying to find her place in music, Alexander does not offer a lesson in perseverance or a list of things she wishes she had known. She does not try to spare that girl the uncertainty that came with finding her way”.

I will end there. I hope that this feature has gone a little way to exploring the phenomenal Mary Ann Alexander. I know that many websites will herald her as one of their artists to watch 2027. When her new E.P. is out, there will be more interviews online. I am not sure whether there are any U.K. dates in the diary. I do hope that Alexander comes and sees us soon. Her jaw-dropping and sensational music is…

IMPOSSIBLE to ignore.

___________

Follow Mary Ann Alexander

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/mary.ann.alexander

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@mary.ann.alexander

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/p/Mary-Ann-Alexander-100081661015247/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MaryAnnAlexander

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Nd0pl530GmwyCK1lRGQqd?si=9u-iDtfPQPOIx_-nB22DZQ

FEATURE: Foundations: Why Kate Nash Is One of the Most Important Voices of Her Generation

FEATURE:

 

 

Foundations

Why Kate Nash Is One of the Most Important Voices of Her Generation

_________

I have said before…

how there are few artists who are tackling huge issues. There are some around, though when it comes to a wide range of vital issues and subjects being discussed, there are not that many who are speaking up. Kate Nash is different. A huge supporter of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, she has fought and sung up about trans rights. She also speaks out for Palestine and the genocide happening there. Someone who also tackles sexual abuse in her music, this is an artist who is among the voices of her generation. One of the most important. At the moment, Nash is touring North America. She is back home to the U.K. for a date on 2nd December at St Matthias Church. I do want to bring in some interviews from this year. I have huge admiration for Nash. You can follow her on Instagram. In terms of her beliefs and how she is very much an advocate and ally, it is wonderful to see. Her latest singles are quite different to what she was writing about earlier in her career. Songs that were sometimes humorous and other times cutting, they had a definitely vibe and sound. Not that her new music lacks humour. However, there is this real sense of purpose and politics. Kate Nash is someone who cannot stand by and let communities and civilisations be oppressed and destroyed. How she is this idol in the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. Next year is quite a big one for her. She turns forty. Her debut album, Made of Bricks, turns twenty. Her debut single, Foundations, turns twenty on 18th June. She does have an album out next year called Cailín. That is out on 22nd January. In terms of the singles she has released the past year or so, it adds weight to the album already. Whether the remainder will be more personal. Looking at the titles, it is hard to tell. Her latest single, Christmas Eve, is amazing. It is the album’s final track. Given the fact that Russell Brand has been sentenced to ten years and six months for rape and sexual assault, Nash will no doubt tackle that and men who shielded him. That said, Freedom of Me sort of does that. It examines how media outlets and online commentators dissect, mock, and show scepticism toward women in rape and sexual violence cases. That song also was partly inspired by Russell Brand and his crimes.

You can pre-order Cailín. You can also order it from Rough Trade. Considering the singles that have been released and what Nash is addressing, I think this is a hugely important album that everyone needs to hear. Though there is a personal edge. The importance of her Irish heritage. Many who have this limited view of Kate Nash and he music need to listen to her newest singles. Her sound has evolved through the years. I feel Cailín will win huge reviews:

“Eleven years in the making, Kate Nash’s sixth studio album Cailín is a love letter to her Irish heritage. Produced by KoOoLkOjAk and recorded on the west coast of Ireland at Stiúideo Cuan, under the watchful eye of pioneering trad musician Charlie Lennon, Cailín is a raw, raucous album combining traditional Irish sounds with punk energy, nods to hip hop production and Nash’s knack for a killer hook.

“This was my first music,” says Nash, who grew up in an Irish community in North Harrow, where she attended a Catholic school. When visiting her mother’s “loving, vibrant Irish family” in Ireland every summer, she found that music infused the fabric of life in a way that felt natural and instinctive. “All my earliest musical memories were in Ireland: live music in the pub, going to Sharon Shannon gigs, seeing the best accordion player you’ve ever seen and it’s a bored-looking eight-year-old boy in a puffer jacket. There’s a real respect for musicians.”

Marrying punk protest songs with a joyful celebration of trad music, Cailín explores themes of colonialism, inequality, religion, internalised shame and forgiveness and family, drawing on the rich texture of Irish folklore and mythology. The tradition of strong Irish women is at the heart of the record, from the young girls celebrated on the “90s grunge eyeroll” of title track ‘Cailín’, to the resourceful single mother navigating the housing crisis in ‘Póg Mo Thóin’ (“There’s all these politicians arguing with each other on news programmes, then you cut to people’s real life and it’s like, can’t you just fucking help them?”), to Nash’s grandmother, memorialised in the poignant yet joyful ‘Irish Saints’”.

I will come to a CLASH feature, where they spotlight Kate Nash’s recent single, Freedom of Me. In the list of topics I mentioned that Kate Nash has spotlighted, I did forget to mention one. There is an interview with Tems this year, where Nash was asked about ambitions beyond her own music. Nash said how she wants to work to get a fairer deal for artists. To represent them. Nash is someone who genuinely cares and sees all the inequality, corruption and abuse. Rather than sit back, she speaks up and out. Puts it into her music. I am not sure if Cailín will include any songs that lash out at the music industry and how hard it is for artists. In 2024, Nash made headlines when she announced she had started an OnlyFans to help fund her tour. Rather than this being a stunt, it was actually something that sparked big conversations. GRAZIA reported the story:

“She refuses to diminish the quality of her show by lowering the budget any further – not when she could just, as she puts it, flash her arse online instead. ‘I need extra income to take the stress out of [touring],’ she says. ‘And to pay my band and crew fairly, to put on high quality shows for my fans. I like flashing my arse and I know a few people that run their own adult film companies or work on OnlyFans, and I thought it was a fun way to start the tour “Butts 4 tour buses”’

She was surprised by the attention she received with her announcement, not least because many musicians have OnlyFans now. Earlier this year, Lily Allen claimed that she’s earned more selling feet pictures on OnlyFans than she ever has from Spotify streams. Rapper Cardi B reportedly made more than £45million during her short stint on the site and Iggy Azalea is said to make more than £13million a month.

For Nash, it’s about more than just money - she wants to make a statement about the state of the music industry. ‘The music industry is corrupt, broken and has failed artists completely,’ she explains. ‘The level of success that is required to make profit has become so inaccessible for most people. The major labels have set it up so that themselves and a bunch of tech bros can profit in the millions and even billions and musicians are getting poorer.

‘It’s not ok because it excludes working class people from entering the business,’ she continues. ‘It means that indie, mid-level and smaller artists are left struggling and will most likely look for other jobs when they hit their 30s. It’s a feminist issue because female musicians that want kids will likely have to give up music if they want children.’

It’s a race and sexuality issue too, she says. ‘There is so much discrimination and we need to financially empower people for their own work. Economically it’s not just bad for musicians, it’s bad for the entire country. Something like one in 10 tracks that are listened to most in the world are by British artists and only about a 30th of that money comes back to the UK. It’s a disservice to the entire country and I think it’s a disgrace. Things should be better now than they were 20 years ago, but we are in crisis I’m not sure what makes the UK great if we lose our music culture and grassroots. It’s really sad. 125 venues in the UK closed last year and more will fall. If bands keep cancelling tours, then we lose more venues, and more jobs are at stake. Van and bus drivers, roadies, sound engineers, lighting engineers, tour managers, people that own gear hire companies, rehearsal rooms, managers, videographers, photographers, the list goes on. Financially we are responsible for everyone in the industry, yet we are being ripped off”.

I am eager to get to CLASH and their feature around the release of Freedom of Me. A song that I feel is going to remain so relevant, even though Russell Brand is in prison, there are so many other men out there that have not been brought to justice. It is also interesting what Kate Nash says about freedom of speech. It is a wonderful song that sort of makes my point about her. This generation voice that I absolutely love, I am not doing much but putting Nash’s words out there. Trying to spotlight what an incredible artist she is. What she is speaking about, and how she is using her voice and platform:

“New song ‘Freedom Of Me’ is a raw, stripped back offering, with Kate’s piercing vocal augmented by a solitary tin whistle.

A song about womanhood, free speech, and sexual abuse, ‘Freedom Of Me’ asks about the measures needed to assure our personal independence.

Out now, it’s an intense piece of songwriting, coupled to an eloquent note from Kate…

I’ve noticed the globalisation of this American approach to, and obsession with, freedom of speech on social media. We think of George Orwell’s 1984 when it comes to controlling what we can or cannot say, and it makes us feel like freedom of speech is incredibly important. But is it? I don’t really think it is, and I think America is selling a lie.

The far right are very concerned with and protective of freedom of speech. I’m obviously someone who speaks out about what she thinks. But in the UK, our speech is governed by national legislation, including the Public Order Act 1986, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, the Online Safety Act 2023, and the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. Rightly so, in my opinion. I would argue that my right to exist free from rape and violence, with access to healthcare without political debate, is far more important than freedom of speech. The same goes for a trans person. My right to protest is fundamental.

The song is also a reflection on how the media treats women in rape cases. I wrote it right after watching Dispatches’ ‘Russell Brand: In Plain Sight’ and watching the commentary online. It’s quite difficult as a woman to listen to the derogatory and casual things people say, and to watch the way women are dissected: the mistrust, the anger, the jokes, then the boredom. I listened to the radio the next morning and heard people who worked for these massive TV corporations feigning shock. I thought, ‘How could you be shocked?’ It made me angry that we pretend this isn’t normal.

I was also listening to the Covid inquiry into the Conservative Party at that time. Men in positions of power who literally run the country saying things like ‘dodging stilettos from that cunt’ really stuck with me. It’s not lost on me that this song is dropping the week Russell Brand is on trial and we are reading about the Cornell 7. The terrible thing about this song is how it will always be relevant”.

Prior to a conversation between Kate Nash and Tems, there is this BBC article. Kate Nash discussing “Irish history, heritage and covering Sinéad O'Connor”. Famine will appear on Cailín. This month, we mark what would have been Sinéad O'Connor’s sixtieth anniversary. Her legacy and impact is huge. She is so sorely missed. I did want to highlight this BBC feature around Kate Nash covering Famine:

“Singer-songwriter Kate Nash believes many English people are disconnected from parts of their own history, and her latest single is an attempt to start a conversation about why.

She has recorded a cover of Famine, Sinéad O'Connor's 1994 song about one of Ireland's darkest periods, using it to explore wider questions about how Britain's role in the famine is remembered.

For Nash, the project was also deeply personal.

Born in London to an Irish mother, she attended a Catholic school, spent childhood holidays in the Republic of Ireland and the first instrument she learned was the tin whistle, despite long claiming it was the piano.

Revisiting the song more than three decades later, Nash said she was struck not only by its message, but by her little knowledge of the subject matter.

'That's so audacious'

"Sinéad gave me the whole history lesson that school never gave me, that I didn't really get at home either," Nash told BBC News NI ahead of a performance in Belfast as part of this year's Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann fringe programme.

She is quick to clarify what she means when she says English people do not know their own history.

"When I'm saying the English don't know their history, I'm also English.

"So I'm saying, I don't know my history… and I want to learn."

Nash, who released her debut album almost 20 years ago, says her latest project is hugely personal

Nash's debut album Made of Bricks came out in 2007 and spawned her biggest hit, Foundations.

She's since released four more studio albums, including 9 Sad Symphonies in 2024.

While working in the United States more than a decade ago, Kate met music producer Kool Kojak and was encouraged to explore her Irish heritage through music.

After O'Connor's death in 2023, he suggested recording Famine.

"I was like, 'oh my God, that's so audacious, only an American could suggest that'," Nash said.

"But then I thought, why not?

"The tradition of covering old folk songs, passing music through is really important. And the more people that cover that song really the better, because you can bring that message, the education, to a new audience."

Rather than simply replicate the original, Nash rewrote parts of the song and added a new verse reflecting her own experience of dual identity.

"England doesn't take responsibility for destruction that it's caused, for its empire and now commonwealth, they left us uninformed", she sings, echoing wider debates about how Britain's imperial past is taught and remembered.

Deeply intertwined societies

Enda Delaney, professor of modern history and director of research at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, believes Nash's point of view is "fair comment".

Unlike in the Republic of Ireland, he said, Anglo-Irish history is not routinely taught to English students, creating a gap in public understanding.

"The fact that one million people died in a part of the United Kingdom, which of course Ireland was in the 1840s... there isn't a really good knowledge of the context in which those terrible events occurred."

He said there should be greater emphasis on Irish history in schools and pointed to growing interest in the subject at university level.

"When you've got two societies which are so closely located to each other and so deeply intertwined, it's really important that both Irish people and British people understand those shared points of history”.

I am going to finish off with DAZED. Tems met her hero, Kate Nash. It is a great interview. “Here, the two musicians meet for the very first time for a conversation about AI, autotune and how the music industry is worse now than it was 20 years ago”. I am really looking forward to the release of Cailín. I think it is going to be one of the best albums of next year:

“Tems might be Kate Nash’s biggest fan. Here, the two musicians meet for the very first time for a conversation about AI, autotune and how the music industry is worse now than it was 20 years ago”.

“At the same time Nash released her debut album, Made of Bricks, Tems, then 12, was given her first iPod. Her uncle had loaded it with a random assortment of songs, including tracks from Nash’s album. From then on, Tems’ daily school commute was soundtracked by Nash’s cockney-inflected confessional anthems; songs like “Mouthwash” and “Mariella”. The plucky piano arrangements inspired Tems to teach herself to play. At first, she only wanted to learn Nash’s songs, but eventually she began writing arrangements of her own. While Tems had dabbled in songwriting since she was nine, it was Nash, some 3,000 miles away in London, who helped unlock her musical world.

Today, Tems is known for her uniquely imperfect vocals. Every note she sings is charged with raw emotion, and when her voice breaks and crackles, it only becomes more relatable. Now, with over 30 million monthly listeners and fresh from headlining London’s All Points East festival, fans might not have guessed that her sound can be traced back to Nash. And she’s the first to admit it, too: in recent interviews, Tems has credited Nash as one of her earliest influences, though the pair have never met before. Until now.

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As Nash prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Made of Bricks and returns with new music, we bring the two artists together for the first time. It should be noted that the first minute of the conversation consisted mostly of silent screaming, shaking their heads and covering their mouths in starstruck disbelief.

Tems: How did it feel seeing people connect to your music at that time?

Kate Nash: It’s interesting now, being 20 years into my career, I’m reflecting a lot. When I was younger, I wanted to be like other artists – I was trying to be like Alicia Keys or Jeff Buckley. I was writing in other people’s voices. I was desperate to go to university, but I didn’t get in anywhere, even my backups. But I also had a heart condition at that time and had to have surgery. Looking back, I think [my surgery] massively impacted how I viewed everything. I was working at Nando’s, grilling chicken. Then I had heart surgery and realised that I hadn’t lived. I wasn’t living. I realised that I didn’t have to be a poet or write about stuff that wasn’t my experience; I just started to write about my life and what was happening to me. When you find your truth and are more honest as an artist, you connect with more people. My open heart, although it’s got me in trouble, is also why I’ve connected with you and other people and their stories.

Tems: I am working on new music. I’m having fun, but I’ve also had a lot of things on my heart, so there’s some heavy stuff.

Kate Nash: I’ve been working on music that explores my Irish heritage for the first time. I grew up going to Irish-Catholic school and was put into Irish music school when I was little. So I suddenly thought, why haven’t I explored that in my artistry? In your mid-to-late thirties, you start to realise how your childhood impacted your adulthood, and that comes from what my parents went through and why they went through it.

Growing up in England, we don’t get taught about our history from the perspective that we did anything wrong. With Ireland, it’s very political, because England is this massive coloniser who had such a violent impact on so many countries in the world, but we don’t get taught any of that. And actually, we did a lot wrong. So the new music is coinciding with this awakening in the world. It’s actually the most personal work that I’ve made. But I also think we’re going to see people wanting that human experience more. Especially with the conversation around AI – you want the individual and the imperfections, because that’s what makes it unique and real and raw.

Tems: Do you have any goals beyond music?

Kate Nash: I really want to change the law regarding how the music industry exploits artists. I don’t feel like you can negotiate with the music industry. I’m so annoyed that it’s worse now than it was 20 years ago. I wish I were sitting here saying that it’s so much better now than what it was in my day. I feel really angry about that, so I’m driven by that anger to see what I can do to try and make a difference for younger artists”.

I am a big Kate Nash fan. Her new singles are her best work yet. Cailín is out on 22nd January. If you can afford to pre-order it then I would recommend you do so. Kate Nash is one of our best artists. One of our finest people. I do think that she is a voice for her generation. Someone who shows her love and support for the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. Calling out the music industry and how hard it is for artists tour and survive. She wants an end to genocide in Palestine. Writing songs that address how rape victims are treated. How Freedom of Me is a song that (sadly) will be relevant for a very long time. Even if Cailín will not change the world or too many policies, it will open minds, win hearts and…

MAKE a huge impact.

FEATURE: Groovelines: John & Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band – Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

John & Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band – Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

_________

DECEMBER is a bittersweet month…

IN THIS PHOTO: Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 1971/PHOTO CREDIT: Frank Barrett/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

when we think of John Lennon. In the context of The Beatles, 3rd December, 1965 is when Rubber Soul came out. On 1st December, it will be fifty-five years since John & Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band released Happy Xmas (War Is Over) in the U.S. It was not until 24th November, 1972 the single was released in the U.K. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were based in the U.S., so it made sense for it to be released their first. On 8th December, it will be forty-six years since Lennon was killed. Whilst I wanted to discuss a song that turns fifty-five very soon, we cannot ignore the fact that its co-writer (alongside Ono) is no longer with us. That said, it is important that we look inside this song. It is a little divisive when it comes to the greatest Christmas songs ever. Its messages and spirit perhaps as relevant now more than ever, though its imagery and lyrics are not traditional or necessarily positive. There is this plea for peace and unity, though was it quite a naïve thought to base a Christmas song around? The fact genocide and warfare rages would have repulsed Lennon were alive today. He would have been enraged by what is happening around the world. I do want to look inside its development and legacy. I guess one thing that blackens the song is the involvement of producer Phil Spector (In 2009, he was convicted of the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson and sentenced to nineteen years to life in prison, where he died in 2021). However, we cannot ignore him when discussing the song. In 2011, The Guardian marked forty years of Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by publishing an account of events by Richard Williams that was first published in Uncut magazine in 1998. We are in New York 1971, just prior to this Christmas standard being recorded. It is interesting why Lennon wanted to wrote Happy Xmas (War Is Over):

“John says that he wrote it "because I was sick of White Christmas," and it could well take over as the annual Yuletide anthem. It's terrifically singable, in the tradition of All You Need Is Love or Give Peace A Chance, and it's very pretty, too. The words are simple and direct, with the chorus going "War is over/If you want it/War is over now," while John and Yoko express appropriate good wishes to all mankind”.

Unfortunately The Beatles Bible does allow you to copy any text from their site, so I will guide you to it so you can see interview archive, where John Lennon talks about Happy Xmas (War Is Over) and why he and Yoko Ono wrote it. There are articles I can source and copy, so I will bring them in. Actually, we can get some archive interview from the official John Lennon website. The addition of The Harlem Community Choir adds this extra element that is spine-tingling. It really adds weigh to the song’s messages. I do think that it sits there with the best Christmas tracks. As mentioned, its lyrics should hit especially hard today, given how divided, destructive and violent the modern world is. I don’t think it is corny or ineffectual writing a song like Happy Xmas (War Is Over). John Lennon and Yoko Ono genuinely wanted to see peace and change in the world:

“John: ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ we wrote together. Nothing more to say on that. It says it: ‘War is over if you want it.’ Because it was still that same message, the idea that somebody is either going to give us power or [has] taken our power or has made us go to war or not made you go to war or the president did this to us.
We are just as responsible as the man who presses the button. It’s that idea of God in the sky is a separate thing, you know? It’s all that separation. It’s all the same thing: nationalities, religions, authority. It’s all the same garbage. As long as we or as long as people imagine that it’s something people are doing to them, they have no control, then. They have no control.

Yoko: It was July 1971 in New York City. We were having our morning coffee in a hotel room facing the park. Then, still in the middle of our breakfast, we got this idea to write an Xmas song. We were fast workers, so the song was born by the time we fi nished our last morning coffee. That made John feel better. ‘This is going to be bigger than “White Christmas”, you’ll see.’ He wiggled his nose again, this time with satisfaction.

In November, John remembered the song and called the manager to release it as a single for Christmas. ‘John, it’s too late…printing the cover…advertising.’ ‘Well, try.’ The single was out, but the manager was right: it was too late for anything and it bombed. ‘Happy Xmas’ only became big after John’s passing in 1980.

John: What we wanted to do was have something besides ‘White Christmas’ being played every Christmas, you know, and there’s always war, right? There’s always somebody getting shot, so every year you can play it and there’s always somebody being tortured or shot somewhere, so the lyrics stand in that respect…. I’ve always wanted to write something that would be a Christmas record that would last forever, you know?

The basic idea of the poster event was Yoko’s. She used to do things like that in the avant-garde circle. Poster was a sort of media.

Jack Douglas: When we did the ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ record, Phil seemed much happier, more relaxed and more in control than he did on the Imagine sessions. Possibly because it was just a single.

It had lots of acoustic guitars in a circle around one microphone, which was one of Phil’s recipes. And lots of backing vocals and kids and sleigh bells! John & Yoko wanted to create a Christmas standard better than ‘White Christmas’ and they sure did. Every Christmas, there it is.

I was so happy to be a part of it. It was so much fun to watch John & Yoko work with the kids, who were so excited. It was funny, because they didn’t quite know who John was, which was kind of cool.

Arlene Reckson: By then, I was then the studio manager [at The Record Plant]. The night before the session, I got a request to get in a kids’ choir. Dee Lee, our African-American night-time receptionist said, ‘All those churches in Harlem have choirs.’ The very fi rst Harlem church that I called said ‘OK’. I said to Yoko and John, ‘Can I get a limousine to take me up there to talk to the vicar?’ and I went up.

The next day I hired a bus and went up to get the kids. I had to have each one of them provide a signed release form from their parents and they got on the bus with the woman who was the choir leader. I remember getting them all Happy Meals and I think that the donation John & Yoko made to the church was $500, which was a lot of money then.

Roy Cicala told John that I had organized all the kids, and he was really pleased and they got me in when they took that great group photograph. I’m standing to the right of Phil Spector”.

I will end with a feature that reviews Happy Xmas (War Is Over) and is surprised it was successful at all, given the fact it is confrontational and very much not what you’d expect from a heart-warming and inspiring Christmas song. If it were released today, how many people would actually promote it? I don’t think the holidays should be off-limits for protest and compassion, even if it is more to do with those afflicted by war and conflict, rather than people cosy in their homes around a fire. Last year, uDiscoverMusic wrote about a song whose origins can be traced back to when Lennon was with The Beatles. What was once an acoustic ditty grew and expanded into this choral thing. A song that I have always loved:

“John Lennon’s seventh single outside of The Beatles was written and demoed in October 1971 on acoustic guitar with Yoko Ono in their New York hotel. It had them entering into the spirit of Christmas in their own special way, with an anti-war sentiment and, as John was reported as saying, because he was fed up with “White Christmas.”

The song, of course, was “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”, recorded almost immediately at the Record Plant, co-produced by John and Yoko with Phil Spector, and released as a single in America for that 1971 holiday season, on December 1 that year. But that wasn’t the case in the UK, where a dispute between John and The Beatles’ publishing company, Northern Songs, delayed the release to the extent that it had to wait until November 24 the following year to come out in his home country. The elaborate artist credit on the disc recognized both the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir.

Session notables on the track included Beatles and Rolling Stones alumnus Nicky Hopkins on piano, chimes, and glockenspiel, and ever in-demand drummer Jim Keltner, who also added the atmospheric sleigh bells. The song’s title was familiar to John and Yoko devotees from the posters they had launched in 12 US cities for Christmas 1969, which proclaimed “WAR IS OVER! If You Want It – Happy Christmas from John & Yoko.”

It’s an oddity of the British charts that any number of the songs we regard as Christmas classics never reached No.1. The Pogues’ perennial “Fairytale Of New York,” featuring Kirsty MacColl, topped out at No.2 on its first release; Wizzard’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” peaked at No.4 peak and so, after making the UK charts on December 9, 1972, did John and Yoko’s festive message.

Even in the US, the year before, “Happy Xmas” emerged too close to the holidays to get substantial airplay, and barely made the Top 40 of the Cashbox singles chart. Billboard, for its part, listed it on its separate Christmas countdown rather than the Hot 100, limiting its profile further even though it reached No.3.

When the song finally saw UK release, its chart entry was somewhat modest, at No.23. It climbed to No.16, but sales really took off in the last chart before the holiday, and it spent the last two weeks of the year at No.4. Like so many Christmas songs, “Happy Xmas” has made many return appearances, most notably in the sad aftermath of John’s death in 1980, when it climbed to No.2.

In its many subsequent chart runs, it made the Top 40 in 2007, at No. 40, and returned to the Top 20 in both 2018 and 2020. The festive classic has inspired endless covers, including those by Neil Diamond, Diana Ross, Jimmy Buffett, the Moody Blues, and in 2018, a version by Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson featuring John and Yoko’s son, Sean Ono Lennon”.

I do want to end with this article, as it sort of challenges the idea that Happy Xmas (War Is Over) should have got to number one and was overlooked a bit. This debate as to whether all Christmas songs need to conform to a narrative and emotional spectrum. John Lennon and Yoko Ono asking people celebrating Christmas maybe to think beyond their own lives and look around them. Perhaps it was too big a thing or too heavy to demand of those who were probably seeking escape whilst The Vietnam War raged and there was all tis horror on the news:

“The single had a lightening-fast turnaround. Within 30 days, the track went from the studio to store shelves in the United States, arriving in time for a December 1st launch. However due to a dispute over publishing rights, the single wouldn’t land in the UK until the following year.

Unfortunately, the timing of the release may not have helped the single initially. The song may have launched a bit late into the Christmas season in the US, and it struggled to get much attention in 1971. It peaked at number 36 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles, and only number 3 on the Billboard Christmas Singles Chart, but like most Christmas songs, it’s popularity would grow over the years.

“Happy Xmas (War is Over)” really started to pick up steam in the UK, where it immediately garnered attention in 1972. The song peaked at number 4 on the UK singles charts, and it has also would continue to hit the charts nine more times, including after Lennon’s murder on December 8th, 1980, where it claimed the number two spot behind another Lennon cut, “Imagine.”

For the longest time I didn’t care for “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” It always felt a bit off-putting to me. It’s probably partially due to the cognitive dissonance that comes from someone as problematic as John Lennon writing about peace and harmony, but it also always felt like Lennon and Ono just wanted to write another protest piece but decided to disguise it as a Christmas song to garner extra attention.

As it turns out, that’s kinda exactly what they did, but looking at it now that’s actually an interesting reversal of the way lot of Christmas music was made. Take “What Child is This” for example; it’s a traditional folk tune (“Greensleeves”), reworked to celebrate Christmas.

The other important factor to consider is the actual message John and Yoko use the season to promote. As far as lyrical content goes, “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” is as true to the Christmas spirit as any of the more secular holiday songs, if not considerably more so. Christmas is supposed to be a season of hope and peace, bringing warmth and light to a dreary time of year, and these themes appear in most Christmas songs (“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” “the Christmas Song,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” to name a few). Though Lennon and Ono propose these as a commentary on global armed conflict, those themes of social unity and peace perfectly fit the season.

One other exceptional element of the song however is the way that it challenges the listener. We’ve seen this before in Lennon’s work, most notably in “Imagine.” When you listen to that song, his words command you to quite literally imagine what he’s singing. “Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.” “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do.” As a listener, you join him on that journey, and by the time the chorus hits, he directly calls you out. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” You’ve taken part in that journey, and you’ve become a dreamer yourself, even if just for a moment.

John and Yoko take the listener for a similar ride on “Happy Xmas.” The verses don’t focus on the present season, but reflect on the previous 11 months. They ask the listener what they have done with their time, what example they have set now that we’re at the end of the year, and they challenge the listener to try harder in the new year. “And so happy Christmas (war is over), for black and for white (if you want it). For yellow and red ones (war is over). Let’s stop all the fight (now)” The song is aggressive and confrontational in a way that, to my knowledge, no other Christmas song has ever dared”.

On 1st December, it will be fifty-five years since John & Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band released Happy Xmas (War Is Over) in the U.S. Look at pretty much every article that ranks the best Christmas songs, and you will not find this one there. It seems to split people. As we remember John Lennon forty-six years after his death, surely Happy Xmas (War Is Over) has some personal, deeper meaning? Or may it is not conventional Christmas-spirited, so can we place it alongside the best Christmas singles ever?! I think it should be considered more favourably. Fifty-five years after its release, the John & Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band classic is as potent, meaningful and urgent…

AS ever.

FEATURE: Groovelines: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Hey Joe

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

IN THIS PHOTO: The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967/PHOTO CREDIT: GAB Archive

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Hey Joe

_________

MANY might assume that this…

is an original from The Jimi Hendrix Experience. However, Hey Joe is a cover version. Though I feel that the version that The Jimi Hendrix Experience released in 1966 is the best. Because it was released on 16th December 1966, I did want to mark sixty years of this classic. It is hard to overstate how seismic Hey Joe is in terms of Jimi Hendrix and his legendary. A month after arriving in London, he and his band laid down an unbeatable rendition of Hey Joe. In terms of the chronology, on 5th October, 1966, having moved to and living in London, Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding played together for the first time - The Jimi Hendrix Experience were formed.  It was 23rd October, 1966 when The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded Hey Joe, at De Lane Lea studios in London. 25th November, 1966 and The Jimi Hendrix Experience made their U.K. live debut at the Bag O'Nails Club, London, where they played using the clubs DJ booth. Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, The Hollies, and the Small Faces would all hang out at the club. This Day in Music provide that useful timeline. Let’s start with this article that documents the birth of an experience. This seismic recording of Hey Joe:

“The Jimi Hendrix Experience made their meteoric debut with the release of the single “Hey Joe” b/w “Stone Free” on Friday, December 16, 1966.   While Billy Roberts penned the original lyrics to “Hey Joe” in the late 1950s and performed it regularly through the early 1960s while busking on the streets of New York’s Greenwich Village and later while based in San Francisco; he never took the chance to formally record the track himself.

The Byrds were known to perform the song at the LA hotspot Ciro’s which is where The Leaves discovered the track, and eventually became the first group to record and release the song commercially.  Debuting as “Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go” in November 1965, it found limited commercial success. The Leaves eventually re-recorded the song again in 1966 and released the new version “Hey Joe” alongside the B-Side single for “Girl From The East” which found moderate commercial success as the group’s fifth single and as the title track to their eponymous debut release.

Singer Tim Rose recorded the song in 1966, taking a slower, almost bluesy ballad approach as opposed to the faster renditions made by others. Rose’s rendition was perhaps the most successful commercial release of the song up to that time becoming a regional hit on both the west and east coast while also receiving radio airplay.  It also became a mainstay of Tim Rose’s stage repertoire.

As New York City braced for the forthcoming snows in the Fall of 1966, Chas Chandler, bassist for The Animals, was looking to move into the business side of the music industry.  A consummate fan of Tim Rose’s rendition of “Hey Joe,” Chandler was looking for his own, bright up-and-coming musician to record an adaptation of the popular track.

By stroke of luck, a young Jimmy Hendrix, who was performing regularly in Greenwich Village, was also inspired by Rose’s same rendition. With the prodding of friend Linda Keith, and a break in his own touring schedule while staying in New York City, Chandler happened to catch Hendrix in action on stage at the famed Café Wha? in the heart of the East Village where he was performing.  It took only a few of seconds for Chandler to decide right then and there that this player, performing under the guise of Jimmy Hendrix (performing the lead role in Jimmy James & The Blue Flames), would be whisked away to London, quickly paired with bassist, Noel Redding and drummer, Mitch Mitchell and released to an unsuspecting public as The Jimi Hendrix Experience in September 1966.

The newly formed Experience went to France to garner some quick audience exposure and help to earn some needed funds.  As part of a four-show supporting spot on a tour with legendary French singer Johnny Hallyday, The Jimi Hendrix Experience mesmerized the sell-out crowd at L’Olympia in Paris during final tour stop on October 18, 1966. Performing “Killing Floor,” “Hey Joe” and “Wild Thing,” the band’s performance was recorded by RTE and marked the first time the band was professionally saved to tape.  [Ed. This version of “Hey Joe” was eventually released as part of The Jimi Hendrix Experience deluxe box set in 2000.]

Back in London and wanting to get Hendrix into the studio quickly to record “Hey Joe,” Chandler had scrapped together enough cash to get the first studio session booked for October 23, 1966, at De Lane Lea Music Ltd. [aka., Kingsway Studio].  These were familiar confines for Chandler as this is where The Animals had completed most of their recordings. “I knew the studio well, that’s why I took him there,” explained Chas Chandler to John McDermott in the Ultimate Hendrix book.

As Hendrix and Chandler tried to figure each other out, the two butted heads.  Jimi, weary of his vocal capabilities, looked for ways to bury his voice in the mix and keep the focus on the guitar; while Chandler, who learned during rehearsals that Hendrix’s voice was far stronger than he was giving himself credit for, wanted the vocals to be more up front. Jimi even threatened that “if I can’t play as loud as I want, I might as well go back to New York.” To which Chandler threw down Hendrix’s travel papers and said, “Well, here you go. Piss off!!” Jimi looked at Chandler, started laughing and said, “All right, you called my bluff!” and that was it; Jimi was ready, and Chandler knew they were about to take everyone by storm.

In a mere two hours, all that Chandler could afford at the studio, The Experience completed more than 30 different takes before a completed basic track met approval.

With master tape in hand, Chas Chandler moved recording to both Pye and Regent Studios in early November. “Although we had completed the backing track, we still weren’t finished because we couldn’t get the girl’s vocals right,” recounted Chandler in Ultimate Hendrix. “I ended up going from one studio to another, trying to get different girls to put the vocals on. Initially I went to De Lane Lea, but they were booked, so I had to go elsewhere. I nearly screwed it all up because my master tape was one-inch four-track, and it took sessions at three different studios to complete.”  In the end, the trio of Gloria George, Magaret Stedder, and Barbara Moore who performed under the framework, The Breakaways served as the final backing track to the single”.

IN THIS PHOTO: 25th November, 1966: The Jimi Hendrix Experience made their U.K. live debut at the Bag O'Nails Club, London, where they played using the club’s D.J. booth

Earlier this year, Classic Rock looked inside a song that demonstrates and displayed Jimi Hendrix’s otherworld abilities. Hey Joe was not the only cover version that was supremely better than the original. Tackling All Along the Watchtower in 1968, no doubt it is a more impactful and powerful version than the 1966 Bob Dylan original:

“You’ll have heard the stories of how British guitar potentates such as Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton were awe-struck by Hendrix’s otherworldly abilities when they saw this new American kid play his first, low-key shows in London. Now imagine what the public at large, most of whom couldn’t tell the front end of a Fender from the back end of a frying pan in those far-off days, felt like when they first heard the scintillating solos on Hey Joe.

Not to mention the lyrics, which concern the confession of the titular Joe as he plans to murder his ‘old lady’ after he ‘caught her messing ’round with another man’. By the song’s end, the crime has been committed, which must have been something of a shock for the average British rock listener. It was as if the sound of ancient blues had been reborn in hard-rock form; the ghost of Robert Johnson, reanimated.

Hey Joe was released in December 1966 on Track Records, the label owned by The Who’s managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. It was backed with Stone Free, a Hendrix original, and distributed by RCA. Appearances on the TV shows Ready Steady Go! and Top Of The Pops helped the single to climb to Number Six in the UK, although, sadly, no known footage of either performance exists, as UK broadcasters routinely wiped and taped over master reels, believing them to have no historical value.

"It was amazing to watch him for the first time," said Marc Bolan, who was in the room when Hendrix appeared on Ready Steady Go! "Everyone else used to use backing tracks, but he was going to play live, because they got him on the show the same day.

"I was in the control room with the producer, just sitting about, when they started Hey Joe, and this old lady really freaked out and said: 'Turn the backing track down!' Because it was really loud. All the machines were shaking. And they said: 'But there is no backing track.'"

Hey Joe is not Hendrix’s most incendiary performance, musically or politically – consider Fire and All Along The Watchtower or even his Woodstock attack on The Star Spangled Banner for that. It’s not his most psychedelic, most subversive, or his most epoch-shaping song, depending on your point of view.

But Hey Joe was the gateway to his artistry for the public of 1966, and as a vehicle for the total summation of Hendrix’s skills at this early point in his career, it’s unbeatable”.

In 2018, Financial Times explored a song that had murky origins. Though we maybe forget that when talking about it and what The Jimi Hendrix Experience created in 1966. As 16th December marks sixty years since their single came out, I do wonder if anything will be written. I think that Hey Joe is one of the best recordings of the 1960s. I can only imagine how people felt hearing it for the first time in 1966:

“Yet all of these authorship squabbles were rendered insignificant by Jimi Hendrix’s seismic reworking of the tune. Hearing Rose play the song at Café Wha? in Greenwich Village, Hendrix took it and rocketed it into the stratosphere.

Gone was the nervy, lo-fi angst of the original. Instead, Hendrix slowed down and elongated “Hey Joe”, morphed it into something darker and wilder, invested it with vast psychological trauma and tension. In his magic hands, it became crazed, twisted, delirious.

It sounded as if Hendrix didn’t just empathise with the plight of the troubled Joe: he was actively encouraging his friend’s murderous actions. “Shoot her one more time!” he urged in the middle-eight as his Fender wailed, a law and a galaxy unto itself.

Hendrix’s annexing of “Hey Joe” was so colossal, it should by rights have scared off other artists from approaching the song for decades. Instead, the opposite happened. It has been covered hundreds of times, with hugely varying degrees of success. Cher’s shrill, strident 1966 version sounded as if she was giving the killer a miffed ticking-off for his transgression. Marmalade’s puny version was psychedelia-by-numbers. Deep Purple, then still prog rockers and not heavy metal headbangers, got closer to the restless spirit of the song.

Wilson Pickett ladled Stax horns all over it and turned it into a deep R&B cut. Patti Smith’s raw, visceral reworking was almost as radical as Hendrix’s: her new, freeform-poetry lyrics referenced kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst.

Marc Almond’s teasing vocal added sexual ambiguity to Soft Cell’s version, while Nick Cave’s sombre growl on his 1986 Kicking Against the Pricks covers album wasn’t his finest moment. Black Uhuru sounded so stoned on their 1990 album Now that it seemed unlikely Joe would have had the energy to pull the trigger.

Robert Plant gave it some serious welly with his Band of Joy; less likely half-decent covers came from rapper Ice T’s rock side-project Body Count, and from Seal. After hearing Charlotte Gainsbourg’s sultry 2013 murmur through the song, you needed a cold shower.

Ultimately, though, it’s impossible to see past the transcendent glory of Hendrix’s astral ramble. Many authors have laid claim to “Hey Joe”, but it truly belongs to just one man”.

It is hard to think of a guitarist since Jimi Hendrix’s death in 1970 who had the same ability and genius. Naturally, there are phenomenal players. Jimi Hendrix had some extra. A fire and unparalleled ability that still resounds today. Hearing Hey Joe in 2026 is so thrilling. Six decades on from its release as a single, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s version of Hey Joe remains masterful and unstoppable. It is a recording that is among the greatest ever. A sheer moment…

OF mesmerising brilliance.

FEATURE: Spotlight: CATTY

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: NAT TRAXEL + Lucy Cave

CATTY

_________

I thought that I had…

already spotlighted CATTY, but it seems not. I did write about her in 2024 after it was announced she would be supporting Stevie Nicks at BST Hyde Park. I feel I need to spend some time exploring this incredible artist. Born Catrin Hopkins, CATTY is a Welsh-born, London-based artist. She has released a couple of stunning singles this year in the form of Pavlov’s Dog, and Tax Evasion. Last year, she released the E.P., Bracing for Impact. I will start with an interview around the release of the E.P. I wonder what CATTY has in store next year. In terms of a debut album or touring. This is an artist to watch closely. Wonderland. interviewed CATTY last October. Being a massive Kate Bush fan myself, the fact that she asked in the interview, “What if Kate Bush watched Chicago?” makes me admire her even more!

“When did you first discover creating music, and how did that grow into something you wanted to pursue as a career?

I actually had no interest in being a songwriter, which is insane to me now because singing and writing go so hand in hand but for the longest time I just wanted to be a singer. I accidentally wrote a song with someone I asked for guitar lessons from, we released it, got signed. Which sounds pretty easy but that was the calm before the storm. I got dropped quick, ran out of cash even quicker and honestly I was living life like someone who should be writing songs about it. A cancelled Vegas wedding? Come on! So I’m a songwriter now.

As a proud Welsh native, how do you find your nationality influences your music, and creative and personal outlook?

I think being from Wales makes you a bit creative and witchy in nature and that seeps into my work. I remember learning a lot about Welsh mythology in primary school and we always lived in really creepy houses so I’ve always just had that flair for the dramatic, witchy and scary.

Do you think England sometimes forgets about the quality and breadth of Welsh music?

Yeah, for sure. I think a huge part of being Welsh is screaming to be heard; our language, our stories, our songs. But there’s so much talent there.

What was the creative process for the EP? Did it differ from how you’ve approached making a body of work previously?

One hundred percent, I’m distributing through AWAL now so I’m not only working with coffee shop money. I have a little budget, AND coffee shop money, so I was able to make a music video and rent some clothes and start bringing the vision to life. I think that’s always something I’ve missed. I always had this world in my head, my coven, I just couldn’t bring it to life because I couldn’t afford to. Taste and choice and money are a privilege that so many artists aren’t often given.

What inspired the work musically?

I genuinely walked into the studio to write “Joyride” and said “what if Kate Bush watched Chicago?” – which is a quote I swore I was going to take to the grave and then just started spouting. But I’ve always loved that almost theatrical production, I’m a big fan of John Steinmen, the Bonnie Tyler (my Welsh queen) and Meatloaf stuff is always a reference. Which everyone rolls their eyes at but those classics are classics for a reason, fuck off!!”.

It has been a pretty packed year for CATTY. Building on the momentum of Bracing for Impact and having completed a lot of tour dates, there are more gigs ahead. There are some U.K. dates this month, including a gig at London’s Scala on 26th. That London gig is going to be amazing. Go if you can. I will come to some press around her latest singles. Reviews of both. I do feel we will get some more interviews next year. Though I want to keep things in 2025 briefly. Going back to last January, DIY asked CATTY some quick-fire questions, as she headlined one of the nights of their DIY’s Hello 2025 gig series. I have been a CATTY fan for a while now, and it is amazing seeing everything she has accomplished in the past couple of years:

“Describe your music to us in the form of a dating app bio.
CATTY likes long walks on the beach and tormenting her exes.

You hail from rural Wales - musically-speaking, what was it like growing up there? What was your first gig?
There’s a beautiful quote in Welsh - forgive me, I don’t know where it’s from: “Braint yw cael dy eni’n Gymro, nid â llwy arian yn dy geg ond â chân yn dy galon a cherdd yn dy waed”. Roughly translated, it means that it is a privilege to be born Welsh, not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but with music in your heart and poetry in your blood. And that’s exactly what it was; I was always surrounded by music and poetry (it still took me until about 25 to get good at it, but it was always there).

My first gig was Girls Aloud and I loved every second of it - extremely poetic, 10/10.

Even though you’re just getting started, you’ve already amassed a devoted cult following. Do you have a collective name for your fans? What should they expect from a CATTY live show?
They’ve started calling themselves a coven, which makes sense. I think a lot of the opportunities that have been given to me have been because they manifest it with me: they called on Earth, Wind, Water and Fire to help me get the Stevie Nicks gig. And it worked. That’s what to expect at a CATTY live show - myself and those lovely lovely people at group therapy.

“2024 was the best year of my life, so I’m just excited to keep doing my thing.”

Last summer saw you perform at BST Hyde Park - on the same bill as Stevie Nicks! Can you tell us what this meant to you? And if you could support or collaborate with any other artist, who would it be?
She has no idea who I am, obviously, but that’s mother. I listen to [Stevie] when I’m celebrating, when I’m crying, when I’m on the way to work and when I’m at home. She’s been around as much as my parents have, that’s mother!! She’s my obvious answer, but I also LOVE St Vincent - does anyone have her number?

If you could take one album, one book, and one film to a desert island, what would you pick (and why)?
Album: Donny Hathaway, ‘Someday We’ll All Be Free’. My partner introduced me to ‘Jealous Guy’ recently and the album has been playing in my kitchen ever since. Masterpiece.
Book: Love Letters, by Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West. I love love.
Film: Burlesque. Whoever put Christina Aguilera and Cher together, I owe you my life. And this film basically gives me two albums… I’ve hacked the system”.

Two reviews of CATTY’s latest two singles. I will end with one of Tax Evasion. Pavlov’s Dog got a lot of praise. TuneFountain showed their appreciation of an amazing artist and single. Even though they commit the same sin as so many journalists and say CATTY has ‘returned’ – even though she has gone nowhere and released an E.P. last year! -, you can forgive them that. Artists always pressured to keep releasing material to remain relevant and visible:

“CATTY has returned with ‘Pavlov’s Dog’, a new single that arrives alongside the announcement of her debut UK headline tour. For an artist who has already built serious momentum around her theatrical, gothic-leaning pop, it feels like another big step in a year that is moving quickly.

The track grew its own early buzz on TikTok before release, but its appeal runs deeper than anticipation alone. ‘Pavlov’s Dog’ takes the language of psychology and turns it into something bruised, dramatic and personal, shaped by the emotional aftershock of a relationship that left CATTY questioning love, trust and her own sense of self. The result fits neatly into the world she has been building so far: bold, wounded and unafraid to be intense.

CATTY has described the song as a plea to be rewired, to be taught again in the simplest terms what love is and what it is not. That emotional core gives ‘Pavlov’s Dog’ a sharp edge beneath the theatricality, grounding the track’s bigger gestures in something recognisably human. It also connects with the themes that run through her wider work, where queer love, pain, resilience and self-definition are never softened for easy listening.

What makes ‘Pavlov’s Dog’ so appealing is how naturally CATTY commits to the drama of it. The song takes a messy, painful emotional state and leans all the way in, without blinking or sanding down its sharper corners. That suits her style. She has always sounded at her best when she lets things feel a little oversized, a little bruised and a little dangerous, and this seems cut from exactly that cloth.

There is also something compelling in the way the concept balances bite with vulnerability. The psychology reference could easily feel too neat, but here it sounds like a useful frame for something more emotionally chaotic underneath. ‘Pavlov’s Dog’ feels built to connect because it has both character and feeling, and it strengthens the sense that CATTY is becoming one of the more distinctive voices working in this darker end of pop”.

I will end with DIVA and their take on the glorious Tax Evasion. CATTY is building momentum. With some incredible gigs ahead, it is a pivotal moment. One where so many people show their love of this hugely accomplished songwriter. Far from being mundane or generic, her lyrics are biting, playful, and witty. There is humour and darkness to be found, but at the heart is this sense of individuality. She is getting props and recognition from some major artists, which is no surprise:

“Dreaming of a life of luxury, private cars and champagne? Aren’t we all? Welsh pop star CATTY is dreaming big in her latest single Tax Evasion, a sharp-tongued, gloriously chaotic take on fame and the bizarre world of internet celebrity.

Since releasing her second EP Bracing For Impact in 2025, CATTY has been making waves in queer pop, quickly building a devoted fanbase affectionately known as “the coven”. After hard-launching her relationship with girlfriend Amy Spalding in her music video Joyride last year, CATTY has quickly become something of a sapphic icon.

Tax Evasion sees CATTY embrace her larger-than-life persona, poking fun at fame and the fantasy of becoming a “middle class internet sad sensation”. With biting humour, theatrical vocals and an infectious pop sound, she’s clearly having a lot of fun imagining her rise to superstardom.

And it seems we’re not the only ones paying attention. SZA has already shown the track some love on Instagram, adding another pretty impressive name to the growing list of artists backing CATTY like CMAT and singer-songwriter Absolutely.

The single is packed with playful pop culture references, name-checking everyone from David Bowie to Katy Perry and Timothée Chalamet. It’s an unapologetically cheeky earworm, delivered with the kind of confidence and humour that makes CATTY so exciting to listen to. Fans have already declared it a “new banger” and the “song of the year”. Clearly, the coven has spoken.

The release follows her single Pavlov’s Dog, which explored vulnerability through moody, atmospheric production and haunting vocals.

CATTY’s not slowing down anytime soon, heading out on her debut UK headline tour this month, with almost every date already sold out”.

I will end things here. I am already a fan of CATTY, and I will go and see her live when I can. She has such an adoring and faithful fanbase. I have so much respect and affection for her music. You know that CATTY is going to have some genuinely massive moments soon. She already has supported Stevie Nicks, though I feel there are going to be some life-changing events. I am excited to see what comes next year. What CATTY has planned. She is an artist that…

EVERYONE should know.

__________

Follow CATTY

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/catty.mp3

Twitter:

https://x.com/cattymp3

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/discover/cattymp3

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHXzBhTSaFnEV0Y1pJZfnAQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0SAfVY2Qy5TbA3mreZfHyf?si=c7OcHBt2Twu50MqNT-oQxQ

FEATURE: Spotlight: Shy One

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Ronan McKenzie

Shy One

_________

SHE has definitely been…

on my radar for a while, but I have not spotlighted Shy One yet. I am correcting that now. A London-based D.J. and producer, her album, Mali, was released in March. I want to come to a few interviews from this year with Shy One. In March, CLASH spoke with this amazing producer, artist and D.J. around the release of Mali. We get to know more about her upbringing and background. If you have not listened to the music of Shy One yet, then do make sure that you check it out now. Shy One has been on the scene for a long time, though with a new album out, it was a good moment to spotlight her. Mali arrives fourteen years after her debut, Bedknobs & Broomkicks:

“Growing up in a musically-inclined household in Harrow, Shy One’s trajectory is that of a seasoned selector, developing an ear for soul-nourishing grooves, but also gritty, grime-inflected deep cuts. As a child, she’d stretch her three-pound-a-week dividends at local record shops (the likes of Uptown, Dark and Cold and Black Market) before cutting her teeth in community radio aged just fourteen. At university, Shy One would form a deeper understanding of her sound and communal spaces, while chipping away at her debut project, ‘Bedknobs and Boomkicks’, released via Scratcha DVA’s record label in 2012.

Years on Shy One is ready to reintroduce herself on her self-titled album ‘Mali’, reflecting on her origin story, the relationships she’s cultivated and the crowd she communicates to. It’s a cohesive testament that has a clearcut club identity; it echoes the strength of her earlier work but builds on its premise by integrating broken beat, jazz, house and more. Shy One’s honed tastemaking and curatorial touch sees her amplify and weave in the voices of James Massiah, George Riley, Steve Spacek and Private Joy into her self-styled tapestry.

Take us back to the very beginning growing up in Harrow. In what ways did Northwest London shape your understanding of the world around you?

It was the people around me who shaped my outlook on the world. My mum and I lived in Harrow, but the HQ of our family was in Kensal Green, Wembley and Harlesden; these are the places where I spent a bit more time. Caribbean Northwest London raised me, and I learned a lot of life lessons from these people and the culture.

With both of your parents being musically inclined, did you ever see yourself going down a different route? Or was producing and DJing your only calling?

I wasn’t even supposed to go down this route. I didn’t actually think it was possible, despite one of my parents having a whole career in it. I was doing IT! No one in my family really went to university, so there was all this pressure on me to go, and to be real with you, my dad didn’t want me to pursue a career in music. It was completely unintentional and I never thought I could have it.

In 2023, you were able to dedicate yourself to music full-time. What was on your mind, ahead of taking that leap?

I only took that leap because I had to. My last job that I had working in retail, I barely worked any days anyway, so my holiday time was really minimal. It got to the start of the new financial year, and I needed to request pretty much all my holiday time off, so I just had to quit. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to rely on music and place that pressure on it and make it a money-making thing. I’ve always been very worried about changing my relationship with music, so I reluctantly went full-time with it. But it was also a great thing because there are two sides to that coin.

For a long time, I thought so many of the DJs and producers I looked up to were already full-time, but they weren’t: they had jobs. I’d put all this pressure on myself: Why am I not getting enough gigs? Or making enough through ba? In actuality, the rest aren’t either. I think it’s good to have a bit of balance, as you have a bit more control over your direction. You won’t have to compromise and you can have a bit more artistic integrity.

Fourteen years after the release of your debut you return with another full-length ‘Mali’. What made now feel like the right time?

It’s well overdue to be honest with you. My discography, considering how long I’ve been making tunes, is really sparse. But it’s the right time because of who I’m releasing it with (Touching Bass), where they’re at, and where I’m at mentally.

At this point, what’s your favourite dancefloor that you’ve played to? What made it special?

I think it’s Nowadays in New York. That was my last gig, two weekends ago. There’s something about that place. We’re increasingly seeing people banning phones from the dance floor, which is great and has an amazing impact on a night. Nowadays is one of those spaces where you’re not going to get any dickhead bros coming in. It’s a queer safe space, and you’re given an education on the door before you step into it. There’s actual care for the people coming into the space and the people playing, which is reflected on the dance floor and the energy that you get from the crowd.

What’s one key lesson you’ve learned in the last decade? And how does it dictate your future steps?

Not to get too comfortable or complacent in this career and to be more intentional, to have a plan and take a bit more control, steer the ship a bit more. That’s something I’ve learned, and I’ve had to check myself on and readjust in my mind”.

I think I will get to one more interview and then end with a review of Mali. Her new album, as DJ Mag say, established her as a tastemaker. Their new interview with Shy One is fantastic, so I did want to bring it in here. They write how “the Harrow-born DJ and producer reflects on identity, musical lineage, and protecting the love that drives her craft”. I might be a little late to her genius, but with Mali out and it getting a lot of love, I do feel like many others may be connecting with her for the first time:

“Named after herself, ‘Mali’ sits in direct contrast to Shy One’s debut album ‘Bedknobs & Boomkicks’, a title she now refers to, affectionately, as “slightly cheesy,” but one that reflected the sense of freedom she felt at the time. The difference between the two records also mirrors a shift in her life. ‘Bedknobs & Boomkicks’ was made largely on a laptop while studying at university outside London, long before the touring and festival circuits had become a daily reality. ‘Mali’, by contrast, comes out of an intense period of studio work, shaped by constant immersion in music culture and a growing public profile.

“I made the record surrounded by music constantly,” she says. “I used loads of hardware, spent proper time developing things, and there was definitely more pressure because more people were paying attention.” Still, there’s a looseness to her approach that feels guided by intuition. “I just try to tune into what something feels like,” she adds. “It’s just me, isn’t it?”

Beyond the music, Shy One is just as intentional about how she presents herself. Early in her career she deliberately obscured her image, moving from fragmented artwork to partially hidden portraits, rarely showing her face in full. “The first EP was a mosaic of my face, kind of like putting the puzzle together,” she says. Even now, on the cover of ‘Mali’, she turns away from the camera — a subtle boundary within increasing visibility. “It’s a slow reveal,” she explains. “A very slow blossoming... I want longevity. I want to do this for the rest of my life, so I don’t feel any need to rush into full exposure.”

She holds up a recently repaired classic iPod, remarking, “especially since not being on Spotify again... I’m pretty much just Bandcamp or my iPod. I’ve got 953 gigabytes of music on iTunes. Forty-one thousand tracks.” The device, bought on eBay three years ago, is now a daily fixture, but even in that vast digital archive, physical formats still hold different weight. “When I buy a record, I remember it,” she notes. “There’s something about physically owning music that changes your relationship to it.”

There’s a contained satisfaction when Shy One talks about collecting — and what it means to finally be able to buy records she once couldn’t afford. “I’m not saving for a house,” she shares plainly. “I don’t think I’ll ever own one. But it means a lot that if I come across a rare record now, I can actually buy it.” She is equally candid about the city’s growing hostility towards artists trying to survive in it. “Creatively, London definitely fuels me because of the sounds that were born here,” she says. “But the city itself? Increasingly, it’s been more of a hindrance.”

“There were many years I should have been honing my craft when I was just depressed and working minimum wage,” she continues. “The highlight of my day was having a spliff after work.” We touch on DIY venues like Rye Wax, a record shop, café, workspace and club rolled into one, and the kind of ecosystem it represented. “That was a proper hub,” she says, smiling. “You could spend your whole day there.” Large-scale club spaces, on the other hand, hold little appeal. “We don’t need huge 15,000-capacity spaces,” she argues. “The greatness comes from small venues”.

I will end with a review of Mali from CLASH. There are a lot of highlights and standouts from Mali. I think Shy One’s collaboration with George Riley on I Can Tell is my favourite, though it is one of those albums where certain tracks reveal different elements and strengths the more you hear it. It is great that there was a London headline show this March. Amazing hearing Mali on the stage. So many people at Village Underground to see that set:

“‘Mali’ is a love affair, tangled in Shy One’s signature concoction of London’s very own mingling sounds of house, jazz, UK breakbeat, and club scene’s tireless enticing baselines. Titled ‘Mali’, as Shy One’s first given name, the highly anticipated album lands as her multi-layered ode to London as a city and its vibrant, manifesting nature, curating a cohesive story, celebrating the history and lineage of Black British electronic music. It blissfully follows her creative intuition after a phase of mental and physical decluttering.

As a pirate radio DJ debutant, Shy One opens ‘Mali’ with ‘Evidence Of My Love Affair,’ talking about her early passion for radio. Introductory to her lifelong devotion, it quickly progresses into the pulsating breakbeat of ‘I Can Tell’ featuring George Riley, calling out delusion, ending with the classic defeatist night-out line, “it is what it is”.

‘Loosen Up’ fuses hints of the 80s with chords of funky piano and multiple simultaneous rhythms, forming an electronic jazz simulation that smoothly melds into the second feature, Private Joy, on the soulful ‘Moonlight,’ dazing in the seductive reflections. Though it is ‘Full Circle,’ which glimmers with trickling questions on life’s purpose, as a night-out halfway point tradition.

The brilliantly vibrating beat of the focus track featuring 90s trailblazer, Steve Spacek, ‘Driving On Sand’ lures you in on sweet talk, and promises, until the filthy edge of ‘Nort Wess’ throws you into a sexy, thrusting baseline of the album’s most anthemic club moment, of no limits and no inhibitions. James Massiah’s weight on ’16 Hours’ is the album’s collaboration highlight, soundtracking the inevitable elusion of the endless after party and whatever comes after. For the closing, ‘Live Dis Ting (Belt Drives),’ Shy One reverts the tempo to soft afro house, serving as a melodic canvas for days of reminiscing about records, drifting into the abyss of the night with residual echoes.

Across ten tracks, Shy One’s ‘Mali’ successfully embodies a mandatory sonic guide to the heart and soul of London’s club scene, which she will commemorate with a headline show at Village Underground on March 14th.

8/10”.

I absolutely love Shy One. Such an incredible and versatile D.J. and artist, I think that Mali is an album that is up there with the best of this year. I have said that about a few albums lately, but it just goes to show the breadth and wealth of talent out there. As she wraps up a busy 2026 and thinks ahead, there is a lot to reflect on. A new album after fourteen years. A big headline show in the spring. Shy One can look forward to…

A wonderful year ahead.

__________

Follow Shy One

PHOTO CREDIT: Ronan McKenzie

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/shyclart

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@shyclart

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPlxk88zm_oO_wF18s_Em-Q

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6FafP4LIlZnnYNacDoW7yZ?si=iw8Q6BhfSheVsvR2UgZmDQ

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: IAMDDB

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Raia Maria-Laura

IAMDDB

_________

THIS is an occasion…

IN THIS PHOTO: IAMDDB at the Royal Albert Hall in London, October 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: radhika

where I am discussing an artists where there has not been a lot of recent activity in terms of interviews and new music. Even so, many are performing and making moves. That is the case with IAMDDB. I think, even though she is established and a hugely popular artist, next year is going to be one where she makes her next move. In terms of a mixtape, album or tour. She has been performing a lot this year, and people have got to witness her brilliance. I have been a fan of hers for years now. Her album, Hoodrich Vol. 3, turns ten next year. This is an artist whose latest album, LOVE Is WAR, Volume 6, came out in 2024. Since then, IAMDDB has been pretty busy. IAMDDB is the moniker of Diana De Brito, an Angolan-Portuguese artist. She was formerly based in Manchester, but I am sure if she is based in Manchester right now or whether she is in London. I am going to drop in some older interviews. There has not been a lot of press from the past couple of years or so, but this is such an incredible artist who everyone needs to know. Even though IAMDDB has a large fanbase around the world, there are those who may not know about her. In terms of this year, there have been some events that stood out. IAMDDB was on the Ivor Awards red carpet in June. She looked absolutely captivating. This is someone who stays unapologetically true to herself. In terms of the advice and wisdom offered to artists coming up: “Be yourself, be true to who you are, don't conform, be open to listening to people that have done more than you have done... have fun, don't be a square, be colourful”. IAMDDB has been busy on the road. She has performed far and wide this year, including stops at the The Live Jazz Experience in Brussels, and London’s Royal Albert Hall in October. It has been a massive year for a true original. One of the most amazing and fascinating artists I have ever known.

Whilst I have been a fan for almost a decade now, I feel that the best days still lie ahead. In terms of IAMDDB’s best work and most amazing gigs. I feel she is going to headline major festivals soon. Such is her talent, this will be rewarded with a major booking. That said, IAMDDB has played some amazing venues and worked tirelessly. She is putting herself out there, though many of her fans wonder if she will grace us with some new music next year. What her next chapter is. Many might have heard earlier in the year how she hit back at the Israeli government for using her in an A.I.-generated propaganda video. The now-deleted clip sparked rightful fury and condemnation. Resident Advisor provide more details:

“IAMDDB has condemned the unauthorised use of her likeness in an AI-generated propaganda video shared by Israel's official social media accounts, accusing the government of using her image without permission. The clip, posted last Thursday, October 15th, and since deleted, featured an AI-generated woman closely resembling the Manchester-based artist, reciting lines defending Jewish indigeneity, including: "Colonisers? Say the name. Jews from Judea, it's in the damn name." The video was captioned: "'GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM!' We did." Addressing the situation in a statement shared to Instagram yesterday, IAMDDB said: "I'm deeply concerned by the use of AI to create the appearance of an artist's involvement in something they never agreed to." She's now seeking advice on protecting her image, work and rights. "I stand for humanity" she continued. "I stand against the killing and suffering of innocent people. And I stand for every artist's right to decide what their name, face and work are associated with. FREE PALESTINE”.

I am absolutely love IAMDDB! I have been lucky enough to have been in a room where she was premiering a new music video a while back. Hearing her speak about it and interacting with the crowd, so is such a compelling human. So intelligent, funny, profound and instantly likeable, she is a very genuine artist who has been consistently putting out original and terrific music and delivering incredible performances. I have yet to see her live, though if there are dates next year, I will try and see her, as it has been a while since I have seen her.

I do want to go back a bit to the earlier years. Even if her career and life has moved since then, it is worth revisiting some early interviews. I do hope that there are some new chats coming soon, as I feel IAMDDB has a lot to say, and next year is primed to be a phenomenal one for her. I will drop in one interview from 2018 and one from 2020 before wrapping up. I wonder if IAMDDB thinks about her earliest interviews and sees how far she has come. Her life has undergone changes and her music has evolved through the years, yet we do get a sense of who she is and why she is so special from these interviews. In 2018, CRACK focused on this stunning young artist who you could tell then that she was going to endure for years. Six years later, and this must-hear queen continues to excel. I do feel like next year will be her biggest in terms of success and quality. She gets better with every release. I think I first heard her music played on BBC Radio 6 Music. Mary Anne Hobbs playing a track of hers. It was a big moment where I instantly connected with IAMDDB:

“IAMDDB has achieved a great deal in a short time. Her come-up has been, in her own words, a “crazy journey. I’m just trying to keep up with the pace.” Having studied performing arts at college, she took a series of retail jobs before focusing seriously on music just two years ago. Last year finished with a string of accolades – from the BBC Sound of 2018 longlist, to support slots for Bryson Tiller alongside headline dates across Europe. At the age of 21, IAMDDB is a force to be reckoned with.

In terms of genre, IAMDDB has described her debut EP Waeveybby Volume 1, as “urban jazz”; songs with a spiritual leaning that you can jam at home and smoke a joint with your friends to. But many of the songs on 2017’s Hoodrich Vol 3 – including breakthrough single Shade – had trappier leaning for the turn-up. “I wanted to make something that the mandem can feel it, the girls can feel it, but it has to be… not mainstream, but for the club, for the hood.” What inspired the switch in vibe? “I just reached a point in life where I had had enough, and I was like ‘if one more thing falls apart I’m gonna fall apart, then we’ve got a real problem!’ It wasn’t a nice time in life so instead of just wallowing and feeling sorry for myself I was like ‘nah, you’re gonna use this, you’re gonna talk about it, you’re gonna manipulate it into something positive’, and here we are.”

IAMDDB grew up listening to a lot of Afro-soul, Afro-jazz and kizomba – her dad is also a musician and is in a band in Angola – along with the likes of Nat King Cole and Whitney Houston. Now, she mostly listens to US rap, citing Jay Critch, Future and Rich the Kid as current playlist favourites. Her musical hero, however, is somewhat unexpected. “Bob Marley was my inspiration,” she reveals. “Lyrically, in harmonies, in rhythm, in everything he did and represented. His music to me is almost higher powers saying it’s fine to have emotions, it’s fine to be emotional, it’s fine to fall apart but you’ve gotta forget about that and come back stronger.” And although their music might be worlds apart – “Bob Marley weren’t out here shouting ‘bad bitch no underwear’,” she laughs – IAMDDB hopes her fans will have the same soul-stirring feeling she experienced when listening to her biggest influence”.

I’ll finish with The Line of Best Fit and their 2020 interview. Despite it being six years ago now, it is useful for those new to IAMDDB. I must also see if I can interview her too, as this is an artist near the top of my list. I would love to ask what her dream collaboration is and whether she will try and manifest that. You wouldn’t bet against her being able to achieve anything she wants:

“A passionate yet serene energy encompasses Debrito when we speak: it’s the day after the announcement that Boris Johnson is set to become the UK Prime Minister for the next four years. A crushing defeat for Labour, much of the UK was left in despair at the outcome, questioning the future of the country, with Brexit now a solidified fact. When I ask DD her thoughts, she answers breezily: “You know what, at the end of the day, they’re gonna do what they wanna do. Everyone should just focus on building their own ecosystem and we’ll be cool.” It’s clearly not in Debrito’s vocabulary to dwell on the negatives.

This resilience has surrounded IAMDDB’s aura ever since she emerged on the scene. In 2015, she announced herself with a hazy and pure Fly-Lo re-work on Soundcloud, followed by a string of addictive jazzy and trap fusion EPs, most recently, Swervvvvv.5 – an R&B hybrid released via Union V records. Each record featured no-one but the woman herself.

Despite her music generating over 1 million listens on Spotify a month, it becomes clear in talking to her that Debrito is not one to be clouded by cosmically generated numbers. Speaking candidly of the often skin-deep nature of the industry, which she seems to glide seamlessly through, she tells me: “Music has evolved so much from the time when we had ‘real’ artists. Music nowadays can be so microwavable, here today, gone tomorrow.” Particularly, in the genres of R&B, jazz and trap in which IAMDDB traverses, it could be argued that since it gains so much traffic and has such a high turnover, there is a temptation for artists to succumb to a certain style in order to make bank.

“A lot of people have one smash hit and think that’s it, and they’re good for life. But when you really examine this industry and this game, you realise that just because you’ve overcome one obstacle doesn’t mean there isn’t 100 to go. So staying humble, staying level-headed, and always remembering why you began this to begin with, is super important, in a level of consistency and quality, in the way you work and the way you carry yourself. Girl, it’s like a whole matrix.”

Within this vulnerability in her music, Debrito’s honesty is palpable, her songs almost always beginning with an exclamatory shout of ‘IAMDDB’ – a message that this is her, and you can take it or leave it.

Debrito’s personal style emulates this off-kilter sincerity, her lyrics transmitting a message to be yourself, and to always work for what you want. This is especially poignant given that navigating the industry as a woman can be so difficult. It would be amiss to not cite one of the most exciting points in IAMDDB’s journey last year, where her talent was recognised by the legendary Lauryn Hill – so much that she was chosen to accompany her as support on the The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill tour through Amsterdam and Scandinavia to London’s SSE Arena. She performed alongside Nas, M.I.A. and A$AP ROCKY. Reflecting on the whole experience, Debrito says, “I know! I still can’t believe I did that. It was so humbling to have such a legendary Black female recognise what I do – when I got the call I was like, ‘This is wild’. Someone I’d looked up to for so long was recognising the light within me.

“[Touring with Lauryn] was true motivation to just continue pushing towards being as true and as strong within myself as I can be. Even when I spoke to her, she gave me some advice and it was to stay true to myself, to make sure the team that I have believe and never try to make me conform.” Debrito has gone on to collaborate on tour with artists such as Bryson Tiller and Jhene Aiko. “It’s so humbling, the reception with the audience... for them to take me in with open arms. It gives me the sensation that, if I really hone in to my artistry, I can take it as far as I can.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins

Debrito’s sound has never followed a strict pattern or focus, but the importance of connectivity with her audience has always been at the forefront of her style. We reflect on one of her first gigs as IAMDDB, at the beginning of her journey, in Hoxton Square in 2016: “There were maybe 20-50 people in the audience, and it was one of my very first shows in London. And honestly, just having the opportunity to be on the stage and be able to express myself, have an audience that was so engaged, it was so humbling for me.”. The energy of Debrito’s first gig inspired her to never let the background noise of the negative cogs in the industry affect her: “It taught me you can never lose this passion and fire inside of you, that motivates you to produce, that motivates you to dig into your emotions and express to people. It’s so powerful, it’s something that people need, as a listener and a consumer. They need somebody who’s fearless and somebody who’s going to say the things people are afraid to say.”

Similarly, on her debut EP Waeveybby Vol 1, the palpable energy that comes through is that Debrito wants her audience to feel what she is feeling, to form a collective consciousness. On the first track "Ease", her lyrics echo this positivity and self-confidence: “Lost something from underneath / I can see my enemy, I’m free / Oh, I think I like what I see, yeah / The best of me”.

Debrito’s musical inspirations also echo this self-assuredness. “Some people who have inspired me here from the beginning: Lianne La Havas. She’s one of my favourites. And Gretchen Parlato. With these females, they stay so true to their own genre and their own style of doing things. I’m never one to follow the main structures, I have a very unorthodox way of being. It’s like when I buy a piece of furniture, I never read the instructions. I never read the terms and conditions with my phone! I base everything more off feeling. I really gravitate towards anyone who portrays that– who goes off feelings rather than, you know. Anyone that thinks outside of the box is an inspiration to me”.

Go and follow the brilliant IAMDDB. In spite of that horrible situation with the Israeli government and how damaging and upsetting it would have been, IAMDDB has had a really good year. I look at her Instagram feed, and I can see how much joy she is bringing to people. How happy she seems too. I hope that she has time to chill as we head to Christmas, and it will be interesting to see what next year holds. The exceptional IAMDDB is going to be in the industry for so long to come. Someone who is born to make music and touch people. In a music world where there is a lot of same-sounding artists and it can be quite hard to distinguish the amazing from the average, it is clear IAMDDB is in a league of her own. Look out into the world of music and there is…

NOBODY quite like her.

__________

Follow IAMDDB

Official:

https://www.iamddbworld.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/iamddb

Twitter:

https://x.com/beeechimblind

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@iamnotddb

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdADIhED9-Plw02DwWqFPZA

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7za6M9P94wuMsOVCHopTsI?si=mcTlHrDsTZqISv_a_74cHg

FEATURE: Spotlight: Amelie Lens

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Amelie Lens

_________

I am spotlighting…

one of the greatest D.J.s in the world. Her album, AURA, came out in September. I am going to come up to date with some interviews from this year. I want to start with last year and an interview from office. They spent time with Amelie Lens. One of the best D.J.s in the world. I think that, when we think of the best D.J.s, many would choose men. DJ Mag’s top one-hundred every year does include women, though it is male-dominated. Things are slowly changing, yet their top twenty is still hugely male-focused. In this interview, office sat down with the “Belgian DJ to chat about Tomorrowland, her budding career in fashion... and Belgian fries”:

“How did you experience the music industry as a young woman back when you started your career?

To be honest, this is something I don’t like to talk about, since I see myself as an artist and not a female artist. I like to be treated equally and questions like this are somehow making me feel like I am not. But unfortunately, there is still a lot of prejudice towards women entering the scene. I had to deal with a lot of hateful comments with people telling me I should go back to my kitchen, that there must be a guy making my music… But these things have only motivated me to work harder and be better.

You are touring around the world non-stop. Is there a ritual or specific routine you try to maintain despite all these travels?

Not really, no. I’ve had a hectic life since I was 16 years old, combining work and school and traveling a lot. Thus, I never really had a lot of daily routines. I do try to video call my grandmother, who raised me, every two days, but that might be the only routine I have in my life to be honest.

You have been DJing since you were 18 years old. Was there ever a plan B for your future?

Music was just a passion. I never really thought I would be doing this full-time. I was always working hard and trying to take as much as possible out of life. When I was 16, I realized I could study faster by myself and use the rest of the time to work. So I dropped out of school, studied independently, worked and traveled in the meantime. After I graduated, I was already financially independent and signed up for university, but it was almost impossible for me to pay by myself combined with my job. So, I quit. I found a school that offered event management as distant study, but even this was hard to combine with my job, since I was mostly living in Paris and London, but I had exams almost every week in Belgium. I was already DJing sometimes and making music for several fashion brands.

What does true happiness mean to you, professionally and personally speaking?

I see myself as a very happy person. Even though I had a complicated past, I never stopped smiling and made the best out of it. I guess I’m an optimist—it’s partly my personality, but mostly I think it’s a state of mind. I will always find something good in any bad situation. It’s important to focus on ourselves and not on others and try to be the best person you could possibly be.

Also career-wise, with social media we always see what other artists are doing, and it’s hard not to compare ourselves. But what other people are doing should not matter; I am focusing on myself, always trying to improve myself. So I think that true happiness starts with being happy about yourself. Once you accept yourself, love yourself and you're proud of yourself, you can also accept, love and be proud of others”.

Amelie Lens is not playing sets at the moment, as she is pregnant with her second child. Though she has festival and gig dates booked for next year. She is getting ready to greet her daughter into the world. Maybe the first time I have spotlighted someone who is pregnant. However, when she is back and on the road, go and see Lens. Her new album is tremendous. I did want to get to some press from this year. In August, DJ Mag caught up with Amelie Lens to discuss EXHALE. I am slightly new to this, so it was great reading this interview. As they say in their headline, “Since its first no-frills parties in Belgium a decade ago, Amelie Lens’ EXHALE platform has grown in lockstep with her career into a global ecosystem that’s both supporting and shaping techno’s next generation. Rooted in connection and community, the brand now encompasses a label, events arm and flourishing artist roster, all guided by Lens’ hands-on approach. In conversation with DJ Mag’s Olivia Stock, Lens and label and brand manager Max Tassi reflect on EXHALE’s rise to major force in global techno, alongside a slamming mix of tracks from the label’s catalogue”:

“For all its scale now — the sold-out rooms, the festival stages, the international routing that keeps Lens in constant motion — EXHALE remains rooted in connections like these. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was bring people together through music,” Lens grins, before carefully returning the book to the shelf behind her. Fresh from back-to-back solo shows in San Diego and Austin, she apologises for her tired demeanor, though there’s little sign of it. Dressed in techno-black, her trademark blunt bob framing her face, she lights up as she talks about EXHALE — a platform she has meticulously built over the past decade, but one that often exists in the shadow of the artist behind it. “It’s been a long, crazy journey,” she smiles. “If I think back to our very first party in 2016, I didn’t ever realise what it was going to become... I just wanted to host my own events because I felt like the sound that I like was not very represented in Belgium, and I wanted to make people dance.”

“There’s so much I’m proud of but most of all it’s the community that we have created with EXHALE. I get emotional just thinking about it. A lot of fans travel alone, they meet at events, recognise each other, stay in touch, and come back again. It really is so special.” — Amelie Lens

That sound — fast, physical techno designed for big rooms — became the early blueprint for EXHALE. The first parties were held at Labyrinth club in Hasselt, Belgium, where Lens was already a resident and had the freedom to build the night exactly as she imagined it. Word spread quickly. Soon, the room was hosting some of European techno’s most respected figures, from Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock, to Ellen Allien and Enrico Sangiuliano, alongside Joyhauser, Milo Spykers, and other rising names from the Belgian scene’s next wave.

 

EXHALE’s expansion into a label in late 2020 brought the brand even closer to the dancefloor at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic had forced clubs around the world to close. Under the watchful eye of Lens and EXHALE manager Max Tassi, who joins us on the call from his base in Berlin, the imprint found its footing through a steady run of V/A compilations, packed full of cross-spectrum techno goodness, and shaped by the same open-minded curation that has become a signature of Lens’ own sets.

“The first V/A release was in 2020 during the pandemic, and we had a whole lot of events booked for that year that all got cancelled, so the project was actually a perfect way to still give something back,” Tassi explains. “On that first release, we had the artists that were originally booked for those events, plus a few others.”

These compilations are still the backbone of EXHALE, with the series now up to its eighth instalment. Beyond offering a snapshot of the label’s sound at a given moment, they’ve become the engine behind its artist development, with artists like Italy’s Flour — who first appeared on VA004 [2023] with his techno slammer ‘Invasion’ — returning to release expanded solo projects like 2025’s ‘Visitors’ EP and 2026’s ‘Fallen Angel’ EP through EXHALE. As clubs reopened, EXHALE’s packed-out events became a testing ground for the music moving through the label pipeline, helping accelerate the rise of artists like Belgium’s NOVAH and BYØRN, French artist ARDL, and Spain’s BLONDEX from relative obscurity into the spotlight of the European techno scene.

To this day, EXHALE’s label and events exist in constant dialogue. “When I listen to demos, I always ask myself, ‘Will this work at 4AM at RSO.Berlin? At DC10 in Ibiza? In the Atmosphere tent we host at Tomorrowland?’ This is the most important thing, because it’s the line between the sounds that we sign,” Lens explains. “I’ll also question if it works for my sets, because that’s a big part of promotion. I play all the new EXHALE tracks and fans look out for them. It’s so funny as people always know which tracks are gonna be coming out soon on the label, because they will recognise it’s something unreleased that I’ve been playing a lot”.

I am not sure whether Amelia Lens will see this feature, as I think she is stepping away from social media a bit at the moment during pregnancy. I did want to spotlight her, simply because she is one of the finest D.J.s in the world. She is a pioneer and has kicked open doors for other women to follow. Beatportal spotlighted Lens in September. Here, she discussed keeping EXHALE’s sense of community, the long route to her album, AURA, and motherhood:

“Externally, Amelie Lens hasn’t changed much since our Artist of the Month interview six years ago. She has the same dead straight, deep brown hair, the same kind eyes and the same warmth. She’s just as busy – she has to jet off to Malta in a few hours – and she’s just as open, but as we talk it becomes clear that inwardly, a whole lot’s changed for Amelie since that last video call in 2020.

“In general, techno really grew,” she says. “All my shows, including EXHALE, were just growing so fast to a point where we’re scaling back the EXHALE shows while my own shows and AURA keep growing.”

Already wildly popular pre-COVID, Amelie’s brand of techno exploded once lockdown lifted. Young people, pent up from two years of lockdown, unleashed their energy on warehouse dance floors, fist-pumping to a minimum BPM of 145.

In October 2024, EXHALE and Awakenings took over Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, a 12,000 capacity arena that’s hosted Adele, Beyoncé, U2 and Madonna.

On September 5 2026, EXHALE and AURA will unite in a huge, sold-out open-air hometown show at Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts. The occasion is a special one: it’s the official launch party for Amelie’s debut album, AURA – dropping Friday, September 4 via EXHALE Records.

“My vision for this album was to show all aspects of myself,” Amelie says. “The album was definitely not made to be for the charts. I don’t want one big track taking it over. I want it to stay as one package.”

The eleven-track album merges the grand with the intimate, the cinematic with the raw. She takes her listeners back in time to when she was a fresh-faced clubber in Antwerp, neck-deep in the dance floor, besotted with the culture.

“Being in the nightclubs gave me this feeling of belonging somewhere, I felt connection and freedom I had never experienced before,” she says. "That feeling changed my life completely.”

It’s something she’s recreating with this album, taking us from tiny local clubs to gargantuan festival stages. The intro is so cinematic it could soundtrack a Christopher Nolan film. It’s followed by “our frequency”, with escalating arpeggios, hair-raising builds and ecstatic drops, best served with strobe lights and pyrotechnics. It’s an air-tight summary of Amelie’s technical and pacing abilities. She pulls back, holds, then pummels like no one else.

“4am at RSO” stands out as a love letter to Berlin nightlife and endless weekends in its subterranean warrens, hypnotised by hard, fast, industrial techno.

The only collaboration on the album comes from fellow Belgian powerhouse Angèle. Meeting at the intersection of peak-time techno and contemporary pop, “run” combines Angèle's ethereal vocals with Amelie’s driving, 4:4 textures. If one of the tracks on this album were to hit the charts, this would be it.

The album ends with “whatever you do,” another vocal-infused techno slammer, showcasing Amelie’s fun, vibrant side and ending on a high note.

If there’s one artist that can influence people, it is Amelie Lens. In the six years since we last spoke she took over an issue of Vogue Netherlands, one of very few DJs to make that crossover. She spent a year with their journalists, letting them into her home for a shoot, inviting them on tour, and curating a music-focused magazine that uplifted new artists and candidly shared the realities of being a female touring techno artist.

She was one of the first major DJs to proudly play with her baby bump on show back in 2023. And she’s been open about her miscarriages and the lack of infrastructure in dance music to support women through these kinds of devastating events.

Vogue magazine dove into these experiences. “Just being a woman in a very, very male dominated scene and going through pregnancy and miscarriages twice,” Amelie says. “I felt really lonely. Just the toilets show they really don't care about women. These horrible DIXI [outdoor, portable] toilets with no hand wash, while I was at big risk of infection. So this was very, very important for me to speak about.”

In recent years, Amelie’s become notably louder, utilising her voice and influence in dance music to highlight issues close to her heart. When allegations of sexual assault emerged against several techno artists in March 2026, she released a statement.

“We are tired,” she wrote. “The dance floor is our home and the backstage is our workplace, but neither feels safe for us.”

Amelie says that becoming a mother to a baby girl in December 2023 made her realise she needs to fight for a better world for her daughter.

“[Motherhood] really, really changed me a lot as a person,” Amelie says. “It changed my whole life, all my priorities. I become so self-aware, because I'm constantly thinking, how is my daughter gonna see me? What is my daughter gonna think? This makes me more ambitious.”

Amelie, who is now pregnant with her second daughter, says she never quite felt ready to share an album. “You cannot plan creativity,” she says. Plus, she needed those years of experience to fully live the story she wanted to tell.

It’s only now, after 12 years of touring the world, building multiple business empires and kicking down doors for women in dance music and beyond, that she’s finally ready to share her journey with the world”.

Although Amelie Lens is now stepping away from touring and focusing on her expectant daughter, when DJ Mag spoke with her recently, she was still performing. Lens wants to change how the industry views women and pregnancy. Changing attitudes. She also discussed how she has found confidence to do things her way. Lens also talked about ongoing industry sexism. This is someone who is affecting change and is a role model for so many women:

“Lens has been here before. When she was pregnant with first daughter Kiki in 2023, she toured up until two months before her due date. “I think sometimes you feel like you have to pick one or the other. But I was lucky enough to not have to,” Lens tells DJ Mag a couple of days after the show in London. She’s back home in her Antwerp studio, draped in a baggy, black ‘AURA’-branded t-shirt, and reflecting on the latest chapter in her life and career with a frankness softened by genuine warmth. “With my first pregnancy, I think many people assumed, ‘Oh, she’s going to be taking a step back’. I remember even someone I used to work with being like, ‘Maybe you’re going to want to focus more on motherhood and step away from music for a while’, and I was like, ‘What? No... Why would I do that?’

“Of course, you don’t know how you’re going to feel during pregnancy and after you give birth, but for me, I just became crazy ambitious,” she continues. “I want to be an example to my daughters and show them that they can have it all, too. I didn’t give up my dreams to have them — I took them with me. Kiki was by my side on the main stage at Tomorrowland Winter, and I was eight months pregnant with her when I played to 15,000 people at the Ziggo Dome.”

“I don’t know if there are many jobs that are totally flexible around these things, but I think ours would be the very last one because there are not even children allowed. The two worlds are so far away from each other, and I think that’s OK — but what is not OK is not even thinking about us.”

The decision to keep working was the easy part, Lens says. The harder part has been navigating an industry that isn’t designed even remotely with pregnancy or parenthood in mind. With so few high-profile examples of pregnancy in the techno scene, she found herself having to “really educate a lot of people” along the way. “Which is crazy because it’s such a normal thing. We all came from someone’s belly!

“Many people still feel like pregnant women should be on the sofa, not working,” she continues. “It’s definitely a cultural thing that I’ve experienced while touring. Some places really want to protect pregnant women and expect you to be in bed. So when they see me on stage, they’re like...” She mimes being shocked and horrified. “It is difficult to get all these opinions from everybody on your pregnancy when I’m very educated on all the decisions I am making. I think I saw six different doctors just to be sure.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniil Lavrovski

They’re basic things, but they highlight how little the scene is set up to accommodate pregnancy. “I don’t know if there are many jobs that are totally flexible around these things, but I think ours would be the very last one because there are not even children allowed,” Lens continues. “The two worlds are so far away from each other, and I think that’s OK — but what is not OK is not even thinking about us.”

From Belgium’s club circuit to the biggest stages in techno, she has spent much of her rise navigating the particular scrutiny that comes with being a woman in electronic music. “A few years ago, there weren’t that many women DJs, so we had this big almost spotlight on us...” she shares. “I was so conscious all the time about what I wore, how I acted and moved on stage, what I posted online, all of these details, and I’m pretty sure that male artists don’t really think about it, at least not to the same level.”

That scrutiny can quickly turn into something more sinister when a new artist starts to make a name for herself. “It’s great that there are so many more of us now, but I can also still see that every time someone new is coming up, she gets all the hate,” Lens continues. “I see the comments and I’m like, ‘OK, here we go again...’ You know, ‘You don’t mix yourself’, or something about her body. And then after she has ‘proven herself’,” she rolls her eyes, “it eventually eases up. And then the next one comes through, and she gets all the hate again. It’s just disgusting.

“Also the endless comparisons, I feel this is also something that is mainly being done with women. I’ve never seen a male artist come up and people saying, ‘Oh, he’s better or worse than this other artist’, or ‘Stop trying to be so and so’.

“I’m very close with many of the upcoming female artists in techno, and quite often they will call me because they know I’ve been through the same, and I always tell them, ‘It’s going to stop I promise. It’s just this period when you’re breaking through, and all the eyes are on you’.” 

“Unfortunately, I can say with 99% confidence that every woman in our scene has experienced something. It might be abuse of power, intimidation or sexual harassment, but we all have our stories."

The hostility she describes online is only one part of a much bigger problem. In recent months, a wave of allegations of sexual harassment, assault and abuse of power has emerged across the European techno scene, with women coming forward about experiences both inside and outside the workplace. Some of the allegations have prompted artists to be removed from festival and club bills, while others continue to be booked. Meanwhile, METOODJS, an independent organisation supporting victims of sexual violence in electronic music, has reportedly received hundreds of testimonies from people across the scene.

Lens has spoken publicly about the issue before. In February 2026, she shared a statement addressing the lack of safety women experience both on the dancefloor and backstage. Since then, the conversation has only grown, and so has her frustration with how little action has been taken. “Unfortunately, I can say with 99% confidence that every woman in our scene has experienced something. It might be abuse of power, intimidation or sexual harassment, but we all have our stories. And that’s really fucked up, because it’s all of us. It’s not just a small percentage. We’ve just normalised it.

“I’ve personally had several incidents with male artists backstage or in the DJ booth. And literally, I’m at work — this isn’t me partying. Even if it were, that wouldn’t be an excuse, but this is my job. I also know so many DJ colleagues who have had really horrible things happen to them — really bad things — and they spoke about it, but nobody believed them. It was a real mindfuck for me, because for all those years I thought, ‘If I ever have the courage to speak up about these artists, something is going to change’. And now I’ve realised that it doesn’t. People hide it, agents know, and now with these allegations going public everybody knows, even the fans, and nobody does anything. That’s really, really wrong”.

I am going to end things here. By the time I publish this, Lens may have given birth. I guess she is going to be spending precious time with her daughter. Though you know she will be back at festivals and dancefloors next year. A fixture of summer festivals. AURA is a terrific album. This is what DJ Mag said: “Hard techno exploded when lockdown kids were released back into the wild with a newfound thirst for maximalism. Amelie Lens soon became their poster girl, her supersized sounds the perfect antidote for lockdown ennui, and the scale of her arena shows is suitably mind-blowing. Until now, the only thing missing from her CV was a debut album — ‘AURA’ plugs the gap with the force of a supernova. While mostly hard and fast from front to back, there’s important nuance and narrative across the 11 tracks that give the album legs. Take ‘4am at RSO’, a deeper, more atmospheric ode to time the Belgian spent submerged in Berlin nightlife. ‘run (w/ Angèle)’ and ‘whatever you do’ have trance overtones and uplifting vocals that befit the infinite festivals Lens plays. ‘our frequency’ is a signature blend of everything: sultry whispers, consuming bass and explosive drops, all laced with escalating arpeggios designed to get hands in the air. She might go hard, but Lens never lacks heart”. If you have not connected with Amelie Lens and her incredible work, then you really…

NEED to so now.

__________

Follow Amelie Lens

Official:

https://linktr.ee/amelie.lens

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/amelie_lens

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/amelielensmusic

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@amelielenske

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg2JFUP67ZdKzehy8TWMUmw

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Ho1vKl1Uz8bJlk4vbmvmf?si=4JSkQU4_SZKtUPEBSlMoIA

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Britney Spears at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Britney Spears at Forty-Five

_________

THOUGH this biography…

from AllMusic might not be the most up to date when it comes to Britney Spears and her musical activity, I did want to source it. I am writing about her as she turns forty-five on 2nd December. One of the greatest and most influential Pop artists of her generation, we do hope that she will record another album one day. She has had a pretty tough past few years – and longer -, so it is understandable that she would not want to tour or record. In terms of her legacy, there are few who have as more impressive one than Britney          Spears:

“Britney Spears is the defining figure of the Y2K pop era, the artist who shaped the sound and look of pop music in the first decade of the 21st century. Like Madonna before her, Spears melded her music to her image so thoroughly, it became impossible to separate the two: the title of "...Baby One More Time," her 1999 breakthrough hit, evokes the industrial Max Martin-produced hook and Spears' schoolgirl dance routine in equal measure. "...Baby One More Time" arrived in early 1999, months after the launch of MTV's Total Request Live and just as the pop charts were shaking off post-alternative doldrums in preparation for millennial bacchanalia that was just around the corner. Spears provided the soundtrack for that era as she moved from fizzy bubblegum like "(You Drive Me) Crazy" to the slinkier, sexier funk of "I'm a Slave 4 U." Hits were certainly central to Spears' appeal but she didn't reach the Billboard Top Ten with the same regularity as her fellow Mickey Mouse Club veterans Justin Timberlake, who fronted the boy band *NSYNC, and Christina Aguilera. Spears' stardom transcended the confines of the charts and even film, television, and the tabloids. Her cultural omnipresence in the 2000s elevated her to iconic status, turning her into the embodiment of all of that decade's glorious excesses. Spears' presence as a pop idol endured even after her personal problems led to her being placed in a conservatorship in 2008. In the years that followed, she continued to work, appearing as a judge on The X Factor, releasing singles that brought her back to the top of the charts and settling into a series of Las Vegas residencies.

Britney Jean Spears was born December 2, 1981, in the small town of Kentwood, Louisiana, and began singing and dancing at a young age. With a nationally televised appearance on Star Search already under her belt, Spears auditioned for the Disney Channel's The New Mickey Mouse Club at age eight. The producers turned her down as she was too young, but one of them took an interest and introduced her to an agent in New York. Spears spent the next three years studying at the Professional Performing Arts School, and also appeared in several television commercials and off-Broadway plays. At 11, she returned to The New Mickey Mouse Club for a second audition, and this time made the cut. Although her fellow Mouseketeers included an impressive array of future stars -- *NSYNC's Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, Christina Aguilera, and Felicity actress Keri Russell -- the show was canceled after Spears' second season. She returned to New York at age 15 and set about auditioning for pop bands and recording demo tapes, one of which eventually landed her a deal with Jive Records.

Spears entered the studio with top writer/producers like Eric Foster White (Boyzone, Whitney Houston, Backstreet Boys) and Max Martin (Ace of Base, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC). In late 1998, Jive released her debut single, the Martin-penned "...Baby One More Time." Powered by its video, in which Spears and a troupe of dancers were dressed as Catholic school jailbait, the single shot to the top of the Billboard charts. When Spears' debut album of the same title was released in early 1999, it entered the charts at number one and stayed there for six weeks. Once the ubiquitous lead single died down, the album kept spinning off hits: the Top Ten "(You Drive Me) Crazy," the near-Top 20 ballad "Sometimes," and the Top 20 "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart." By the end of 1999, ...Baby One More Time had sold ten million copies and went on to sell a good three-plus-million more on top of that. Its success touched off a wave of young pop divas who included Christina Aguilera, P!nk, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. Spears was a superstar.

By the time ...Baby One More Time finally started to lose steam on the singles and album charts, Spears was ready to release her follow-up. Oops!...I Did It Again appeared in the spring of 2000, and the title track was an instant smash, racing into the Top Ten. The album itself entered the charts at number one and sold over a million copies in its first week of release, setting a new record for single-week sales by a female artist. Follow-up singles included "Lucky," the gold-selling "Stronger," and "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know," which was co-written by country diva Shania Twain and her producer Mutt Lange. A year after its release, Oops!...I Did It Again had sold over nine million copies. Rumors that Spears was dating *NSYNC heartthrob (and fellow ex-Mouseketeer) Justin Timberlake were eventually confirmed, which only added to the media attention lavished upon her.

For her next album, Spears looked ahead to a not-so-distant future when both she and much of her audience would be growing up. Released in late 2001, Britney tried to present the singer as a more mature young woman, and was accompanied by mild hints that her personal life wasn't always completely puritanical. It became her third straight album to debut at number one, although this time around the singles weren't as successful; "I'm a Slave 4 U," "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," and "Overprotected" all missed the Top Ten. In early 2002, Spears' feature-film debut, Crossroads, hit theaters, but its commercial performance was somewhat disappointing; moreover, her romance with Timberlake fizzled out not long after. Spears next made a cameo appearance in Mike Myers' Austin Powers: Goldmember, and contributed a remix of "Boys" to the soundtrack. Meanwhile, sales of Britney stalled at four million copies, perhaps in part because a new breed of teenage female singer/songwriters, like Michelle Branch and Avril Lavigne, was emerging as an alternative to the highly packaged teen queens. Spears took a break from recording and performing for several months, and began work on a new album in early 2003. The results, In the Zone, reflected a wish to be taken seriously as a mature (though still highly sexualized) adult. Predictably, it topped the charts and launched several singles into orbit, including the musically adventurous "Toxic," "Everytime," and "Me Against the Music."

In the Zone hit number one on the Billboard 200, and "Toxic" snagged a Grammy for Best Dance Recording, but in 2004 Britney's personal life started to hit the tabloids on a regular basis. She had a brief two-day marriage to childhood friend Jason Alexander, followed by the controversial Onyx Hotel tour, which was eventually canceled despite positive financial numbers. Soon, Britney revealed her relationship with her former backup dancer Kevin Federline. Spears and Federline married in September and were tabloid regulars in the months after the ceremony; some of this relationship was documented in Chaotic, a UPN reality show consisting mostly of their own home videos.

The year 2005 was no less eventful for Spears. She released Greatest Hits: My Prerogative that January, but it was the announcement of her pregnancy that really garnered the headlines. Her son Sean was born in September, and a bidding war ensued for first rights to the baby photos. As the hubbub surrounding Sean's birth continued, Britney released a remix album just in time for the holiday season. In 2006, Spears discovered she was pregnant again; shortly after the birth of her second son, Jayden, she divorced Federline. Following another headline-grabbing incident in early 2007 (in which Spears spontaneously shaved her head at a salon in Tarzana, California, much to the delight of nearby photographers), Spears sought help at Malibu's Promises Treatment Center. After leaving the facility, she began working on her comeback album and performed a few small shows at House of Blues locations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Anaheim, and Las Vegas that May. Despite ongoing turmoil in her life that summer and fall, Blackout arrived in October 2007. It proved to be her least successful album to date, charting three Top 40 hits but failing to achieve platinum certification within its first year of release.

Spears was dealt more blows in early 2008 when she lost custody of her children, made several court appearances, and was placed on involuntary psychiatric hold twice in one month. Blackout nevertheless won several MTV-sponsored awards, including Album of the Year from the Europe Music Awards in November 2008. That same fall, "Womanizer," the lead-off single from Spears' next record, became her first number one single in nearly a decade. The full-length Circus arrived in December, featuring a mix of syrupy ballads and uptempo dance numbers that were designed to fuel Spears' comeback. In 2009, the single "3" followed "Womanizer" to the top, and appeared on her career-spanning compilation The Singles Collection. In 2011, Spears returned with the studio album Femme Fatale, featuring the single "Hold It Against Me," which became her fourth single to top the Billboard Hot 100. The second single, the Ke$ha co-written "'Til the World Ends," didn't top the charts but it was a bigger hit, going double platinum in the U.S.

Britney supported Femme Fatale with an international tour that ran until the end of 2011; at the end of the year, the home video Live: The Femme Fatale Tour was released. Spears made a splashy return to television in 2012 when she signed to be one of the celebrity judges on the second season of the U.S. version of Simon Cowell's The X Factor. The show returned in the fall of 2012. Spears did not return to the show for its third season. Also in 2012, Britney appeared on will.i.am's track "Scream and Shout." This was the beginning of a greater partnership, as will.i.am wound up as the executive producer for her eighth studio album, Britney Jean. Preceded by the single "Work Bitch" -- along with a Britney cameo on Miley Cyrus' 2013 album Bangerz and the announcement of a two-year residency in Las Vegas -- Britney Jean appeared during the first week of December 2013. Although Britney Jean debuted in the Top Five on the Billboard 200, it would be her lowest-performing album to date. In the following years, she continued her Vegas residency and contributed to a pair of new tracks: "Pretty Girls" with Iggy Azalea and a cover of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" for Giorgio Moroder.

Spears released "Make Me," a midtempo track featuring rapper G-Eazy, in July 2016, with the full-length Glory appearing a month later. Glory peaked at three in the U.S., two in the U.K., and wound up generating only one other charting single, "Slumber Party," which peaked at 86. Spears supported Glory by taking her Vegas show on the road in 2017. Her Britney: Piece of Me production wrapped in Las Vegas at the end of 2017 and there were plans for another residency called Britney: Domination for February 2019, but it was canceled after her father suffered serious health problems. Spears entered an "indefinite work hiatus" that lasted into 2021, a period punctuated by a deluxe version of Glory in 2020”.

As one of the giants of music celebrates her forty-fifth birthday on 2nd December. To mark that, I have collated a mixtape with the essential Britney Spears songs. There are some deeper cuts too. Let’s hope that the future is settled for Spears. Recently, a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of her album, Britney, was released with some bonus tracks. This is a musical salute to one of the best artists…

WHO has ever lived.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Warm and Soothing (B-Side of December Will Be Magic Again)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979

Warm and Soothing (B-Side of December Will Be Magic Again)

_________

THIS is a Kate Bush track…

IN THIS PHOTO: Abbey Road Studio 2/PHOTO CREDIT: tagvenue

I am highlighting for a couple of reasons. It was the B-side of Bush’s 1980 Christmas single, December Will Be Magic Again. Recorded in 1979 at Abbey Road Studios, as we are nearing Christmas, it made me think of the B-side of December Will Be Magic Again: the wonderful and undervalued Warm and Soothing. Also, Abbey Road Studios celebrated its ninety-fifth birthday on 12th November. Kate Bush recorded and worked out of the studios a lot through her career. She may well still use the studios. Warm and Soothing is significant, as it was the first song that she recorded and worked on there. It did feature on the 2019 compilation from Kate Bush, The Other Sides, though that album is not available on streaming services. Whilst she may have dismissed it as a demo-quality off-cut or something that was basically laid down to test the equipment and space, it has grown in relevance and stature since 1979. I want to come to a recent article from Spectrum Culture. I have been keeping abreast of their rundown of every Kate Bush song. They were highlighting some of the songs a bit lower down the list. Not Bush’s least essential songs, but not ones that are her very best. Warm and Soothing given a rare nod. Before that, here is what Bush said about Warm and Soothing when speaking with Peter Swales in 1985: “’Warm And Soothing’ was a demo-tape which we did basically just to see what Abbey Road sounded like. We wanted to work there, and we went into Studio Two, and really the only way we could tell if it was going to sound good was if I went and did a piano vocal. So I did, and it sounded great”. Reading the lyrics, and you get this sense of it being an old Jazz number. Sung in a smoky or seductive way. A song maybe someone like Nina Simone or Billie Holiday could have performed. I think Bush’s mention of the word ‘great’ refers to the sound and acoustics of Abbey Road Studio 2 rather than Warm and Soothing. However, there is so much to explore with this song.

Amazing to think that this song was recorded more or less right alongside December Will Be Magic Again. The songs are so different. I love the images Kate Bush paints on Warm and Soothing: “Abrupt, too moody/You making our party list/I remember sulking/On the sofa/For most of the winter/We were strangers”. How the song turns into this idea of being old and trapped in a relationship. Not that warm or soothing. Though it begins with memories of home and childhood that does the title justice: “Warm and soothing/That’s how I remember home/Walking into arms/Through the back door/Hearing voices I know well/And long for”. I was pleased that Spectrum Culture recently looked at Warm and Soothing. Declaring it 112 when ranking Bush’s songs, this is what they said:

“There’s not much to “Warm and Soothing,” a spare piano ballad and demo-dweller that Bush supposedly set to tape in order to test out the room sound of Abbey Road, where she was recording her third album, Never for Ever. Just Bush and a piano, it begins with a piercing two-note alternation on the high keys and Bush indulging in some basic nostalgia: “Warm and soothing/ That’s how I remember home.” It would seem to pair naturally with its A-side, the likewise ambiguously wholesome “December Will Be Magic Again,” with visions of an idyllic childhood refuge just a-poppin’ up in the singer’s memory. But the harmonies and melody never settle into the simple joys that Bush describes, instead slipping between keening clarity and cloudy, minor-key complications. So it’s no surprise when the lyrics alter course as well, with Bush moving from the comfort of the past to a present that’s decidedly less reassuring and unquestionably more despondent: “Cold and boozy/ Our holiday in the Alps/ Sitting in the lobby, mostly smoking/ choking in the woozy afternoon.” Bush then lurches from forlorn piano ballad to cocky drinking anthem in the chorus, declaring “I’m reeling in the music/ But I’ve only had a few” in a savory purr. While a full-album version might have leaned too hard into the cabaret element, this stripped-down, off-the-cuff presentation suits the song’s gentle whiplash perfectly—it’s a shame that the next line, “I’m afraid at the way we grow old,” feels like stock filler, as does the turn to dramatic Elton John-style phrasing. Still, for what is essentially a tossed-off test run, “Warm and Soothing” has a tense electricity that points both to Bush’s natural musical gifts and her growing command of craft. – Reed Jackson”.

I would have actually loved to have seen Warm and Soothing appear on an album. I guess it would have been out of place on 1980’s Never for Ever. Yet, it would have emboldened her sound and would have been an intriguing listen. The song that we do hear is pretty amazing. Even if it was seen as nothing more than a way to see what Abbey Road Studio 2 sounded like, I do feel that we need to shine more light on it. As Abbey Road Studios turned ninety-five, it made me think of Bush’s first moment there. Well, the first time she laid down a song there. It was a big moment for her. If Warm and Soothing is a curio that has not had much life beyond its B-side status, I do think it is an interesting comparison to her Christmas single. This is what Dreams of Orgonon wrote in 2019: “The trite-and-true model of Bush playing her piano without a backing band or further instrumentation was a solid testing ground for recording at Abbey Road. Bush sounds at ease singing a fairly standard song of hers about the warmth of her old home vanishing into past as she returns to it, poor memories returning and getting buried under unpleasant new ones. “And I’m afraid by the way we grow old, darling,” says Bush. The further away she gets from her childhood in East Wickham, the most anxious her music gets. As the world moves forward, so does she. Nostalgia is a poison, but sometimes a revelatory one”. Similar to December Will Be Magic Again, you can hear the song on YouTube, though it would be great to see it on streaming services. Warm and Soothing might be seen as disposable or average. Yet I feel that it is very important and has its place. I am not sure if it has ever been played on the radio. We definitely need to…

HEAR it more often.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: The Divine and Beautiful A Coral Room

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005 in a promotional photo for Aerial/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

The Divine and Beautiful A Coral Room

_________

I have written about…

this song from Aerial before. Kate Bush’s 2005 double album, I am compelled to revisit the track as I have been reading Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. It is a perfect Christmas gift for the Kate Bush fan in your life. There is a section on A Coral Room, so it gives me an excuse to write about it once more. People do discuss Aerial, though it is one of those albums that is not as exposed and investigated as others from Kate Bush. If we think of Aerial being this epic and sweeping album with lots of layers and all these musicians coming together, there are moments that are quite sparse or more stripped. I think Hounds of Love has more in the way of consistent layers. Not too many songs that are bare. I guess And Dream of Sheep and Mother Stands for Comfort, though this is an album where most of the songs have a lot of detail and are cinematic. Aerial is cinematic too, yet there are these songs that are perhaps less busy or dense as some on Hounds of Love. Mrs. Bartolozzi is Bush at the piano. It does feel like a live recording in a way. Although Michael Wood provides a solo vocal on A Coral Room, for the most part, it is Kate Bush and the piano. I love how we have songs like this that sit alongside these fuller epics such as Aerial, Nocturn, or even How to Be Invisible. The more I think of Aerial, the more I notice how it is this album that is huge and expansive, and yet quite a few songs are impactful and huge because of the power of the vocal and piano, rather than there being a lot of instrumental elements. Such is the case with A Coral Room. Tom Doyle writes in his book how some of Bush’s greatest recordings were completed in a single take. Wuthering Heights – her 1978 debut single – among them. A Coral Room is another. Before moving on, I am turning to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and interview archive where Kate Bush talked about A Coral Room:

“There was a little brown jug actually, yeah. The song is really about the passing of time. I like the idea of coming from this big expansive, outside world of sea and cities into, again, this very small space where, er, it’s talking about a memory of my mother and this little brown jug. I always remember hearing years ago this thing about a sort of Zen approach to life, where, you would hold something in your hand, knowing that, at some point, it would break, it would no longer be there.

Front Row, BBC4, 4 November 2005”.

As Tom Doyle notes, A Coral Room was a track Bush almost didn’t release and include on Aerial, as she felt it too personal. Those without intimate knowledge of Aerial will not necessarily understand the significance of A Coral Room. So little written about this song. Even if there are bigger ideas and non-personal themes explores, Bush’s late mother is at the heart. Hannah Bush died in 1992. Even so, over a decade after her death, Kate Bush very much had her in her heart. I think Aerial signalled a return to how Bush used to work early in her career. Rather than build tracks from beats and keyboards and sort of layering as she goes, a lot of Aerial was Bush working alone at the piano. I think Aerial is very much one of Bush’s most intimate and personal albums. I have said before how family past and present are featured through Aerial. Bush’s then-young son Bertie the focus of more than one song. You do get a sense of the past affecting some of the musical moments. In the same way Bush sung about her mother on The Red Shoes’ Moments of Pleasure, at a time when she was ill and would not live too much longer, on A Coral Room, there is this sense of immersing herself in her childhood home. I have stood outside of East Wickham Farm more than once. Where Bush lived as a child. A Coral Room seems to place itself back there, maybe in the 1960s, when Kate Bush was very young. She would have been referred to as Cathy or Catherine then. I can understand why Bush was a little hesitant about putting A Coral Room out into the world. Warm and Soothing, as Doyle writes, is another song that is set at East Wickham Farm. That is the B-side of her 1980 Christmas single, December Will Be Magic Again. Unintentionally, as Bush told Doyle when he interviewed her in 2005, featuring similar scenes in both songs was by accident. A Coral Room’s larger theme and vision is about a cataclysmic event. A submerged city. A vision of the world centuries on. It makes me think of the cover of Donald Fagen’s 2012 album, Sunken Condos. Submerged houses. Kate Bush is a fan of Steely Dan, Fagen’s band, so maybe that is why I connect the two.

Tom Doyle writes how A Coral Room is a sequel to Moments of Pleasure. That song is lush and orchestral. It is this stirring and grand song that remembers a lot of Bush’s friends and collaborators no longer with us. It is a sad and beautiful song. That idea of yearning for those gone. The spirits and images of these people are with her in spirit, yet they have passed. Bush loved the idea in A Coral Room of someone being in a boat and putting their hand into the water and being able to touch the top of a city. Maybe a nightmarish vision of the climate crisis and what could be. Not that Bush cited a particular book, though several have written about sunken civilisations and cities. H.P. Lovecraft’s 1936 book, The Shadow over Innsmouth, is a Horror novella about a decaying Massachusetts seaport connected to a hybrid fish-humanoid cult and a submerged or amphibious deep-sea mythos. Also, in Moments of Pleasure, the video (directed by Kate Bush) ends with her twirling whilst there is a blizzard. These figures she sings about twirling but barely visible. Being buried and obscured by weather. If there is the drama and heaviness of snow separating Bush from these departed loved ones in Moments of Pleasure, the stillness and drama of floods and masses of water can be found of A Coral Room. I am also fascinated in how Hannah Bush speaks or has a part in both songs. Kate Bush sings “And I can hear my mother saying/"Every old sock meets an old shoe". Bush wrote this song when her mother was still alive. She said that lyrics to her and she found it hilarious. Hannah Bush represented by Kate Bush and Michael Wood reciting the drinking ditty, Little Brown Jug. Written in 1869 by Joseph Eastburn Winner. A song about alcoholism, as Tom Doyle observes, becoming something more childlike. A song that may well have featured in the Bush household. The jug that was in her mother’s hand falls in slow-motion and shatters.

It is a heartbreaking scene and one that Bush sees ion Zen-like terms. She likened it to the Zen idea of broken glass. At some point everything breaks. It is the inevitability of life. Nothing can remain unbroken and in its original state. Even humans. We all die at some point. The little spider that crawls out of the broken jug is this spider of time. Maybe it crawled into the jug when it was in the Bush household and then left. Forward a bit and to the broken jug, the spider returns and crawls out. The years go by and the house is submerged and overrun by coral. This idea of not being able to live in the past. Even though these moments remain in the memory, their actual physical form is gone. Replaced and sunken. The spiritual side of Kate Bush. Appreciating what you have now as it will be gone one day. It would have been great to see a video for this song. An animated video that would have been beautiful. I do love the connection between this Aerial song and Moments of Pleasure. Tom Doyle wrote how this spider is like the spider of time. It connects the past and present. This spider moving through time and keeps on moving as this house and childhood memories is replaced by ocean and coral. In Moments of Pleasure, we have this thought: “Every old sock meets an old shoe/Here come the Hills of Time”. The Spider of Time and the Hills of Time. A Coral Room is about a city submerged. In Moments of Pleasure, a huge U.S. city is blanketed in snow: “The buildings of New York/Look just like mountains through the snow”. Bush in the 1990s thinking of her ailing mother and those in her life who are gone. “And these moments given/Are a gift from time/Just let us try/To give these moments back”. A Coral Room sees Bush with her new son. I have sourced this when article from The Guardian before. In 2023, Darren Hayes (Savage Garden) explained why A Coral Room is perfect and provided a roadmap for his own life: “It just speaks to me about how precious time is, and how precious the tiny moments are that we have with each other. I think so much about my own mother who I’m very close to – she lives in Brisbane and I live in Los Angeles – and I see my own life in A Coral Room’s cinematic vignettes. A Coral Room is one of many songs on Aerial where Kate really looks at motherhood – both her relationship to her own mother and her experience of having her child, Bertie, and how that changed her. It profoundly touches me”. Reading back through Tom Doyle’s wonderful Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. His take on A Coral Room and what Bush said about it when he interviewed her around the release of Aerial in 2005. That connection with a 1993 song. Both tracks feature Bush’s mother. In different situations and with different perspectives, it is right that A Coral Room is the sequel to Moments of Pleasure. A fascinating thought that shines a light on a pearl from Aerial. An evocative and cinematic vision of sunken cities and the tenderness and intimacy of a little brown jug and the Bush household. A typical work of genius from…

THE staggering Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Life in the Fast Lane: Eagles' Hotel California at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Life in the Fast Lane

Eagles' Hotel California at Fifty

_________

THERE are not many…

classic albums that were released in December. Artists tend not to release in December, as things are winding up and attention turns to Christmas. It is a bit of a risk of being overlooked by people not really thinking about new albums and the proliferation of Christmas music. However, there is a notable exception. On 8th December, 1976, Eagles released Hotel California. It is one of the best-selling albums ever. It has been certified 28× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the U.S. From 13th November to 23rd January, the band are playing at Sphere in Las Vegas. I do wonder if they are playing tracks from Hotel California? I wanted to mark fifty years of this world-conquering album. The title track, which opens the album, has been streamed more than two billion times. I know it may be a bit late, but it would have been great for a few new videos to be commissioned to mark fifty years of Hotel California. Whether animated or live action, Hotel California, Life in the Fast Lane, and New Kid in  Town getting these great videos. There will be features about the album closer to the anniversary. I wanted to sort of get in there early, as it will be exciting to see how Hotel California’s fiftieth anniversary is marked. Because there was a fortieth anniversary reissue of Hotel California, I am not sure if anything will be done for the fiftieth. I am writing this on 7th November, and there has not been anything announced. Some people wrote features earlier in the year. Marking fifty years a bit prematurely. A new book by Sean Egan explores aspects of the recording, and the album’s legacy. How there was conflict and divisions within the band at the time. One of those classic albums that was made during a bad time. Like Fleetwood Mac and Rumours – which turns fifty next year -, you do wonder how Eagles made a masterpiece when they were not in harmony and completely happy! I guess The Beatles did it too. Not that drama and tension defines Hotel California. If anything, you get this impression of a band at ease and at a creative peak.

For such a huge and historic album, there is precious little written about it. In terms of extensive features that analyses the recording and legacy, there is really not as much as there should be. Perhaps will get something like that soon. Such a phenomenal and huge-selling album should get more words written about it. I did want to come to Ultimate Classic Rock and a feature they published in 2016 to mark forty years of Hotel California:

“Hotel California, the Eagles' layered and frank meditation on the price of fame, is a reflection of where they were in life in the mid-'70s. The band was beset by the trappings of celebrity, wrestling with personal issues, moving toward a harder-edged sound, slowly falling apart – and all of that can be found deep in the grooves of their best album.

They got there by looking with steely focus into “the darker side of paradise – sort of what we were experiencing in Los Angeles at that time," the late Glenn Frey once said. There were powerful forces at play, including – but not limited to – stardom, cocaine, egos, love lives and a small fortune.

All of it went into Hotel California, which produced two consecutive No. 1 singles in the Frey-sung "New Kid in Town" and the title track. "Life in the Fast Lane," which drew the most direct line from their current excesses to their newly formed art, also reached the Top 20.

“We were getting an extensive education – in life, in love, in business," Don Henley said in 2004's To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles. "Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us. In that sense it became something of a symbol, and the ‘Hotel’ the locus of all that L.A. had come to mean for us. In a sentence, I’d sum it up as the end of the innocence, round one.”

Meanwhile, their sound was in a state of flux. Joe Walsh's recent arrival forever shifted the Eagles away from the rootsier influences of their early years with multi-instrumentalist Bernie Leadon – and that started here.

"One reason Leadon didn’t last in the band was that he was so contrary," Henley later remembered. "Success freaked him out a little; he was always worried about our success, about coming from a ‘pure’ bluegrass background and making it in rock ’n’ roll. He thought we were selling out from the very beginning. To me, the point was to reach as many people as possible."

Things were no more settled at home. Henley, for one, was involved in an emotionally draining relationship that emerged as a topic in both Hotel California's title track and "Wasted Time." But they were such a gifted group, with each member working at a creative peak, that the pieces somehow fell into place anyway.

"What we did in that band, it was a very unusual circumstance to have five guys and each one brought such an abundance of talent," guitarist Don Felder said in 2012. "Everybody in that band would write, sing and play. Anyone in the Eagles could, and did, front their own band. So, it was unusual to have so much talent in one band. We took everyone’s strongest suit, in order to make the best records we could."

That concept is best understood through the prism of "Hotel California," which began as a Felder demo before being completed by Henley and Frey – and then improved upon through a striking group performance that concludes with extended guitar interplay between Felder and Walsh.

Released on Dec. 8, 1976, Hotel California quickly shot to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and was reportedly selling 500,000 copies a week at one point. More than 14 million copies later, it's one of the Top 10 best-selling albums of all time – a testament to how timelessly relatable it remains.

"People tend to think the album is about California,” Henley later noted. “But I think it was about the dark underbelly of American culture at large.” Particularly, there seems to be just as much reporting on Hotel California – real truth-telling about the band members' personal foibles – as there was narrative myth-making, and that gives the album continuing resonance”.

“You can’t argue with success. And when it comes to popular American albums, Hotel California –with two #1 Billboard hit singles and 32 million (and counting) in worldwide sales — certainly qualifies. So it’s no surprise that this is the first Eagles album to receive the deluxe reissue treatment, just in time for Christmas shopping, circa 2017, more or less its 40th anniversary (it was first released October, 1976).

Hotel California arrived, seventeen months after One of These Nights, with a substantial personnel change: the substitution of Bernie Leaden who, as a former member of the Flying Burrito Brothers, had lent the Eagles authenticity and a connection to the country world. Filling that slot was hard rocker Joe Walsh (on guitar and keyboards), initially an unusual choice, but one that history has shown to be wise, especially for the tougher, more arena rock oriented sound the band was aiming for.

Little more needs to be written about the music, although it’s worth noting that for all of its lyrical exploration of excess in the Golden State, neither of the Eagles’ primary songwriters Don Henley or Glenn Frey, was born or raised in California. Regardless, with songs such as the thrill ride slide guitar rocking of “Life in the Fast Lane,” the bittersweet, string enhanced, cinematic ballads “Wasted Time” and double entendre titled closer “The Last Resort,” along with the incisive, reggae/Spanish-styled title track, the songwriting team along with help from others in their orbit such as J.D. Souther, nailed the dark underbelly of fleeting success with memorable melodies and committed performances. Even Randy Meisner’s yearning “Try and Love Again” and Walsh’s poignant “Pretty Maids All In a Row,” both composed without either Frey or Henley, slot nicely into the general concept. Producer Bill Szymczyk’s input isn’t often credited, but he effectively captured the organic nature of the music while providing the scope and heft that shifted the Eagles from a popular roots rock act to a worldwide household name.

Assuming everyone who wants the original set already owns it since its release four decades ago, this reissue needs to up the ante. It boasts remastered sound both in stereo and 5.1 (the surround mix is apparently unchanged from its initial 2001 appearance), ten live tunes culled from three October 1976 dates oddly before the record was released (only including two of its selections), and some extraneous swag with rare pictures, poster and a replica tour book. That’s in hopes of justifying the wallet wincing $99.98 list price (slimmer single and double packages are also available for the budget conscious). The most frustrating aspect of the expanded edition is the abbreviated 50 minute live set since there is audio of the same tour floating around with at least an hour of additional music. Fans hoping to hear demos or early versions of the songs, a natural inclusion for a pricy edition of this type, will also come away empty handed”.

I will end with a review of Hotel California. There is this interview from 1976, where Don Henley and Glen Frey talked about Joe Walsh joining Eagles. They also discussed their soon-to-be-released masterpiece, Hotel California. It is well worth a read. I did want to come to this feature, that takes us inside the timeless songs from Hotel California. I have chosen the three biggest/most popular tracks, but I would advise people to have a read of the whole thing:

“By late 1976, the American Dream was beginning to fray at the seams, and the Eagles were on hand to document the dishevelment. Having established themselves with four albums of breezy country-rock, Don Henley, Glenn Frey and co. exchanged Laurel Canyon vibes for a sound that was darker, sleeker, and infinitely more cynical.

The result was Hotel California, a lavishly produced monument to 1970s decadence, paranoia, and the ugly side of fame. With new recruit Joe Walsh's guitar giving the band a sharper edge, it remains a masterpiece of stadium-sized storytelling. Here's our track-by-track breakdown.

Take evocative lines stuffed full of images (‘mirrors on the ceiling’, ‘the Mercedes bends’); a ‘Mexican reggae’ rhythm, the immortal Bm-F#-A-E-D-G-Em-F# chord sequence, the guitar duel to end all guitar duels, and a glimpse inside a place where you are trapped eternally, and you have history in the making.

Asked what it’s actually about, Henley mused: “[These are] the same themes that run through all of our work: loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream, idealism realised and idealism thwarted, illusion versus reality, the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work, trying to square the conflicting relationship between business and art; the corruption in politics, the fading away of the sixties dream of ‘peace, love and understanding’.”

Pretty much what you thought, right?

New Kid In Town

After the epic dimensions of Hotel California and its six-plus minutes of decayed magnificence, some downtime is required, and New Kid In Town is that. As mellow as Peaceful Easy Feeling and as warm as Tequila Sunrise, it takes your pulse down to manageable levels.

A JD Souther co-write, this track was released as this album’s first single and topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The public had been yearning for one of their heroes’ mellower hits for some time, and with New Kid In Town they got one, no matter what its theme was. It’s still a precision-engineered song of great beauty.

Life In The Fast Lane

Supposedly based on something Frey said to his drug dealer while powering along the freeway in a highly tuned car, Life In The Fast Lane represents the other side of the Eagles – the take-no-prisoners buccaneers of rock’n’roll who lived life at a frenetic pace. The finger-twisting guitar riff that Walsh busts out at the beginning says it all.

As Henley remembered: “I said: ‘What in the hell is that? We’ve got to figure out some way to make a song out of that!’ But we really couldn’t sing over that riff, so Glenn came up with the idea of what is a traditional blues or R&B staple – the ‘one chord’ song.”

That makes the song sound simple, but it’s actually far from simple. The Henley/Meisner rhythm section delivered a slinky performance here. As Henley noted succinctly: “It was a real bitch for me to learn how to do that syncopated bass-drum part and sing the melody at the same time”.

In July, Classic Rock published this feature. Don Henley and producer Bill Szymczyk revisit the making of the Eagles' most successful album. It is an illuminating feature. I know that there will be a lot of younger music fans who may not know Eagles and Hotel California. What an important album it is. I heard it when I was a child, but I am still amazed every time I listen. A truly timeless album that will never fade in terms of its brilliance and importance. I am not sourcing the whole article. I am picking it up here:

“Meanwhile, in the world outside the studio, the United States was basking in its bicentennial. On the surface, the country’s 200th birthday was all stars and stripes, but that was tainted by a Watergate hangover and relentless dark stories in the news.

“The ‘peace and love’ idealism of the sixties had faded by the beginning of the decade,” Henley says. “The so-called counterculture, due in part to its own excesses, had disintegrated. The US was trying hard to focus on the bicentennial, but the Cold War continued, and the Boomer generation had slowly realised that the same corporate forces that had always been in charge were still, in fact, in charge, and there was an air of capitulation. There were now the realities of jobs and families to consider. Gone was the dream of a new kind of America; gone was the appetite for rebellion. ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.’”

One of Hotel California’s standout tracks was about appetite with a capital ‘A’. Both a celebration and a critique of LA’s decadence and the band’s own excesses, Life In The Fast Lane could have been subtitled ‘Nervous, Edgy Feeling’.

“There are a great many of our songs that could be retitled ‘Note To Self’,” Henley says. “Excess – too much of a bad or good thing – was a subject we examined, both from a personal perspective and an American cultural standpoint.”

The song’s classic riff began as what Walsh called his “co-ordination drill”. “I had this lick that I played that I would warm up for a show with,” he told Paul Shaffer on Plus One. “It’s an exercise between your right and left hand, faster and faster. I was playing, warming up for the show, and Glenn comes busting in my dressing room and says: ‘What the hell’s that?’ ‘I don’t know, it’s just this lick I warm up with.’ He said: ‘No, that’s an Eagles song, dude!’”

On In the Studio With Redbeard, Frey said the title came one day after a crazy car ride with a drug dealer nicknamed The Count. Driving at 90mph, Frey asked the dealer to slow down, and the answer came: “It’s life in the fast lane”! With that title, he and Henley wrote the lyrics and melody together.

“We knew it was going to be the most rock’n’roll thing the Eagles had attempted so far,” Walsh said. “They turned me loose on that one.”

And what guitar was he using?

“That’s a Strat,” Walsh told Total Guitar. “And the amplifier was probably this little orange Roland Cube I was using a lot back then. I found it to be a pretty darn good little amp for recording with a Strat, by turning it up pretty good to make it work.”

The killer riff doubled with guitar and bass, cliff-hanging power chords, and trademark four-part vocal harmonies on the chorus. This was a classic Eagles record, yet one that sounded like nothing they’d ever done before. And as sonic icing, Szymczyk employed a Jimi Hendrix trick – the “Electric Ladyland two-track flange technique” – to add a whooshing sound to the song’s offramp exit.

“When I suggested phasing at the end of the song, Henley and Frey were sceptical,” he says. They thought it might sound too much like the Small Faces’ Itchycoo Park – which Szymczyk says was the inspiration. “I just wanted listeners to feel the rush of the wind in their hair!”

An ocean breeze was in Don Felder’s hair on the afternoon he got the idea that would become the title song of Hotel California. In his Malibu beach house, noodling on a 12-string Martin acoustic guitar, he hit on a Spanish-sounding chord progression. He put it down on a reel-to-reel four-track, then layered on syncopated electric guitars and a samba beat from a drum machine. He sent it to Henley and Frey on a cassette with another dozen snippets. They liked what they called “the matador in Mexico” vibe of it, and experimented with lyrical and melody ideas.

Henley took the cassette in the car, which was his favourite place to write. “I think it has something to do with movement and a constantly changing view,” he says. “Just sitting in a room and trying to find inspiration can be stifling. It’s a static situation. Driving, if you’re not in heavy traffic, creates a feeling of flow that can free the imagination and call up memories and images while the music’s playing.”

After a week or two, the song took shape.

“The hotel concept came first, and then the melody,” Henley says. “Some time in May of ’76, Glenn and I had gone to see Neil Simon’s play California Suite in Los Angeles. But that was after we had come up with the hotel concept. Seeing the play was a ‘field research’ trip, just to see if it would help us to flesh out our initial idea. But it wasn’t very helpful; [it wasn’t] dark and spooky enough for what we were after.”

Or maybe the title influenced them, because their spooky inn became the Hotel California, and in turn a metaphor for everything from the mythmaking of the American Dream to an artist’s search for the muse and spiritual meaning.

The recording of the song required some searching, too.

“We cut the track several times, first at Criteria Studios, shortly after Felder had given me the demo,” Henley recalls. “The Miami recording was a rough arrangement with the working title ‘Mexican Reggae’. The second time we cut it was at the Record Plant in LA, after Glenn and I had come up with some ideas for lyrics and melody, but that recording turned out to be in the wrong key, at least for singing.

"There was often a schism between what key was best for the guitars and what key was best for the lead vocal. At the end of the day, though, the vocal has to take precedence. There are workarounds on the guitar – tunings, capos, etc – but you can’t capo a voice. Or at least you couldn’t then. So we ended up cutting the final track in Miami in the key of B minor with the choruses going to G major.”

Szymczyk recalls that the final version of the track consisted of “thirty-three separate tape edits from five different takes”.

Apart from being the album’s thematic centrepiece and the Eagles’ best song, it also rode out on one of rock’s most iconic guitar duels, with Felder and Walsh trading sizzle and sting, one-upping each other, then finally merging in triumphant two-part harmony.

“We worked really well together,” Walsh told Guitar World in 2012. “It was competitive. We brought out the best in each other. We liked to kick each other in the butt! He would play something, and I’d get an attitude, like: ‘Oh yeah? Listen to this.’ And he’d go: ‘Wow. Listen to this!’”

“For two days, we wood-shopped the hell out of that,” Szymczyk says. “We had amps out in the studio, but Felder and Walsh were in the control room with me, one to the right, one to the left, like gunfighters! Felder was the ultimate technician, always a tad on top of the beat. Walsh was the ultimate ‘feel’ guy, always a tad behind it. Together they were phenomenal. Those two days were one of the high points of my career.”

“There are at least half a dozen guitar tracks on the original recording,” Henley says. “In live concert settings, this required Felder to play a double-neck guitar, with the twelve-string neck being capo’d on the seventh fret for the intro and the breakdown, and the six-string with no capo for the single-line phrases and the tag solos. One of the unique things about the song is that it ends with extended dual guitar solos. Skynyrd had done something like that a couple of years earlier.”

Another thing it shared with Skynyrd’s Free Bird was a length – six and a half minutes – that wasn’t exactly radio friendly. “The label wanted us to do a single edit, and we all said no way,” Szymczyk says. “Obviously we were right to.”

After seven months of off-and-on recording, the album finally completed in October.

The cover artwork, designed by John Kosh (who also handled Who’s Next and The Beatles’ Abbey Road), featured a photo of the Beverly Hills Hotel at dusk, taken from a cherry picker 60 feet above Sunset Boulevard. Built in 1912 in a Mediterranean Revival style, the pink stucco hotel had hosted famous A-list guests such as Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra. A month after the album came out, when the hotel learned that the Eagles had used the image without permission, they threatened a lawsuit. They dropped it when they realised that the hotel’s bookings had tripled because of the record’s success.

The Hotel California album was released on December 8, 1976, and was certified platinum in its first week. It went to No.1 on the Billboard 200, where it stayed for eight weeks. Reviews were glowing. Creem said there were “no weak tracks; the music flows majestically every step of the way”. Phonograph praised its “peerless harmonies” and said it was “pretty and punchy, as the best albums of fellow troubled hedonists Steely Dan and the Beach Boys are”. NME said: “There’s no laurels-resting, and a lot has gone into its meticulous crafting.”

While Szymczyk calls the record a “quantum leap forward”, Henley’s opinion is more modest. “I don’t know if I’d call it a ‘quantum leap’; One Of These Nights had three big hits on it,” he says. “But in terms of growth and consistency and range, I’d agree that Hotel California was an improvement.”

The 10-month, 72-date world tour that followed was gruelling. So much so that the band’s road crew nicknamed it The Prison California. Everyone travelled with their own little entourage. Walsh and Felder had their faction, briefly entertaining the idea of forming their own band. In History Of The Eagles, Henley said: “Glenn and I saw ourselves as the leaders, but other people saw us as dictators. You just cannot have five leaders in a band. It doesn’t work.”

But according to To The Limit: The Untold Story Of The Eagles, even the two leaders had stopped talking and would only communicate through others. There were also cocaine-induced physical ailments. Stomach ulcers all around. Henley suffered back pain. Frey’s nasal lining was shot (he would have two surgeries before getting his nose repaired with Teflon). By the end of the tour, Meisner had become persona non grata after drunkenly refusing to sing Take It To The Limit at one show. He left the band shortly after”.

I will end with Stereophile and their review of the 40th Anniversary release of Hotel California. There are going to be new takes and dissections of this album closer to 8th December. I wanted to bring together some features on this gigantic and juggernaut album. For anyone who has never heard the album, you really do need to listen to it. A truly masterful offering from Eagles:

“Not so long ago, you could not wander the halls of any High End Audio show and not hear The Eagles' Hotel California. To say it was an audiophile favorite is to grossly understate the obvious.

Produced by Bill Szymczyk and tracked between March and October 1976 at Criteria Studios in Miami and the California branch of the Record Plant, it was the group's fifth and ultimately one of the album-sales blockbusters of all time. Its current sales number is somewhere near 35 million copies sold. Late last year Rhino Records released a Hotel California 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition CD boxed set edition of this rock landmark that comes complete with a hardbound book of photos, a tour posters and other assorted paper goods.

Given some of my previous utterances on The Eagles and the vociferous responses that they've elicited I need to clear the air once and for all. For the record (and hopefully the last time), even though I am a Gram Parsons fan (if not a full-fledged member of the Gram cult), the Eagles occupy a cherished place in both my teenage hood and my overall musical education. Besides the endless cruising in cars and fruitless scheming about girls that went on whilst the One of These Nights album was playing on an 8-track car stereo, I also bought all the records and saw the band a number of times, both pre and post Joe Walsh joining the band. While I prefer the self-titled debut, On The Border (their first album to be released in a quadraphonic version), and One of These Nights, I pretty much loved them all including The Long Run. With the mustachioed and rakishly handsome Glenn Frey as the front man and Don Henley, one of the few drummers outside Levon Helm who was a genuinely great lead vocalist—both of whom could also write memorable, hooky songs—they were a powerhouse. I have always marveled that Frey, a guy from Detroit, the land of the MC5, Iggy Pop and CREEM magazine, became an icon of soft, sweet SoCal country rock.

The band's supporting cast was equally strong. In fact, I like the band best when the voices of Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner and the slide and double-necked guitar heroics of Don Felder were all still aboard. Leadon, who'd played with Gram Parsons in the Flying Burrito Brothers prior to the Eagles, wrote "My Man" for the On The Border album to pay tribute after Parsons OD'd in 1973. Losing Randy Meisner's high voice was a definite blow and noticeable sonic alteration change to the band's sound. As far as later additions are concerned, there's no doubt, however, that Joe Walsh's guitar, which upped the band's overall musicianship, and then his songwriting both became welcome infusion of new energy into the band's live shows and the last two studio albums prior to their 1980 breakup.

For me, a show during the On The Border tour (or was it during the One of the These Nights tour . . . the memory wobbles) and one show during the triumphant 1977 Hotel California tour will always rank among my favorite live music experiences of all time.

Now for the inevitable provisos. As a live act, before and after Walsh entered, they did tend to scrupulously stick to the script, essentially playing their studio albums note for note including replicating guitar solos. If you dislike bands that make changes from the studio albums when they play live, then The Eagles were your kind of act. I would have preferred a little stretching, a different vocal arrangement here and there, and a new guitar solo now and then. Seeing them live, I always wanted to see what they actually had musicianshipwise—see them kick out the jams and blow away the old saw about how they were essentially a studio-only band.

And then there's the oversaturation issue. Today, when I listen to the band's albums I tend to lift the needle over the hits and play the inner cuts—the deep tracks that the radio forgot. Because the band owed much of its massive success to 1970s commercial radio who, along with Steve Miller and Fleetwood Mac, played their singles and album cuts—OVER AND OVER AGAIN—I do not go back to Hotel California much. That and it's constant presence at High End Audio shows, where those famous opening chords to the title track that usually sent me drifting back into a hallway, have combined to give me a little ear and brain fatigue.

With that as my overlong prologue, I approached the 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition 2-CD/1-Blu-ray reissue box ($99.98), primarily curious about three things: the original album remastered, the hi-rez and 5.1 mixes and finally the ten previously unreleased live recordings from 1976.

According to Rhino, the surround mix by Elliott Scheiner and the 24-bit/192kHz stereo mix were originally released on a DVD-A in 2001. Neither have ever really impressed me much. While the Eagles camp were early 5.1 adopters, surround was still a new toy then. These mixes could perhaps be improved upon today. While what you hear is the band all around you, at sort of the halfway point between the ceiling and the floor in whatever room you are listening in, I still prefer the standard two-channel mix—you standing in the audience and the band in front of you. Again via Rhino, this new remastering, which was done a few years back when the album was remastered for HD digital download, is here on CD for the first time. The results are not dramatic, but the overall sound is a mite clearer and like virtually all-new remasterings, a touch brighter.

As for the live tracks, they are taken from the band's three=night stand in 1976 in The Forum in LA, a gig that also supplied five tracks for the band's official live recording, Eagles Live. That album, the last Eagles album, was cobbled together to fulfill their contract with the Elektra/Asylum record label. The fact that is has an 86 on the front cover, and record labels that feature a bird's nest filled with eggs and hand grenades were seen at the time as hint that the band was over. The album was mixed and released after the famous backstage near- fisticuffs between Don Felder and Glenn Frey that occurred in Long Beach in July 1980. Frey refused to participate in postproduction. He stayed in Los Angeles while the band went to Miami to work on the album. This led to producer Szymczyk's famous quote: "We were fixing three-part harmonies courtesy of Federal Express."

All that fixing led to a live album that was overdubbed to the point of being a studio album. The sound is suspiciously clean and groomed. It's no secret that many '70s live albums were in fact sweetened in the studio before release—clams were fixed, harmonies were added, guitar solos re-recorded and dropped in. On Eagles Live and the live tracks here on the 40th Anniversary boxed set, any and all warts, both in sound and performance are scrubbed and what's left are impossibly perfect performances with vocal harmonies that are mostly dead-on. What's best about the live tracks here is the selection of tunes, which cherry picks the best tracks from On The Border, One of These Nights and Hotel California.

One mystery here is why extra material from the original sessions—alternate takes or unreleased tunes—was not included. The band's near obsession with recorded perfection, with not exposing loose ends or anything but fully assembled takes, may be the reason. While picture books are nice, more extensive notes would have been a better choice for collectors. And while there have been numerous LP reissues previously, heavy, quiet, premium-quality LPs would have been a welcome addition. Overall, though a must have for Eagles fans and the first of what I suspect will be more tributes to come to one of the most iconic albums in all of pop music recording history”.

On 8th December, it will be fifty years since Hotel California was released. Given the name, you’d think Eagles would release it in the summer, rather than the more oppressive winter! Though that may have been planned. Given the fact the title is not all about sunshine and warmth. Few classic albums were released in December, so it is a treat we get to talk about Hotel California. One of the greatest albums in music history. Some may contest this, but I would say Hotel California is…

A perfect album.

FEATURE: In the Flesh: Blondie's Eponymous Debut Album at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

In the Flesh

Blondie's Eponymous Debut Album at Fifty

_________

EVEN if people…

think Blondie hit their peak with 1978’s Parallel Lines, there is no denying how important their 1976 debut is. Blondie was released in December 1976. It is one of these anniversary features that is marred by the fact nobody seems to know exactly when an album was released. It is not like we’re talking about something that is hundreds of years old. However, there does not seem to be an available release date for Blondie, other than the fact it came out in December 1976. I did want to celebrate fifty years of an album that introduced this legendary bands. They are still releasing music and High Noon, their twelfth studio album, comes out on 26th February, 2027. Let’s go back fifty years to this incredible debut. Featuring the singles, X Offender, In the Flesh, and Rip Her to Shreds, it was a masterful and stunning debut. The band line-up consisted of Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Gary Valentine, Jimmy Destri and the late Clem Burke. Even if Blondie did not hit their stride until a couple of albums later, there is no denying that their eponymous debut of December 1976 was underrated at the time. Some critics calling it dumb and uninspired. It has gained more love later on, considering its legacy and how influential it is. Earlier in the year, Classic Rock provided a buyer’s guide to Blondie’s albums. This is what they said about their eponymous debut: “A scene had formed around NYC’s CBGB, comprising Blondie, Television, Ramones, Talking Heads and the Heartbreakers. Blondie played a show every week while they lived on the breadline in a nearby loft space with bullet holes in the windows and homeless bums dying outside in the snow. But they practised daily, and their passionate debut came out of that destitution, connecting their love of retro pop with the emergent punk scene. Bassist Gary Valentine wrote their debut US single/album opener X-Offender with Harry, while she and Stein wrote the Velvet Underground-influenced Rip Her To Shreds”.

In 2021, to mark forty-five years of Blondie, Pop Matters reflected on a powerful debut. One that brought together genres as wide-ranging as Disco, Punk and Surf Pop. A lot of people do not discuss Blondie’s debut when they think of their greatest work. I think that Blondie is one of the most significant debuts of the 1970s. Maybe not as exciting and fresh as it would have sounded in 1976, I do feel that it gets less admiration than it deserves:

“In the early ’70s, Blondie went through various incarnations and name changes before settling on the five-piece lineup of Debbie Harry (vocals), Chris Stein (guitar), Gary Valentine (bass), Jimmy Destri (keyboards), and Clem Burke (drums). Destri was the last to join in the fall of 1975. After playing regular gigs at CBGB for the better part of a year, the group started work on their debut album in August 1976. They had signed with a production company called Instant Records, co-owned by Richard Gottehrer (who would produce the LP and its 1977 follow-up, Plastic Letters).

Blondie was recorded at Plaza Sound, a capacious studio built in the 1930s in the same building as Radio City Music Hall. With Gottehrer at the helm, the band recorded the songs they’d been honing for two years onstage. One day, legendary Brill Building veteran Ellie Greenwich visited the session. Greenwich wrote “Out in the Streets”, a song popularized by the Shangi-Las in 1965 and later recorded by Blondie as a demo. She’d also penned such hits as “Be My Baby” and “River Deep – Mountain High”, so the group were thrilled when her trio sang backup on “In the Flesh”. With the women’s tight harmonies and the ringing chimes in the bridge, the composition emulates the girl group sound so well that it could have been a Shingdig Pick of the Week (if it weren’t for the sexual double entendre).

“In the Flesh” would also prove to be the band’s first number-one single—in Australia anyway—after it was played on Molly Meldrum’s Countdown, a popular music TV show. As for Blondie’s original demo of “Out in the Streets”, it was eventually released on the 2001 Blondie CD re-issue.

In Face It, Harry writes about the subversiveness of Blondie’s music: “We felt that we were Bohemians and performance artists, avant-garde. And when you add to the mix this very New York DIY street-rock attitude that we had, you got punk.” Blondie hardly sounds like a punk record, though. The album is full of catchy, mid-tempo melodies and hooks, but the band’s pop sensibilities are undercut by their lyrics. The wry innuendos of “X Offender”, “In the Flesh”, and “Look Good in Blue” were no doubt partly fueled by adolescent prurience, but they can also be read as an attempt to subvert gender norms.

Harry’s stage presence and persona are part of the stratagem. Fully aware that sex sells, she nevertheless tried to challenge double standards by “being a cartoon fantasy onstage”, as she puts it. “The Blondie character I created was sort of androgynous. Even when I was singing songs that were written from a man’s point of view… I had to be kind of gender-neutral, so it seemed that I wanted (the girl)”. On songs like “Kung Fu Girls”, that neutrality is convincing, as Harry sings: “Kung Fu, Cindy Sue / Oh, I want to get close to you / You’re my Kung Fu girl.”

Unfortunately, much of Harry’s cultural commentary is lost on the listener. “Rip Her to Shreds”, for example, is supposed to be about gossip columnists and their callous criticisms of women in the public eye. Harry’s not singing “rip her to shreds”; she’s saying that’s what the media does. But the nuance is obliterated by the jubilant, sing-along chorus that only seems to encourage mob mentality misogyny. Still, it’s one of the LP’s stand-outs, with a driving beat, raunchy organ, and Harry’s campy delivery.

Speaking of camp, before 1976 disco was still mostly played in underground clubs frequented by gays and minorities. In only a few years, though, it began to infiltrate the establishment, with traditional rock bands incorporating disco elements into their music. In fact, “Silly Love Songs” is an early example (just listen to McCartney’s bass line). Yet, a backlash came quickly, and by 1979, anti-disco sentiment reached a fever pitch with the infamous Comiskey Park “Disco Demolition Night” spectacle.

The conventional narrative, then, is that punk came along and saved music from the wretched pablum of disco. But, that interpretation is rooted in misogyny and homophobia. Punk’s raw energy was seen as earnest and masculine, while disco was perceived as frivolous, pre-fab music enjoyed mostly by women and queer people. The gap between disco and punk wasn’t as wide as it would appear, however, and Blondie managed to embrace both. Each form, in its earliest iteration anyway, bucked convention and promoted inclusion.

Before coming to a review of Blondie, there is another feature I want to highlight. It is amazing how quickly things started for Blondie. In terms of signing a deal with the New York label, Private Stock, and recording their debut album with producer Richard Gottehrer. I would love to see a Blondie biopic that starts when they were playing Punk clubs like CBGB, that takes us up to the release of their debut album. In 2021, Albumism discussed Blondie on its forty-fifth anniversary:

“The album kicks off with the bouncy, rhythmic, organ-fueled “X Offender,” a perfect example of a new wave pop-punk song, filled with catchy melodies, rapid beat, Debbie Harry’s undeniable vocals, and idiosyncratic chord progression that characterizes Blondie’s trademark sound.

A leading classic rock electric guitar line, distinctive bass section, upbeat tempo accompany the lyrics of “Little Girl Lies.” In the song, Debbie Harry delivers the words with clever humor and sarcasm, warning an unnamed boy not to disregard his girlfriend, because “She'll be talking and laughing with six other guys / Flirtatious and cute, she'll take you the route.”

The retro-flavored “In the Flesh” is the album’s first mid-tempo doo-wop ballad, adorned with enticing harmonies, prominent drumbeat, syncopated staccato piano chords, and lush vocals expressing the melancholia of an unpropitious love story.

The ingeniously crafted speed-up tango “Look Good in Blue” is perhaps one of the catchiest pieces on the album, presenting a dynamic rhythm and thumping piano, jazzed up by electro-synthesizer and electric guitar solo.

Like “X Offender,” “In the Sun” is an up-tempo, cheerful track with peppy prominent drum and legato electric guitars layering the leading harmonies, switching for keyboards during the chorus.

“A Shark in Jets Clothing” is a nod to West Side Story’s rival gangs: The Jets and The Sharks. The song is a blend of a poppy beat, electric guitar solos, fresh synthesizer, and keyboard flourishes, showcasing Debbie Harry’s impressive range stretching from lower to higher notes on the vocal register.

Next, “Man Overboard” is the most spirited, danceable tune on the album. The track, filled with a speed-lightning psychedelic keyboard section, hypnotic reggae-kissed basslines, and sizzling percussions, which accompany the lead singer’s—speaking from experience—reprimanding tone as she tells the story of a man who wore his heart on his sleeve and got it broken eventually “sinking in a sea of love.”

Harry and guitarist Stein collaborated on “Rip Her to Shreds,” bringing together new lyrics for the song’s pop-rock melodies. Across the track, Harry—with her typical ironic sense of humor—addresses the issue of misogyny, posing as a gossip columnist making sexist remarks about a woman and inciting the public to “rip her to shreds.”

The spaghetti western-nuanced guitar riff and keyboard chord progressions of “Rifle Range” make up the central harmonies of the song. The slick drumbeats and Harry’s charming delivery—perhaps hinting at her love story with a woman—complete the piece.

The infectious opening of “Kung Fu Girls,” with full-blown electric guitar lines, perfectly soundtracks the singer’s sweeping vocals.

On “The Attack of the Giant Ants” the band explores Latin-influenced rhythms, merging them with a goofy sci-fi horror story, rife with mock-apocalyptic cinematographic sound-effects in the middle section of the piece, and Debbie Harry singing the same riff repeatedly”.

I will wrap things up with Treble Zine and their thoughts on Blondie. It is a brilliant album that captures the New York City band right at the start. I do wonder if the band will post anything to their Instagram on the anniversary. We do not know the exact date the album was released, though we know it was some time in December:

“Punk” is surely one of the most widely abused words in the English language—though I will grant that a lot of that is due to discussions between misanthropic teenagers, barley old enough to draw a line between Good Charlotte and The Clash. But back in the mid-70s, before The Ramones overshadowed the much-maligned word, it became the amorphous title to an entire burgeoning scene. And while it seemed like every band in the five boroughs had its own take on the evolution of rock, the members of Blondie decided to walk the well-tread path of pop.

While the etymology of that last word has left it on par with “punk,” it shouldn’t induce any cringing. There’s nothing wrong with good pop, and Blondie aspired to the best of it. Though their sound would later evolve and crystallize into the well-known, radio-friendly gems on Parallel Lines, their self-titled debut tends to get overlooked as a masterpiece in its own right. The former album guaranteed the band’s commercial success by hopping on the musical bandwagon, adding a slicker bent toward New Wave, and even delving into disco with “Heart of Glass.”

Blondie, however, planted its roots in the all-American rock of yesteryear. Debbie Harry’s mellifluous lament on the intro to “X Offender” harkens back to the days when melodramatic teen dialogue opened songs like “Leader of the Pack.” Just listen to the twangy, surf-guitar solo, or Harry’s lilting sighs—this is what American Bandstand would have played if synthesizers were more popular in the mid-60s and Dick Clark had taste.

Chances are, America’s most elderly teenager would have had an early stroke watching the vampy, pouty-lipped Harry calling herself a “sex offender” or offering “some head and shoulders to lie on,” as she does on the feisty “Look Good in Blue.” A former Playboy bunny, Harry could have been another lovely face waiting to become a marketing tool if not for her actual talent. The difference lies in her personality: She can play the cute poster girl, crooning out doo-wop ballads like “In the Flesh,” the sultry seductress eyeing her prey on “Man Overboard,” or a vicious bitch on “Rip Her to Shreds.”

“Rip Her” ravages the rabid fashion-sense of hipsters in a feast of crunchy guitar and pounding synth notes, but it’s the lyrics that really sting. “Her nose job is real atomic,” Harry spits, “all she needs is an old knife scar.” Even when she’s taking jabs at the shallow, there’s an underlying humor that propels every song, lending a general sense of fun to the whole album.

Two songs probably capture that playfulness perfectly: “In the Sun” and Blondie‘s closer, “The Attack of the Killer Ants.” The first is possibly the greatest song ever written for summer, surf and sand. After opening with a cascade of drum rolls, Chris Stein’s guitar does its best Ventures impersonation, twisting and rushing over James Destri’s synthesizer warblings while Harry calls for her “paka lola luau love.” I’m not exactly sure who or what that is, but I do know this song makes me want to do the Watusi at the beach with Gidget.

“Killer Ants” has a similarly infectious rhythm section, and you’ll find yourself wearing the largest grin an apocalyptic tale about giant insects can inspire (which is pretty damn wide, if you’re like me). “Giant ants from space / waste the human race / then they eat your face / never leave a trace!” Cheerful, no? There’s even an interlude that includes sirens, bombings, and some rather unsettling roaring that could only be issued from the maws of fire-breathing space ants.

The fact is, Blondie does sound a little dated now—and, outside of a few grating keyboard solos, it’s supposed to. It’s a send-up and tribute to everything old-school pop offered us, but modern enough to cut whatever schmaltz was packaged in the genre. It may not be the hardcore thrashings or artsy experimentalism we’ve come to expect from “legitimate” punk, but creating an amalgamation of modern stylings and pop didn’t dilute Blondie’s originality, either. And if that’s not punk, I’m not sure what is”.

I do hope that there are new features written about Blondie as it turns fifty next month. The first salvo from the legendary group, you can feel that many bands who have come since have been influenced by that album. Debbie Harry’s vocals particularly are so memorable and make the album what it is. Sure, they may have recorded better albums, yet Blondie is where it started. It is a brilliant album in its own right. A 1976 missile from…

THE brilliant Blondie.