FEATURE: Love Is a Losing Game: Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

Love Is a Losing Game

Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black at Twenty

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IT is rather unfortunate…

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Broomberg & Chanarin

that one of the greatest albums of the 2000s has a lead single that seems inappropriate or tragic, given the artist’s premature death. Amy Winehouse’s Rehab was released on 23rd October, 2006. I will not mark that song, as I feel it is somewhat awkward doing so. Winehouse died at the age of twenty-seven in 2011 of alcohol poisoning. It was one of the moist heart-aching losses in music history. However, her second and final studio album, Back to Black, turns twenty on 27th October. It is being reissued for its anniversary. Rolling Stone UK provide details of a release all Amy Winehouse fans will want to get:

“The 20th anniversary of Amy Winehouse‘s seminal second album Back to Black will be celebrated with a deluxe reissue.

The late singer’s career-defining second album arrived on October 27, 2006 and went on to sell over 25 million copies globally, as well as netting Winehouse five Grammy Awards including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

To mark that milestone, the album will now be reissued in a series of formats which will take in unreleased demos, rare B-Sides and a live recording of Winehouse’s 2007 show at Amsterdam’s Paradiso venue. 

Also included in the new formats is previously unseen photos by the record’s original photographers Alex Lake and Mischa Richter, as well as as well as new liner notes from producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi.

It will be released in a special 3LP clear vinyl and multiple limited-edition 1LP variations, including a Chalkboard Marble colour vinyl. There will also be a webstore-exclusive 1LP Zoetrope vinyl featuring moving footage of Winehouse.

The reissue will be released on October 27, and is available to pre-order here.

Check out the tracklisting in full below.

Tracklist: 3LP
LP1 – Side 1: Back to Black
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back to Black’
6 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’

LP1 – Side 2
1 ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’
2 ‘Wake Up Alone’
3 ‘Some Unholy War’
4 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
5 ‘Addicted’

LP2 – Side 3–B-Sides & Demos
1 ‘Valerie’ (Live at BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)
2 ‘Monkey Man’
3 ‘Hey Little Rich Girl’
4 ‘You’re Wondering Now’
5 ‘Do Me Good’
6 ‘Close to the Front’

LP2 – Side 4
1 ‘I’m No Good’ (‘You Know I’m No Good ‘- Original Demo)
2 ‘Fuckery’ (‘Me & Mr Jones’ –Original Demo)
3 ‘I’ve Been Drinkin’’ (‘Just Friends’ –Alternative Version)
4 ‘Back to Black’ (Original Demo)
5 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’ (Original Demo)
6 ‘Tears Dry’ (Alternative Demo)

LP3 – Side 5 – Live From Paradiso Amsterdam / February 8th, 2007
1 ‘Addicted’
2 ‘Just Friends’
3 ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’
4 ‘He Can Only Hold Her / Doo Wop (That Thing)’
5 ‘Wake Up Alone’
6 ‘Back to Black’

LP3 – Side 6
1 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
2 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
3 ‘Rehab’
4 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’
5 ‘Valerie’

Tracklist: 3CD, Digital

Disc 1– Back to Black
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back to Black’
6 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’
7 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
8 ‘Wake Up Alone’
9 ‘Some Unholy War’
10 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
11 ‘Addicted

Disc 2–B Sides, Bonus Tracks & Demos
1 ‘Valerie’ (Live at BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)
2 ‘Cupid’
3 ‘Monkey Man’
4 ‘Hey Little Rich Girl’
5 ‘You’re Wondering Now’
6 ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him’
7 ‘You Know I’m No Good’ (feat. Ghostface Killah)
8 ‘Do Me Good’
9 ‘Close to the Front’
10 ‘Rehab’ (Demo Version)
11 ‘I’m No Good’ (‘You Know I’m No Good’ – Original Demo)
12 ‘Fuckery’ (‘Me & Mr Jones’ –Original Demo)
13 ‘I’ve Been Drinkin’’ (‘Just Friends’ –Alternative Version)
14 ‘Back to Black’ (Original Demo)
15 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’ (Original Demo)
12 ‘Tears Dry’ (Alternative Demo)
17 ‘Some Unholy War’ (Down Tempo)

Disc 3 –Live From Paradiso Amsterdam / February 8th, 2007
1 ‘Addicted’
2 ‘Just Friends’
3 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
4 Cherry’
5 ‘Fuck Me Pumps’
6 ‘He Can Only Hold Her / Doo Wop (That Thing)’
7 ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’
8 ‘Wake Up Alone’
9 ‘Back To Black’
10 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
11 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
12 ‘Rehab’
13 ‘Love Is A Losing Game’
14 ‘Valerie’

Tracklist: 1LP Colour / 1LP Zoetrope
Side 1
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back To Black’
6 ‘Love Is A Losing Game’

Side 2
1 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
2 ‘Wake Up Alone’
3 ‘Some Unholy War’
4 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
5 ‘Addicted’

Tracklist: 1CD Amazon Exclusive
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back to Black’
6 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’
7 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
8 ‘Wake Up Alone’
9 ‘Some Unholy War’
10 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
11 ‘Addicted’”.

There are a couple of interviews from 2006 with Amy Winehouse I want to bring in before getting to features and reviews. After the minor success of her 2003 debut album, Frank, Back to Black was this multi-award-winning masterpiece. It is gut-wrenching to think what she could have achieved on her third album without press harassment and if she was able to overcome her addictions. It is almost unavoidable bringing ion interview achieve without mention of alcohol. The Irish Times interviewed Winehouse late in 2006. I did want to highlight this interview, as it was published after the release of Back to Black. However, its opening paragraph observes how Winehouse walked into a bar for the interview and was not sober. I did not want to include that section, as it seems insensitive:

“Winehouse has kept the drama for her record. Back to Black is a belter, an album more bewitched, bothered and bewildered than pop ever gets to be these days. Split right down the middle with heartbreakers and soul shakers, it has Winehouse swapping the jazz lounge she frequented for her Frank debut for a basement where '50s and '60s girl groups hang out comparing their men and their hair-dos.

The new company suits Amy. Once you hear her magnificent defiance on the brassy and bold Rehab ("they tried to make me go to rehab," she sneers. "I said no, no, no"), you'll be hooked. As confessional, troubled, humorous and honest as songs get about a woman falling in and out of love with men, drink, weed and the gym, Back to Black is rousing and brave on every level. It's the sassiest, sharpest Motown album imaginable.

Winehouse talks fondly of the girl groups who inspired her, who provided a soundtrack for her musings, when she began writing songs for the new record. "The Shangri-Las, very dramatic and atmospheric. The Ronettes, very stylish. The Shirelles, they had coolness and attitude, they had vulnerability."

Vulnerability

Winehouse became fascinated with how those singers projected and protected their vulnerability. After all, some of them had desperate, depressing back-stories but were cooing like angels. "I loved those heartbreak songs they used to do, especially the way the girls sounded so heavenly. Yet they were also singing about the kind of heartbreak you would find at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. They knew all about sorrow."

When it came to Back to Black, Winehouse was more than ready to be heartbroken. While Frank had been a big old hit (250,000 sales, glowing critical reviews, an Ivor Novello award and a Mercury Music Prize nomination), Winehouse's personal demons were having a field day at her expense. Her relationship at the time was falling apart, leaving her to find solace in weed and booze. Something had to go. Scratch that; lots of things had to go.

"I don't smoke weed anymore so I'm not so defensive as I was back then," she says. "I'm not as insecure as I was either. I go to the gym, I run loads and I'm much healthier than I was.

"When I did my first album, I was smoking too much weed. I mean, I was really proud of that album at the time and I still think the songs are up to scratch. But you have to remember I had never made an album before. When you have a producer with you who is far more experienced, you do tend to become a bit 'yeah, that's cool' in the studio and go with the flow. And when you're smoking weed, you just don't care about anything except who has the next joint."

Relationship change

Another change has been in the relationship with her record label. After Frank was released in 2004, she slammed what she saw as their inefficiencies. "The marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible, everything was a shambles," she railed in one memorable interview at the time.

Now? "It was my first album and I didn't know what I was doing so I was learning as I went along. I don't think the label had a clue what to do with it either, so it was a learning curve for them as well - and they had to deal with me mouthing off all over the place! This time, I know what is going on so I'm better prepared. And the label know how to deal with me as well."

The next heave-ho was her management. When Winehouse first emerged, all queries were directed to pop svengali Simon Fuller.

"It was never right," is how the singer now considers this dalliance with the man behind The Spice Girls and Pop Idol. "My manager on paper was not the person doing the day-to-day stuff. He was a lovely fellow but he didn't care about music. He was definitely one of those people who left their work in the office. I needed someone else, I needed someone who really cared."

More karma

You also no longer find Winehouse being so lippy to her fellow pop stars. This means less entertaining quotes for the masses (Katie Melua was once summed up as someone "singing shit songs that her manager writes for her"). But Winehouse thinks about this change in more karmic terms. "I have stopped slagging people off as much as I did. Not because I think it will sell more records or it looks bad for me, but because I don't wish anything bad against anyone. Everyone has a job to do."

Winehouse takes another sip from a glass of red wine. Of course, one vice remains. "I do drink a lot, and I'm a bad drunk, a very violent drunk," she says. "It's only since I started going out with my boyfriend Alex that I have realised what a horrible drunk I am.

"My ex-boyfriend would be saying things like 'stop doing that, you're an idiot' and rowing with me when I was drunk, which just made me worse. With Alex, he will bring it up the following day when I've sobered up. It really embarrasses me to hear I've punched him in the face six times. Again."

Winehouse winces. "Of course, it does make me want to cut down on the booze. I really do try not to drink, but I'm a very self-destructive person."

There's a soft smile on her face now. "I keep saying to my boyfriend that he can take it. I'm a little girl, he's a big guy."

Still, no matter how much of a "bad drunk" she is, we won't likely see Winehouse joining the boozy and stoned celebs shoring up a rehab clinic in the near future.

"Do you really think I could be pushed into doing anything I didn't want to do like that?" There was one attempt at rehab and that didn't get very far. "It was my old management's idea. I literally walked in and walked out. I knew it wasn't for me.

"Some people go to rehab and treat it like Butlins. Some people go because they think it will really sort them out and it does. But me, I'm from the school which believes that you can only sort yourself out, you can't rely on other people to sort out your problems."

Ronson alliance
Winehouse says she sorted out her problems by working so intensely on the new record. She's proud as punch with the results, and with her new alliance with producer Mark Ronson, the young New York producer who put a summertime bounce into Lily Allen's album.

"I have the same publishing company as Mark and they wanted us to meet for a while. I wasn't really interested at first. I thought he was just some big hip-hop beats geezer and I have Salaam Remi as my hip-hop guy, he has always been there for me. When we did finally meet up, I played him what I was writing and what I was listening to. You could see a lightbulb going on in his head. We just clicked right away personally too."

However, Winehouse didn't want to make the same mistakes she felt she had made with Frank, so she still kept a close eye on proceedings. "I was really geeky about it. I scrutinised everything that was going on, I was really paying attention to what Mark was doing. I trusted him, but I still watched what he was doing."

She doesn't know if Ronson will be around for her next record, but she has a good idea what kind of songs she wants to write. "I want to do an album of winsome, pining songs. I like that idea. I don't want to do another record of 'screw you' songs.

"Yeah, it will be a romantic record. I am a very romantic person. I don't mean romantic in a flowers and chocolates kind of way. It's more like if it's raining, I'll go up to the window and press my nose against the glass and sigh at how beautiful it all looks”.

A very different kind of interview, The Guardian chatted with Amy Winehouse shortly before Back to Black came out. It is interesting, as she talks about her relationship with men. She reveals how “Men are far more straightforward. They don't dwell on things and play psychological games”. It is a fascinating chat with someone on the precrisis of global stardom:

“I've never been a boyfriend kind of girl. I'm too selfish. A couple of years ago I would have said that I would end up as one of those women who lives with 20 cats and 40 piles of newspapers, but I'm thinking a bit more optimistically now because I've met someone I really like. I've been with Alex for six months and he moved in about a month after we met - it felt natural, and not at all scary. He's like my best mate, which probably sounds really sad. Actually, there is something inside me that is a proper little housewife. I love cooking for him, even though he's a chef and knows much more about cooking than I do! I constantly want to look after people, but I've only met a couple of men in my life who deserved or appreciated it. My first proper long-term boyfriend Chris (he's the fella that I wrote my first album about) was lovely, but he didn't really appreciate it. It was my second boyfriend, Blake, who kick-started my domestic instinct. I immediately saw he was someone who hadn't been treated right, so I practically put him in my bag and said, 'Right, you're coming with me!'

I wouldn't say I'm a feminist, but I don't like girls pretending to be stupid because it's easier. I would say that there is still more pressure put on women to look good, but I have some very vain male friends. The papers go on about how I lost weight, but I didn't even notice myself losing it. I used to smoke £200 worth of weed a week, that's two ounces, which is disgusting, and it made me eat crap food on impulse. I lost the weight when I stopped smoking weed and got into the gym instead. I like my gym because there are all these sweaty men around to gear me up and get my adrenaline going. You want to sweat and look good. When I'm in a women's gym and they see me in my standard make-up (it's my war-paint, I wear it all the time), the women look at you as if to say, 'Who are you trying to impress?' At the men's gym it's like, 'Run girl, run!' I don't mind being looked at by men, I'm competitive - anyway, every girl likes being looked at by men.

If I'm checking out a man I'll usually go for someone who is at least five nine, with dark hair, dark eyes and loads of tattoos (that was Blake). But, saying that, my current boyfriend is the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life, and he's blond, so I guess it doesn't matter that much. I just like a man who I can muck about with, and who can take a joke. I admire men who don't take anything seriously, like Dean Martin, who had this amazing ability to distance people from himself. He never talked about troubles with his marriage and would have a line for everything. Also Sammy Davis Jr, who treated all that racism like water off a duck's back. He was like, 'Fuck it, I've got music.' That's how I feel”.

Let’s get to the album itself. Why is Back to Black so revered and has endured two decades later? How did it change Pop music forever? GRAMMY provided their analysis and showed love for Back to Black in 2024. It is definitely one of the most influential albums of the past couple of decades. I remember the awe and sense of wonder around the music press in October 2006:

“When Amy Winehouse released Back To Black in October 2006, it was a sonic revelation. The beehive-wearing singer’s second full-length blended modern themes with the Shangri-Las sound, crafting something that seemed at once both effortlessly timeless and perfectly timed.

Kicking off with smash single "Rehab" before blasting into swinging bangers like "Me & Mr. Jones," "Love Is A Losing Game," and "You Know I’m No Good," Black To Black has sold over 16 million copies worldwide to date and is the 12th best-selling record of all time in the United Kingdom. It was nominated for six GRAMMY Awards and won five: Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album.

Winehouse accepted her golden gramophones via remote link from London due to visa problems. At the time, Winehouse set the record for the most GRAMMYs won by a female British artist in a single year, though that record has since been broken by Adele, who won six in 2011.

Written in the wake of a break-up with on-again, off-again flame Blake Fielder-Civil, Black To Black explores heartbreak, grief, and infidelity, as well as substance abuse, isolation, and various traumas. Following her death in 2011, Back To Black became Winehouse’s most enduring legacy. It remains a revealingly soulful message in a bottle, floating forever on the waves.

With the May 17 release of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new (and questionably crafted) Winehouse biopic, also titled Back To Black, it's the perfect time to reflect on the album that not only charmed listeners but changed the state of a lot of popular music over the course of just 11 songs. Here are five ways that Back To Black influenced music today.

She Heralded The Arrival Of The Alt Pop Star

When Amy Winehouse hit the stage, people remarked on her big voice. She had classic, old-time torch singer pipes, like Sarah Vaughn or Etta Jones, capable of belting out odes to lost love, unrequited dreams, and crushing breakups. And while those types of singers had been around before Winehouse, they didn’t always get the chance — or grace required — to make their kind of music, with labels and producers often seeking work that was more poppy, hook-packed, or modern.

The success of Back To Black changed that, with artists like Duffy, Adele, and even Lady Gaga drawing more eyes in the wake of Winehouse’s overwhelming success. Both Duffy and Adele released their debut projects in 2007, the year after Back To Black, bringing their big, British sound to the masses. Amy Winehouse's look and sound showed other aspiring singers that they could be different and transgressive without losing appeal.

Before she signed to Interscope in 2007, "nobody knew who I was and I had no fans, no record label," Gaga told Rolling Stone in 2011. "Everybody, when they met me, said I wasn’t pretty enough or that my voice was too low or strange. They had nowhere to put me. And then I saw [Amy Winehouse] in Rolling Stone and I saw her live. I just remember thinking ‘well, they found somewhere to put Amy…’"

If an artist like Winehouse — who was making records and rocking styles that seemed far outside the norm — could break through, then who’s to say someone else as bold or brassy wouldn’t do just as well?”.

Amy Exposed The Darker Side Of Overwhelming Success

Four years after Winehouse died, a documentary about her life was released. Asif Kapadia’s Amy became an instant rock-doc classic, detailing not only Winehouse’s upbringing, but also her struggles with fame and addiction. It won 30 awards after release, including Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards and Best Music Film at the 58th GRAMMY Awards.

It also made a lot of people angry — not for how it portrayed Winehouse, but for how she was made to feel, whether by the British press or by people she considered close. The film documented Winehouse’s struggles with bulimia, self-harm, and depression, and left fans and artists alike feeling heartbroken all over again about the singer’s passing.

The documentary also let fans in on what life was really like for Winehouse, and potentially for other artists in the public eye. British rapper Stormzy summed it up well in 2016 when he told i-D, "I saw the [documentary, Amy] – it got me flipping angry... [Amy’s story] struck a chord with me in the sense that, as a creative, it looks like on the outside, that it’s very ‘go studio, make a hit, go and perform it around the world, champagne in the club, loads of girls’. But the graft and the emotional strain of being a musician is very hard. No one ever sees that part."

These days, perhaps because of Winehouse’s plight or documentaries like Amy, the music-loving population seems far more inclined to give their favorite singers a little grace, whether it’s advocating for the end of Britney Spears’ conservatorship or sympathizing with Demi Lovato’s personal struggles. Even the biggest pop stars are still people, and Amy really drove that point home”.

In terms of leaps in production, songwriting quality and singing, although Frank is phenomenal, few people could predict what Amy Winehouse would produce as its follow-up. I really love her debut, but nobody can deny that Back to Black is her greatest work. In 2019, The Guardian explained why Back to Black is the greatest album of this century. Some might argue artists like Fiona Apple have topped it but, think about its impact, influence and genius, I am not sure any album since 2006 has surpassed Amy Winehouse’s final studio album

“Certainly, it could not prepare the listener for Back to Black: nothing about Frank suggested that its creator was going to make a genuinely epochal masterpiece. Something had happened to Amy Winehouse in the three years that separated her second album from her debut: skinny, covered in tattoos, dressed like a cartoon of a 60s girl-group member – complete with a vertiginous beehive modelled on that of the Ronettes’ Ronnie Spector – she was almost unrecognisable. The lyrics of its lead single suggested that whatever had happened wasn’t good – no one pleads with you to go to rehab if your life is in perfect shape – but the music was so ebullient you could easily overlook that.

Her sound had changed as dramatically as her appearance: with Frank’s producer Salaam Remi joined by Mark Ronson, then a virtual unknown, Back to Black offered an update of 60s soul and girl-group pop. Characteristically self-effacing, Ronson has suggested that his primary contribution to the album was keeping Winehouse out of the pub, but in reality his decision to relocate the recording sessions to Brooklyn’s analogue Daptone studios and employ its house band, the Dap-Kings, was a masterstroke.

The Dap-Kings had already spent a decade honing their retro soul style, first backing obscure deep funk singer Lee Fields, then Fields’s former backing vocalist Sharon Jones. They gave the album’s sound a toughness and grit that is usually missing when contemporary producers ape the 60s output of Muscle Shoals and Hitsville USA. The sound chafed against the lyrics’ plethora of 21st-century references and hip-hop-influenced intonation (“I’ll check him at the door / Make sure he got green / I’m tighter than airport security teama”), and against Winehouse’s Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday-influenced vocals.

The tension between musical styles was infinitely more gripping than Frank’s clumsy attempts to highlight Winehouse’s jazz chops through scat singing and decorating tracks with samples of crackling vinyl. Moreover, it didn’t sound like a knowing pastiche, largely because Winehouse had dispensed with the hired songwriting help and written a set of songs that were strong enough to bear comparison to those she had been influenced by. You could tell how good they were by the artists they attracted: within months of Back to Black’s release, Prince had taken to covering Love Is a Losing Game on stage. As if to underline the qualitative similarity of Winehouse’s songs and the music that inspired them, Ronnie Spector began performing the title track live amid the Ronettes’ hits.

Understandably, everyone went on about Winehouse’s voice. It was a snappy, ragged, extraordinarily expressive contralto that still carried something of the nasal north London drawl of her speaking voice, perfect for conveying both heartbreak and sass. It dispensed with the usual firework-display theatrics of the modern soul diva in favour of an idiosyncratic, apparently untutored approach to phrasing that lent everything she sang a directness and immediacy. Set against the contemporary backdrop of melismatic oversinging and arch indie rock, Back to Black offered a reminder of what it sounded like to really mean it.

A rare instance of critical acclaim chiming with public taste, it sold millions. It may well be the most influential album of the last 20 years. The immediate effect of its success was a wave of artists obviously working in her image. Female vocalists made retro soul-influenced music, replacing Winehouse’s troubled unpredictability with something less volatile and more marketable: earthy everyman good humour or cute kookiness. Adele was by far the most successful, but at one point there seemed to be dozens of them, all filling the void created by the fact that Winehouse was increasingly unable to play live, let alone complete another record (as the posthumous Lioness compilation revealed, she recorded virtually nothing in the final years of her life, taping only two songs for a projected follow-up). Winehouse’s vocal style became a kind of all-purpose pop template, its idiosyncrasies reduced to a series of slurred, prematurely aged tics intended to signify emotional authenticity. Nearly 15 years on, you still can’t move for twentysomething men who sound like ravaged blues shouters and twentysomething women trying their best to channel Billie Holiday.

And Back to Black ushered in a new vogue for soul-baring albums rooted in the artist’s lives: an updated version of the early 70s trend for confessional singer-songwriters, rebooted for the age of social media, with its oversharing late-night posts and belief that rock and pop artists should be #relatable (Facebook opened to everyone over 13 with a valid email address four weeks before Back to Black’s release; Twitter’s tipping point came five months later). For better or worse, we currently live in a pop world that Back to Black unintentionally helped to create, where writing frankly about your personal experience is the most noble occupation a pop star can pursue; where artists are queuing up to tell the world about the neuroses and trauma that inspired their latest work; where everyone from Drake to Taylor Swift to Beyoncé has their songs pored over for IRL references.

Whether that is a positive state of affairs is moot: the quality of Back to Black isn’t. Untangle it from its legacy and the appalling backstory of its songs, and you are left with an astonishing album – an unexpected, unprecedented burst of creativity and talent that still hits home emotionally, no matter how many times you hear it. It feels impermeable, the kind of album people will still be listening to and talking about for decades to come: the 21st century’s most obvious candidate to join the pantheon of all-time classics”.

I will end it there. On 27th October, 2006, Back to Black was released. It reached number one in the U.K. and two in the U.S. It has been certified fifteen-times Platinum here. Frequently mentioned in polls of the greatest albums ever, Florence And The Machine, Sam Smith, Jorja Smith and so many other artists have been impacted and influenced by Amy Winehouse and Back to Black. The album won five GRAMMY Awards, three of which were for Rehab. But, as I say, I do feel uncomfortable discussing a song where Winehouse refuses to go to rehab. It has this sour taste now. Though I am including the song in this feature, as it is part of the album and was a single. At the 2008 GRAMMYs, Amy Winehouse won Best New Artists. Back to Black awarded Best Pop Vocal Album. In a way, a lot of that fame and attention was a curse as much as a blessing. I do wonder what Winehouse would think of this album still inspiring people, two decades after its release. Camden’s proud daughter released an album that will be discussed and adored for decade. When you think about that, Back to Black has…

AN immense legacy.

FEATURE: Don’t Fight It, Feel It: Primal Scream’s Screamadelica at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Don’t Fight It, Feel It

Primal Scream’s Screamadelica at Thirty-Five

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NOBODY can deny…

the genius and legacy of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica. Their third studio album was released on 23rd September, 1991. This was a week in music that saw timeless albums come out. In the U.S., A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory and Nirvana’s Nevermind came out on 24th September. I wanted to mark thirty-five years of Screamadelica. I hate to not include the whole feature, but there are sections from The Quietus and their feature from 2021. They celebrated thirty years of Screamadelica. “Two themes are routinely described as transformative for Primal Scream’s celebrated 1991 recording: acid house and Andrew Weatherall. But, as Ben Gilbert outlines, other factors led to an album that was both era-defining and defined by the era in which it was made”. It is a fascinating piece:

“Understandably, given the acclaim Screamadelica has generated in the three decades since coming out, this period has been well documented. Two key themes are routinely described as transformative for Primal Scream: acid house and producer Andrew Weatherall. But, while both had an obvious impact, there are other factors that led to an album that was era-defining but also defined by an era where studio technologies allowed a band interminably drenched in their own influences to dive into them like a bath full of ecstasy.


As Gillespie freely admits, the group certainly lifted, if not thieved, a vast number of other people’s ideas to fully realise the fabric of his mind for Screamadelica. “Everything was up for grabs, because of the technology and the way people could sample in the way they couldn’t before. Rap and hip hop records were doing it, house, dance records,” explained Gillespie, perhaps in reference to albums like Paul’s Boutique and 3 Feet High And Rising, both released in 1989, which redrew the art of music production.

“It was like the wild west. No copyright laws,” he said, making comparisons to William Burroughs’ cut-up method. “It was what everybody was doing. It was a culture,” said Gillespie. Of course, the dominant British culture in this period was acid house, a scene that his band initially felt was so acutely anathema to their leather-clad rock & roll dreadnought that guitarist Robert ‘Throb’ Young reportedly threatened to excommunicate McGee from the Scream Team after he was spotted wearing “a baggy T-shirt”.

Improbably comic parties began to shape the future narrative. “There was always the Scream at one end, and Alan championing house music and playing it to them. Then Bobby would put on Goats Head Soup and all the Scream would go mad. Then Alan would take it off and put some more house on. This was going on all the time”, Lawrence from Felt told Cavanagh. Innes has rather more unifying memories of the period, explaining: “We took to the acid house clubs like ducks to water,” he said in Jockey Slut’s tribute to Andrew Weatherall. “The girls were incredible looking, the atmosphere was brilliant, there was no violence and the music was great. Better than some indie club playing the Wedding Present.”

Gillespie had previously dismissed modernising the Primal Scream sound. Quoted in Cavanagh’s book, he insisted: “We’re not that stupid.” But the singer went along with a proposal from either Innes or Jeff Barrett, founder of Heavenly Recordings and former PR at Creation, that Weatherall should remix/“fucking destroy” ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’. Weatherall, whose only previous studio experience apparently involved watching Paul Oakenfold overhaul ‘Hallelujah’ by Happy Mondays, was perhaps the only music journalist on Earth to enjoy the Primal Scream album, writing effusive reviews about its ballads for the Boy’s Own fanzine.


“The thing about Andrew was that he was a non-musician,” said Gillespie, who first met Weatherall in the summer of 1989 at a rave in a field in the Brighton countryside. “Because he wasn’t aware of the rules, he broke them. He wasn’t trying to make hit records. That never entered his mind. He just wanted to make interesting tracks that worked on the dancefloor.” Reflecting on Weatherall’s 2020 death in The Observer, Gillespie celebrated his friend’s ability to divine the “ecstatic blues”: “No one else would have thought of constructing tracks like he did, arranging our melodies and music into abstract pop songs.”

Alongside Weatherall, engineer Hugo Nicolson’s influence on these sessions cannot be diminished. Witness their collaborative process on a second mix of ‘Don’t Fight It, Feel It’: “I gated the drums and keyed them off a cowbell which I programmed to do a rhythm I’d heard on a Jungle Brothers record. Then I grabbed a bit of bass fill from halfway through the song, turned it backwards and used that as the bass,” he told Sound On Sound. On Weatherall’s instruction, he also located a pivotal component: “I found a crappy whistle sound on the Korg M1 and played what turned out to be the main hook of the song.”

Gillespie has compared the band’s spirit and approach on Screamadelica to that of Parliament-Funkadelic. With ‘Higher Than The Sun’, The Orb’s Alex Paterson become part of this loose collective, contributing one of two titanic versions. His ‘Higher Than The Orb’ mix contains another percussive fill, from ‘Wah Wah Man’ recorded in 1971 by Young-Holt Unlimited, and a more amorphous spirit described by Gillespie as “Starsailor music”, in reference to Tim Buckley’s disorientating and light years from home 1970 album of the same name”.

There are a couple of other thirtieth anniversary features I want to include. I guess there will be thirty-fifth anniversary features shared very soon. The Skinny wrote how Screamadelica is still influential today. I don’t think that it has lost any of its power and brilliance. That is in part thanks to the genius production of Andrew Weatherall. I think I first heard this album not long after it came out in 1991:

“The album opens with Movin' On Up – unashamedly cribbing from The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil – which provides one of the few links to past and future Primal Scream with the searing hard-rock guitars, but the prominence of gospel singers, the electronic production and Gillespie's light touch vocals are the first signs that this is a different beast. The psychedelia is immediately dialled up on the cover of Slip Inside This House, with whirling sitars sitting next to a syrupy Amen break. And then Don't Fight It, Feel It runs dangerously close to the vapid dance music of the era that paired interchangeable soul singers with pseudo-transcendent electronics, but is saved by Weatherall's Midas touch and the thrilling Italo-house piano that enters midway through. These three songs are very different, but they represent the album perfectly in their marriages of dance and rock, along with so much more.

Gillespie is a less prominent vocal presence throughout the album (sometimes not appearing at all), frequently ceding the floor to the many experimental flourishes; the pitched-down orchestra plus haunted yodelling of Inner Flight; the shrill, overbearing saxophone of I'm Comin' Down; the corny/cosmic psychedelia of Come Together (which gestates for almost five minutes before the uplifting chorus comes in); the spooky accordion of Shine Like Stars. It gives the album an inclusive, cohesive feel, ideal for the sense of collective hedonism and creative freedom that permeates and defines Screamadelica.

By the time Screamadelica won the inaugural Mercury Prize in 1992, the burgeoning movement was over, the dance elements to be subsumed into the harder rave scene of the 90s and the rock elements to provide the seeds that Britpop would soon take up and ride to chart domination for the rest of the decade. Tellingly, the band never attempted another album that sounds like this one, perhaps appreciating the unique, lightning-in-a-bottle magic at play here.

But its influence has been strongly felt both at home and abroad; Scottish indie was brilliant in the 80s (Orange Juice, The Associates, Aztec Camera etc), but the parameters were fairly narrow until Primal Scream opened the door to funk, house, electronic etc. This openness continued in great 00s bands like Life Without Buildings and Franz Ferdinand and is still felt today in Django Django and even Young Fathers.

Outside Scotland, Daft Punk have praised Screamadelica's brilliance and Mark Ronson cites the album as the one that got him into indie, informing his production style to this day. Solar Power, the first single from Lorde's most recent album, is clearly indebted to Loaded, so much so that she contacted Gillespie to get his approval. Lorde claims she'd never even heard of Primal Scream, all the more evidence that the band's influence has seeped into international musical culture, though perhaps lacking the recognition.

For a brief moment, rock, acid-house, psychedelia and more congealed into a gleeful genre-less gloop that focused more on vibes than posturing, an unabashed desire for joy that wouldn't be seen again until the internet started to break down genre borders in the late 00s. It couldn't happen again, and it would be foolish to attempt, but Screamadelica is the culmination of that moment and a potent gateway drug to experience those feelings again”.

I will end with Classic Rock and their 2021 feature. I can appreciate that there may be fewer thirty-fifth anniversary features, as a lot has been said already and people might not be able to add to that. However, Screamadelica still resonates and is being discovered by a new generation. Classic Rock say this in their sub-header: “how self-belief, speed, dance music and the best producer the Stones ever had combined to make Primal Scream’s truly progressive and psychedelic masterpiece”.

“They were certainly living the life. Screamadelica was a filthy party animal of a record. It was a place where the tribal edicts of rock’n’roll were played out amid the glowstick rallies of rave. The album’s unbowed hedonism was typified by songs like Higher Than The Sun, Gillespie intoning to some imaginary Golden God: ‘I live just for today/Don’t care about tomorrow.’

“That’s exactly how I felt,” Gillespie says today. “I didn’t care if I died. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s all there in the lyrics. We were out there taking ecstasy and speed. Speed was our main drug of choice, then people got more money and got into cocaine, then they got into heroin and it kind of fucked everything up. But I can’t really include heroin here, because while we were making the record it’d be speed and ecstasy. We’d never record on it though; you can’t play rock’n’roll on ecstasy.

“Acid house was similar to the LSD explosion of the sixties. The music was different, but I think it released a similar amount of energy and creativity in people who maybe hadn’t realised they had that inside them before. The energy in the clubs was intense. It reminded me of early rock’n’roll and punk. And that energy was extremely seductive. So we were up for days, living what it says in the songs. Being up for days meant we were exposed to a lot of great scenes and wild, strange, dangerous people. And fucking weird scenes with weird women. But we were a serious band when it came to recording and gigs. We may have partied at the weekends, but every week we were in the studio writing. At that point in your life you’re really out to prove to the world what you can do.

“We had a fucking great time, and that found its way into the music and the songs. I think it’s a very euphoric record. To me it’s ecstatic rock’n’roll. It’s what rock’n’roll should be: joyous and celebratory.”

Amid the mixes by Weatherall, Hypnotone and The Orb – who took Higher Than The Sun into the freakoid realm of cosmic dub – Screamadelica was notable for a more obvious Primal Scream influence. Jimmy Miller was the producer behind The Rolling Stones’ killer streak of albums from 1968’s Beggars Banquet through to Goats Head Soup in ’73.

When engineer Colin Leggett quit three days into the sessions for Movin’ On Up, Gillespie knew just who to call to finish what was already an ultra-Stonesy track: “The one guy in the world I wanted to mix us was Jimmy Miller. But he was hard to find, because within the music industry he was seen as a burn-out. But I went up to Eden Studios and he mixed Movin’ On Up for us there. And it was incredible. Then he did Damaged with Andrew Innes. We were blown away. He was really into groove and rhythm. On Movin’ On Up there’s this mad percussion thing going on, and it’s Jimmy playing two Coca-Cola bottles.”

So was Screamadelica ultimately a balancing act between guest producers and the Primals’ own artistic vision?

“With Andy Weatherall, I think we were both coming from the same place,” Gillespie offers. “I think we married a rock’n’roll attitude and sensibility and songwriting instinct to Andy’s knowledge of the dancefloor and contemporary rhythms. Also, Andy was a bit of a punk. He wasn’t a musician, but what he had was ideas in abundance. I think the best records are not just made by people with loads of technique, it’s about attitude and imagination.

"And between Andy and us – and The Orb and Jimmy Miller – we made a fantastic record. I’ve got to give those guys credit, but then they did what producers are supposed to do. Producers are supposed to enhance your songs and suggest things. For example, I know the Stones struggled with the rhythm of Honky Tonk Women, then Jimmy Miller came up with the cowbell intro. Charlie Watts said that it was Jimmy’s riff. And that’s one of the most famous intros in the whole of rock’n’roll.”

True to their own wilful nature, Primal Scream refused to repeat Screamadelica. Give Out But Don’t Give Up, in ’94, was instead a return to the visceral charge of time-worn rock’n’roll. The music press largely bemoaned the fact that this was no Son Of Screamadelica, and duly waded in. True, the album may have been uneven, but there were more than a few choice moments.

“Even if we’d wanted to we couldn’t have made another Screamadelica,” reasons Gillespie. “We were in a different place, and so was Andy Weatherall. I know that he didn’t – and we didn’t – expect that success. And then we went away and toured the world. Some of the band got into heroin. My take on it is that the creativity seized up a little. It was a really strange period, then out of that came the …Don’t Give Up album. We could have made a better record than that, but maybe that record was as good as it could be. There are two songs from that that we play live every night: Rocks and Jailbird. At the time, the music press in Britain slagged it. But when we play Rocks at our gigs these days, younger and younger generations just love it and the place goes fucking nuts. To me it’s like School’s Out by Alice Cooper.”

Primal Scream have made some striking albums since – chiefly Vanishing Point (’97) and Riot City Blues (’06) – but none more memorable than 2000’s XTRMNTR. Coming at the opposite end of the decade, it can almost be seen as the sinister flip-side to Screamadelica. It’s a dense, punishing listen, shot through with abrasive riffs, hard-nosed electronica and a misanthropic world-view. It’s like that second Summer of Love never happened at all.

“Screamadelica is an emotionally warm record,” Gillespie agrees, “whereas XTRMNTR is the other end of the scale – angry, paranoid, vitriolic, scathing. But then that’s part of my character and part of the character of the band. When he heard XTRMNTR, Alan McGee said to me: ‘That’s the record you’ve wanted to make all your life.’ And I went: ‘Yeah, you’re right’”.

I do feel, at such a hard and dark time, Screamadelica is a record to embrace and escape in. It is euphoric and warm. It has this energy that can lift the heart and mood. I was only eight when the album came out, so it was not until I was an adult I properly dived in and listened. I would urge everyone to play and immerse yourself in Screamadelica, as it is one of the greatest albums…

EVER released.

FEATURE: Spotlight: DEELA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Chukwu

DEELA

__________

I know that…

DEELA has been on the scene for a little while. Though I think the past year or two have been her strongest and most important so far. Her latest album, Wicked, was released last year. I want to bring in a few interview with this British-Nigerian artist. In 2024, 1202 spoke with DEELA around the release of her then-latest E.P., Good Girl No Dey Pay. It is a remarkable E.P. Since then, she has put out so much interesting work. One of these artists who has been working tirelessly but has not quite got all the recognition that she deserves:

“So tell me about your latest EP. I love the sensual dance vibe of each song. What goals did you have when approaching this project?

I worked with this one producer. His name is Genio, and he has a very distinct type of drum pattern that he uses on his beats. So, going forward, I was trying to make something that was in a different space compared to the other stuff that I have because I feel like when I started making music, it was almost not duplicated to what I listen to. I listen to a lot of Young Nudy, Young Thug-type of music. I gravitate towards that sort of beat, those hip-hop-type beats. When I was coming back to Lagos, I was like, ‘It needs to be a different sort of production to kind of catch their energy.’ Rap is not a huge genre that people listen to in Nigeria. I was thinking of how I could switch it up. That's how I came into the whole Good Girls No Dey Pay EP.

With your music, I love how I can hear different elements from various genres of Afrobeats, hip-hop, and R&B. Which track on the EP do you feel best embodies the multi-genre influence?

I would say ‘Kryptonite’ because it's very dance-like, but then, at the same time, still very mellow. I don't know how to explain it. It just sits in different pockets. And ‘Final Boss’ as well because that's like hip-hop, but then the drums are very Afrobeats. It’s more like alté. That’s what they call it in Nigeria—alternative music—but they call it alté. Like Odunsi and Santi, that’s where you’ll hear it sometimes. That's kind of where it comes from.

I love how your outfits and the style of your cover art play into your visuals. Who are some of your fashion inspirations?

I love Bree Runway. She has the most amazing archives. Also, Leomie Anderson—those are the British girls when it comes to dressing—and obviously Rihanna. She's an icon. She changes her style with every album she drops, which I thought was really cool. But it was still very much authentic to her. It never seemed like it was a gimmick. And Aaliyah because she has that tomboy-like style as well, but in her own way. I like grunge things like spikes, leathers, blacks, and dark looks, but with a spin that doesn't make it too dark”.

There are a couple of interviews from this year that I want to come to. CASAWI chatted with DEELA in July. This is an artist that I have seen recommended by other music websites, and I was compelled to check her out. In a position where she is getting praise from some huge publications, here is someone primed for world domination. Though DEELA has her own plans for what comes next:

“Your musical foundation features a contrast between your mother playing Anita Baker and your father listening to Jay-Z. What is the process of blending emotive balladry with hard-edged rap to define your sound?

Every time I step into the studio, I am trying to create with no boundaries. I am protective of sharing my true emotions, but I have seen how doing so directly stunts my songwriting process. My process generally involves journaling and a lot of voice note recordings I refer to when I get to the studio.

You completed a Biomedical Science degree at the University of Manchester and dedicated your research to sickle cell disease. How does university research influence your independent approach to the music business today?

I am always researching. Watching performers I like and taking notes, studying the people before me and how they stayed relevant, new music globally, and what makes their production interesting. The research never stops, to learn something new every day is the goal.

You recorded your 2025 project Wicked in Lagos with producers like Genio Bambino and Black Culture. What was your daily routine during these writing camps and how did working in Nigeria affect your creative choices?

There is truly no place like home. Being in Lagos makes me feel more at ease because most of my immediate family lives there. Every day was a different vibe entirely. I knew the energy I wanted Wicked to have with reference tracks. The general rule every day was to have a hook and a verse for whatever beat we made from scratch. Some things get me in the zone, and this includes having loads of fruits and snacks as I am unable to make music hangry, lighting a scented candle to get me in the mood, and journaling before setting foot in the studio to let go of any bad chakra.

You built your career independently by learning the mechanics of the music industry. What advice do you have for other artists who want to build an audience without relying on record labels?

I would say study the game, have influences, but always make sure what you are giving is true to you. Also, do not focus on the numbers or other people, building takes time, especially on your own.

Dazed and Clash recognized you as an artist to watch in 2026. What are your next steps beyond your collaborations with Little Simz and DJ Vanco and what themes do you plan to address in your future releases?

I am going to be dropping more music. I love rapping over interesting beats combining genres together like electronic and rap or even afro-house and afro-electronic. Expect me to explore themes of love and vulnerability, fully stepping into my womanhood and what this means to me”.

I do want to finish with CLASH, who recently named DEELA as one of their artists to watch. Someone who is going to a massive name very soon. I am looking forward to seeing what she does in 2027. With this amazing body of work under her belt, DEELA has this incredible and loyal fanbase. I can see DEELA going on these huge international tours very soon. Playing U.S. festivals:

“From Lagos to London, DEELA is injecting the spirit and rhythms of Nigeria into UK trap. Finding inspiration everywhere she goes, the rapper is merging worlds to create a fresh, futuristic sound, dubbed ‘Wicked Babe Music’. Growing up in Lagos, her move to England for school at just 12 was a massive culture shock. Thankfully, she found solace in London’s burgeoning grime scene. “It just blew my mind,” she says. “It was such a different style of rapping. It gave me a whole new perspective.”

Despite feeling torn between two homes, music bridged her disparate worlds. It was a producer friend at university who first encouraged her to jump on a track. “I remembered when I was younger, I used to write poems and do all this creative stuff, but I kind of just lost myself. So making music was me finding myself again,” she reflects.

DEELA shared her debut mixtape ‘Wicked’ last year. Her rave-ready anthems – bassy, percussive, atmospheric backdrops layered with her signature slick bars – ushered in a new era of ‘Wicked Babe Music’. It embodied “the spirit of being confident and a go-getter; it’s also the attitude of being Nigerian.” To DEELA, it’s more than music: it’s an aura. “What’s so funny is I didn’t actually come up with the concept,” she explains. “I posted a video to my track ‘Patience Ozokwor’ and people on TikTok were like, ‘Wicked Babe Music is so back’. It made so much sense! It’s very Nollycore, very confident babe.”

The production DEELA spits over is never predictable. She pulls inspiration from rave, the Alté scene, and UK dance hybrids. “One thing about me, I love rapping over any style,” she shares. “I can give it some space but I always come back. I have so much to say.”

Trusting your gut and doing something different often requires taking the long road, but some recent major collaborations tell us she’s on the right track. DEELA featured on the highlight on Little Simz’ experimental-dance EP ‘Sugar Girl’, later performing with her at Cross The Tracks. She supported Amaarae in Paris and London, and linked up with South African producer Vanco on the infectious Afrohouse number ‘Repeat’”.

Go and follow DEELA and spent time with her work. Recent singles  Dey Play! and Gbona are incredible. If you are not aware of this remarkable artist, then do go and follow her on social media. She is an absolute sensation. I do think that she warrants more column inches and playlist inclusions. DEELA will be a household name soon. Only a matter of time for this…

MUSICAL supernova.

___________

Follow DEELA

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/deelagram

Twitter:

https://x.com/deelagram

TikTok:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/deelagram/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMHHT0wUxBZP4VBIhb2Tz5A

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/10yLOgKTy2iAtvIqkow5l4?si=lcw9yfBBRXmZKiOaVFnAeg

FEATURE: Excursions: A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory at Thirty-Five

__________

ALTHOUGH A Tribe Called Quest…

put out a wonderful debut album with 1990’s People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, their second album, I feel, is their strongest. The Low End Theory is one of the greatest albums ever. Released on 24th September, 1991, I am marking its thirty-fifth anniversary. This is one of those classic albums that did not get the same acclaim upon its release as subsequent years. Maybe critics wanted a repeat of the group’s debut or were not hot on it. In years since it came out, The Low End Theory is ranked alongside the all-time best albums. I did want to get to some features and reviews around it. Upon its release, The Low End Theory did not make the top forty in the U.S. or U.K. Maybe the more minimalist approach confused critics who felt that The Low End Theory would be fuller and harder-hitting. I want to start with The Ringer and their fascinating dissection and examination of a masterpiece. There were a lot of features around this album in 2021 as it turned thirty:

“Hip-hop is said to be the music of drums and I think that is true, though not in the way that is commonly meant. Rap has, since its creation, relied on rhythm and the sonic possibilities it forms. And yet what most links the genre to the sound at its core is the fact that hip-hop, more than than any other American art form, uses the past to reflect the present. It’s music made possible by melding together other kinds of music into something different, something new.  (What doesn’t change helps form what is constantly in flux.) Released 30 years ago Friday, nothing in the history of rap music embodies that ethic quite like A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory.

The meaning of the album’s title is still a trick question of sorts. The rapper and producer Q-Tip—who joined DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the late, great Phife Dawg (friends with Tip since childhood), and sometimes-Y member Jarobi in the group—has long said its thesis is twofold. First, The Low End Theory refers to the low end of the sound spectrum, the bass frequencies, and the consistent and delicious fashion in which they are employed throughout the project. Second, it refers to Black people, and how, as he once told Netflix’s Hip-Hop Evolution, they are at “the low end of the totem pole” in U.S. society. This, though, is where things get sticky. Because, although The Low End Theory does veer at times into political concerns, it is not really a political album. There are spates of social critique on the project that have aged decently in some instances (see: “Show Business”) and less decently in others (see: “The Infamous Date Rape”); and there is a strain of early-’90s Pan-Africanism that surges through the tracks—but The Low End Theory is never just, or even mainly, that.

Over the years, because of its sample-heavy sound and Ron Carter feature, folks have taken to calling it a love letter to jazz, a claim that is kind of true (I can’t imagine the record without the influence of jazz music), but also a takeaway that its creators have rebutted. (“Just say A Tribe Called Quest makes good fuckin’ music,” Ali told Spin in 1991, when asked about being labeled “jazz-rap.”) And yes, the record worships at the altar of the low end of the sound spectrum, but it revels just as much in brotherhood and laughter and braggadocio and “Vibes and Stuff.” The truth—the thing that really makes the album what it is—is that there isn’t just one answer. The Low End Theory uses jazz, particularly its bass frequencies, to communicate something that was a certain kind of political but also a bit undefinable and entirely unique. In other words: A Tribe Called Quest.

Bob Power is here and he was there for The Low End Theory too. I ask the esteemed producer and sound engineer what Tribe were like in their youth, and he’s got to be real with me. Bob worked with Erykah on Baduizm, laced D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar. Bob’s been around the block. Bob doesn’t bullshit. “I just saw a bunch of kids—literally—coming in the door who happened to be really good people, really nice people, straightforward, not stiff, funny,” he recalls, a touch of nostalgia in his voice. “I was fascinated by it.”

They weren’t supposed to work together. In 1990 Power was an engineer at a studio in New York called Calliope. He’d picked up a job there a couple of years earlier after a few decades that included a career as a jazz musician, bouts in academia (undergrad at Webster College in St. Louis, a master’s at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco), and a couple of years scoring TV shows. Tribe was working out of Calliope when their sound engineer had to leave town for a few weeks and Power filled in. He was old enough that he didn’t worry about trying to be buddies. “You’re there to make their thing work well,” Power says, erudite as always. He struck a bond with the group and helped engineer and mix the rest of their first album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.

The record was a launching pad to an era. In 1990 the industry was at the precipice of an inflection point. The titans of late-’80s rap—LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and N.W.A—were all, to varying degrees, still potent forces in the game. (A week before People’s Instinctive Travels was released, PE dropped their seminal Fear of a Black Planet.) The hot winds of change were starting to rise, though. Ice Cube had just gone solo. LL was about to go on a two-and-a-half-year break. The first golden age couldn’t continue forever. People’s Instinctive Travels didn’t outsell any of rap’s ruling powers, but along with fellow Native Tongues member De La Soul’s debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, it did usher in a new sound. The album was light and airy, with hits as smooth as soft serve. A track like “Bonita Applebum,” luscious and flirty, or “Can I Kick It?,” with its hypnotizing Lou Reed sample, portended a different kind of rap, one built as much on melody and vulnerability as gusto and brute strength.

What Tribe was trying to do on The Low End Theory was at once hip-hop at its essence and, invariably, unheard of. When I ask Power how the group pulled it off, he points to the members themselves—the people behind the music. “There’s an intangible thing that happens at a place and a time and with certain people, and you can’t bottle it and you can’t re-create it. You can try—what happens as a professional is [as] your chops get better, as your skill set gets better, you can get closer to faking it—but magic happens at its own speed.”

And magic is what they called it. The reception to The Low End Theory was, at least within the walls of hip-hop, rapturous. The Source awarded the album five mics, hailing it as a classic. The album peaked at no. 13 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and reached no. 45 on the Billboard 200, but sales were never the optimal measuring point for Tribe’s reach. There are children, like myself, who have been raised on it and have spent their whole lives bathed in it and an entire strain of music it birthed. When Dr. Dre, years later, discussed his sonic inspiration for The Chronic with Q-Tip, he cited The Low End Theory. When Kanye, speaking at Phife Dawg’s 2016 memorial service, revealed the first album he ever purchased, he didn’t hesitate: The Low End Theory.

We’ve known the record for so long that it’s easy to forget what it sounded like on first listen. How Phife’s “YO!” at the top of “Buggin’ Out” resembles the arrival of some mighty and celestial being. The way that Q-Tip speaks in triplets over the xylophonic shuffling of “Vibes and Stuff.” The tenor of love coursing through  “Check the Rhime,” every handoff between the two showmen at its head (“Yo, Phife, you remember that routine” … “Yo, Tip, do you recall when we used to rock”) melding the song into a whomping stew. “Stern firm and young with a laid-back tongue,” Tip lulled us on “Jazz (We’ve Got)” with its modal funk, and we never questioned the veracity of the message, because over those horns, how could anyone disagree with anything? By the time the album-closing posse cut “Scenario” arrived—with Phife breaking the track’s orbital bone and Busta engulfing it in flame—there was no choice but to swoon. What The Low End Theory did—what it still does to this day whenever it’s played—is make listeners feel like they are in league with someone at once familiar and unlike anyone they have ever known before”.

In an article that was originally published in 2011 to mark twenty years of The Low End Theory, it was republished in 2021. I wonder if there will be any retrospectives published to celebrate thirty-five years of The Low End Theory. The Quietus went inside an album that I feel still sounds so current. It has not dated and reveals new layers. One of the best-produced albums ever:

“While it’s surprising today to hear The Low End Theory described as "commercial", it wasn’t a very common reaction 20 years ago either. Certainly, next to People’s…, its reliance on a primal hip hop blend of hard rhymes and harder bass made it sound at first almost austere. The New York group’s debut had found Q-Tip, Ali-Shaheed Muhammad, Phife and satellite member/spirit guide Jairobi positioned as the first post-De La Soul rap act, its cartoonish, brightly coloured sleeve helping imbue the record’s eclectic samplescape with a similarly psychedelic atmosphere. ‘Can I Kick It?’s Lou Reed lift and breezy amiability turned Tribe into minor global pop stars, yet it was the nearest to the mainstream the group ever got. Just as 3 Feet High & Rising wasn’t all dayglo hippy hop, and De La would prove themselves to be formidable true-school innovators, so Tribe emerged here as purist rap paragons, makers of music of much rawer shading than the accessible, melodious debut had led some to expect.

Yet The Low End Theory took Tribe to that fabled "next level" hip hop acts always bang on about by performing the trick every authenticity-obsessed artist most dearly wants to execute. They crossed over without selling out – in fact, they crossed over while retrenching. Contrary to what Weiss and colleagues thought at the time, …Low End… is harder-edged, darker, and, in terms of its adherence to established hip hop codes, actually a little bit conservative. (Not that that’s a bad thing, of course.) The record became beloved of fundamentalist b-boys because it rooted itself firmly in the music’s core sonic, conceptual, lyrical and artistic values, yet managed to increase the band’s appeal to listeners who generally shunned rap for sonic or ideological reasons. Here was a group from a still outsider genre, uniting hardcore fans and curious outsiders by making music that worried more about integrity, commitment, creativity and resolve than it did appealing to the mainstream. Who’da thunk it?

Even after 20 years it’s difficult to work out quite how they did it: the music makes no concessions to outsiders – meaning, essentially, anyone outside the group and their immediate circle of creative associates – and, a couple of half-decent jokes aside, neither do the lyrics. There are formal and aesthetic changes from the first LP, but they’re slight: even the much-vaunted coup of landing the input of jazz bass icon Ron Carter has minimal impact on the album as a whole (he only appears on one song, so the notion that Carter’s appearance somehow validated hip hop as jazz’s heir – which was claimed in all apparent seriousness at the time – doesn’t really hold water). Compare the boom and thwack of the mighty ‘Buggin’ Out’ with ‘Can I Kick It?’, and they’re really not all that dissimilar – both are snapping, fairly sparse drum loops underpinned by cyclical bass lines. What’s changed is implied rather than overtly stated: the use of ‘Walk On the Wild Side’ is a deliberate reference the listener is expected to get, while the bassline from ‘Minya’s the Mooch’ by Jack Dejohnette’s Directions – which to start with is an album track released on an experimental jazz label rather than a global radio staple – has been chopped up and reconstructed in a sequence so different even its makers might struggle to recognise it. It surely ought to be the more "difficult" track to listen to – less accessible, less direct – but the opposite is true: the bounce is infectious, the melody drilled into the music from the bass simply thrilling, and it leaves ‘…Kick…’ trailing in the dust, clearly the work of a band yet to find their own unique voice. If it’s tracks like this that made the Jive staffers feel the record was more commercial, you can sort of see why, yet it’s beyond counterintuitive: this is a kind of universality that can only be achieved by doing the polar opposite of dumbing down”.

There is one more feature that I want to bring in before finishing off. SLANT explained how The Low End Theory “remains a stellar execution of hip-hop methodology”. It is interesting where Sophia Ordaz writes how “A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 breakthrough album, The Low End Theory, is as much a totem to today’s youth of color as it was when it came out, which is equally a testament to its significance as the unshakeable hold that the album has on hip-hop past and present”:

“The Low End Theory is a jazz-rap touchstone through and through, powered by the vitality and chemistry between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, who truly go head-to-head here. Both rappers subverted the figure of the hyper-masculine rap god: Q-Tip was the bespectacled loverboy and front-stoop poet with a nasal but mellowed-out flow, while Phife was the high-pitched Five-Foot Assassin, the charmingly self-deprecatory Funky Diabetic with a potty mouth. Together they were a union of soul and mind, the concrete and the abstract, the lowbrow and the highbrow, the worm’s eye view and the bird’s eye view, the feet on the ground and the head in the clouds, with Muhammad, overseen by Q-Tip and assisted by engineer Bob Power, orchestrating from the DJ booth, dishing out the blood, flesh, and muscle that composed the Tribe corpus.

No track better encapsulates Q-Tip and Phife’s chemistry than “Check the Rhime,” which contains the most famous call and response in all of hip-hop: “You on point, Phife?” “All the time, Tip.” As you’ll know if you’ve seen Michael Rapaport’s controversial documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life, it was rare for Q-Tip and Phife’s relationship to be that effortlessly harmonious. Childhood friends turned embittered business partners, they were driven apart by misaligned goals and motivations, thankfully reconciling to record the group’s stupendous swan song, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service. (Phife sadly passed away from diabetes-related complications before the album’s release in 2016.)

Hip-hop has no shortage of iconic duos: Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, Talib Kweli and Mos Def, Method Man and Redman, Prodigy and Havoc, Pimp C and Bun B. But Q-Tip and Phife may be the greatest because they complemented and completed each other. In Shadow and Act, Ralph Ellison wrote, “Each true jazz moment…springs from a contest in which each artist challenges all the rest, each solo flight, or improvisation, represents…a definition of his identity: as individual, as member of the collectivity and as link in the chain of tradition.” Like Ellison’s jazzmen, Q-Tip and Phife defined their individual identities by reviving traditional materials and playing off of one another. And it’s fair to say that each MC found himself in the other, even if that meant losing a piece of his individuality along the way.

The Low End Theory’s sequencing stimulates without requiring the listener to exert great effort to engage with it; like cruising on a skateboard through an urban landscape, it elicits a pleasant alertness and awareness of the present. On “Buggin’ Out,” dueling percussion samples, drums from Lonnie Smith’s “Spinning Wheel” and Jack Dejohnette’s Directions’s “Minya’s the Mooch,” make for a harmonious though slightly off-kilter union. When the drums drop out altogether, the spotlight is solely on Phife delivering one of his most self-possessed performances. “Vibes and Stuff,” “Skypager,” and “What?” are jazz-rap concoctions that go down smooth and easy, the latter song composed of a catalog of questions. And on the showstopping “Butter,” Phife bemoans the trials and tribulations of being a player, accompanied by an electrifying saxophone lick from a Gary Bartz tune.

Though “Show Business” and Q-Tip’s coinage of Industry Rule #4080 (“Record company people are shadyyyy”) still rings true in today’s music business, other moments on The Low End Theory, like the cringe-y “Infamous Date Rape,” feel antiquated in retrospect. There’s a tendency to look back on the album as sacred hip-hop doctrine, but the group’s members were by no means enlightened prophets or model adherents to progressive politics, though some of Q-Tip’s early verses are very much begging you to see them that way.

The Low End Theory has often been called the Sgt. Pepper’s of hip-hop. And, undoubtedly, it’s as influential to its respective genre. But the album is more of an organic progression of hip-hop, rather than a rupture from it. Where the Fab Four aimed to conquer new frontier, looking to English vaudeville, Indian classical music, and psychedelic drugs for inspiration, A Tribe Called Quest recontextualized and reinvented old into new—which was the ethos of rap from its inception—drawing inspiration not from some exterior entity, but from experiential and inherited knowledge, acquired from coming of age on Linden Boulevard and poring over their parents’ old Minnie Riperton and Roy Ayers records. The album is a stellar execution of hip-hop methodology, proving just how ripe with potential it was and continues to be.

Inspired by a beat that he heard Pete Rock working on, “Jazz (We’ve Got)” uses a slowed-down clarinet sample from Jimmy McGriff’s “Green Dolphin Street,” molding it into a plaintive wail that seduces the listener, urges us to stay immersed in the sonic soup of the song. Jazz is A Tribe Called Quest’s lodestar, but I suspect that they’re referring to more than just the musical tradition when they recite over and over, “We got the jazz.”

For A Tribe Called Quest, jazz is an outlook, an ability to improvise when life throws you curveballs, to adapt and create even as the forces around you would suppress or silence you. Q-Tip has said that The Low End Theory’s title refers to the album’s bass-loaded sound as well as the status of the black man at the low end of the social hierarchy. Living life in the way of jazz, being able to roll with the punches and innovate against all odds, is A Tribe Called Quest’s response to that struggle. Decades later, that positive jazz-inspired outlook on life is The Low End Theory’s enduring legacy”.

I will wrap it up here. On 24th September, it will be thirty-five years since the release of A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory. This is an album that you need to own on vinyl. Ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary, I did want to explore one of the most important albums ever. It is a shame that some critics were underwhelmed in 1991. Since it came out, The Low End Theory transformed and reshaped Hip-Hop. It created a blueprint for Alternative and conscious Rap. This is an album that everyone needs to hear in their lifetime, as The Low End Theory is…

A hypnotic listen.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Grace Cummings

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

Grace Cummings

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THERE have been a fair few…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Andersen Jnr

new interviews published recently, as Grace Cummings released her album, Bloodhorse!, last month. The Melbourne-born artist is coming to the U.K. in November. You can find details here. I did want to include a few interviews with Cummings. I am starting with CLASH and their conversation with Grace Cummings. They write how her new album has “classical flair and a passion for surprise”:

“Could you go back to the process and explain how you began sketching the album out, or how that works for you?

Grace Cummings:  Well, I think that writing any album sort of starts from the moment you stopped recording the last one. For instance, I’ve had songs on previous albums where I wrote it on the day of the last recording, but we didn’t have time to record it, so it was on the next one.  This time I went in with over fifty songs that I could choose from, but I didn’t really have any kind of preconceived concept or story or whatever. But the one thing that I did want was to be as much of myself as possible. It was important to me to be extremely honest and true and not to worry about how that came out.

Did you feel different expectations of yourself either internally or externally when going on to album number four or did it just feel like a natural continuation of the process that you’d built up through the previous ones?

GC: A little bit of both, but I did have the expectation of myself to just not to care about outside judgment or opinion. I think that I’ve gone through a particular kind of change in my life where I’ve realised, not that previous albums have been untrue, but that some of my opinions and what I think I like or dislike, have kind of been adopted by others, and I’ve realised that that’s not actually who I am. This time around, I just thought, ‘fuck that’. And I’ll get back to being who I am, really.

In some ways, the album sounds like it could have been made at any time in the last forty or fifty years. It seems to have been crafted as an album and not a collection of individual tracks. Is that deliberate?

GC:  I certainly think of things as a whole, and I know that’s sometimes not the way that you should think about it. But I can’t help it, and it’s not going to change because I love that, and I think that it’s really important. I kind of think about it as being like in acts almost.

And the reason it sounds like that is because Jonathan’s an analogue guy. That’s how everything’s recorded and listened to, you know, like everything, even the synth stuff, we’re manually getting that in the right tempo while it’s going into the tape. But though he’s analogue, but he’s also hi-fi. I love that too because everything is something real, even though it doesn’t sound like it, except for one thing on the album, and yeah, I want to listen to something like it’s an album. I don’t really want to listen to things like they’re supposed to be on a computer.

You are four acclaimed, and increasingly popular, albums in, how close do you feel to that?

GC: Very far. My ambition is to be truthful and that includes this. I don’t want to say something that isn’t true. I’m very far from it. It’s hard.

Also, being an Australian, being so far away from everything, it’s extremely hard. You kind of haemorrhage money all over the world. It takes a lot.

Sinead O’Connor said that the reason you make an album is you’ll go fucking mad if you don’t. That’s true. But I’m very far from being able to sustain myself. It’s incredibly stressful. You know, not to be like woe is me, but I’m also extremely, extremely grateful and extremely lucky to be where I am. But it’s a testament to the care and the need that I have to do it. Because I think a lot of people would fucking give up. It’s not for the faint of heart.

So now that the album is out, what’s the plan for the next, and where do you hope to be at the end of it?

GC: Well, for the rest of the year, I am doing tours in Australia and the UK and Europe with my band, and in the US just alone or with one other person. I’m really looking forward to that. In an ideal world, in an ideal world, I just hope that this finds the right people that connect with it, and that I will keep being pushing myself to just have a little bit more courage every time, you know”.

There are a few more interviews that I want to explore God Is in the TV spoke about Bloodhorse! It is an album where she got the opportunity to turn painful things into things that give her great joy and relief. I have been following Grace Cummings for a little while now. An extraordinary artist that everyone needs to know about and listen to:

“Recorded in Topanga Canyon, California, with GRAMMY-nominated producer Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Angel Olsen, Margo Price) like her last album, it was another fulfilling artistic experience for her. “I love that guy, and I’ve worked with him every day for the rest of my life because he’s amazing,” Cummings enthuses of working with him. “Recording Ramona, we became really good friends because of, you know, similarities in the way that we approach music, but just similarities in the way that we are and the playfulness that we have together is something that I find really, really important.”

“I’m up for anything, and he’s up for anything. I think that different musical shades, a lot of it I wanted to do; I knew that I wanted to go in there and do that and kind of delete some other kind of musical shades, if you will, from previous records,” she explains of the albums shifting sonics.

“I just don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, like that would be boring for me, at least, and he’s got no problem with that, which is awesome. It’s just anything goes...”

“I love that guy; he’s a freak, and he kind of understands me being that way as well. We just kind of go in, and there’s not too much planning at all, at least not this time. I think that works really well because a lot of it is just spontaneity, and it feels present and good at the time. I think that’s kind of the best thing that you can hope to capture, really. If I plan something out too much, I don’t think it’s going to be very good.”

‘My God’ comes replete with a homespun video by director Ben Portnoy. The song itself is an emotive, haunting piano track with striking percussion that simmers wonderfully around Cummings’ deep, breathy vocals, recorded while she was suffering from pneumonia. Her voice and lyrics house a deep disquiet at the world “Lyrically, this song is about hatred, jealousy, rage. The God here is the dark forces that are wrapping around us, that we scroll through, the toxic energy that binds us together in this modern world, and the fear we feed it every day”, Cummings confides.

“When I speak about God, I don’t speak about it with religion in mind. ” She continues, “I speak about it because it’s a gateway into talking about the fallibility of people and questioning your own morals and humanity and pain, and I think God is the biggest word for that.”

“I think that we’re constantly asking for help or in desperation or something like that. This song, though, is, I suppose, pretending to have a God that I certainly don’t believe in. But the force of it is enough to be a God, like a Greek God. It’s dark, and it’s vengeful, and hateful. I think that it is represented in a lot of our world and a lot of our communities, and it makes me very sad. Sometimes I find myself subscribing to it myself, on your phone or whatever, see how much people go on and just tear each other apart and build armies, founded on hate for no reason. It’s just like you’re worshipping something here. It’s not good.”

“We can talk about the Greek gods; they certainly weren’t all happy and merry. Not at all, they’re killing each other left, right and centre and putting in little curveballs for us down here out of spite and vengeance and hate.” She continues, “There’s a God for this, a God for that, a God of the sky, a God of the sea, and they are fallible just like us. It’s just the bigness of them, or of the mythology or of stories about God or different kinds of theology, different beliefs that I’m interested. And it’s just a word to trigger something huge that none of us really know much about.”

Cummings says of the album’s title, “A bloodhorse is a horse expected to be a winner. But they can often also be temperamental, fearful, fragile and easily broken. Sometimes I feel like I’m a trapped animal. When I go to sleep, sometimes it’s like I’m in the gate, twitching. And as soon as I open my eyes, I’m fucking running.”

“Someone brought up that I talk about animals a lot, which I guess I do. I didn’t really realise. But it’s the symbol, I suppose, that I’ve chosen: temperamental, flighty, fight, flight and hide and trapped and all that kind of thing. All related to fear, really, anxiety. But that’s the human condition, isn’t it? ” Cummings asks.

“I think we’re all very much the same, really. I don’t think anyone’s that terminally unique. I just think that some people look into it a little bit more and some people don’t. I envy people that don’t feel the need to look into it that much, but I can’t get it out of my head. I guess that’s why I do things to occupy myself, and make music to feel better”.

Rolling Stone Australia spoke with one of their greatest modern artists. Grace Cummings is a hugely consistency and hard-working artist. “vulnerability, the realities of Australia’s music industry, and learning to lean into who she really is”. I have not seen Grace Cummings live, though I will try and catch her at some point. Her music has garnered praise from around the world:

“What do you hope fans get out of your new album?

What I hoped for myself was to lean in to who I am, try and keep trying to move away from judgement; of myself and from the outside. It’s funny… because “leaning in to who I am” really has meant connecting with who I was when I was a child, before outside noise made me feel like I had to be a certain way to please certain people. I don’t wanna be like that anymore. If I’ve got the privilege of having a platform where I can make something that people may find to connect with, I want it to be real. To be true. I hope somebody might have their hand held by this music, I hope that somebody might feel more understood. If I shot for the moon, I’d hope that people might want to lean into who *they* are — in a way that might have made them be burnt at the stake a few hundred years ago.

When publications like Pitchfork, us, and NPR praise your music, how does it make you feel? Do you pay much attention to it?

I’m really grateful that my music can reach people and does reach those platforms. It doesn’t feel very real to me sometimes, and I guess I have a gap in the connection of understanding that it is “real”. What I really feel is the connection between us and the the people in the room when I/we play live.

If you had to choose the most notable musical influence on your sound, who would it be and why?

I find that changes often, and I’m in all honesty not very sure. Anybody who I can hear truth in, vulnerability, risk, raw and unsettling exposure of themselves… Some things touch you in a way that you can’t explain. But I really look up to people who take the risk to be themselves.

It’s such a tricky time for working musicians like yourself. How have you noticed Australia’s music industry changing over your career? Has it gotten better or worse, in your opinion?

It’s pretty hard. I think sometimes from the outside it might look like things are easy and you’re ticking boxes and living the life… but the changes in the industry make Australian musicians and teams some of the hardest working and self sacrificing people I have ever met. It lets me know that anybody making music and trying to get it out there is doing it because their passion for it is fucking huge and real”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Kinross/The Guardian

Grace Cummings has been compared to artists like Nina Simone, Nico, and John Cale. Even though Bloodhorse! Deals with “themes of identity, gaslighting, manipulation and betrayal, with a depth that only someone well-versed in otherworldly angst could reach”, Cummings has found peace and a life-saving quality in music. The final interview I want to bring in is from The Guardian:

“Since releasing her debut album, Refuge Cove, in 2019, Cummings has had success both in Australia and overseas, playing international festivals including Great Escape in the UK. Though she is a sure-footed songwriter whose last album, Ramona, was shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Music prize, Cummings has spent a lifetime trying to better fit people’s expectations – ever since that formative night-terrors incident.

In her track The Magnum Opus of The North is a Cowboy Boot, she describes the kind of man “who cosplays as tortured poets or cowboys, pretending to be disaffected”. Recently she’s come to the realisation that she has been a bowerbird in her relationships, borrowing opinions, taste and values and assuming them to be her own.

“I’ve been mirroring people’s behaviour in order to please them,” she says. “I’m autistic and I didn’t really realise what that meant. Now I want to live my life the way that I am – in a way that I would probably be burned at the stake for a couple of hundred years ago. I only want to do things that teach me something, or help somebody. The fucking coolest thing is to care. And I do care, so much.”

The aforementioned cowboy theme pops up a few times, including in an abbreviated, highly sexual AI country banger with a male vocal (it’s as surreal as it sounds), and in the video for My God, shot at The Lawrence Rodeo in Maclean, New South Wales. The rodeo becomes a physical manifestation of the hatred she describes in the song, the kind of hatred that people direct at strangers online. “The rodeo is this fucking strange environment where people have a bloodlust,” Cummings says. “A real depiction of us just sitting and watching something that’s quite awful.”

My God, the first single from the album, has a percussive urgency with its uh-huh-huh refrain. When recording it, Cummings had pneumonia, which forced her to experiment with her breath – picture the sound you might make when jumping into freezing water. “I’m leaning more into vocalisation without words, and this was primal sounding,” she says. “It’s the way that some people soothe themselves and their nervous system.”

With her track FAKE, she wants the listener to feel as though they are being dragged under water. The line “if you would just be a good girl” is so offensive to her that she has omitted it from the official lyrics and uses a glottal stop to make it almost unintelligible. In the video, she chokes on viscous black blood when singing it.

Seeing Cummings live, there’s a similar feeling of purging, as if watching a seance or someone speaking in tongues. “There’s definitely a milking of catharsis going on, but there’s no acting in it,” she says. “Sometimes I have no idea what’s going to happen and my band are like, fuck. But then you’re like, ‘Oh well, I guess that was there and needed to come out at some point’”.

CLASH provided their review of Bloodhorse! They wrote some interesting insights into one of the albums of the year. I know there is going to be a lot of love waiting when Cummings plays the U.K. in November. I think that she is a truly unique artist. I wonder where she goes from here:

“‘My God’ is a juddery, twitchy and almost equally dramatic piece, packed with off-beat vocal fills and “uh huh”s which continue the eye-opening feel of the album as a whole. But by now we’re at least partly acclimatised: perhaps getting used to expecting the unexpected. The song explores the “jealous creep” and “wounded animal” which lives in our ubiquitous handheld devices: the god – or idol – of our modern age. It ends with a soothing resolution in a quick piano chord which foreshadows the lead instrument of the third track, ‘Paradise’. This is a slower number, but still steeped in Cummings’ unusual sonic choices (the insistent open hi-hats and possible harpsichord). ‘FAKE’ takes the sound palette even further and elevates it thanks to an inarguably beautiful chord sequence, the kind that rends the heart no matter your constitution. Swelling strings and a head-turningly menacing tone from Cummings anchors this as a visceral piece of songwriting. Just as enjoyment has really set in, though, the track abruptly dissolves into a monotone drone – an undercurrent of electronic hum which may have been there all along and, for all we know, might continue forever.

It doesn’t though, instead melding after two long minutes into the bed of title track ‘Bloodhorse!’ That transition is a truly inspired move, evoking intense emotion which Cummings has explained seeks to evoke the feeling of gasping for air or “Alice falling down the rabbit hole.” The song which emerges is set on a racy, pattering rhythm section, and there’s plenty of entertainment to be had even while Cummings continues to push every boundary she can find. Like the rest of the album, this is an accessible form of the avant garde: challenging in part and extremely innovative but allowing space for essential music ingredients to flourish also.

A quick aside to note that the subsequent “take two” of this track has to be heard to be believed – putting it mildly, it bears no resemblance to its namesake but seems to take the form of an adult-rated, AI-delivered country and western mashup. Cummings’ thought processes are sometimes impenetrable and inexplicable but that, after all, is what sets humans apart from the apes (and the machines).

‘I’m Not Crazy’ is set on more “typical” ground: a woozy, acoustic guitar-prominent confession exploring misdirected love. Coupled with ‘John Lennon’, Cummings now seems to have entered a retro lounge pop era (and seems to have an impressive budget for string sections) too. Then, another startling contrast and an exploration of the misty mysteries of childhood night terrors: ‘WITCH! WITCH! WITCH!’ evokes primal fears from a knowing standpoint, using slow-paced and eminently enjoyable melody to paint dark pictures.

That’s already a lot to take in. What’s left are three reflective songs, leading us with  Cummings ultimately to a place of farewell and acceptance through a process of fierce self-help (‘My Island and Me’) and seeking of peace (‘The Magnum Opus of The North is a Cowboy Boot’), both songs built on gorgeous piano riffs.

As the final track, ‘See you in Fifty Years’, presents unanswered and perhaps rhetorical questions of what our futures may hold, it’s impossible not to share at least some of Cummings’ desire to seek – if not find – answers. For us mere mortals to understand every nuance of what Cummings is aiming to say in ‘Bloodhorse!’ may not be a realistic goal, though. This is a unique and intensely unsettled album, swerving from anxiety to hope; dream-like with some of those visions clearly amounting to nightmares, and others much less clear-cut. There are countless moments of brilliance, with only an occasional drop of energy, but perhaps it’s entirely unreasonable to expect Cummings to operate constantly at fever-pitch. Go back, listen again and you will likely find more secrets which have been tantalisingly hidden by this singular artist.

8/10”.

Go and connect with the remarkable Grace Cummings. If you are new to her work then go and listen to Bloodhorse! I do hope that there are more tour dates next year, as I will try and get along to see her play. For now, I am enjoying one of the standout albums from this year. The brilliant Grace Cummings is one of…

OUR best artists.

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Follow Grace Cummings

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/gracecummingsmusic

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@grace.cummingsmusic

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/gracecummingsmusic

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6ANsvg8EAfIP8TLs0VnlOA

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3uAWPonHw80gRQRUjhdW5a?si=pomM5ek4QCuB3peoKFfIPg

FEATURE: Spotlight: Miss Kaninna

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Joel Thomas Wilson

Miss Kaninna

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IT is exciting…

PHOTO CREDIT: Joel Thomas Wilson

sharing the work and brilliance of Miss Kaninna. Her mixtape, BLACKPRINT, was released last month. I am keen to spotlight her, as this is an artist that you should know about. At the moment, she is busy touring and is doing dates in her native Australia. I want to start out with an interview from CLASH. I am curious whether Miss Kaninna is coming to the U.K. to play soon enough, as people would love to see her:

“Back in 2021, you might have struggled to recognise Miss Kaninna. “I wore a hazmat suit, and I was fucking injecting people with shit,” she tells CLASH. What could be a scene from The Substance was, in fact, the rapper’s daily routine, working as a mental health nursing student during the pandemic.

As is the power of her ever-articulate tracks, a couple of underground gigs quickly spun into three ARIA nominations, an award for best Hip-Hop EP at the 2025 Australian Independent Music Awards for her debut, ‘Kaninna’, and a 2025 support tour with Kneecap. “I feel confident in things that I can do well, and I know that I’m good at,” she tells CLASH.

In BLACKPRINT you write: “My pen be a gun.” How did you know that being an artist was the way you wanted to share your story?

My whole family are performers and singers, and also very political. So, it wasn’t actually like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be a singer, I’m gonna be political.’ I never thought that politics was going to be a part of my music in such a big way. As a kid, I just wanted to be like Britney Spears, like Beyoncé and the Pussy Cat Dolls, and they’re not political at all.

I remember performing music as a kid – I liked musical theatre – and I was always put at the back. It was constantly like, while I know I’m good at this, because you’re black, because you’re Aboriginal, you have to be at the back, not sing anything too political. And then it’s like, well fuck you, I want to be the one in the front, the one that gets attention.

What was that experience like, the first time you got to be centre stage?

I was working in hospitality at the time, at a couple different bars, and a guy who ran one of the bars had his own band, and because it was lockdown, there were no gigs. A couple of underground gigs started to pop up, and he put on a show and was like, ‘Why don’t you come and open with me?’ I was like, ‘Well, I only have one song that I’ve written,’ and he said, ‘Well, we’ll just do all covers then.’

I did Naughty Girl by Beyoncé, Tyrone by Erykah Badu and some Sneaky Sound System. It was so random, but it was sick. There were no other girls doing music like that in Tasi, and no one was rapping either. So it was a pretty infectious feeling.

How does it feel to constantly describe your experience to all the people asking you to share your story?

It’s like trying to describe a dog to someone who’s never seen one. Unless you have been in Australia, lived there and know Aboriginal people, you really can’t fathom the history and the experience. Then I have to come over here and promote my music, which seems so irrelevant. I feel like I have an opportunity to speak about things that are not music-related, and gain allies in the white and black communities here so that they listen not only to my music, but to other Aboriginal creatives and politicians. Having my human rights is the goal, and music is the vessel.

Tell us about the upcoming Australia tour, and what’s next after that.

I’m really excited – it feels like my first time again. I haven’t had a chance to perform these songs in front of these people before, and a lot of them have been watching me since Black Britney. A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, your music is so different?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ I’m just trying to figure it out. I’m writing an album at the moment, and I’m developing my sound a lot more.

On tour, I’ve got some incredible opening acts. I like to dictate my show a lot, so it’s really annoying when you go to a festival and you’re not allowed to have the visuals up. I like to create a show where I get to create the story and a space where people can come and feel safe and be part of music, of something, that doesn’t feel too judgemental”.

I want to move to Rolling Stone Australia. They caught her in the middle of her European tour recently. The Tasmania-born six-time ARIA nominee was in conversation about her tour and exciting mixtape. To her, changing the world is the goal. Music is the vessel in which she can do that. You just know that she is going to be making music for years to come. “As her profile within the Australian industry has risen, so too has the responsibility she feels to remain authentic, unapologetic, and real when it comes to how she steps in a room, shows up for her people and for those who may feel like their voices can’t be heard”. If you have not connected with Miss Kannina, then go and follow her on social media:

“The BLACKPRINT mixtape is a lesson in overcoming, achieving and embracing one’s own power. It’s also a lesson in letting the joy in; the Kaninna we hear on this project is a woman empowered, yes, but also a woman who is comfortable in balancing softness with the raw intensity audiences love about her.

As she simply puts, it’s a discovery in free will. “A lot of artists and people in the industry have a mindset of: how do we hop on a trend? How do we make this big? I think that the biggest songs in the world, the most important ones, were never made to do that,” she says. “They were made to get an emotion down on paper and record that, so that people could feel it too and be seen. Or they were songs that could speak on an issue that needed to be spoken on.”

“Someone gave me some really good advice just after ‘Blak Britney’ came out,” she remembers. “I was thinking that I needed to release another ‘Blak Britney’. I had caught the wave and I was focused on how to keep going, that if I didn’t go viral again it was all going to fall apart. I spoke to this big artist and she was like, ‘As long as you’re having fun when you’re releasing new music and you can stand back, look at it and be proud of what you’ve done… You know you’re creating art.’” That was just so fucking true.

“Even if you don’t like the song, it’s about having a relationship with that song, knowing that it’s not only doing something for you but also for other people.

“‘Dawg in Me’, for instance. I love that song but it’s not my favourite anymore and I don’t really like doing it, just because I’ve done it for so long. I took it out of the set and every show I’ve done in Europe, people are screaming an encore for ‘Dawg in Me’. It’s done so much for other people. I think that’s something I’m coming to terms with a lot more. As an artist, I’m around that music a lot and I listen to the music a lot, but it might be someone’s first time hearing it.”

Looking ahead to what this BLACKPRINT era can potentially grow into, the wheels are already turning for Kaninna.

Exposure to more audiences internationally is feeding into how she is approaching her live shows at home. The validation received on the other side of the world has only added fuel to the fire that has been burning bright since her powerful breakthrough year.

Continuing to grow as an artist and performer go hand in hand, and with the opportunity to grow BLACKPRINT throughout the rest of this year, she’s ready to push herself further than before.

“What I am excited about is being able to create a show that is high production, high quality, with really talented musicians,” she enthuses. “Doing it in front of 1,500 people, 800 people, 500 people, whatever. It’s a show where people can come and feel like they are part of something”.

I am going to finish with BRICKS and their recent interview with Miss Kaninna. Even if I am new to her music, this is someone who I am going to follow closely. For BRICKS, “The First Nations rapper talks honouring Aboriginal history, touring with Kneecap, and making music that demands to be heard live”:

“The mixtape’s title is more than just a play on words; it’s also an homage to the Black artists who have revolutionised rap, and paved the way for a new generation of artists to rise with them. “I’ve always been a big Nicky fan, and she has The Pinkprint,” she shares, also citing Jay-Z’s The Blueprint. “I don’t really fuck with Jay-Z like that, but you can’t deny his impact on hip hop.”

Taking her own unique spin on the metaphor, the title was imbued with personal meaning as the artist reflected on the vastly misunderstood and downright incorrect histories Aboriginal communities are expected to accept. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the connections between reality and lies,” she shares. “Lies about Aboriginal people’s right to this land and how long we’ve been here – and what has been taken from us is our humanity.”

For Miss Kaninna, her artistry is inspired by an inherent longing to correct the misinformation she repeatedly hears. “I really do believe that Aboriginal people have been here since the beginning of time. We are the oldest living culture in the whole world. We still practice what we practised 100,000 years ago, and before then, it’s probably lost,” she explains. “The BLACKPRINT is really reminding people that this is stolen land, and it is an illegal occupation.” She draws comparisons to other illegal occupations, such as the Palestinian genocide by Israel. “It’s become quite evident between colonised peoples that we have to find solidarity in one another, so the ‘blackprint’ is trying to pay homage to my family – my family has always known this land, and I’ve never left.”

While working on the mixtape, Miss Kaninna was far from the studio – supporting on the European leg of Kneecap’s Fenian Tour. The experience helped shape the project, doubling down on her vision for a fully-rapped record. “Going on tour with those boys was such a good full-send into rap,” she explains. “Coming off the back of a rap tour, I felt so focused on writing lyrics and what I was trying to say. Getting to play my songs live – I played ‘MOB TIES’ and ‘STOLEN WAGES’, which are two songs about my community – overseas was a trip, because I didn’t think anyone could relate to what I was saying.”

To build the visual language of BLACKPRINT, Miss Kaninna worked with Adriane Neshoda. “I talked to her about colour schemes early on, and just how important colours are,” she shares. Central to the project was the original Aboriginal flag, designed by Luritja artist Harold Thomas in 1970, along with an alternative design that features a golden spear and its ties to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights in the world. “If people want to really learn about Aboriginal history, they need to look into the Tent Embassy,” she asserts.

Both flags prominently feature the colour yellow, leading to the golden yellow wig Miss Kaninna adorns on the mixtape cover. “Half of my face is covered because I wanted to represent any of us, all of us, from this country,” she explains. “Any Aboriginal person is the blackprint. Any black fella, any person with Aboriginal blood in their veins, is the blackprint. It’s not just me I’m representing anymore”.

The final thing I am dropping in is from Beat. They shared their thoughts on a furious and funny mixtape. BLACKPRINT is one of the most immediate and memorable releases of this year. I do wonder how much support she has in the U.K. I feel that her music should be played on our stations. There will definitely be demand for her to come and play for us:

“A proud Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung, Kalkadoon and Yirendali sovereign woman, Miss Kaninna relishes in calling out “Aussie-Aussie-Aussie/ Oi-Oi-Oi” chanters (mad props) and gets dirty/freaky in a casually graphic way (eg. “Do the splits lickin’ back on a dick” – the Parental Advisory Explicit Content sticker is valid). “I ain’t afraid to take it there” is an understatement. Sorry not sorry, prudes, Miss Kaninna’s not for you.

She’s hilarious, too: “Mug too fug, I had to go celibate.”

BLACKPRINT mixtape is great party music, but it’s born from resistance. She’s all about educating people the world over on the true history of “so-called Australia”, with a focus on Indigenous land rights, preserving the oldest living culture on Earth and fostering Black power. Every single word on here is worth memorising.

With its hi-hat-heavy beat, CHAT MY SHIT references old-school hip hop. This intro cut runs for one minute only, but cuts to the chase: “I’m Indigenous so you know you gon’ be feelin’ this and if you don’t then you’re prob’ly white supremacist… I got land back on my mind and I’m looking for a fight.”

The title track opens with a tweaky drone, before thwacking drums bring it home; the big-beat mayhem of Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy is referenced on this one. Listen out for the sound of silence, used to spectacular effect in the track’s final quarter.

Slinky bass glides through the creepy-hot LOOK AT ME NOW (feat. Kobie Dee). Sax is used sparingly, hitting like sprinklings of gold dust.

Bass notes played on piano, blazing electric guitar licks, clanking sounds that bring RATM to mind – her nuanced beats are delightfully unpredictable with a live-sounding edge.

“FUCK YOU, BITCH!” – HANDOUT, which features Waanyi/Gangaliida MC Jamahl Yami, opens with a bang. Miss Kaninna’s scattergun rapping astounds while she dismantles white Australia’s systemic racism. Inspired percussion drops later in the arrangement and the dancefloor beckons.

When her delivery hits boiling point, we hear Kelis’s Caught Out There choruses (the fuming “I hate you so much right now!” parts) as an influence.

“You hide behind your screen but ima meet you at your front door, BITCH!” – the hectic STOLEN WAGES veers into punk-rock territory while exposing cyclic dispossession.

A self-described “Black pop baddie”, Miss Kaninna is ultimately a truthteller. She’s furious about injustice, but also chic and unmesswithable.

Miss Kaninna’s braggadocio is warranted (“Deadly bitch ’til the day I die”). Bring on the debut album!”.

I am going to finish things here. The sensational Miss Kaninna is an artist that you definitely need to know. She is simply incredible. Go and check out BLACKPRINT. It is a mesmerising project. There is going to be that excitement around a debut album. This Australian-born queen is…

A major talent.

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Follow Miss Kaninna

Official:

https://www.misskaninna.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/misskaninna/

TikTok:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/misskaninna

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@MissKaninna

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ODboExevbfXfgKz7NPKxz?si=_YYnLvrCRPKCeDdRrzsPZQ

FEATURE: Wonderful Teachers, Ready to Teach Me… Those Who Inspired and Shaped Kate Bush’s Connection to Dance

FEATURE:

 

 

Wonderful Teachers, Ready to Teach Me…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Those Who Inspired and Shaped Kate Bush’s Connection to Dance

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PRIOR to coming to the last features of this year…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lindsay Kemp onstage in his production, Flowers, in which he played the lead role of Divine (in 1975, Kate Bush saw Kemp for the first time in a performance in Bloomsbury, London)/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

and doing stuff aimed at the Kate Bush Christmas market – gift ideas for new fans -, there are some other features I want to cover off. As I have said in a previous feature, I am exploring once more Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Going from the start to the very end, I am thinking about Kate Bush’s early life and career. Something I have talked about again but wanted to approach from a different slant, her love of dance is something that defined so much of her work. Some of those early Gered Mankowitz photos focusing on Kate Bush as a dancer, rather than a traditional artist. It is not the case that Bush always incorporated dance into her career. However, it was one of her earliest loves. Shy as a child and teenager (and an adult), the idea of committing to dance and expressing herself in quite an exaggerated and uninhabited manner, would have been terrified. So you wonder why she decided to pursue dance. Certainly, a lot of the music she grew up around and admired was by artists who were not necessarily dancers or were defined by dance. When she a student at St. Joseph's Convent Grammar School between 1969-1978, dance was part of her education. Though, like everything, it was quite formal and impersonal. Bush did not get along with her dance teacher. Perhaps because of their contrasting personalities. Bush, even so young, ambitious and someone who was not conventional and did not want to be bound by strictures and conventional teaching. Even though she would have been stimulated and wrote poetry, her experiences at school were largely unhappy and unsatisfying. Not getting the nourishment and inspiration that she would get elsewhere. Graeme Thomson notes how her bedroom at East Wickham Farm allowed her the privacy to work on routines to songs like The Beatles’ Eleonor Rigby. Whilst not the go-to when you think of danceable tracks, she had a wide range of records at her disposal, so I don’t think she was limited to 1960s Pop.

However, that idea of taking this fascinating with movement and dance and bringing it into public. She could dance freely and without shyness at home, only wary that a parent or brother might walk in and catch her. Worried they might laugh or she would be embarrassed. Of course, as she knew that she would have to take classes and be around other people, her first steps into dance were tentative or largely unspectacular. In the sense that she was not an instantly great dancer. The gap between Bush singing with EMI and going into the studio to record her debut, The Kick Inside, in 1978 allowed her time to muse and think about what to do. She thought about her appearances, physicality and her body. Naturally, that would lead her to dance. There would have been moments in the Bush household at East Wickham Farm where the family danced, though it was not part of her day-to-day routine. Her first eye-opening moment was watching a production by a dance teacher who would make an enormous impact. One honoured in the opening song of The Kick Inside, Moving. Lindsay Kemp’s production of Flowers, which was a re-imagining of Jean Genet’s 1943 novel, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs (Our Lady of the Flowers), played at the Collegiate Theatre in Bloomsbury, London, and then at The Roundhouse. Bush was not exactly a stranger to unconventional or esoteric art. If those are the right word. Her brother Jay’s poetry was often quite dark and unusual. In terms of the books she read and the culture that was in her household, it was different from a lot of her schoolfriends. Though Flowers was a mind-altering moment for Kate Bush. Populated by drag queens, sailors and murderers, it is a production that might raise eyebrows and see backlash today. Showing how we have not really progressed or evolved. I am not sure what the wider reaction to Flowers was when it was staged in 1975. For Bush, it was impactful enough that she would leave school and following her love of physical movement. If you feel her seeing the final gig of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust in 1973 was pivotal in terms of pursuing music and that love of live music, Lindsay Kemp was this figure who captivated Kate Bush. In the sense he could communicate so strongly without opening his mouth or using words. Bush knew something was missing in her music. The expression in her music.

You can feel this in The Kick Inside. The person who crushed the lily in her soul, as Kate Bush sings, is Lindsay Kemp. In the sense he unlocked something in her. Brought out this confidence. Fifty years ago, in 1976, Bush took drop-in mime lessons for 50p a session. She couldn’t enrol in a dance school, as she had no formal qualifications and nobody would admit her. David Bowie was one of Kemp’s students, so that also would have appealed and spoke to Kate Bush. Lindsay Kemp’s mime and dance classes was not about “who and what you were; it was about what you could become”. Graeme Thomson notes how “It’s not acting, it’s emotional amplification; finding the right part of her character to accentuate in order to represent the emotions of her songs, dissolving the fixed parameters of the corporeal into the amorphous, ever-changing “moving liquid” alter ego, bursting through boundaries and rolling over obstacles”. When Kemp went to Australia to tour, Bush began studying with American mime artist, Adam Darius. He taught at the Dance Centre down Floral Street in London’s Covent Garden. When Darius moved his classes to Elephant and Castle, Kate Bush followed him. These teachers imparted discipline and routine, but there was the visceral and unconventional, rather than the formal. Aside from Lindsay Kemp and Adam Darius, Robin Kovac was also hugely important. The routine for Wuthering Heights (Bush’s 1978 debut single) was choreographed by Kovac. She was an English Literature, Dance and Drama graduate of Florida State University. Kovac was instantly struck with Kate Bush and loved having her in the class. Bush modestly felt she was useless at the start, Bush became frustrated and depressed she could not absorb and nail the routines. Though Kovac said how it takes a decade to become a good dance, Bush was a fluid, astute and dedicated student and soon vastly improved.

“Kovac taught a contemporary style, with touches of jazz, heavily influenced by Martha Graham’s ‘contractions’. Anyone who has seen Bush’s early videos and live performances will immediately recognise the following description: “Contractions begin in the stomach, as if someone knifed you, and you just press back, rounding the back,” says Kovac. “It’s not that you’re getting smaller, you’re actually getting bigger in the back, like a bow, but it’s called contraction because you’re lifting up and away from the legs. The body must flow through that, because you’ve started an impulse, spreading through the body”. Kovac’s classes at the Dance Centre attracted actors. She also taught, as we learn from Graeme Thomson’s book, at Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, not far from Welling. By the time Bush called Robin Kovac to choregraph for her at very short notice, she would have been living at 44, Wickham Road with her brothers.  This request was for the Wuthering Heights video. Kovac charged £30, and in her flat in Archway Road, this iconic routine was taking shape. Although Bush forgot to credit Kovac when asked who choregraphed the video – she said she was influenced by Lindsay Kemp -, Bush did write a very sincere and sweet letter of apology when learning about her rare lack of manners and accreditation. I want to come to the last teacher, Anthony Van Laast. Adam Darius’s teaching was all about emotional release. Bush was able to overcome inhibitions and a lack of self-confidence. The ability to express her physical side was of paramount importance. Even if the media focused on her voice, looks and mocked her, Bush’s movement and dancing was enhancing her videos and live performances.

The dance side was misunderstood and often ignored. Bush recalled how her father said she used to dance to music on the telly but, after some people walked in, saw her, and then laughed, she was embarrassed and stopped. If there is one missing chapter from Kate Bush’s career that I am desperate to discover and uncover, is what form her reconnection with dance took when she recorded Hounds of Love. I am not sure whether it was Anthony van Laast who worked with her. Her association with Van Laast pre-dates 1979 and The Tour of Life. He appeared in the video for Hammer Horror. That was the first single from her 1978 album, Lionheart. This feature about The Tour of Life talks about Anthony Van Laast:

“But then Bush was big news. Her star had been arcing across the firmament ever since she first appeared on Top Of The Pops just over a year earlier. That memorable performance, playing her first single, Wuthering Heights, had introduced her as an utterly new and fresh talent. There had been an instant clamour for her to play live, though it would be 14 months before she did.

Looking at Nationwide from the vantage point of 2014, it’s amazing how much unguarded access she granted the filmmakers over a six-month build-up. Footage of early production meetings where people are crammed onto chairs and sofas in a tiny dressing room is followed by a clip of a leotard-and-leggings-clad Bush being worked hard by choreographer Anthony Van Laast during three initial weeks of “gruelling exertion” just to prepare her for several weeks of even more intense choreography.

Remarkably, the camera was allowed into Wood Wharf Studio in Greenwich, south London, where the singer was drilling her eight-piece band through Kite and Wow. Here, it’s possible to get a real sense of the pub gigs she’d started out playing just a couple of years before. “I think the main reason they listen to me is because I’m paying their wages,” she says of the rest of the band, her girlish, sing-song voice cut with chewy south London vocals”.

Alongside Lindsay Kemp, Adam Darius and Robin Kovac, Anthony Van Laast was a valuable and incredible teacher. I am curious whether there were any other dance instructors and choreographers that Bush worked with in the 1980s and 1990s. I will come to that thought in a second. However, there is this other article that also discusses Anthony Van Laast and Kate Bush collaborating for The Tour of Life. One of the most intense periods of her creative life in terms of the physicality required, it would have been a real tough period preparing for an international tour:

“Planning for Bush’s tour (known then and during its existence just as the Kate Bush Tour) began at the end of December 1978 with a brainstorming session involving Bush and set designer David Jackson at EMI’s headquarters. Further preliminary meetings were held at East Wickham Farm in January, and shortly afterwards Bush was meeting wardrobe consultant Lisa Hayes. Rehearsals then began in earnest: Bush spent mornings at The Place performance center in Euston, preparing the tour’s dance routines with choreographer Anthony Van Laast (now of Mamma Mia! and Harry Potter fame) and dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst. These sessions were as collaborative as they were instructive: Bush had worked with Van Laast before, as he’d appeared in the “Hammer Horror” music video as her masked dancing partner. They spent the mornings designing routines for the show, informed by Van Laast’s seasoned dancing skill and Bush’s mime training. It was a positive union: the resulting concerts have notable dancing which is inseparable from the songs it’s set to. As Bush had to both sing and dance onstage, she and Van Laast worked out choreography that would both work as dance and allow her to sing without losing her breath. The minimalism of “Moving” and Bush’s all-limb gesturing during it is one such careful work of planning, as is her most frenetic gun-happiness during the extended bridge of “James and the Cold Gun,” where she doesn’t sing”.

There were definitely periods where Bush let her dance instruction and training lapse. She needed it for The Tour of Life, and you can feel a physicality in videos for 1980’s Never for Ever and 1982’s The Dreaming. It is clear, whilst producing The Dreaming, she ate junk food and there were these exhausting night and days recording. She suffered from nervous exhaustion and, for Hounds of Love, she incorporated a healthier diet and a recommitment to dance into her life. In addition to this, rather than record out of multiple expensive studios, Bush had built a bespoke studio at her family’s home at East Wickham Farm. I am interested who she called on for Hounds of Love. I do know that the legendary Diane Grey choregraphed the spellbinding video for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). I feel there was a period after Hounds of Love and during The Sensual World (1989) where dance was less at the fore. By the time of The Red Shoes and the Kate Bush-penned/directed/starring The Line, the Cross and the Curve, came out in 1993, it seemed that she was once more immersed in dance. Or that the videos and film required a certain physicality. Lindsay Kemp appeared in the film, so I am not sure whether he helped with any of the choreography and provided any training and instruction. Regardless, we can see some incredible people who helped Bush unlock this immense and profound physicality and expression.

From her eyes being opened by Lindsay Kemp’s Flowers and the friendship they enjoyed (Kemp sadly died in 2018), through to the underrated importance of Robin Kovac, the connection Bush forged with Adam Darius, through to the brilliant Anthony Van Last and Diane Grey, these passionate and impactful teachers helped take Kate Bush from this shy but eager student to this captivating and world-class dancer. Her videos and live work immeasurably enhanced and enriched. I have not even talked about George Gurdjieff (who she name-checks in The Kick Inside’s Them Heavy People (“They open doorways that I thought were shut for good/They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu/They build up my body, break me emotionally/It's nearly killing me, but what a lovely feeling”), and The Fourth Way: “Gurdjieff taught that most people live in a state of "waking sleep"—acting on mechanical habits, conditioning, and automatic reactions without true self-awareness. To break this sleep, traditional paths required leaving the world to practice as a fakir (focusing on the physical body), a monk (focusing on emotion and faith), or a yogi (focusing on the mind)”. I will close here. I am going to write a lot more features around Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, as there are things that I wrote about a while ago but wasn’t to reapproach, reassess and reframe, and things I missed or briefly alluded to at other times. It has been a pleasure discussing dance, movement and incredible people who brought something almost spiritual and transcendent out of Kate Bush. To them, fans around the world…

OFFER eternal thanks.

FEATURE: Full English? Kate Bush and a Particular Kind of Cultural Influence

FEATURE:

 

 

Full English?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Adrian Boot

Kate Bush and a Particular Kind of Cultural Influence

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I have touched on this before…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Lionheart (her second studio album) cover shoot of August 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

but I am coming back to Graeme Thomson’s must-own book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. I am utilising this book for the next two features. Starting from the beginning, I was caught by something that was raised early on. In terms of Kate Bush and the nature of Englishness. Of course, she was born in England (in Bexleyheath, Kent), and she has lived in England her entire life. In many ways, Kate Bush is a quintessential English artist. Most of her influences were born in the country. Her mannerisms, love of tea and so many areas of life do rather define her as n English artist. And yet, there is also this Irish blood running through her. Not literally. More of a connection to her late mother, who was born in Ireland. I don’t think you can say that Kate Bush is 100% English. I always associate her with being half-Irish. When she was growing up and living at East Wickham Farm, she was living in a middle-class household in a nice neighbourhood. I have been there a couple of times, and East Wickham Farm is this rural property surrounded by older houses and more modern builds. It is this jewel in a long street in South East London. Formerly part of Kent, there was not a lot of international exposure. In the sense that her street would be largely composed of English residents. However, she travelled widely and was in London a lot. In terms of the music that was played in the Bush household, there was a lot of English Folk. Irish music and influence from her mother. Her brother Paddy, who played on most of her studio albums, favoured less traditional or obvious music. All sorts of sounds and genres exposed to his sister. That would occur throughout her career. Esoteric and slightly unusual, that extended to instrumentation as well. Though I think that most of the music a young Kate (or Catherine) Bush gravitated towards was English. Elton John a particular hero. She listened to David Bowie and Roxy Music. Though she also brought in Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and music beyond the U.K.

In the 1960s, this was a time when The Beatles exploded. The music of that decade defined by incredible English artists. The Rolling Stones and The Kinks among the very best. Into the 1970s, Kate Bush also fell under the spell of Pink Floyd. Graeme Thomson notes some of the literary influences and loves of a young Kate Bush. Works that she treasured into adulthood. J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (which was referenced in more than one song; In Search of Peter Pan among them). Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince. That “aching sense of loss and deep-rooted Englishness” exists in so much of her music.  Although she would have loved The Kinks and The Small Faces, her music does not have the kitchen-sink vignettes of the former or the impishness of the latter. Bush connected, as Thomson observes, “with a harder, more mythical England, a pre-Christian Celtic land, a deep, green dream of a country that has never truly existed except buried deep within our own minds”. I do love that thought. I could imagine how Bush connected with the grand old gardens she had access to as a child. She would go seeking and search at Hall Place at Old Bexley. Bush was a fan of Ealing comedies, children’s books and cheesy T.V. shows that were very English at their heart. This idea of roaming in wild flowers and rustic climbs. A land of ghouls and phantoms. Even if there was this enormous influence from her mother’s Irish heritage, so much of Kate Bush’s young being and mindset was around a certain type of Englishness. There was this “yearning to return to uncomplicated, instructive modes of behaviour, an acute sensitivity to the crackle and static of real life”. The early photos her brother John (Jay) took of her at East Wickham Farm. The ivy and tall walls. A decerped barn and leaf-strewn pool. The “open fires and old bellows”.

If Bush has grown up in London, perhaps she would have had a more cosmopolitan experience. Life at East Wickham Farm was a treasure trove of discovery and realisation. The cover to Lionheart. It suggests a world of hidden spaces, dark corners with peace and solitude. A little later on, Bush talks about her parents. Her father, Robert, was born in a village in English. Not from a privileged family, he was very smart and won a place at medical school to train to become a doctor. He served in the army and when Kate Bush’s eldest brother John was born (in 1944), Dr. Bush served in the army whilst his wife, Hannah (who was a staff nurse) was at home caring for her first child. If Kate Bush was closer ion resemblance to her mother, in terms of her mannerisms and personality, her father the dominant force. Bush having that same calm and patience. Her voice and speech more similar to his. There is no doubt that so much of Bush’s earliest work was about England. This older and more mythical view. Something romantic. World away from the realities of cities in the 1970s and 1980s. Not to say that Bush was shielded away as a child. It is true that most of her musical and cultural touchpoints were English. In terms of her Irishness, Bush had this warmth and ability to welcome and embrace everyone. That came from her mother. There are articles that examines English aspects and themes in Bush’s music. When writing about Oh England My Lionheart (from 1978’s Lionheart), Dreams of Orgonon explored the Englishness and Britishness of Bush’s music:

“It’s difficult to imagine Kate Bush heralding from any place except England. It’s certainly easy to understand why she’s popular in countries outside the U.K., but Bush is a uniquely English phenomenon. She came from pastoral England and often sings about British culture. Her work, especially on Lionheart, is full of allusions to English and Irish folklore, and she’s predominantly influenced by British music (glam rock was also a chiefly UK-locked phenomenon). Unlike most British rock singers, Bush doesn’t shy away from singing in an English accent, as she herself has pointed out. Bush is uniquely hard to categorize as an artist, but she’s consistently staked herself out as an English singer.

Even more than most of her albums, Lionheart is cohesively British. This is reflected by such songs as “In Search of Peter Pan” and “Wow,” both of which pile on staples of British culture, and the album’s title. “Lionheart” is a word mostly associated with England, conjuring up images of Richard the Lionheart and British staunchness. Its connotation is of fearlessness and an endless march, of “God Save the Queen” and Trafalgar. Even the cover of Lionheart suggests frigidity: Kate Bush sits in an attic with gold cloth draped around her, perched on top of a wooden chest, with a stuff lion’s face resting on the floor next to her. There’s a standoffishness to it which the anabatic, orientalist cover of The Kick Inside lacks. The cover suggests that this is a more serious album, one that’s placing itself in a lineage of British stalwarts”.

I don’t think that Bush was tipping into nationalism. It could be perceived as that. She was not a political songwriter or someone who was trying to stir up division and controversy. This 2024 article celebrated Kate Bush’s music. With its “haunting mysticism and eccentric charm, offers an unexpected gateway to English identity and culture”. Bush was not someone trying to define herself as English and wave the flag. I feel it was just that so much of her upbringing and tastes was to English cinema, T.V., literature and music. Though she would sing in different accents and weaves instruments from around the world into her music. The article also asks this: “Doesn’t much of the joy of life lie in noticing the small things that make us who we are?”. Fascinating and compelling points to consider:

“Everything I do is very English and I think that’s one reason I’ve broken through to a lot of countries.’ All I had to go on was Lionheart, which contained many clues, several of which, like references to Hammer Film Studios and the TV show The Sweeney, would only, in those pre-internet days, be clearly understood many years later. The melancholy closing track, ‘Oh England, My Lionheart’, is a concentrate of references that would certainly sound familiar to a British person – wassailing, London Bridge, abandoned air-raid shelters ‘blooming clover’, Peter Pan stealing children in Kensington Park, Shakespeare, the timeless poetic course of the river Thames, the ravens in the Tower – but which, to a French person trying to imagine them, sounded wonderfully strange and exotic. There was also a sense of almost post-apocalyptic loss about the song, which spurred me on to find out more about the things Bush appeared to locate in a paradise lost.

Bush’s songbook was to me a primer for learning English and becoming attuned to a British accent, though as Graeme Thomson has pointed out in Under The Ivy, his comprehensive and recently updated biography of the artist, Bush, who enjoys modulating and distorting her pretty voice, has also sung in Australian, Irish, French and German accents and ‘has impersonated a donkey, a witch, a bird and an enchanted house’. Through her songs I, a French outsider, was first shown a glimpse of the cultural landscape that had shaped her.

Bush is a cinematic songwriter. The inspiration for the song ‘Wuthering Heights’ came to her not from the novel but rather from a scene in a 1970 adaptation that showed ‘a hand coming through the window’. The song ‘Hounds of Love’, about the panic nature of love, opens with the thrilling line: ‘It’s in the trees! It’s coming!’ from the 1957 British horror film Night of the Demon and the video pays homage to Hitchcock’s 39 Steps, with a dash of the 1945 supernatural portmanteau film Dead of Night. I was living in England by the time Bush released The Red Shoes in 1993, and I enjoyed the confirmation of her allegiance to the distinctly English films of Powell and Pressburger. With their dreamlike interplay of historical timelines, A Canterbury Tale and A Matter of Life and Death always put me in mind of how, in ‘Oh England, My Lionheart’, Bush compresses thousands of years of national history into the line: ‘Dropped from my black spitfire to my funeral barge”.

This podcast finds Graeme Thomson discussing Kate Bush’s Irish roots. A podcast about artists who are actually Irish. Give Kate Bush Back to the Irish is what the episode is called. To this day, we talk about Kate Bush as a narrowly English artist. I guess that is fair enough, as she herself has so many English qualities and influences. I would be interested to read a book or article that charts Kate Bush’s global connections. In terms of where she travelled and promoted her work. Sounds and instruments from different countries. If a lot of it has its core in England, we find that Bush is not strictly 100% English in that sense. In terms of her fanbase and famous admirers, they come from far and wide. She has a massive following in American now. Australia and Japan. Countries she visited, they understood and connected with her long before the U.S. did. In examining Kate Bush’s upbringing and Englishness, do we also bring in themes such as race and class? Bush was comfortably middle-class, with very few of her songs documenting working-class worlds and characters. In terms of her sound and music tastes, very little in terms of Black influence. Personally, I don’t find this problematic. Bush not being exclusionary or ignorant of other classes and races. It was a life in 1950s, '60s and '70s England. Living outside of the city in a suburban street, one can forgive Bush for not having a certain diversity, worldliness or understanding or worlds and people beyond her family home. It brings me to another Dreams of Orgonon article. This one about James and the Cold Gun. Included on Bush’s 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside, Bush’s ideas of England are pastoral and middle-class, rather than the more cosmopolitan and diverse England that was prominent in large cities:

“There is another distinctive element of Genesis that Bush’s work inherits: Englishness. While the predominant trend in British rock was to pluck from American music to make it big, Genesis came from a school of art that looked to its homeland for its stories. There’s a pastoral quality to much of their music that’s more at home in a tradition with As You Like It than The Great Gatsby. English land and politics come into Gabriel-era Genesis songs quite often, and Bush’s nurturing relationship with British mythos bears similarities to this approach (which will come to a crescendo in “O England My Lionheart”).

Furthermore, the Englishness of Bush’s vocals is also similar to Genesis. In a 1985 interview, Bush distinguishes between British artists who sang in English accents (David Bowie and Roxy Music) and those who sang with American voices (she cites Elton John, Robert Palmer, and Robert Plant). Bush expresses a preference for the former tradition, perhaps liking the familiarity of it. Peter Gabriel fits into this tradition well enough, articulating syllable endings that Mick Jagger would spit across the vocal booth. When Bush works in disparate genres, she brings her own English vision to them (Bush’s vision of Englishness is of course deeply middle class and white. There’s a conspicuous absence of working class people in most of her music, although we’ll get to the exceptions soon enough)”.

There have been articles where Kate Bush’s name has been used when talking about English nationalism. This article from The Guardian says this of Kate Bush: “She could not be anything but English”. Rather than Kate Bush ignoring everything other than English, I do feel that there was a certain commercial lure to Englishness in the 1970s and 1980s. When Bush spoke with Melody Maker in 1978 and talked about Oh England My Lionheart, she fought back against those who feel the song is sloppy and old slosh. An area she wanted to explore, Bush observed how “Everything I do is very English, and I think that's one reason I've broken through to a lot of countries. The English vibe is very appealing”. One could say that a slightly narrow Englishness to her early work was a reason why Bush never resonated with American audiences. It was not conscious on her part. There is never this feeling of rallying around the flag or anything like this. Bush understood the international lure of Englishness, but this was the world Bush was brought up in. I don’t think her distinct Englishness is something that is a negative or damages her work. So much of her music is about characters and takes from literature, film and T.V., rather than anything strictly or problematically English. And bands like The Kinks could also be seen as extremely English. In terms of the scenes they create and the people they discuss. Bush, I feel, more wide-ranging and worldly. Maybe her earliest work was largely placed in an English world, from The Dreaming onwards, Bush took us to foreign war grounds, Australia, America, Ireland and far beyond. This coincided with her travelling more and being introduced to all kinds of music. As I mention, there is probably a book in this. At sixty-eight, Bush still resides in England and has not drastically changed her life since she was born. Though her work has reached the entire world and I don’t think you could see her entire catalogue as distinctly and rigidly English. Anyway, I was compelled to dig deeper after re-reading Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush and considering her Englishness. Whether it was an issue or something that is charming and intriguing. An English birth and Irish heritage, the divine Kate Bush is an…

INTERNATIONAL icon.

FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Yellow, Green, Blue: The Final Albums of the 1980s

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989

Yellow, Green, Blue: The Final Albums of the 1980s

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I am covering…

a few colours in this series, as I have spent a lot of time in the ‘red’ portion of the rainbow and sort of run out of room almost, so I am covering there colours here. It is appropriate, as I am going from Hounds of Love through to The Sensual World. There was this evolution and change, so there is a lot to cover. The final part of this series with take us into indigo and violet. Into The Red Shoes, the final notes John Carder Bush includes in his book, Kate: Inside the Rainbow. The penultimate edition takes us from page 169. This is the video for The Big Sky. This was one of Bush’s earliest videos as a director. Imaginative and full of different characters, Carder Bush observes how “The video shoot for ‘The Big Sky’ was lots of fun; a kind of ‘Mary Poppins rooftops of London’ set and that beautiful bird. It was one of those videos that when, during the breaks, you would come across groups of extras in incongruous combinations of characters; an astronaut and a kamikaze, Baron von Richthofen chatting to a bunch of US marines and jet fighter pilots playing electrical guitars next to Superman”. We then see the amazing photos for the cover of Hounds of Love. For the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave. They are some of the most memorable photos John Carder Bush took of his sister. Kate Bush looking amazing. Aside from the colour scheme, which is purple and pink, there is one particular shot, on page 174, of Bush with silver dragon earrings. Even if the shot is romantic and has this sensuality and calm, there is something fierce and proud when it comes to these earrings. Bush showing that she had this strength and fire inside her, I feel. Bush’s make-up is incredible. Purple eyeshadow and pink/red lipstick. Her hair flowing on this purple backdrop, I wonder what the inspiration was for the shot. One of the most enduring images of Kate Bush.

Though, as we know, Hounds of Love’s cover has Bush’s two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, with her. Before getting to The Sensual World on page 232, we do get this series of photos. Bush behind the camera when she was directing videos. She directed the videos for Hounds of Love and The Big Sky. Lots of really interesting photos from the sets. When she was in the Cloudbusting video. Playing the part of Peter Reich, this is what Kate Bus said of Cloudbusting: “It’s a song with a very American inspiration, which draws its subject from ‘A Book Of Dreams’ by Peter Reich. The book was written as if by a child who was telling of his strange and unique relationship with his father. They lived in a place called Organon, where the father, a respected psycho-analyst, had some very advanced theories on Vital Energy; furthermore, he owned a rain-making machine, the Cloudbuster. His son and he loved to use it to make it rain. Unfortunately, the father was imprisoned because of his ideas. In fact, in America, in that period, it was safer not to stick out. Sadly, the father dies in prison. From that point on, his son becomes unable to put up with an orthodox lifestyle, to adapt himself. The song evokes the days of happiness when the little boy was making it rain with his father - Yves Bigot, ‘Englishwoman Is Crossing The Continents’. Guitares et Claviers (France), February 1986”. It takes us to The Sensual World. I think the cover is the best one from Kate Bush. Many might say Hounds of Love is the very best. Others would say Never for Ever. I do feel that The Sensual World is the standout. In  terms of the composition of Bush with a flower covering her mouth. It is such a beautiful and striking image, so I was interesting to hear from John Carder Bush how he came about this concept. He writes how “I had shown Kate the beautiful edition of the book Ordeal by Roses, and she had been drawn immediately to one particular photo, so, yes, the way this shot is printed and lit is inspired by the iconic shot of the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe. Although one eye is in the shadow, it looks lit in the same way as the one not in shadow. But there the resemblance ends; or does it? They are both holding a rose … The rose, the most sensual flower, with its perfume, its elegant beauty, its passionate colour and, of course, its thorns, is like love itself. Whereas Mishima has a challenging flint in his eye, Kate is full of trepidation, yet her posture is very upright and challenging. Mishima wants what he senses; Kate is not so sure, and this is much more interesting. The background was a Spanish shawl of Vivienne’s. However, one of the biggest differences is that the Mishima shot was taken on a small ‘spy cameras’ to be able to harden and contrast the image when printed, and mine was taken with a Hasselblad with the intention of creating subtle skin tones while still retaining the impact of the idea of the two eyes”. I did not know any of this. I assumed that there was a link to Ulysses.

This is the novel that inspired The Sensual World’s title track. Or the soliloquy from Molly Bloom. She could not use the text, so she came up with her own words. I was not aware how John Carder Bush and his sister decided on the photo and its background. We do see the colour version of the album cover, but the black-and-white is better in my view. Like a classic Hollywood actress or an artist’s muse, you feel all this intent and emotion in Kate Bush’s eyes. We also learn about the shoot for This Woman’s Work. A single that was released in 1989, it was first used for John Hughes’s film, She’s Having a Baby, in 1988. It does seem to be one of those shots that had no specific concept or direction. Bush shot in black-and-white with her head in her hands. It is a beautiful shot. The final part of this series is brief. The notes from John Carder Bush about The Red Shoes. He did shoot his sister up to and including her 2011 album, Director’s Cut. There are a couple of shots from 50 Words for Snow. So he has been involved with almost every album. I am not sure why he did not take shots for 2005’s Aerial. Trevor Leighton dealing with those promotional images. No real insight why John Carder Bush was subbed there. However, you feel like he will be behind the camera again when Bush decides to release another album. I love the photos during The Sensual World. Kate Bush looking so happy and relaxed. That move from Hounds of Love to her final album of the 1980s. She was now in her thirties, and her music was exploring new subjects.

Bush more aware of age and ageing. The Sensual World a more feminine album than The Dreaming (1982) or Hounds of Love. I think the photos her brother took in 1989 are some of the very best. She looks amazing and so happy. You can tell that here was someone she was at ease with. Having been his photographic subject for decades, Kate Bush is at her very best. From the iconic shots for the Hounds of Love cover and images captured during her videos, there are also others that many people would not have seen, Guido Harari also photographing her for Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. He would photograph her for The Red Shoes and the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Both of these incredible photographers bringing layers and different sides from Kate Bush. I love those words about the cover shoot for The Sensual World. What the inspiration was. There are so many connections to literature, art and film throughout Kate Bush’s career. Few artists have that same depth and variety. In terms of the links to various films, T.V. shoes, works of literature and beyond. It is sad to wrap up this series. I realise I have covered a few colours o the rainbow in this feature, but I misjudged thigs at the start, so we get a lot of shades of red and I did need to go through the spectrum. However, even though the final part is brief, there is going to be plenty to say. The Red Shoes the last album John Carder Bush would shoot for until 2011. I do love Kate: Inside the Rainbow, and I would recommend that people buy it. All these incredible photographs that we do need to see in a gallery or exhibition. Some unforgettable images of…

HIS beloved sister.

FEATURE: In the Snow with Rosebud: Kate Bush’s King of the Mountain at Twenty-One

FEATURE:

 

 

In the Snow with Rosebud

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Kate Bush’s King of the Mountain at Twenty-One

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IN terms of seismic…

single released, few were as big as Kate Bush and King of the Mountain. 1993’s The Red Shoes was her previous album. Aerial came out in November 2005. On 24th October, 2005, King of the Mountain arrived. It reached number four in the U.K. I think it is among her best singles. Though you feel songs like How to Be Invisible or Mrs. Bartolozzi could have been great singles, King of the Mountain was perhaps the most appropriate. Because it was written back in the 1990s and was the first thing on the album Bush wrote, maybe getting it out there after all those years was important. Also, its lyrics discuss Elvis Presley and this king of the mountain. The ideas that he is alive and is hidden away somewhere. It is about celebrity and fame. Bush theorising whether Presley is alive and has retreated from the spotlight. It is one of those great conspiracy but, alas, Presley did die in1977. Bush herself stepped away from the spotlight and started a family. Her son Bertie was born in 1998. The illustration you see on the single cover for King of the Mountain was by him. It is a fascinating and typically Kate Bush song. As it is twenty-one soon, it makes me wonder about her next single. King of the Mountain came out twelve years after The Red Shoes was released, but Bush had released music after 1993. Though this was a new single after such a long time. Now, it has been nearly fifteen years since she released a single. If you don’t count the recent Little Shrew (Snowflake). 50 Words for Snow’s Wild Man came out in October 2011. I don’t think a new Kate Bush single will feature her in it. King of the Mountain is the last time we will see her in a video. Bush was self-conscious and worried about her appearance. She is magnetic in the video, though I don’t think it was the most comfortable experience. Even so, the single and video was received with huge warmth. BBC Radio 2 gave it its premiere on 21st September 2005.

I recall when King of the Mountain came out. It was this massive moment. People not quite sure exactly when and if any new stuff from Kate Bush would arrive. It was also one of this song included in Bush’s 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. I am going to bring in some articles I may have sourced before, but there is very little written about King of the Mountain. This article takes from Tom Doyle’s book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. He interviewed Kate Bush in 2005 in promotion of Aerial:

“Aerial began with ‘King of the Mountain’, the first song Kate had written for the album. Its lyric explored the idea that Elvis Presley was alive and well and living in some remote, snowy, elevated location. More significantly, it was someone who’d had myths built around her, writing about another individual who’d had even greater myths built around him. It was essentially a song about fame.

‘There’s only three or four people who’ve been as famous as Elvis,’ Bush reckoned. ‘You’ve got Elvis, you’ve got Frank Sinatra . . . even Marilyn Monroe, I think it probably happened more after she died. But Sinatra and Elvis lived these lives that . . . I mean . . . I can’t imagine what it must have been like.

‘What a horrible nightmare. Particularly for somebody like Elvis. Because the impression I get was that he was fun-loving and just happened to be really gorgeous and sexy and talented. And I think, y’know, partly why people respond to him the way they do – and I really feel strongly about this – is that people [sense] an intention from somebody, whether it’s an actor or a singer. People felt that Elvis was a really genuinely sweet person and that’s why everybody loves him so much. Not that I know a great deal about Elvis, but I thought he was a very beautiful- looking man with a fantastic voice and this fun-loving quality where you see he’s up there kind of taking the piss out of himself.’

I said I’d recently re-watched Presley’s 1970 Vegas-era documentary, That’s the Way It Is, and it had struck me that it often must have been a real laugh being Elvis.

‘Well, I hope it was. What I see is somebody who was a sweetheart in the truest sense, just being eaten alive. To be as famous as he was . . . how could anybody survive that and still be a human being? I see him as being destroyed really by the fact that he was so famous. So I just love the idea of him being alive somewhere, away from all the people and the greed and the wanting to take him over”.

That idea that Elvis Presley was innocent and sweet and got eaten by fame. Maybe we forget some of the controversy and darker sides of him. Though he was hugely respected and undeniably brilliant, there were aspects that cannot be ignored or put down to the pressures of fame. Even so, he was one of the biggest artists ever and would have felt manipulated. Pressured and almost forced to keep recording, performing and being in films. I do wonder whether Kate Bush recognised some similarities. Not to the same extent, though she did have a hectic career. So much attention came her way, she would have been uncomfortable with some of it. Consciously stepping away from music for a bit to focus on herself and family, you can see some autobiography in King of the Mountain, even if Kate Bush rejects that notion. MOJO placed King of the Mountain thirty-sixth in a list of Kate Bush’s best songs: “The first song written (and partially recorded) for Aerial, in 1997, and the song that announced its completion eight years later, is an atmospheric meditation on the possibility that Elvis lives on in some iconic hinterland, sledging on Kane’s Rosebud. The slinky marimba groove, tough drums and skanky guitars (by Bush’s husband Dan McIntosh), provided an early clue this album would be unlike anything she’d done before, albeit reassuringly compelling and eccentric”. The Guardian said the following about King of the Mountain. They judged it as her eleventh-best single: “Comeback album Aerial wasn’t exactly overburdened with obvious singles. Perhaps the beautiful, sunlit Somewhere in Between might have worked out of context of the Sea of Honey song-suite, but instead Bush plumped for a song that involved her impersonating Elvis and knowingly ruminating on the benefits of withdrawing from the public eye”

There was so much anticipation. King of the Mountain released on 24th October, 2005. Then Aerial came out on 7th November. That period between getting this new Kate Bush single - the first in a while -, and then this double album. I wonder whether she considered releasing any other songs as singles. At this point, I feel Bush was more about albums. Rather than release multiple single, she wanted people to get the album and experience it as a whole. That is why she only released one single from her two albums after that (Deeper Understanding from 2011’s Director’s Cut and Wild Man from 50 Words for Snow, also 2011). I was not in Hammersmith at any of the twenty-two dates in 2014 to see this live. Though I can tell from the live album how atmospheric a performance it was. The crowd awe-struck by this song. It is among my favourites from Kate Bush. Twenty-one years after its release, there is now this wait once more. We have heard from Kate Bush fairly recently, so she is not hiding away. And yet, she is an artist that has so many fans and is loved around the world. I am not sure that she has the same stress and weight on her shoulders as she did in 1993 leading up to 2005. You do have to wonder what the next single will be about. Whether she will release one at all. She may just put an album out and that will be it. Twenty-one years after its release, King of the Mountain is still played on the radio. One of those songs that was huge in 2005, in terms of its significance, it also meant that Bush was still relevant and adored. Number four single and a number three album, that was some achievement, seeing as she had not released anything for a while. King of the Mountain, this wonderful and epic song from…

THIS music queen.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Creedence Clearwater Revival

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: ZUMA Press Wire - Imago Images

Creedence Clearwater Revival

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THIS is a band…

IN THIS PHOTO: Creedence Clearwater Revival photographed at Fantasy Records, Berkeley, CA in 1970/PHOTO CREDIT: Ed Caraeff

that I have not written about before. There is no doubt that Creedence Clearwater Revival are one of the greatest bands ever. Formed in California in 1959, they recorded seven studio albums. Whilst their final album, 1972’s Mardi Gras, is not considered among their best, they left us this incredible catalogue. Their lead songwriter, John Fogerty, one of the very best. I am going to end this feature with a twenty-song mix from Creedence Clearwater Revival. Before getting to that mixtape, AllMusic provide us with a deep and interesting biography about a band that a lot of people might not be aware of:

“As the tumultuous 1960s crashed into the '70s, few American bands could match the fevered output, unified vision, and consistent hit-making ability of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Despite hailing from Northern California, bandleader John Fogerty rooted his imagination in the Deep South, fusing vivid Southern imagery with a distinctive brand of rock & roll that combined swamp pop, blues, R&B, and country. Viewed as outliers in the Bay Area's overwhelmingly psychedelic music scene, CCR's punchy roots rock delivery, blue-collar work ethic, and comparative sobriety helped them quickly surpass their peers and become one of the most prolific and popular bands in the country. In 1969 alone they produced three major albums, headlined the Woodstock Festival, and introduced iconic songs like "Proud Mary" and "Fortunate Son" into the cultural lexicon. The latter of the two went on to become one of the defining protest songs of the Vietnam War, followed closely by "Run Through the Jungle" and "Bad Moon Rising," which, while not written about the war, nonetheless tapped into the nation's zeitgeist and had a similar resonance. Their creative and commercial success peaked with 1970's Cosmo's Factory, a rock solid chart-topper that housed massive hits like "Up Around the Bend" and "Lookin' Out My Back Door." Like many great bands, CCR's star burned brightly for a relatively short period before in-fighting and contention led to their breakup in 1972. In spite of ongoing feuds and protracted legal battles with their record label, the band's legacy grew over the following decades as their music became a definitive touchstone of American classic rock. Their 1976 anthology Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits remains a ubiquitous chart staple well into the 21st century.

In 1959, while attending Portola Junior High School in El Cerrito, California, classmates John Fogerty (vocals, guitar), Stu Cook (bass), and Doug Clifford (drums) began playing together as the Blue Velvets, cutting their teeth on early rock instrumentals and the jukebox hits of the era. They later became a quartet with the addition of John's older brother, Tom Fogerty (guitar, vocals), and released a handful of independent singles to local radio. In 1964 the Blue Velvets joined the roster of San Francisco's Fantasy Records, a label which at that point was primarily known for jazz artists like Vince Guaraldi and Dave Brubeck. In an attempt to compete with the burgeoning British invasion, label co-founder Max Weiss urged them to change their name to the Golliwogs. Despite releasing a number of singles over the next few years, their early efforts yielded little attention and in 1966 John Fogerty and Doug Clifford were drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces. Fogerty's time in the Army Reserves proved to be somewhat transformative in terms of shaping both his creative vision and political views and in 1967, he and his bandmates gladly abandoned the unfortunate Golliwogs moniker in favor of the more eclectic Creedence Clearwater Revival. By then Saul Zaentz had bought out Fantasy's original partners and promptly offered the newly minted CCR a contract, albeit one that would later come back to haunt them.

The group released their eponymous debut album in May 1968. Although it bore a few sonic traces of the psychedelic era, it served to introduce the fiery delivery, tight arrangements, and Southern musical influences that would become CCR's hallmark. It also gave them their first hit in "Suzie Q," a sprawling cover of Dale Hawkins' 1957 rockabilly song which found its way into the Top 40 in November of that year. The album also cemented John Fogerty's all-encompassing role as the band's frontman, chief songwriter, lead guitarist, producer, and arranger. Having had their first taste of success, CCR entered their peak period a few months later with the release of Bayou Country, their breakout second album. The first of three LPs released in 1969, Bayou Country reached number seven on the pop charts and was certified platinum thanks in large part to lead single "Proud Mary" and its swampy B-side "Born on the Bayou." With its catchy tune, Mississippi River imagery, and themes of escape, "Proud Mary" was an immediate hit and went on to become one of CCR's most enduring songs. Of the many covers it inspired, it was Ike & Tina Turner's revved-up 1971 soul rendition that did nearly as well as CCR's, earning the duo a Grammy Award. Riding a wave of newfound momentum, CCR released their third album, Green River, in August 1969, giving them their first chart-topper and adding two more Top Five singles -- the jaunty but foreboding "Bad Moon Rising" and the twangy "Green River" -- to their growing clutch of hits. They also toured relentlessly in support of it and were one of the headlining acts at the Woodstock Festival in Upstate New York that summer, although Fogerty deemed their set unworthy of inclusion on the live album and asked that it be omitted. Completing this remarkable year, CCR released their fourth album, Willy and the Poor Boys, in November. The harmony and groove-filled "Down on the Corner" gave them yet another Top Five hit, but it was Fogerty's gutsy protest song "Fortunate Son" that made a more lasting statement. Arriving at the zenith of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, "Fortunate Son" became one of the defining anthems of the anti-war movement and has retained that status through subsequent decades. In 2013, the Library of Congress added it to their National Recording Registry for its cultural and historical significance.

At the dawn of the 1970s, CCR were at their commercial peak, riding a string of hit albums and singles that had placed them in the upper echelon of American rock music. Without pausing for reflection, they kicked off January 1970 with the double A-side of "Travelin' Band" and "Who'll Stop the Rain," appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine the following month. Two more instant CCR classics, "Up Around the Bend" and "Run Through the Jungle," appeared a few months later as the group headed to Europe for their first international tour. With four more hit songs already on the charts, "Lookin' Out My Back Door" and "Long as I Can See the Light" helped turn the band's fifth album, Cosmo's Factory, into a massive success, sitting at number one for a nine-week stint in late 1970. By then, CCR had caught on globally as well, with the album also topping charts in Australia, the U.K., and parts of Europe.

They ended the year with yet another album, Pendulum, which yielded a pair of Top Ten hits in "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and "Hey Tonight." It also marked the first time CCR had made a record containing entirely original material, though the influence of their R&B and blues heroes remained, especially that of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, with whom they had recently jammed. It was also the final record to include the group's original lineup as a disgruntled Tom Fogerty departed in February 1971. The price paid for Fogerty's unyielding control of CCR's affairs and creative vision was growing dissent among the other bandmembers. After Tom's departure, they carried on wearily as a trio with John reluctantly agreeing to cede some creative control to his remaining bandmates. However, even this attempt at democracy was somewhat heavy-handed; rather than simply allowing Cook and Clifford a little more artistic input, he insisted that each member now write and sing his own material to be split evenly on future albums. Their first release as a trio was Fogerty's "Sweet Hitch-Hiker," an energetic rocker that proved to be CCR's final Top Ten hit. Cook's bluesy B-side, "Door to Door," made little impact. When their seventh album, Mardi Gras, was finally released in early 1972, it was maligned by critics as uneven and lacking cohesion, though the group's momentum still helped it achieve a number 12 chart placement. The growing frustration over the band's direction and its lousy contract with Fantasy continued to mount and, following a grueling two-month tour, CCR called it quits in October of that year. For an impressive five-year period, they had performed at the top of their game, leaving behind a deep catalog of studio albums and hit songs, all of which fell under the ownership of Fantasy Records.

CCR certainly weren't the first rock band to attach themselves to an unfavorable record contract, but the bitter legal battles between Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz and John Fogerty unfortunately became a part of CCR's post-breakup mythology, stretching all the way into the 2000s when Zaentz finally sold Fantasy to the Concord label which attempted to restore some contractual goodwill with the band. Starting in the mid'-70s, in order to deny them any more royalties, Fogerty rebuked the label by refusing to play any of his CCR material live. After the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and his solo career saw a late-'90s revival, he softened his stance and re-embraced his old catalog, much to the delight of longtime fans. Tom Fogerty died in 1990 having mounted a moderately successful solo career and in 1995, Cook and Clifford launched the Fogerty-less Creedence Clearwater Revisited with various guest singers in order to take the old catalog on the road. A proper reunion never materialized, though CCR have remained an iconic band with a multi-generational fan base thanks to a steady succession of archival releases and compilations. In 2019, their Live at Woodstock set finally saw the light of day in honor of the festival's 50th anniversary”.

I will end things there. If you are already a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival or are a stranger to them, I hope that the mic below gives you an insight into their brilliance and importance. One of the greatest bands who there ever was, in spite of their relatively short recording career, what they left behind will endure and be treasured for generations to come. This is a salute to…

A legendary American band.

FEATURE: Lionhearted: Billie Marten’s Writing of Blues and Yellows at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

Lionhearted

Billie Marten’s Writing of Blues and Yellows at Ten

__________

THIS is an album…

that is very personal to me. Billie Marten released her debut album, Writing of Blues and Yellows, in 2016. Even if she may feel subsequent albums have been truer to her or better, she cannot argue against the fact that her debut is magnificent. A teenager when she wrote and recorded it, what you notice is how astonishingly accomplished the songwriting is. No naivety or wasted words, this is almost like a poet at work! Her voice beautiful throughout. A couple of its songs, Emily and Heavy Weather, among my favourites of the 2010s. In fact, Writing of Blues and Yellows is one of my favourite albums ever. When it came out in 2016, in terms of music, we had lost Prince and David Bowie. It was bleak for other reasons, but it seemed to be this especially tragic year. For me, I was in a job I disliked and was feeling lost. This album was vital in helping me. I was immersed in the songs and the extraordinary power and tenderness of Marten’s voice. Her astonishing songwriting. I will come to some reviews and interviews. 2016 was not the year Billie Marten broke through. The Ripon-raised, London-based artist released her first single, Ribbon, in 2014. Shortly after her fifteenth birthday. The Ribbon E.P. followed a month later. Such talent at a very young age, she put me in mind of Kate Bush. I know she is a fan of Bush, so hopefully she will not mind the comparison! Though Bush released her debut single at nineteen, so it makes her seem pretty slow compared to Billie Marten! I also like to think that a track on Writing of Blues and Yellows, Lionhearted, is a nod to Kate Bush’s second studio album, Lionheart (1978). Marten’s music has expanded and broadened through the years. She has toured around the world and is incredibly hard-working.

In 2016, Billie Marten was quite fresh in terms of international exposure and recording. I am not sure if she will mark a decade of her debut album. I am sure she will pop an Instagram post in. Looking back on things, she has done so much since then! I saw her live last year at the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London. Such a masterful performer who seduced and had the crowd in her hand – in the best way -, she was like this decades-long professional. So effortlessly charming and brilliant, I wonder how a teenage Billie Marten would have felt stepping onto that stage in 2016! You truly get the feeling on her debut album that you are inside her home. So private and personal, this is a songwriter very much bringing you into her bedroom walls, though the songs have so much space and room. In the sense that we explore the skies and horizons. A lot of nature, weather and outside. Hello Sunshine, La Lune, Bird, Heavy Weather and It’s a Fine Day (which is a cover version of the 1992 Opus III song) take us beyond Billie Marten’s family home. Songs such as Teeth quite raw and personal. In terms of deeper cuts that you should check out, Green, Live, and Unaware are songs I do not hear people talking about. I am not sure if they have been played on the radio. They are gems. It is disappointing that there was not huge press coverage for Writing of Blues and Yellows. I guess, in a year which saw albums from Solange, Beyoncé, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, David Bowie, Frank Ocean, and Radiohead, perhaps Billie Marten was under the radar of many critics. Since then, the music press has jumped to review her albums. Writings of Blues and Yellows is an album that has this gentle and acoustic feel, through there are darker and deeper moments. The wider industry gravitating towards albums more experimental or harder-hitting. Apart from the sublime beauty and transcendence you get from Billie Marten’s words, playing and singing, there is also the videos for the singles. The album artwork too. Everything is absolutely wonderfu!. I don’t think there is a tenth anniversary reissue though, a decade on, this wonderous and must-hear debut album deserves a lot of fuss.

I do want to source a couple of interviews with Billie Marten. Just before her album came out, there was this curiosity. A Yorkshire-born wonder with such an instant memorable and resonant sound, who knew that she would be touring the world a decade later and be this major artist?! Not long after her debut came out, her P.R. company sort of offered me a role. Not sure if it was being part of Marten’s team or being part of her career, it never came to fruition. It is a missed opportunity. No chance now to be part of her team, I am glad I was one of the early supporters of her music. I have shouted about Writing of Blues and Yellows a number of times. In fact, the first interview is from 2015. When her As Long As E.P. came out. Coup de Main spent time with Billie Marten and asked her about her career and future plans:

“CDM: Being only 16-years-old and still in school, how are you finding juggling your music career and academic commitments?

BILLIE MARTEN: I tend to keep things very separate, so I'll have two frames of mind that work and don't get in the way of each other. I don't talk about music in school, and I don't talk about work in music - but I'll always take work with me to on the train or when I have 10 mins etc.

CDM: How does your songwriting process work?

BILLIE: I usually start with a guitar riff or a few chords that I'll play around with for a while, and then I'll start singing some sort of noise and somehow it turns into a song, ha. I have so many voice-notes on my phone, so I'm always thinking.

CDM: Do you write your lyrics specifically for the songs, or do you write poems or prose and then evolve them into song-form?

BILLIE: Usually I'll write them for the song, but sometimes I do English Lit so a lot of the songs have some sort of background influenced by a line I will have read, or a T. S. Eliot poem or something.

CDM: What do you hope for people to take away from listening to your music?

BILLIE: I'm not too sure really. If it helps people think a bit less, or think a bit more, I guess that's a good thing. I hope they can empathise a little too.

CDM: If you were a country, which song would be your national anthem?

BILLIE: I think maybe 'All The Young Dudes' (Mott the Hoople version) or 'God Only Knows'”.

This interview from Euphoria Zine was published in 2016. It was a busy and important year for Billie Marten. Her debut album on the horizon. When it arrived on 23rd September, I wonder if she had a sense of relief or excitement. What emotions were in her heart and head when it was put out into the world:

“Who are your influences?

Everything in my parents’ record collection really; Kate Bush, John Martyn, Joni, Loudon Wainwright, Brian Eno, Joan Armatrading, Jeff Buckley, you know; those awe-inspiring humans that everyone wishes they were like.

Is there anyone you’d hope to collaborate with some day?

Most of them are dead sadly.  I guess people completely removed from my bubble – experimental geniuses like James Blake, Jon Hopkins, Sigur Ros, people like that. Also Kendrick would definitely be an experience to remember.

Did you always want to go into music? Were there any other jobs you dreamt of when you were younger?

I never dreamt of being in music, I quite fancy being a cobbler or a mechanic someday, or I’ve always wanted to make soundtracks for films.

You signed a record deal with Chess Club at the very start of last year. How has it affected your teenage years?

It’s affected me only in the way that it would affect anyone I guess. It’s something you must get used to, and that does take time (no matter how comfortable you pretend to be with it) but I do remember signing and the next day having to sit an exam in the hall – that was a bit mad.

You were picked up by both Apple Music and BBC Sound for “up and coming” in 2016, how was that?

Such great news. I’m incredibly grateful.

Having played at festivals and with more lined up this summer, did you have any experiences of festivals before playing at them?

Only tiny local beer festivals or ones I used to go to with my mum back in the day. But my first ‘proper’ one was Leeds/ Reading 2014, where I did the BBC Introducing stage and that’s when I first understood how incredible music festivals are”.

Two reviews to end with. Financial Times reviewed the debut album from a Yorkshire teenager who sings in “breathy high tones in an atmospherically worked mood of introversion and subtlety”. Ten years later, and this album is still very dear to me:

“What would life be like with a lion heart inside?” Billie Marten sings, in breathy high tones that convey the wistful ache of a wallflower at the edge of the action. The atmospherically worked mood of introversion is all the more impressive considering Marten’s youth: she is 17, an age more associated in today’s showbiz with super-confident stage brats than subtle singer-songwriters. The Yorkshire teen’s rapid ascent, winning praise from Ed Sheeran and releasing a debut album on a major label, began when her mother posted a video of her playing on YouTube, an immaculately modern back story. Her songs are more old-fashioned, however. Based around her acoustic guitar and lingering voice, they dare risk associations with Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell, disproving the lack of boldness lamented in “Lionhearted”. Plain arrangements are given added body with drums, brass and strings while Marten’s eye for observation is summed up by her evocation of a northern winter in “Heavy Weather”.

I will end with CLASH and their assessment of an album rich with wonder and gold. Even if the arrangements are not as full and varied as they would be on future albums, that is not to say Writing of Blues and Yellows is one-note or limited. No two songs are the same. One cannot easily compare Emily with Untitled. Heavy Weather has a different atmosphere to Milk & Honey. I have so much love for this album:

“If there is any requirement we must advise before playing ‘Writing Of Blues And Yellows’, it is that you shut yourself away in a room and just listen. And hope for no background noise.

Billie Marten’s thoughtfully crafted debut is a collection of tales, retrospect and self-examination. Candidly honest about her periods of mental health, ‘Teeth’ places you in the centre of her overwrought mind: “I’m writing this in a bad way, no one can hear what my head says.” Her vocals are infused with a fragility that drills down into your consciousness, whether you want it to or not. Full of contradictions, ‘Lionhearted’ highlights the songwriter’s desire to be braver, yet she fails to acknowledge that she has achieved exactly this through her overt lyrical sincerity, which is intrinsic to the success of this record.

‘Writing Of Blues And Yellows’ manages to be flawlessly delicate in terms of instrumentals and tone, drawing on inspirations from her quaint upbringing in her home-town of Ripon just near the Yorkshire Dales. Fixating upon the wilderness and nature, this is a theme that is inter-weaved throughout songs ‘La Lune’, ‘Heavy Weather’ and ‘Hello Sunshine’; later on ‘Live’, she explores her close relationship with her family, versus her yearning to explore and find some adventure.

Billie Marten delivers a pragmatic album that explores the equilibrium between her positive and negative outlooks on life, whilst confirming that being preoccupied with our own contemplation is and will forever be an ongoing process of the human condition.

7/10”.

Even though 23rd September is a little way away, I wanted to be the first to spotlight Billie Marten’s debut album ahead of its tenth anniversary. It was a source of stability, escape and release at a tough time for me. So many other people will have their reasons why this album means so much. If you have never heard the album, go grab it on vinyl . I think the Deluxe version is easier to find, though you can hear the original on streaming services. Let’s hope that, on 23rd September, Billie Marten shares some words about her debut album. She has had a pretty relentless touring schedule, so I am not sure if there are festival dates or anything more this year. The stunning Dog Eared (her fifth studio album) came out last year. I feel it was worthy of a Mercury Prize nomination. Marten may be working on her sixth album, or she is taking a well-earned rest. Having travelled all around the world, I wonder if she gets back to Ripon and visits the spaces that inspired her debut album. The rooms she wrote the songs in. It may seem an age ago, but the music sounds so ageless. I think it is a masterpiece from one of our greatest songwriters. Writing of Blues and Yellows has a very special place…

IN my heart.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Devon Again

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Devon Again

__________

I am late in…

PHOTO CREDIT: Max Christiansen

spotlighting one of the most promising and extraordinary artists coming through. Devon Again might see herself as more than a ‘rising’ artist. What I mean is that Los Angeles-based Devon Johanningmeier is not on the same rung as major artists. She will be soon enough. I want to come to some interviews from this year. There is a lot of fresh interests in Devon Again because of her major-label debut. An amazing double A-side/twin release, snake the drain, and this time it’s different. One of her most extraordinary tracks, Udiscovermusic give us some insight and reveal about this extraordinary single:

“Devon Again has released “snake the drain,” her major label debut single, via Interscope Records and Amusement Records. The track arrived June 2 as part of a two-pack that also includes the intro song “this time it’s different.” The release marks Devon Again’s first new music for the label and comes ahead of her support dates on Olivia Rodrigo’s sold-out North American arena tour.

Devon Again said “snake the drain” grew out of a reset in her creative process after making In Order. “Making In Order had been really heavy and emotionally difficult,” she said, adding that she wanted to make music that felt “fun and silly again.” She also said a trip to Nashville helped shape the track’s country-leaning direction, calling the song “permission to explore a more headstrong, confident and playful side of myself.”

Produced by frequent collaborator Jon Buscema, “snake the drain” follows the singer’s 2025 EP In Order. The new release also arrives with a public-facing boost from Apple Music Radio 1, where Devon called into New Music Daily on June 2. The song launched at the top of the New Music Daily playlist, with Devon featured on the cover.

Devon Again will join Olivia Rodrigo’s The Unraveled Tour for 40 North American dates beginning November 7 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia. The run includes two nights at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, two nights at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, and 10-night residencies at both Intuit Dome in Los Angeles and Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Devon Again first released the self-issued PEE EP in 2022 before following with In Order in 2025, which featured “Never Goes Away” and “cherry cola”.

I get the impression that Devon Again would make this exceptional actress. It may seem random, but there is this thing in her videos. A power and pull. No doubt a phenomenal and captivating live performer, I do feel she has a future on the big screen (or T.V.). That is a slight detour. I want to come to this interview from Unravelled Edit and their conversation from June:

“If you’re chronically online, Devon isn’t new to your algorithms, and as a long-time follower, Devon recently received life-changing news that she'll be joining Olivia Rodrigo on the North American leg of the Unraveled tour!  When mentioning this to Devon, it’s clear that the reality of it still hasn't fully sunk in. "Overall, the feeling of having this information and still processing it, feels so special," she says. "Having music as a career is something super tangible for me, so having this opportunity has been overwhelming because I don't know what to expect, and I'm so unbelievably honoured that I get to do it. And to top it all off, Devon shared a recent full-circle moment, where she stumbled across an old TikTok of herself singing Olivia Rodrigo songs in her bedroom. "Knowing that I'm going on tour with her is surreal."

The opportunity marks another major milestone in a career that has steadily grown since her debut EP Pee in 2022 and the release of In Order in 2025. But while In Order was built around a carefully refined narrative, Devon says her current creative process is much more experimental. "I think by the time I was making In Order, I felt the need for a refined story," she says. "But now, with what John and I are making, the goal is to try and find that story and what we're craving, overall just seeing how big it can be and what we can touch on."

I tried to ask if a larger project is on the horizon and while we didn’t get an exact answer Devon expressed that she wants  to push herself as far as possible creatively. "It's horrifically daunting, and who knows how it will feel down the track, but right now in the throes of it, it's so consuming and overwhelming to decide on what I want to say and share about my life."

Fans hoping ‘snake the drain’ signals a full country pivot may need to temper their expectations. Devon laughs off the idea, quickly confirming the single is probably "the farthest to country we'll get." However, she promises a sonically broader era ahead, featuring more instruments and newer sounds, including mandolin!

Of course, part of Devon's appeal has always been the emotional connection she builds with audiences during her live shows. Watching fans fully immerse themselves in her music remains one of her favourite parts of performing. When asked which song she's most excited to bring to the stage, she admits she prefers to leave expectations at the door.

"I don't know until I do it," she says. "There's a part of me that has a slight hint of that feeling when making particular tracks, but I delete it from my mind and get surprised when performing and people feel a certain way which makes it more special."

But don’t worry, ‘snake the drain’ is a track she's particularly eager to test out in front of crowds.

"At least later on tour, I'm excited for this [snake the drain] because it's so high-energy and challenging for me. I'm excited to see if/how I can improve when performing it."

Any future bodies of work from Devon represent another significant first: it's her first release under a major label through Interscope and Amusement. Reflecting on the achievement brought a moment to not burst into happy tears, I asked Devon to think back to the little girl who idolised Hayley Williams and Hannah Montana, "I would probably just let her know that she's doing the right thing. To trust yourself and every decision that got me here. Moving to LA and continuing to live in LA despite how hard it was, and not quitting. This is one of the things, one of the whys you keep going."

It's a sentiment that feels especially fitting for an artist whose career has been built on persistence and commitment to growth. Speaking of growth, Devon also made her way to Australia earlier this year, where local audiences fell in love with her. When reflecting on her time spend down under, she didn’t wait to share "The coffee there is awesome, you guys don't know how good you have it," she laughs. But beyond the caffeine, the trip was so much more meaningful to Devon, "It was so special to be there, not because I wanted to visit as a tourist, but for my career and for music, to get to know everyone there." And yes, she also loved the Bin Chickens”.

She did play London last month, so I am not sure if Devon Again will be back next year. I hope so, as I would love to see her live. There will be questions around an E.P. or album. What comes next for this staggeringly talented and original artist. There are one or two older interviews with Devon Again. She has been putting out music for a long while now, so I am very late to this party! However, I do feel that she is still coming through, and there are some people, especially here in the U.K., who may not know who she is. Certain stations she could be featured on but perhaps has not been as much as you’d like – BBC Radio 6 Music is one. I will get to another 2026 interview, as I could only find two. I would urge anyone who has not discovered Devon Again to check her out. I am surprised that the likes of The Guardian, NME, Rolling Stone UK, and The Forty-Five have not published interviews this year with her. That may be something coming up, but you feel like they would jump at the chance. Not only because Devon Again is a superb artist. She has a look and aesthetic that is so intriguing and stands out. Speaking of films, not only could Devon Again appear in films (I see her as a potential Lady Gaga in terms of cinematic talent); her music could also soundtrack a variety of films. As FADER note in their header, Devon Again’s “big-feeling pop music can soundtrack any coming-of-age flick”:

“Her true breakout moment came a full three years after with In Order, her 2025 EP released on Pizzaslime Records and produced with Jon Buscema. Written about her experience touring PEE, the EP is peppered with details about cars, nature, and life on the road, which imbues the project with the fleeting sensorial sensation of travel. That said, making the EP was slow going. Grieving a heartbreak and outpatient therapy dragged the recording process on for years. She’d work with Buscema three to four times a week and “a lot of [the time] nothing came out of [the sessions],” she says. “The songs that ended up being special happened once in a blue moon when we were really locked in.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Lo Harley

The fact that these tracks felt like miracles is reflected in their sonic and lyrical enormity. Each song on In Order sounds like either a finale or intro of a longer album. Its most viral hit, “cherry cola,” soars to a credits-rolling level of euphoria as what sounds like thousands of Devon Agains sing, “Lovin' you is just like sipping on straight syrup, sugar, sticky soda / Cover me in candy, I'm so lucky that I get to know ya,” over rising guitar.

The entire project is covered in these sensorial lyrics that blend emotional feelings with cinematic images, like on the sleepier but still searing, “Never Goes Away” (“I miss you like hot rain / Like red dirt / Like a river”). Its allusions to nature, epic yet relatable, remind me of how my adolescent feelings used to feel, before the doldrums of adulthood sapped some sense of wonder from my heart.

Johanningmeier chalks her songs’ widescreen emotionality up to the main character syndrome endemic to growing up as an only child. “I thought my life was really important and I was the only one experiencing it,” she says with a laugh. She’s matured, but somehow retained that sense of self-narrative, which is probably why her music feels like an antidote to numbness.

On TikTok, the chorus of “Cherry Cola” has become a digital anthem for pure feeling. In October 2024, after she put out “Never Goes Away” and Dan Nigro shared it on his Instagram, her Interscope deal began to take shape. She never thought she could sign to a major but, “if Dan believes in me enough to sign me, that means something,” she says.

Roan, who she opened for in 2022, has also been in her corner, pushing her on.

“When I’m like, Should I quit? [Chappell] is like, ‘No, don’t.’ That’s the only advice that’s valuable,” Johanningmeier says. In November, she’ll play her first show with Rodrigo at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia: capacity 21,000”.

I did actually want to finish with this review of two incredible new songs from an artist who has been tirelessly working since her debut. Never returning or back – a horrible habit of the music media feeling artists are ‘back’ if they don’t release new material in a few months! -, here is an artist always growing and evolving. Anticipation around a potential debut album:

“The videos arrive after “snake the drain” launched at the top of Apple Music’s New Music Daily playlist on Tuesday, with Devon as the cover. She’s also been named to the hotly tipped GEN F artist series from The FADER, who called her “on the precipice of forever fame,” adding that, “The Los Angeles singer’s big-feeling pop music can soundtrack any coming-of-age flick.”

Directed by Kaylinn Duffy (Don Toliver, Aiden Bissett), the new music videos tell their own cinematic story. For “this time it’s different,” we start with a raw, in-the-room vocal from Devon, but the handheld camera soon zooms out with a series of reveals: producer Jon Buscema is sitting at the piano, and Devon is flanked by two friends, then over a dozen, who turn her yearning, detail-rich lyrics into a living room sing-along during an unusual crafting party.

Meanwhile, “snake the drain” opens on a large neon star – spinning from the ceiling before diving into the footage. Among the highlights: Devon wins big on a convenience store scratcher; countless dollar bills get defaced in the name of art (and dumb jokes); an actual plumber snakes a drain; and Devon and her friends end up in an inflatable mud pit.

As Devon noted when the track was released, “‘Snake the Drain’ is the song that helped me play in the mud again. Making [2025 EP] In Order had been really heavy and emotionally difficult, and I found myself in a place where I felt like if I wanted to keep making music, I would have to shift my process to make it feel fun and silly again. I have been really fascinated with country music for years. How it often feels like a math equation or something. Clever and clear with a perfect payoff. I took a trip to Nashville and when I came back it just felt right to try leaning into something that felt almost comically country, especially compared to what I had been making for the past couple of years. This song felt like giving myself permission to explore a more headstrong, confident and playful side of myself. ‘Snake’ is the first of a few that chase this feeling, and I hope to inspire that permission in whoever the song finds.”

Building on Devon’s proven gifts as a songwriter and performer, “snake the drain” is a powerful opening statement. Produced by her frequent collaborator Buscema (Conan Gray, Slothrust), the cut opens on a huge guitar line that breaks into a full-band sound as Devon fires off (“Love don’t snake the drain!”). Speaking to her storytelling prowess, “this time it’s different” is both a complement and contrast. Pairing spare piano with her distinctly poignant vocals, the song finds Devon at love’s beginning: “Come on, admit it, what could go wrong if we’re both all in it?” she sings, “My God, I swear this time it’s different.”

Devon’s fans have been heavily anticipating the release of “snake the drain” ever since she began teasing the song’s infectious riffs and sharp lyrics both on her socials and at headlining shows earlier this year in Los Angeles and New York. It’s since been announced that Devon will be supporting 40 dates on Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming sold-out The Unraveled Tour, including 10-day residencies at both Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome arena and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

“snake the drain” arrived in the wake of Devon’s buzzing indie EP, In Order, which features quietly devastating cuts like “Never Goes Away” next to viral fizz-bombs like “cherry cola.” The latter had the #4 Best Music Video of 2025 according to SPIN, who called it “a deliriously entertaining montage of sight gags, relatable problems, and sudden moments of beauty and profundity.” Her latest visuals continue a rich tradition of wit, whimsy, poignancy, and pop.

After her first-ever song went viral, Devon self-released her cheekily titled PEE EP (2022), a set of catchy songs prone to outbursts of glitchy noise and messy feelings. Her music since has only expanded on that foundation of distinctive bedroom pop, becoming more emotionally and sonically complex, and also more urgent. Currently based in L.A. after growing up in Colorado, Devon Again is now working on her freest music yet. “snake the drain” is the sound (and sight) of a brand new star breaking down the doors of pop and making herself right at home”.

Go and follow the sublime Devon Again. I am new to her work. I can tell that she is going to be a massive artist who will do global tours and court the same sort of attention as artists like Olivia Rodrigo. She is going to be a supernova soon enough. Right now, Devon Again is settling into a new chapter and phase of her career. Though make no mistake about it: this awe-inspiring Los Angeles artist is going to be in the industry…

FOR decades more.

_____________

Follow Devon Again

TikTok:

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

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/trashytrashy

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@devonagain

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3xz28DkZR6bmPpVh6Rq13t?si=OjjlzE7HSwe2SvHJFawpAQ

FEATURE: But He Never Had a Proper Education: Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers at Forty-Six

FEATURE:

 

 

But He Never Had a Proper Education

ALL PHOITOS: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers at Forty-Six

__________

I can appreciate that I have…

written about this song so many times, it is unavoidable repeating myself to an extent. I am going to bring in some interview segments where Bush discussed this song. The inspiration behind the song. This was the final single from her 1980 album, Never for Ever. After Breathing and Babooshka made chart impact and it showed that Bush was a tremendously diverse writer, what can arguably be called one of her most political songs was released. I am going to source a part of a horrendous interview by Danny Baker for NME in 1979. Condescending and sexist, he is a rank arsehole throughout the piece! Even though he apologised retrospectively, his attitude and lack of respect for Kate Bush, in part, motivated her to show that she was a ‘serious artist. She was always serious and deep, but in the midst of New Wave and Punk, male journalists especially equating credibility and worthiness with something political or controversial. In the years since, Army Dreamers has become one of Kate Bush’s most streamed songs. As I type (29th August, 2026), it has been streamed on Spotify 385 million times. It is her second-most-streamed song behind Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) which is nearing two billion streams! Released as a single on 22nd September, 1980 I wanted to mark its forty-sixth anniversary. There is a modern-day relevance. In terms of context, The Troubles in Northen Ireland was in the news. I always associate Army Dreamers with The Troubles. Maybe Bush was not thinking of that specific conflict. The Warrenpoint Ambush occurred on 27th August, 1979. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed eighteen British soldiers using two roadside bombs at Narrow Water Castle. Events like this surely impacted Kate Bush. I will start out with the NME car crash interview before coming to something more pleasant.

After The Tour of Life in 1979 was a major success, there was a lot of new interest in Kate Bush. Not only one of the most distinct artists of her time, she was also now this acclaimed and extraordinary live artist. Surely exchanges like this would have spurred Kate Bush to write songs that were seen as more political or ‘real-world’, just so that they didn’t have to answer to cretinous journalists like Danny Baker. This is part of his NME hatchet job:

“She grins broadly again. Kate is an artist through and through, seeing the world as a crazy canvas on which to skip. Her outrageous charm covers the fact that we are in the midst of a hippy uprising of the most devious sorts. I approach her on the question of being a woman in pop music once more. How do her workmates treat her?

"Well, when I started, I felt really conscious of being female amongst all these fellows. But these days I feel like one of the lads."

That doesn't sound very healthy.

"Oh, yeah, it is. When I'm working, it's really important for me to get on with it in that way. But at the same time, I sense that they're very respectful, because they make me aware of being a woman, and will lay off the dirty jokes and that..."

Incredible. Do you find men in awe of you?

"Socially? Well, I find that--with people that I haven't seen for a couple of years, because they won't treat me as a human being. And people in the street will ask for autographs and also won't treat you as human, but...ah...sometimes I get really scared. Sometimes when I'm going to the supermarket to get the coffee and cat litter, I get freaked out and see all these people staring, and you turn around and there's like forty people all looking at you...and when you go around the corner, they're all following you! You start freaking out like a trapped animal.

"However, I don't notice guys doing it on a personal level. Maybe some will keep their distance, but that may be because they don't get off on me.

"You see, when I first got started, I thought that I'd better watch out for these rip-off artists and stick with old friends. But it's amazing that since I've been in the business, I've made many more real friends, especially on a working basis. I find that I can get so involved with a guy working with me--and usually on a platonic level, which is great! That's so special, like these two minds linked on this one project. And that is a very beautiful thing that I'd never have experienced if I had not been in this business.

"And what's more, I'll keep these friends for life, because not only do they care for you, but they give me information and their teachings. What more could I ask for?"

Do you think there's a danger of becoming detached inside music?

"Probably. I don't read newspapers, and I've said I don't watch the news. I love books, but I don't read much.

"What I do is I get people to read to me, and I put the stories in my head."

A bit like a hat, I suppose.

"And films. I watch an awful lot of TV films."

Do you think you might be avoiding real life?

"Well, no, because I think that all these heavy issues--equality among blacks and whites, etc.--have all been done before, and if you do it now, it has to be very cleverly handled. It all gets too negative and cliched. So I find that, working with fantasy, I can handle the same issues, perhaps, but in a more positive way."

Don't you think that albums can make you feel and think sometimes without er...pussyfooting? I remember the first time I heard The Clash, and...

"Oh, yeah, some of these new bands are amazing. They're just springing up. The Police are just amazing..."

Here, listen, I think you've got the picture. Kate Bush, to meet, is a happy, charming woman that can totally win your heart. But afterwards on tape, when she's not there and you actually listen to all this, well...golly gosh. Don't lose sleep, old mates, it's just pop music-folk and the games they spin. Wow.

This was Chicken Licken, Cosmic News, Atlantis, goodnight, man…”.

Although Bush did not say it herself in interviews (I don’t think), she does adopt an Irish accent. That is no mystery. Although that also makes me think it relates to The Troubles. If Bush’s Irish accent was more southern, it could also apply to a Northern Irish mother whose son has been killed in war. Kate Bush recalled in more than a few interviews how Army Dreamers came to be and what influenced it:

“It’s the first song I’ve ever written in the studio. It’s not specifically about Ireland, it’s just putting the case of a mother in these circumstances, how incredibly sad it is for her. How she feels she should have been able to prevent it. If she’d bought him a guitar when he asked for one.

Colin Irwin, ‘Paranoia And Passion Of The Kate Inside’. Melody Maker (UK), 10 October 1980

The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn’t matter how he died, but he didn’t die in action – it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who’s obviously got a lot of work to do. She’s full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream.

Week-long diary, Flexipop, 1980”.

Rare for Kate Bush to write in the studio. No doubt there was an urgency to put this song down onto tape. When speaking to Zigzag, she did elucidate regarding the significance of the Irish accent: “The Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it’s the traditional way. There’s something about an Irish accent that’s very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way”. Reaching number sixteen in the U.K., it was perhaps a rarity, in the sense that future singles were not political or influenced by warfare or contemporary fears. Not to say her singles thereafter were personal or fantastical. I feel it was a particular time in her life when she needed to write songs like Army Dreamers and Breathing (a song told from the perspective of a fetus as nuclear warfare is happening outside his mother’s womb).

I have used this article before from Neil Crossley. In May, he wrote a piece for Music Radar which is fascinating. I feel the fact it was recorded at Abbey Road Studio is important. It lends Army Dreamers this grandeur or historic context. The same studios where some of Bush’s music heroes recorded before, it was a moment in her career where she was producing (with Jon Kelly for Never for Ever) and was very much taking her music in new directions. She could have the final say and there was this scope for her to do more. Not simply repeat what was on The Kick Inside (her 1978 debut album):

“Abbey Road Studios was the facility chosen for the recording of Army Dreamers and that was where the song came into being. “It’s the first song I’ve written in the studio,” Bush told Colin Irwin of Melody Maker in October 1980.

Army Dreamers is a wistful folk ballad in 3/4 waltztime and features sampled gun sounds and an emotional vocal performance.

In the song, the grieving mother wrestles with her guilt over what she could have done to prevent her son’s pointless death during military training.

One of the most notable aspects of the song is that Bush sang it in an Irish accent. For Bush, whose mother was from County Waterford in Ireland, the decision to sing it that way was integral to the song.

Bush’s decision to sing in Irish prompted suggestions that the song was specifically about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. But Bush suggested the song was more of a general commentary on the waste of young people’s lives, particularly those with limited opportunities.

“The song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action,” Bush told Kris Needs. “It doesn’t get brought out much, but it happens a lot. I’m not slagging off the Army, it’s just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers, and it’s not really what they want. That’s what frightens me.”

For Bush, the experience of producing Never For Ever was an empowering one and gave her a sense of creative ownership over her recordings. This album marked her transition into a completely self-sufficient auteur of sorts and she seized the opportunity.

“The whole thing was so exciting for me, to actually have control of my baby for the first time,” she told the Canadian fanzine Break-Through. “Something that I have been working for and was very nervous of too, obviously, because when you go in for the first time you really wonder if you are capable – you hope you are… it really is a wonderful experience – everyone's feelings going into the songs that you wrote perhaps in a little room somewhere in London, you know, it's all coming out on the tape.”

Bush came into the sessions soon after the Tour Of Life in 1979, an experience so gruelling that she resolved never to tour again.According to her biographer Rob Jovanovic, Bush spent an unprecedented five months writing and demoing at Abbey Road studios. Like most artists, she was reportedly fastidious and exacting in her quest to achieve her creative vision.

The Fairlight CMI digital sampler in particular was an empowering new piece of technology and Bush and the band reportedly spent hours experimenting with the new technology. As Ben Hewitt notes in The Quietus in 2020, such experimentation allegedly included smashing Abbey Road Studio’s crockery and recording the varying sounds of each shattering plate, cups and glasses.

According to Graeme Thompson’s biography Under The Ivy, Bush reportedly sought forgiveness from the appalled kitchen staff by bringing in Belgian chocolates for them as gifts.

The Fairlight CMI was prominent in the sessions. Bush had been introduced to the Fairlight by Peter Gabriel and there were only three in the UK at the time. It was, as Ben Hewitt of The Quietus put it: “The sonic equivalent of a Jedi being handed their first lightsaber”.

As Ben Hewitt put it in his piece in The Quietus in 2020: “Its gauzy prettiness gives it the air of a nightmare taking place inside a snow globe, twice as crushing for her delicate touch.”

Army Dreamers was released on 22 September 1980 and reached No 16 in the UK Singles Chart. Its success was fuelled by a video, featuring Bush in camouflage in a forest, holding a white-haired child.

Bush went on to say that the video was one of the few pieces of work that she was completely happy with.

“It really was a treat, that one. I think that’s the first time ever with anything I’ve done I can actually sit back and say, ‘I liked that’. That’s the only thing.”

In the decades that have followed, the potency of the song has prevailed. Its message was emphatic enough to ensure that Army Dreamers was one of 68 songs considered inappropriate for airplay by the BBC during the first Gulf War.

Far more recently, in 2024, the song’s haunting anti-war lyrics and themes of loss led to the song being appropriated for Tik-Tok’s ‘Witchtock’ trend.

Army Dreamers experienced a 1300% increase in streams when snippets of the song used on clips on TikTok and Instagram went viral, prompting Gen Z-ers to seek out the track on platforms such as Spotify and Apple and fuelling the song’s popularity.

The song reportedly clocked up over 100 million streams on Spotify between May and December 2024, and 1.6 billion views on TikTok.

This is nothing new for Kate Bush. Ever since 2022, when Running Up The Hill was featured in Season 4 of Stranger Things, Kate Bush’s songs have seemingly had a deep emotional connection through edits on TikTok. While such appropriation can seem facile to some, it does underpin the song’s emotional impact and its potency as an enduring anti-war anthem”.

I do want to end with Dreams of Orgonon and their insights into Army Dreamers. Maybe more of a domestic or personal song than a political one, one cannot help read Army Dreamers as something infused and infected by the news. Bush would have absorbed images of carnage and warfare and been compelled to reflect that. Though there is something very stirring and heartbreaking about a mother losing her son in such a futile and horrible manner:

“Since we’re used to Bush being asleep to political infrastructure and class, we can at least turn to her complex politics of domesticity. While she doesn’t interrogate the structural causes of political violence, she’s still centering a song around the vulnerable people whose lives are destroyed by it. Never for Ever is populated by mothers and wives. Five of its eleven songs explicitly focus on maternal and uxorial figures, and that’s if we don’t count the broadly familial “All We Ever Look For.” Bush’s wives and mothers tend towards fatigue over their familial roles, experiencing emotions that contradict their outward actions or social operations. Bush’s mothers are an intrinsic good whose absence or loss is a tragedy, and whose losses are a social catastrophe. Key to the mother’s characterization in “Army Dreamers” is absence. She bemoans not merely her lost son, but his lost opportunities and the things she couldn’t provide for him. “What a waste of army dreamers,” muses Bush, in a ritual mourning of military casualties, which treats them as a cessation of dreams.

Most impressive is the way “Army Dreamers” treats the mother as an individual while also stressing her importance to her family. Stripped of her duties to her son, she is left with no more motherhood to perform. This suggests that while war is horrible, the people who are left behind have their own experiences of it. Men get sent off to die, and the women they leave behind are expected to grieve dutifully. Yet they’re prescribed a performative kind of grief — the actual effects of trauma are widely besmirched and ignored by the jingoistic reactionaries who send civilians off to die. Women are usually seen as broken when their soldiers fail to come home — this isn’t quite what Bush does. Is the mother broken? No, of course not. Has she had a vital part of her life snatched from her? Utterly.

There’s a touch of sentimentalism to this, if at least a grounded and humanitarian one. Violent deaths are often devastating because they cut short the lives of unsuspecting civilians who’ve been planning to go live their lives as usual the next day. Bush’s anti-militarism is hardly strident, but “Army Dreamers” has an edge to it even in its understatedness, blaming the services of “B.F.P.O” for overseas tragedies (although interestingly, her son’s death appears to be an accident — there’s little fanfare of death, no suggestion of the glory of battle). The horror of the death is largely its silence — all the things that couldn’t happen, no matter how much saying them would make them so.

The politics of the situation are left understated, as is typical for Bush, and yet with a light inimical rage, as if Bush is finally turning to the British establishment and shouting “look at what you’ve done!” While “Army Dreamers” is far from an indictment of the military-industrial complex (indeed, it has more to do with the British Army’s consumption of Irish civilians than anything else), its highlighting of war as futile is striking. “Give the kid the pick of pips/and give him all your stripes and ribbons/now he’s sitting in his hole/he might as well have buttons and bows” is a line of understated condemnation that spits on military emblems (pips are a British Army insignia) and consolidates trenches and graves. “B. F. P. O.,,” intone Bush’s backing vocalists again and again. In interviews, Bush backpedals from any perceived anti-militarist sentiments in her work (“I’m not slagging off the army…”), but her song tells a different story: nothing comes with B. F. P. O. except carnage”.

As it turns forty-six on 22nd September, I wanted to revisit Army Dreamers. It is this song that has enduring relevance, owing to genocide and warfare around the world. Learning nothing from a song like Army Dreamers, we still see young men killed in war. More than that, children murdered and wiped out. It is more than being about the army and their reality. It has a broader and much harrowing impact. It is a timely and enduring masterpiece from…

THE extraordinary Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Stacking the Decks: Why a Controversial and Male-Heavy DJ Mag Bias Needs Correcting

FEATURE:

 

 

Stacking the Decks

IN THIS PHOTO: Peggy Gou/PHOTO CREDIT: Jakub Michal Teringa

Why a Controversial and Male-Heavy DJ Mag Bias Needs Correcting

__________

IT is not quite the same…

IN THIS PHOTO: Charlotte de Witte

with artists in terms of gender inequality. Festivals are still bad when it comes to line-ups. Women not booked as headliners as much as they should be. I do find it troubling that an industry that is dominated by women does not show them enough respect and opportunity. Festivals are very slow to correct. Radio playlists too. Although life for D.J.s is even worse. I do think this is another side of the industry that is defined by women. So many incredible women are uniting crowds around the world. I am not picking on DJ Mag specifically, though they are this huge magazine that was founded in 1991. This is a British magazine dedicated to Electronic Dance music and D.J.s. As it celebrates thirty-five years, you have to wonder why most of their D.J. of the years go to men. In fact the only time a woman has been awarded this honour is Smokin Jo. That was in 1992, one year after the magazine was founded. I am aware of this because Smokin Jo recently appeared in Talk ‘90s to Me. This is a podcast hosted by Miranda Sawyer. Various guests talk about different things from the decade. It was wonderful discovering about Smokin Jo, as I had heard about her, but I did not know much about her career. Since 1992, there has been huge imbalance in their yearly lists. Naming one-hundred D.J.s to watch each year, 2011 was standout because no women were included. Even in 2025, only five women in the top fifty. One makes the top ten. That is Charlotte de Witte at seven. As the polling for this year closes on 16th September, it does bringing this urgency to mind. How women are still overlooked. Only a solitary named D.J. of the year is startling!

Perhaps their metrics are based around commercial appeal. How much money they have made, streaming figures and the like. If you take it on merit and the skill of the D.J., can we realistically say that no women since 1992 have been eligible as the best D.J. Looking through the top one-hundred lists through the years and the same issue occurs. Women are being included more, though very few make it into the higher positions. I have covered so many amazing women on this blog. Some of the best D.J.s in the world. Including Charlotte de Witte. The supreme Carly Wilford is definitely one of the greatest D.J.s in the world. Alison Wonderland, Amelie Lens and Deborah de Luca are all worthy of the title. I also think that Charlotte de Witte is more than worthy of that crown. Also, the top one-hundred lists are not exactly broad regarding race. Smokin Jo a Black female D.J. taking the top prize in 1992 shows there have been steps back since then. Though there is nothing as shambolic as a women-free top one-hundred, the figures are not exactly reassuring. You cannot say there is a lack of visibility. These queens are slaying around the world. So many have huge Instagram followings and release their own music. DJ Mag does cover women and does profiles, so their readers are well aware of who is out there and coming through. You do feel the D.J. of the year for 2026 is going to be a man. Thirty-five years and not a massive amount of progress. You cannot blame DJ Mag entirely. I do feel that most people feel men are the best D.J.s and they are the ones who are delivering the best sets and are the most important. That could not be further from the truth. In terms of quality and promise, you are spoiled for choice. Lilly Palmer and Hannah Laing are D.J.s I have spotlighted. Other names like Linska and Olive F. Arielle Free. There are so many out there, and yet these lists reflect men in the industry.

Whether you feel D.J.s are worthy in terms of their online following, the size of their sets, the years they have been in the game or whatever, it does seem to be a somewhat outdated and ignorant framework. Think about the talent and passion that so many incredible D.J. queens deliver. I have put out a few names. Peggy Gou another incredible and world-class D.J. I feel that, when DJ Mag announce their one-hundred names for this year, maybe five or six women in the top fifty; one or two in the top twenty; perhaps one woman cracking the top ten. The number one slot will be taken by a man. If that projection comes true, this means that thirty-five years after they were founded. DJ Mag still would have named one woman as their DJ of the year. Even that it is not indicative od the entire industry, it does seem to highlight this male bias. I don’t think DJ Mag are excluding women. They highlight them. Yet, when their readers decide which D.J.s are the best in the world, the massive majority seems to be men. In a larger sense, festival bills are still skewed to men. Women not given as much prominence and their dues. And yet, in my mind, the majority of the most dedicated, incredible, talented and awe-inspiring D.J.s are women. That is just a fact! I would like to think that a publication as respected and lauded as DJ Mag would see its voting readers reverse the trend. That a few women are in the top ten. Making the top five and, let’s hope, being named as the absolute best. It takes me back to Talk '90s to Me and Smokin Jo. Her story. Perhaps a bittersweet honour of being the solitary female D.J. of the year.

IN THIS PHOTO: Linska

One would have hoped this pioneering would have led to change and greater visibility for women. Even if things are not as bleak as years past, I don’t think it is the case that there are far fewer female Electronic D.J.s that means men dominate lists. It is depressing. One cannot also say women are not bothered by such lists and polls. It is recognition that they are largely not part of. There are not big award ceremonies for D.J.s as there are artists. Music websites and magazines focus on artists, so it is down to these specialist magazines to shine a light on the talent out there. You can vote now:  “Now in its 33rd year, Top 100 DJs launched in 1993 as an editorially curated list of 100 DJs created to mark the 100th issue of DJ Magazine. Since then, it has grown into the world’s largest publicly voted music poll and an annual snapshot of the artists shaping electronic music worldwide. With no nominations or eligibility criteria, Top 100 DJs remains a fully open poll, allowing voters to nominate any five DJs regardless of their profile or audience size”. I don’t genuinely believe the top one-hundred lists each year reflect real-world popularity and talent. So, in a year where women are absolutely killing it and are standing aside from their male peers, that this is reflected by readers of DJ Mag. If so, it means that equality and changing the dialogue becomes normalised and it has impact throughout the industry. As it stands, I do fear that big steps will not be taken…

FOR quite a few years to come.

FEATURE: Golden Sounds: My Favourite Albums of the Year So Far

FEATURE:

 

 

Golden Sounds

IN THIS PHOTO: Phoebe Bridgers

My Favourite Albums of the Year So Far

__________

PERHAPS there aren’t…

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney/PHOTO CREDIT: Mary McCartney

that many surprises in this list, but I wanted to spotlight my ten favourite albums of this year so far. It has been a very good year for albums. Some best of the decade arguably released since the start of the year. I have loved seeing these incredible artists deliver albums that will endure for years. My selection is below, but it would be good to know what people’s choices are and if there are any I have missed out on. These are my favourite albums…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lime Garden

OF 2026.

____________

Antony Szmierek – Decoding Birdsong

Release Date: 21st August

Labels: Mushroom Group/Virgin Music Group

Producers: Antony Szmierek/Max Rad

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/antony-szmierek/decoding-birdsong

Standout Track: Flight Simulator

Review:

“When Antony Szmierek’s debut, ‘Service Station at the End of the Universe’, became one of last year’s most distinctive breakthrough albums, any follow-up was bound to arrive under an uncomfortable spotlight. His second record ‘Decoding Birdsong’ doesn’t shy away from that pressure; it turns it into its subject. Across its 13 tracks, Szmierek examines his own rise, then examines the instinct to examine it at all.

Opener ‘Chalk’ lays the philosophical groundwork. Over restless electro grooves and spoken-word urgency, he likens analysing success to chalking a snooker cue: a ritual that offers the illusion of control in a game largely dictated by chance. It’s a classic Szmierek opener, marrying dancefloor propulsion with existential inquiry. But the buoyant disco-house of ‘The Heron’ immediately challenges that mindset. Inspired by a heron repeatedly sighted nesting on the banks of the Mersey, the bird becomes a symbol of patience rather than prediction, urging us to experience the world before trying to interrogate it.

Therein lies the record’s central tension. Where Szmierek’s debut found magic in everyday places, ‘Decoding Birdsong’ asks what happens when the search for meaning becomes all-consuming. Coincidences become omens, luck becomes destiny, and every fleeting moment threatens to collapse beneath the weight of interpretation. It’s a remarkably self-aware record, one that recognises its own tendency to mythologise experience.

Its emotional turning point arrives with ‘Seminal’ and ‘Flight Simulator’. The former sinks into isolation and emotional paralysis, while the latter gradually transforms that anxiety into something quietly euphoric. Swelling melodic techno, and Imogen and the Knife’s ethereal presence, mirror a hard-won realisation: nobody is properly equipped for adulthood, and whether it’s luck, fate or practice carrying us through matters less than choosing to trust yourself anyway.

Thankfully, none of this comes at the expense of fun. Max Rad’s production constantly finds movement within introspection, marrying garage, house, breakbeats and shimmering alt-pop to Szmierek’s philosophy. ‘The First Five Minutes of Magnolia’ pairs grungy guitars with bright filter-house exuberance, while collaborators including Pretty Girl, Ellur and 1-800 GIRLS broaden his sonic palette without ever distracting from the album’s emotional throughline.

By the time the title track arrives, Szmierek reaches a quietly revelatory conclusion: some things lose their magic the harder we try to explain them. By the end, he realises that, like birdsong itself, beauty isn’t always there to be translated. Sometimes it’s enough simply to listen” – DIY

The Anchoress – As We Once Were

Release Date: 7th August

Label: Last Night From Glasgow

Producer: The Anchoress (Catherine Anne Davies)

Buy: https://shop.lastnightfromglasgow.com/collections/the-anchoress/products/the-anchoress-as-we-once-were-vinyl-lp-cd-cassette-lossless-dl

Standout Track: She Knows Her Place

Review:

“Beneath the Last Dinner Parties and Wet Legs of U.K. indie rock lies a smaller, more earnest niche, one that’s both kinetic and deeply emotional. These artists have a lot in common with their aforementioned peers—though they often embrace an earnest attitude, rather than a fashionably arch one—and even if they aren’t equally famous, their songs sound enormous. Among the best of this category is Catherine Anne Davies, who performs as the Anchoress, mixing ’80s pop with the gritty ’90s rock of Richey Edwards-era Manic Street Preachers.

Davies has breached containment, at least in her home country: Both 2016’s Confessions of a Romance Novelist and 2021’s The Art of Losing received acclaim, as well as co-signs from Elton John. The latter was an unflinchingly dark album informed by the loss of Davies’ father, multiple miscarriages, and a reckoning with sexual violence, all buoyed by glistening synthesizers. But as well-crafted as the individual parts were, they didn’t always jell; the songs’ many layers sometimes drowned out Davies’ incisive observations.

As We Once Were, her third album, also arrives after personal upheaval: Having a daughter in lockdown caused Davies to come to terms with her own generational trauma, which she navigated during a harrowing time where tabloids invaded her private life. While Davies bristles at being labeled a “confessional” writer, this context makes the elaborate productions on her third album feel like a refuge. Davies has said she spent hours on one particular ARP 2500 synth texture for “I Had a Baby Not a Lobotomy,” for example, and almost every song on the album is swimming in similarly odd little sounds. Here, lavishness is a life raft.

Davies has gotten somewhat reductive Florence Welch comparisons over the years; the grandiose, Virginia Woolf-quoting “Throw Over Your Man” is the first time she’s truly courted them, and it’s a great fit. Here, she fully indulges in campiness, particularly in the song’s come-ons—after she sings the title, she follows it with, “Let me love you like a woman can.” It’s the most upbeat song on the record, offering a glimpse of joyful possibility before the record’s true stakes creep in.

These production choices elevate her captivating songwriting. Even the sparser ballads, like “She Knows Her Place”—written as a sort of sequel to the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home”—have unconventional instruments, like the inclusion of taishogoto, a Japanese instrument with a typewriter-esque sound, and glitching baby coos. On the interlude “Happiness Don’t Show Like It Should,” Davies forms a call-and-response with a backmasked version of herself. That said, Davies pushes it on the six-minute track “Hand to the Tide”—even as it recounts a tragic accident, its strange heavy-breathing backing vocals and uncharacteristically buried prog-metal guitar solo come across as melodramatic.

The occasional overwrought moment never overwhelms Davies’ lyrics, which showcase her dry wit more readily than her last two records. On “I Had A Baby, Not a Lobotomy,” she lines up misogynistic microaggressions she’s received from others in her industry in new parenthood: “Are you still doing that? Oh what for? Guess now there won't be any more tours?” In isolation, some of these lines might sound like they mean well (“So good for you for bouncing back!”) but taken together, they share a subtext of denying women’s creative and personal autonomy.

While that song builds a pop chorus out of her frustration, Davies shows more restraint on a pair of standout songs—“What You Did” and “All I Really Want Is Peace”—that address a former abusive partner. Despite its title, “Peace” is some of the most sarcastic, angry writing she’s put on record, already predicting how her ex will spin the narrative: “What if you turn this into a redemption arc?/They say that adversity makes the best art.” Even the ending line, “Forgive me, please,” is said with a sense of spite.

Given the cavalcade of reference points and intense themes here, as well as Davies’ love of tinkering, the record’s effortless feel is all the more impressive. “Damsels” contains the only real cliché moments on the album; hearing phrases like “well-behaved women seldom make history” brings back memories of 2017 pop-feminism, especially considering how sharp the writing can otherwise be. Using such on-the-nose rallying cries almost feels redundant when she’s able to deliver sharper sentiments elsewhere while walking a tonal tightrope between camp and brutal honesty. When she laments that “if only” the repressed protagonist of “She Knows Her Place” “were a man,” there’s a note of irony—after all, it’s on a record where it’s always possible to subvert the expectations and challenges of womanhood” – Pitchfork

Charli xcx – Music, Fashion, Film

Release Date: 24th July

Label: Atlantic

Producers: A. G. Cook/Finn Keane

Buy: https://store.uk.charlixcx.com/

Standout Track: Camera

Review:

“After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre’s fringes, A-list success seemed like the thing that might finally trap Charli xcx. Her 2024 club-rat opus Brat spawned memes, embarrassing political bandwagoning, Collins’ word of the year and possibly terminal damage to the bra industry. Its ludicrous cultural impact looked set to pickle her as a caricature of a Parliament-toting bad girl; the question of whether “Brat summer” could last – whether Charli could sustain the interest – was so rife she turned it into a mockumentary, The Moment. It made success look miserable: your creation turned cringe by execs wanting to milk their prize cow dry of every last acid-green drop.

Even for a pop star renowned for reinvention, it put a higher price on her next move. Pivot and risk losing new fans and looking wilfully contrarian. When Charli released the sub-two-minute single Rock Music, many heard it as a middle finger. “I think the dancefloor is dead,” she drawls over guitars that buzzed like speakers weathering interference from a Nokia 5110, “so now we’re making rock music.” There were boring thinkpieces about the dancefloor being very much alive, actually (as if Charli had ever ridden culture for clout then binned it off), and about whether she was trying to eject fair-weather new fans. But the key to this cheeky song is surprisingly earnest: “Jump off the stage / I hope they catch you today / But if they don’t it’s OK,” she sings naively, an affirmation to take creative leaps, and to come with Charli – or not, as you like – as she takes this one.

Music, Fashion, Film’s prosaic title references Charli’s recent turn towards acting and fashion collaborations. But from the first singles, the bigger picture felt a little murky compared with Brat’s excavation of anxieties around female relationships. She quickly protested that she wasn’t reeeeaally making rock music. The wistful SS26 dealt in slimy celebrity apologia; the addictive Wink Wink hat-tipped to 00s French indie sleazers the Teenagers as Charli pinky-promised that she was respectable now. But I’d bet these releases were intentionally diffuse, preventing Music, Fashion, Film from slipping out of Charli’s control before it was even out.

That slipperiness turns out to be the essence of another gorgeously astute and disarmingly deep album about the instability of identity – not just as a vanguard songwriter striving for evolution, but how much we can ever know one another, or even ourselves. Rock Music and SS26 explore self-definition: the defiant cultural reset; the celebrity scoundrel who dodges criticism by exploiting certain sympathies (“my heritage could give me quite the USP”). On Card Declined’s blunt, fuzzed-out chug, she’s shopping for “a personality / A whole backstory” via luxury goods. There’s no moralising side-eye: Charli, always a laser-focused cultural observer, understands that self-commodification is just the way we live now, how it might offer an escape from dire times, or helpfully beckon the hellfires faster. Even leaning on guitars and stripping away Charli’s usual AutoTune toys with the idea of authenticity, though it’s far from genre cosplay. Alongside co-producers AG Cook and Easyfun, Charli remakes guitar music at intimate, pocket-sized scale – though with outsized hookiness.

There are two telling songs about different best-friendships. Magic Metal Montana, a dreamy blur of Strokes guitars and emo half-time, is a love song to long-term producer AG Cook. “We don’t talk,” she sings tenderly, “we make music, we talk that way.” The bolshie, muscular Persona teases a friend who talks endlessly and calls Charli her bestie but never says anything real, a performance Charli understands: “We’re both under the influence of life imitating art, and we both know it,” she chants. Who do you trust with your true, faltering self?

For Charli, ever fearless about looking unflattering, it’s her audience. Two shockingly brilliant standouts address her self-actualisation through art. The melancholy, jittering Camera confronts her anxieties about whether she’s stupid for wanting to “throw my life away” to pursue acting, but the way it softens into a heavenly, firefly-dappled rhapsody makes you understand exactly how liberating it is. Pop star-actors are always labelled dilettantes. Charli reframes the idea: how at any moment, a bolt from the blue might undo your idea of yourself, make you feel terrifyingly reborn.

Her actual birth features on I’m Afraid, about how her insecurities may stem from her father not being present at hers. Over spare, bassy dissonance that echoes her fantastically dank John Cale collaboration House, she screams about her fears of failing as a wife (she married 1975 drummer George Daniel last summer) when she’s just a drunk, numb, desperate kid, two more ill-fitting identities. “Take the ring, take the ring,” she yells; then she sounds exhausted as she admits she has to say these “complicated”, unsayable things “so my insides don’t turn black”. That’s less of a case for artistic purification than it might seem: “All this pain makes me believe / I’m a better artist now / An excuse I tell myself / To act selfishly,” she admits. Does she contradict herself? Absolutely. Does that unsparing compulsion to lay it all out for us – the ego and self-hate; the defensiveness and chagrin – make Charli our most consistently bracing pop star? God, yes” – The Guardian

Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Weekend

Release Date: 14th August

Label: Dead Oceans

Producers: Phoebe Bridgers/Ethan Gruska/Jack Antonoff/Tony Berg/Alexander Giannascoli

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-us/product/phoebe-bridgers/lost-weekend/

Standout Track: Lost Weekend

Review:

“Lost Weekend' is easily Phoebe Bridgers' most devastating album yet, which is no mean feat considering the brutally stark emotional reckonings which feature across previous solo releases 'Stranger In The Alps' and 'Punisher', as well as her collabs as part of Boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Centre. Crafted over a four-year period that saw her lose her father and fall in love while also dealing with the whiplash of going from cult indie darling to pop megastar, it's a record of chaotic extremes.

Building on the uneasy, otherworldly synths that stalked the folksy guitar purges of her previous two records, opening track 'The Outside' is a warped, electronic introduction to 'Lost Weekend' that sees Phoebe deliver dark humour ("Crying in a suit and tie but should have seen the other guy. One more time for old times' sake / I'll get carried away") through heavy vocal effects. Comfortable with both isolation ("I am on the outside") and community ("I dive into the crowd and they never let me hit the ground"), the song exists in messy, undefined spaces. Whether it's hopeful or heartbreaking depends entirely on how you meet it.

And that's the same for almost all of 'Lost Weekend'. Lead single 'Lost Boys' sounds triumphant – a nostalgia-fuelled celebration of childhood wonder and reckless abandon – but there's an aching sadness hiding in the shadow of the 00s fairytale. The tender beauty of 'The Governor's Waltz' sits somewhere between full-bodied fear and giddy romance, while the scrappy, defiant forward motion of 'Never Going Back!' is undercut by a gut-wrenching voicemail ("I know being a rock star takes up a lot of your time, but give me a call sometime"). 'Bobby' and 'Liberty Tree' are two halves of the same story. Even 'Haunted', a joyous country anthem that relishes escapism, is brought back to earth a few tracks later with the spiralling, self-reflection of 'As Above', which takes that dream of new beginnings and buries it under a lifetime of regret and uncertainty.  

The title-track sees Phoebe reliving called-off engagements, "surviving her gift", falling apart and feeling understood over dreamy synths that explode into something more euphoric, while 'Still Standing' tries to come to terms with violence, forgiveness, empathy, understanding, fury and resilience. The eerie, experimental instrumentals that start or end most of the tracks give 'Lost Weekend' room to breathe amongst all the heaviness, but it's still capable of emotional sucker punches even after repeated lyrics. It's perhaps why Phoebe has banned phones from her upcoming arena tour, so fans have a safe space to get caught up in the music without fear of going viral.

Produced by Phoebe, Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska and Jack Antonoff (with Alex G offering "additional production"), 'Lost Weekend' is a deliciously strange record. From the fractured post-rock breakdown at the end of 'Kill Me' and the ghostly samples that haunt the record to 'Lost Parade''s big band take on 'Lost Boys', it all adds to the sense of discovery that's threaded throughout the album. There are fleeting moments of undeniable joy, devastating pools of depression and bursts of guttural catharsis, but it all ends with a reprise of the title track. An ode to everything that's come before, there's also an unwavering promise of "we're going to be alright" in the future, but Phoebe is cut off before that grows into anything more celebratory. Across 'Lost Weekend', she takes crushing with a flicker of optimism to daring new places” – DORK

Olivia Rodrigo – you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

Release Date: 12th June

Label: Geffen

Producer: Dan Nigro

Buy: https://shopuk.oliviarodrigo.com/collections/girlsoinlove

Standout Track: the cure

Review:

“Olivia Rodrigo won over the world with songs written from her bedroom floor about what she thought was love. Heartsick ballads and “fuck you” anthems turned into multiple platinum smash hits and two beloved albums, ‘Sour’ and ‘Guts’. So when it came time to write her third, Rodrigo resolved to write a good ol’ love song about her first proper relationship.

All was going to plan, until Rodrigo started listening to her gut – and her relationship ended while making the record. From that comes ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love’, which details the highs and lows of adult love with a cinematic flourish that’s gorgeous to take in. Ambitious, nuanced and layered, it’s absolute proof of Rodrigo’s generational talent.

The album’s lush instrumental heightens the romance of its first half (officially, the ‘Girl So In Love’ side A), where Rodrigo gleefully basks in the warm rays of a new relationship. You can practically see her skipping through a meadow in the meandering breakdown of ‘Stupid Song’, while the rich chorus on ‘Drop Dead’ feels as opulent and ebullient as the name-checked Palace Of Versailles. That cinematic quality even applies to more stripped-back songs like ‘Honeybee’, which pairs Rodrigo’s eerily intimate vocals with a warm, fuzzy piano. “I hope I never see what your face looks like going,” she belts passionately. Ah, young love…

From that naïvety, jealousy and co-dependency rear their ugly heads in Rodrigo’s serenades. She’s braindead and listless without her lover on the excellent New Order ode ‘Maggots For Brains’, while she fights to prove she’s the best girlfriend – paired with the best boyfriend ever – on ‘U + Me = <3’. On ‘My Way’, a deliciously bitchy pop-rock anthem that’s the closest thing to ‘Guts’ as we get here, Rodrigo fends off a rival who can’t keep her eyes off her boyfriend (“Let me be direct, just stop!, You’re being fucking weird…”).

So begins Rodrigo’s inevitable downfall. Though ‘Purple’ fails to stitch together its patchwork sections, its tentative energy sets up the glorious drama of ‘The Cure’. Here, the singer’s an emotional wreck, tallying her lover’s body count in tears until she realises that she’s also the problem. That becomes even clearer on tender folk ballad ‘Begged’, where despite fighting tooth and nail for bare minimum, she hopelessly resolves to ride out the relationship: “I’m a penny in a fountain / Just waiting on my luck to change”.

‘What’s Wrong With Me’ should have been a smash – after all, it’s only got Rodrigo duetting with bloody Robert Smith from The Cure. Their voices melt like butter, and Smith does a fantastic job writing his own ominous verse, but the production is drab and sluggish compared to the grandeur of the album. The relationship comes to a head on ‘Less’, where Rodrigo’s officially, despondently dumped: “If loving me means letting go and wishing me the best / Then I guess / I wish you loved me less.”. It arrives at a thoroughly exhausting point in the record, so depending on your stomach for another ballad, you’ll either find this extremely cathartic or tiresome.

Thank god we have ‘Expectations’ to lift our spirits, which find the singer in a fit of dance-punk mania and post-breakup delusion: “I am so evolved / Now I ask for more and more and more and more and more!” By the time we arrive at closer ‘Cigarette Smoke’, it feels like those expectations are a facade for the deep heartbreak that lingers in her psyche. Even for Rodrigo, this is one haunting ending, who seethes at how long she’s stayed in a relationship with diminishing gains: “Tell me something honest so the memories turn dark.”

More than any other Rodrigo album, you feel emotionally spent by the end of ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love’, but in the best way possible. This must be the most fully realised journey Rodrigo’s taken us on – an impressive feat, considering how quickly she had to rewrite songs here in light of her break-up. Here is a major popstar who is not afraid to get weirder and more wonderful, to give even more of themselves over in their art. ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love’ is undeniable evidence of Rodrigo’s growth: as a songwriter, composer, and as a human being” – NME

Paul McCartney – The Boys of Dungeon Lane

Release Date: 29th May

Label: Capitol

Producers: Paul McCartney/Andrew Watt

Buy: https://shopuk.paulmccartney.com/collections/the-boys-of-dungeon-lane

Standout Track: Days We Left Behind

Review:

“I wrote about the new Paul album for the new issue of Uncut, and for the latest Uncut Greats which is out next week. It’s a really good record. Or, as I say more formally here:

In among the many key 20th century artists that Paul McCartney has in his collection – we’re thinking alongside the paintings by Magritte and de Kooning – he also has an extensive collection of Paul McCartney. The classic Beatles instruments, which he acquires when Abbey Road want more space in the cupboard. His old school desk – in fact, to a certain extent, even his old school. This is someone who not only, as his recent flurry of documentaries suggests, wants to be in tight control of the Paul McCartney story. If possible, he wants to own the actual landmarks in it.

First glances at The Boys Of Dungeon Lane – a Google Earth image will show you a young lad in a school cap crossing a road in Speke – and the first music from it – the wheezy and nostalgic “The Days We Left Behind”, complete with mention of Forthlin Road, the McCartney family home – suggested that the album might offer more of the same. Namely, a solemn, “Hurt”-style it’s-not-dark-yet acoustic rumination on the Young Paul story. It might have played like one of the museums on Liverpool’s blustery waterfront: old photographs, the boys, the changed world, the last word.

In truth, it’s that most Sgt Peppery Paul notion: the nostalgic not-quite-concept album. Here, it’s Colonel McCartney’s Trip Down Memory Lane, in which Paul looks tenderly in through the window on versions of his younger self. “Home To Us”, which bowls along like a 1980s sitcom theme, duly features an appearance from Ringo on vocals and drums, two ex-Beatles looking back warmly on their humble origins. Elsewhere he and Lennon hatch a “secret code” at their writing sessions by the front room fire in “The Days We Left Behind”, while in “Down South”, he remembers hitchhiking to Harlech in Wales with George Harrison in 1958.

There are pop songs and psych songs (the crazy “Mountain Top” is ace) but the best song is “Salesman Saint”, which returns us to Forthlin Road and a tender reminiscence of the fortitude of McCartney’s working class parents, sustained by no greater comfort than the occasional ciggie and songs on the wireless: “//They couldn’t take any more/But they had to carry on//”. The appearance of a swing band in the arrangement is a classic Paul move. At first glance it’s super-sentimental, but give it a minute: in its way it’s completely avant-garde, sounding as if it’s been dropped in from another song, an older radio. It’s the 1967 musique concrete Paul on nothing stronger than a ration book – and a reminder that in tough times, it’s love which will see us through” – Uncut

Nia Archives – Emotional Junglist

Release Date: 17th July

Labels: Hijinxx/Island Records

Producers: Nia Archives/Ethan P. Flynn/Jakwob/James Ford/Sampha

Buy: https://shop.niaarchives.com/products/emotional-junglist-vinyl-lp?srsltid=AfmBOoqWR5YpSpDZOkuB9RlR79OY16oMdVYDldclCeODB-ybpLZ3erYO

Standout Track: Boys in Blue

Review:

“Spearheading the new wave of 21st century junglism, Nia Archives swept the competition aside with her excellent 2024 debut album ‘Silence Is Loud’. Since then, the Bradford-raised producer has expanded her sound, fully unpacking her influences in the process. Along the way, her heart has taken a few bruises, and it’s this mixture of personal and technical which makes expansive second album ‘Emotional Junglist’ so compelling.

If one of the standard criticisms of Nia’s work was that she was too in thrall with jungle’s heritage, well, this album demolishes that entirely. Citing everyone from the Streets and Happy Mondays through to LTJ Bukem as a point of inspiration, it’s a weighty 15-tracker that embodies her quicksilver creativity.

The highs come thick and fast. ‘Feelingz Go Numb’ is a superb opener, a neat point of connection between her crisp debut and the frenetic creativity of the follow-up. ‘Around Tha Bend’ utilises a guitar line worthy of The Cure, while ‘Danger’ merges dancehall impulses with industrial tones worthy of Nine Inch Nails. A heady thrill, it somehow remains firmly under the jungle imbrella.

It’s this push-and-pull between her sonic ambitions and her fixed roots which gives the record such a dichotomous energy. If William Orbit’s late 90s work haunts ‘Vertical’ then something like ‘Train Of Thought’ is a more down-the-line liquid DNB offering (albeit with the vocals of an angel).

Indeed, if Nia Archives’ debut album was defined, then her follow-up is fusion oriented. ‘Almost Always’ has a sombre, post-punk guitar line; ‘Dance With Me 2Nite’ is unafraid to embrace pop, and ‘The Darkest Hour’ has an orchestral sweep.

The guests, too, are expertly chosen. Ethan P Flynn helps to engage the creative process, Julia Michaels pops up during a writing trip to Los Angeles, and as a whole the record fully embraces a live-in-the-studio full band feel. Sampha is typically radiant on ‘Tender’ – an open song of longing – while old friend Jorja Smith appears on ‘Get Me Down’, perhaps the apex of ‘Emotional Junglist’ both as a project and as a concept.

In refusing to be hemmed in Nia Archives has built a space to call her own, building outwards on her firm breakbeat foundations. ‘Emotional Junglist’ is a dense mosiac of sounds, but the feelings are pure and distinct – a step forwards from her debut, it’s a fascinating second chapter.

8/10” - CLASH

Eaves Wilder – Little Miss Sunshine

Release Date: 17th April

Label: Secretly Canadian

Producers: Eaves Wilder/Andy Savours

Buy: https://eaveswilder.bandcamp.com/album/little-miss-sunshine

Standout Track: The Great Plains

Review:

“Act III Scene 1: “Get thee to a nunnery,” Hamlet tells Ophelia. Eaves Wilder nearly did just that, briefly considering quitting music to join a convent in Barnet, London. The good Lord’s loss is music’s gain. Little Miss Sunshine is an astonishingly accomplished debut, a record in which Wilder reaches new heights in songwriting and melody, establishing a sound that finally feels entirely her own.

The album moves through a wide range of emotions, informed by storms of anxiety, flashes of clarity, and moments of wry humor. “Just Say No!” begins with grinding guitars, delivering a powerful portrait of coercion and confrontation. “Everybody Talks” addresses a sense of attention deficit and overwhelm in modern life, as well as the experience of being on stage, distracted by constant chatter, voices crowding in from every side. Or, as Wilder says more succinctly, “We’re all over-stimulated, and everybody is talking and fighting, and most people need to literally shut the fuck up.”

Elsewhere, the sublime “Ropeburn” soars with real majestic force, Wilder’s vocals stretching skyward over propulsive drums, while the Blur-esque “Daisy Chain Reaction” gleams with Britpop-adjacent hooks and elastic guitar lines, confronting teenage anxieties and the toxic, competitive culture around eating disorders. In “The Great Plains,” inspired by childhood memories of The Little House on the Prairie, and “Summer Rolls,” Wilder traces childhood and sisterhood, her voice softening over chiming guitars, transforming memory into something precise, vivid, and unvarnished.

Wilder threads her influences throughout the album without allowing them to dominate. Lush and My Bloody Valentine-style dream pop harmonies float and blur at the edges, whilst grunge guitars lend grit and heft. It is an intoxicating mix of riot grrrl energy with flashes of CMAT’s theatrical pop melodicism, yet everything is filtered through Wilder’s own lived experience, delivered with bracing candor.

There is a cinematic sweep that runs throughout the album, songs expanding and folding into one another with an almost tidal rhythm. Little Miss Sunshine is intimate and expansive, confessional yet composed, a genuinely wonderful debut full of humor and unflinching honesty” – Under the Radar

Lime Garden – Maybe Not Tonight

Release Date: 10th April

Label: So Young Records

Producers: Charlie Andrew/Annabel Whittle/Dan Carey

Buy: https://limegarden.bandcamp.com/album/maybe-not-tonight

Standout Track: Downtown Lover

Review:

“As Brighton quartet Lime Garden were beginning work on the follow-up to their 2024 debut ‘One More Thing’, their four members went through what they’ve described as “a mass break-up”. A somewhat unfortunate act of sisterly symbiosis, each split with their respective partners in tandem “like dominoes”. Rather than sit and wallow in their collective misfortune, however, vocalist/guitarist Chloe Howard, guitarist Leila Deeley, bassist Tippi Morgan and drummer Annabel Whittle chose chaos – and now blazing, brilliant second album ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ lands as a slice of victorious closure.

Loosely structured across a big night out, the reckless spirit of the album might stem from a period of personal disarray but it also lends itself extremely well to the famously difficult junction of a second record. Where many bands overthink themselves into a corner, trying to turn out something slicker and more serious, there’s a hedonistic, ‘fuck it’ energy to the first half of ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ that practically fizzes out of the speakers. Lime Garden’s playfulness has always led to their best work, but here they sound fully unleashed: experimenting with cheeky, wonky synths on ‘All Bad Parts’ and deadpan slacker delivery on ‘Downtown Lover’.

When Charli XCX appeared on the Tape Notes podcast, she walked listeners through the messy trajectory of ‘365’, from owning the club to overdoing it in the toilet cubicle. ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ takes this idea and transposes it for twenty-somethings with a maxed-out overdraft, a pouch of rollies and a dream. Opener ‘23’ sees Howard take a deep breath and step into the mix; the aforementioned ‘All Bad Parts’ is probably the most mischievous song about the crutch of alcohol that we’ve heard in a long time, while ‘Maybe Not Tonight’’s title track rages through the night, landing like a lost indie sleaze classic.

By the album’s second half, we’ve hit the self-lacerating part of the evening when the demons kick in. ‘Body’ seethes jealously at another woman across the room (“I hate the way I’m looking at you / You look so beautiful”), while ‘Undressed’ shrivels at the sight of an old flame over Deeley’s Strokes-esque guitars. But even when the internal monologues are dark, the band’s innate knack for an indie hook stops these thought spirals from ever killing ‘Maybe Not Tonight’’s vibe.

On ‘Always Talking About You’, Howard admits her secret fantasies: ”I want to be famous / I want to be rich / I want everybody to say that’s that bitch”. The first two points might remain in question, but when it comes to getting over your exes, Lime Garden are those bitches that have come out the other side, all guns blazing” – NME

FEATURE: After Aerial… Twenty Years of Tom Doyle’s Interview with Kate Bush for Q

FEATURE:

 

 

After Aerial…

COVER PHOTO: Trevor Leighton

Twenty Years of Tom Doyle’s Interview with Kate Bush for Q

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THIS is an odd…

PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

sort of half-way point. Q magazine was launched in October. Kate Bush appeared on its cover a few times, but she was one of the cover stars when the magazine turned twenty. The November 2006 issue had twenty different covers. Each of the artists gave an exclusive short interview. Tom Doyle spoke with Kate Bush over the phone for her interview. He chatted with her the year before when Aerial was released. That was an extensive interview. It is also sad, as Q came to and end in 2020. I did want to celebrate twenty years of a great interview, to celebrate twenty years of one of our best and most read music magazines. I have written about this before, but as it was twenty years ago, it is worth spotlighting once more. Doyle’s interview is published in his 2023 book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. It is chapter forty-two. I am not going to source it all, but there are a few questions that I really love. Rather than talk about Aerial too much or tread over old ground, Tom Doyle chatted with Bush on 28th May, 2006. Typically, when he spoke with her, she was at home having a cup of tea! The whole interview was infused with tea! Doyle asked Bush what it was like getting a standard ovation when she attended the Q Awards in 2001. She was touched and stunned, as “I was still struggling away with making this album”. That was Aerial. It gave her motivation to keep going, knowing that people had not forgotten about her and there was this love. “It was fabulous. Magic, really”. As Q was twenty in 2006, Tom Doyle asked Kate Bush what she was doing in 1986. That was a year when she was still promoting Hounds of Love. Her greatest hits album, The Whole Story, came out that November. Possibly at her commercial peak.

Bush recalled how a guy at her label (EMI) suggested a greatest hits album. How she thought it was a naff and crap idea. Though, as she said, he went away and did some research and “presented it to me again and he just completely won me over”. It was a massive-selling album and won hugely positive reviews. I can see why she was hesitating about a greatest hits album. Like she was retiring. Not new material, there would have been hesitations. It went to number one twice, so Bush was relieved that she was convinced to do it. Doyle was curious why Bush did not go to America and tour Hounds of Love after it was such a success. That was, in her words, quite typical. “America and I have never really seen eye to eye”. I feel that has changed since 2006. Especially in 2022, when the Duffer brothers used Hounds of Love’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in Stranger Things. A huge American show, it gained her overdue ackolwdgement and visibility there. She was popular before that, but this was a major moment. Bush said she went to the U.S. to push the album. Though it was her in a hotel room drinking tea and chatting. Probably not that American journalists were expecting! A 12” version of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was a club hit in America, so that helped it get to number thirty. In 1986, Kate Bush owned a mobile phone, tough it was “the size of a fridge”. People talking the piss. She drove a red convertible VW Golf. What I highlighted before is that, when asked about her high and low point of the past twenty years (before 2006), family members were selected. The birth of her son, Bertie, in 1998 as the highpoint. The death of her mother in 1992 was the low point. The music questions were very interesting. I wonder if Kate Bush has changed her position. The song she wished she had written from the past twenty years was released in 1986 (so it just scraped in!) was Paul Simon’s The Boy in the Bubble. From Graceland, that album turned forty in August.

In terms of the artist from the past twenty years she admires the most, she said Antony of Anthony and the Johnsons. Now ANOHNI, she is someone who no doubt is influenced by Kate Bush. She was cheekily asked if Tori Amos was in the list. Bush showed her love for ANOHNI and, when trying to think of another artist, Doyle suggested Tori Amos. She gets compared to Kate Bush a lot, and that must be something Bush was tired of hearing about. I am sure she likes Amos’s music, though she did not want to be associated too closely with her. She also said how she liked Shaggy, so you can’t say her music choices were narrow or predictable! On the nature of fan and whether it is a burden, Bush explained how fame allowed her to do what she wanted to do. And she has this loyal fanbase, so that is a blessing. There are negatives, but that is outweighed by the good points. Bush was asked if people come up to her in the supermarket. She said how they sort of smile from a distance, whereas they used to come right up to her and be a lot more animated. Bush showing her sense of humour through the interview. Explaining how she drinks so much tea. Tom Doyle revealed how Q’s review of Aerial imagined Bush “in a cobwebbed stately home, brandishing a candelabra, looking for fairies”. Bush joked how they must have a camera in her home! In 2006, Bertie was still a small child, so school runs and being a mum was dominating. Not quite as exotic as some might imagine, she did say how she had a bit more free time the last few months. Post-Aerial, she has been looking at new ideas and projects. Nothing concrete. It would be May 2011 until a new album, Director’s Cut, was released. However, Bush was keeping busy. Aerial went to number three in the U.K. It was beaten by Ill Divo and Westlife albums. Vastly inferior they were, as Bush pointed out, much more commercial. So the fact she was at three and had a number four single (King of the Mountain) was pretty good going!

Tom Doyle said to Kate Bush how it had been twelve years since The Red Shoes that Aerial came out. Three albums in the past twenty years though, as Bush said, Aerial is a double album so the average is a little better. Bush was asked if we were going to wait another twelve years for an album. She hoped not! We would get two in 2011, so she averages one every three years. Though now we are at a point when it is almost fifteen years since 50 Words for Snow came out, so you can never predict her timescales and productivity! The final question asked of Kate Bush was where she was going to be in twenty minutes. She said, “Probably in the toilet cause of all the tea”. That was a nice way to end! I did like Doyle asking Bush what her best purchase of the past twenty years was. Bush’s answer was the painting that went into the Aerial cover (James Southall’s Fisherman and Boat). Bush said how she saw it in a window as they (her and husband Danny McIntosh) were driving by. She made him drive back because she was besotted and wanted to see what it was. This wonderful interview for Q’s twentieth anniversary. Published in November 2006, it was available on newsstands late September and October 2006. I wanted to mark twenty years of that interview. It is a shame that Q is not around anymore, as I used to read it a lot when I was growing up. I wonder if Tom Doyle thinks back to that interview in 2006. Having spent a bit of time in Kate Bush’s company the year before to talk about Aerial, there was this combination of career and personal questions. Looking back at the past twenty years and what she was doing. Since 2006, so much has changed for Kate Bush. Interesting what Tom Doyle would ask her if they were to speak once more. I love the Q twentieth anniversary interview, as we get some…

TRULY fantastic exchanges.

FEATURE: The Ultimate Greatest Hits Album? Kate Bush’s The Whole Story at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Ultimate Greatest Hits Album?

Kate Bush’s The Whole Story at Forty

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HERE is an artist…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Hounds of Love’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: United Archives/Alamy

who is overdue a second volume of her greatest hits album. There have been compilation and best ofs, though not an official greatest hits follow-up to The Whole Story. That was released on 10th November, 1986. Just over a year after Hounds of Love came out and was a major commercial success, there was now call and opportunity to put a greatest hits album out. Not opportunistic, it would give fans a chance to hear some of the earlier singles. Those who may only have known Kate Bush for Hounds of Love, there was some great pre-1985 singles that were collected into the album. Since then, there have been people asking if we will get another greatest hits. I think it is unlikely. Many artists do this. They put out a greatest hits album at a certain point and then do not put out a second. The Whole Story went four-times platinum in the United Kingdom. During Bush’s residency in London in 2014, Before the Dawn, The Whole Story charted at eight on the U.K. album chart. It went to seventeen in 2022 following the success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and its inclusion on Netflix’s Stranger Things. Kate Bush was a little hesitant to agree to a greatest hits album. The fact it became her third album number one (after Never for Ever (1980) and Hounds of Love (1985) showed that she was right to let EMI do this. My first introduction to Kate Bush was through The Whole Story. It came out on VHS, Betamax and LaserDisc editions. It looks like the U.K. VHS edition came out in 1986. It may have been 1987 when I first saw the VHS, and I was probably four. I am going to bring in a review. Some greatest hits albums suffer because they miss out notable songs or the sound mix is not great.

It is traditional for artists to include a new or unreleased track on a greatest hits, which has always confused me, as that song is not a ‘greatest hit’. In the case of The Whole Story, Bush put out the single, Experiment IV. It did okay, and I feel this song was one that could have made way for another song. I wonder if Under the Ivy, the B-side to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), was considered. I will combine some reviews from 1986 with more recent ones. It is great reading Kate Bush recall the moment the greatest hits album was pitched and being dead against it. How she was won over:

“(…) I was asked to put out a greatest hits album by the guy at the record company. I thought it was such a crap idea and I said, “No, no way”. He came back with all this research he’d done and just completely won me over. And of course it ended up being my biggest-selling record.

Tom Doyle, ‘Kate Bush: National treasure’. Q (UK), November 2006

Yes, I was [against the release of a compilation album] at first. I was concerned that it would be like a “K-tel” record, a cheapo-compo with little thought behind it. It was the record company’s decision, and I didn’t mind as long as it was well put together. We put a lot of work into the packaging, trying to make it look tasteful, and carefully thought out the running order. And the response has been phenomenal – I’m amazed!

Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 22, December 1987”.

There were a couple of negative and sexist reviews of The Whole Story. One talking about how vain Bush is and she is worried more about her looks than her voice and lyrics (Buzz are responsible for that). NME were very kind. This is what Melody Maker wrote: “This glorious retrospective collection… she’s playing a high-risk game, and more often than not her irrepressible flair, her instinct for a hook, and her gift for unusual and gripping arrangements carry her through”. Record Mirror (UK) wrote this: “A monumental tribute to this craziest, coziest girl-next-door. (…) One of the most refreshing compilation LPs it would be possible to put together”.

Perhaps I have argued before how The Whole Story is the greatest greatest hits album. In terms of the quality and the songs and videos. How we can see that evolution. The videos for The Dreaming and Hounds of Love singles more cinematic than the earlier ones. The most surprising things about The Whole Story is that Bush recorded a new vocal for Wuthering Heights. Her 1978 debut single has a perfect vocal, and not many fans prefer the newer version. Bush labelled as high-pitched or girl-like, so trying to correct that and seeing the song more from a woman’s perspective than a teenager. I am curious if there will be articles about The Whole Story on its fortieth anniversary on 10th November. I did want to bring in this review for a greatest hits album that feature some of the finest singles ever released:

“The Whole Story takes the listener away on a musical ride through some of Bush’s most iconic moments from the beginning of her career. Hearing Bush’s early work in particular showcases the evolution of her wonderfully wavy vocals and wild imagination. From her softly sung piano ballad ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’, written at the age of just fourteen, to her spacey-orchestral experiment track ‘Wow’, taken from her second album Lionheart.

Bush uses The Whole Story to really showcase the formation of her now trademark quirkiness. With tracks like ‘Babushka’, (about a woman romantically fooling her husband) and the iconic pop anthem ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’, being flawless demonstrations of her ability to continually surprise listeners and push boundaries. Every track on The Whole Story shows the pure creativity and song-writing talent possessed by Bush – a skill heard in every one of her song’s piano notes and every drum beat.

Opening this compilation is the genius ‘Wuthering Heights’, which Bush remixed and re-recorded herself for this project. This remixing was done purely with the intent on giving the song a more mature sound, replacing Bush’s original vocals for the track when it was released in 1978, when Bush was just 19. This minor alteration in sound really does highlight the subtle change in vocal depth and resonance Bush developed in the eight years between the original track release to the polished and perfected iteration heard on The Whole Story.

Kate Bush creates magical worlds through her music, vocals and lyrics that has the fantastic ability to transport you away to a wondrous place where anything could happen. A place where Catherine and Heathcliff are together; a place where God will let you be another person to escape from the excruciating feeling of loving someone too much. The Whole Story is a vessel that ultimately transports the listener to the depths of Kate Bush’s imagination.

Kate Bush is not a singer, she is an artist. In fact, she is one of the most important artists of our time, and one that will continue to shape the music industry forever. Listening to The Whole Story is all the proof you need”.

I have written a separate feature about Experiment IV. Though I did want to spend time with The Whole Story. It was a big commercial moment. Drawing a line under one stage of her career, Bush’s next album, The Sensual World, arrived in 1989. There are some wonderful greatest hits albums, but I feel The Whole Story is the best of them all. Forty years later, the songs and videos still shine and impact. Though it is a perfect portrait of her career up to 1986, The Whole Story is not the complete picture. When it comes to Kate Bush, there is plenty…

MORE to tell.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Hazel Marimba

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Derek Bremner

Hazel Marimba

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THIS is a bit of…

a challenge for me, as I usually spotlights D.J.s who have conducted interviews. Whether Olive F, Carly Wilford or BETH, there has been some press out there. Not that nothing is known about Hazel Marimba, though I couldn’t find any print interviews. I am not sure if that is because she wants to keep things focus on her sets and radio work, or whether she has not been approached. There is no denying that Hazel Marimba is one of our best D.J.s. Based in London, this D.J. queen has played around the world. I love what she does. I am going to drop in some of her work. A lot of it is on Soundcloud (I have popped in something from Soundcloud, so apologies if you need an account to access it). Marimba is someone who works across multiple genres. Many D.J.s tend to stick with one genre or work within Dance and Electronica. They can do amazing things and splice in different sounds, though Marimba has this wider palette. I wonder if she has been approached by DJ Mag or another publication, as she is a hugely respected and acclaimed D.J. and producer. One reason why I would love to read an in-depth interview or a profile is to see which artists she grew up with. Her transition into becoming this amazing D.J. and broadcaster. I would love to know whether Hazel Marimba began this quest into music. Whether it was a particular album or moment that led her in. Evermix did spotlight her in 2019, and we do get some insight there. What I love about her is that she has covered so much sonic ground. As Resident at Rinse FM, this has been one of her biggest achievements in a career that has lasted over a decade. From working at SWU FM when she was in Exter, this incredible new step-up has occurred. Marimba is living the dream, though you know there still so much more to come from her.

I am going to continue in a minute, but I wanted to drop in this biography from Rinse FM. You can check out Hazel Marimba’s shows here. I don’t think there is enough attention on smaller or independent radio stations. I have spotlighted a few when discussing and interview D.J.s. I feel Hazel Marimba has had such a busy, exciting, inspiring and compelling career that she deserves to be the focus of a load of featured and interviews. Included in the Ones to Watch lists of D.J. magazines and websites:

“DJ. Producer & Singer Hazel Marimba, is known for rocking crowds with her high energy genre fluid sets. Spanning from UK Funky, Soca & R&B to Edits, Dancehall,

House, Neo Soul, Commercial, Club and everything in between. Hazel is the Touring DJ for Eva Lazarus and has performed alongside the likes of Sean Paul, Rita Ora and D Double E. Bringing her mighty sound to hot spots that include Fabric, Burning Man and Outlook Festival. Hazel crafts her own signature productions which land hard on the dance floor. With a career in music spanning over a decade, she has been front and centre in the UK dance music scene, seeing her perform all over the globe. Hazel has a vast music collection and can provide tailored sets to any brief”.

I have been looking around YouTube, and there is some cool bits there. I am committed to highlighting and championing incredible women. I think there is still gender imbalance regarding D.J.s. Festival bills and playlists. Even if there have been some small steps in other areas, I think that there is still a massive divide. The industry not valuing women as much as they should. Women still exposed to sexual assault and misogyny. The truth is that women are dominating and I feel are the most talented and powerful D.J.s. When writing about Carly Wilford multiple times and seeing how she travels around the world and delivers these hugely energetic and memorable sets, she should be headlining festivals and getting more attention.

SWU.FM · Hazel Marimba with Afrolion - 15 August 2026

The same with Hazel Marimba. I have pitched a U.K.-based D.J. festival that is entirely dedicated to women. There are smaller festivals, but having multiple stages where the D.J.s could headline, shine and collaborate. Still, festival line-ups are not as balanced as they should be. I have also suggested it would be great to have a YouTube series where these queens are sat in a studio – or I think a cool cocktail bar where they are in a room, on comfortable seat and the set looks amazing – and share their memories, favourite albums, and we get to see them drop the needle and play some of their favourite mixes and music. Advice to other women who are getting into the industry, and shouting out the best clubs, festivals and spots. There is this massive focus on artists and musicians. D.J.s still seen as underground, niche or not as important. I do think they are as essential and plaudit-worthy as artists. So many of them also record their own music. A natural shift. I am intrigued if Hazel Marimba has thought of putting out an E.P. or mixtape. I can see a lot of big moments coming. She is at Rinse FM right now and plays all around the world. I do think that Marimba will get some shifts on major radio stations Whether she has ever considered BBC Radio 1 or feels that this is something that is a bit commercial and not het thing, she is going to go from strength to strength. Looking at her Instagram feed, and you can tell how much she is loving what she does! So much passion and drive. She is also a tour D.J. for Eza Lazarus. I have spotlighted Lazarus before, and they recently joined forces in Brighton. We are coming out of summer, which might mean Marimba is shifting from festivals and idyllic outdoor gigs and moving indoors. That sounds naïve, but obviously this country’s weather is unpredictable. Marimba may have some international gigs later in the years where she can catch some sun, though thew autumn and winter months provide a different dynamic and reality. Whether she finds the summer is the best time and when audiences are at their best, or she likes the cooler and colder days and getting people united and energised.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hazel Marimba (@hazelmarimba)

I am a new convert to her Rinse FM shows, and I love the All I Wanted 4 The Club (Paramore Edit). This makes me wonder whether this is the start of something special. Putting more of these incredible mixes on Bandcamp. I do feel that Marimba will put out her own work and we will see an E.P., though I don’t want to manifest things for her, as she is very much forging her own path and has her own plans. I do hope that there are some interviews very soon, so that more and more people can learn about this incredible D.J. and broadcaster. A phenomenal producer. Hazel Marimba was D.J. at the afterparty for SNL UK over six weeks. It seemed like it was a career highlight. Her C.V. is so eclectic and interesting! A name that carries a lot of weight and respect, I feel the next five or so years are going to be her busiest and most astonishing. Marimba is not done with 2026, though we are heading near autumn and it will give her time to look back and look ahead. I am already excited to think what 2027 holds in store. I do hope that one of our most captivating and talented humans get some love and props from some of the biggest D.J. mags and websites. Apologies if I have missed any interviews or features, but I do think that she is overdue. Go and follow Hazel Marimba on Instagram and go and check out her shows and work. I have probably not done her full justice, but I did want to show my appreciation and praise. Marimba has had an astonishing career and she must have so many unforgettable memories that are still in her mind. When it comes to this queen, so many wonderful memories…

ARE in her future.

__________

Follow Hazel Marimba

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hazelmarimba/

Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/hazelmarimba

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/hazelmarimba

Rinse FM:

https://www.rinse.fm/shows/hazel-marimba

FEATURE: Portable Nostalgia: Why the Rise in C.D. Player Sales Is Not Surprising

FEATURE:

 

 

Portable Nostalgia

PHOTO CREDIT: Magdalena López/Pexels

Why the Rise in C.D. Player Sales Is Not Surprising

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PERHAPS it has more…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Sever/Pexels

to do with pure nostalgia. After all, a lot of people looking at all-in-one C.D. players online are very young, and they may not be old enough to remember C.D.s when they were first around. I had my musical upbringing happened in the 1990s, so I was used to C.D.s. That portability was amazing. Also, it was a great feeling to save some money and buy an album or single on C.D. I was not really able to afford vinyl, and cassettes were great but perhaps not in every music shop. C.D.s were amazing. I still have so many from when I was younger. As time went on, things changed. Devices like the iPod meant people could carry a library of music around. Now, streaming is massive. So many people listen to music in on these platforms, and there was a worry that C.D.s and cassettes would die out. C.D.s have seen this rise and resurgence. Not so they are going to have the same sort of impact they did in the 1990s and 2000s. However, there is this move back to physical music. One reason why vinyl sales continue to rise is that people want to buy music. Own a product and have that connection with it, rather than everything being delivered digitally. Also, digital music is not as environmentally friendly as you’d imagine. The environmental impact of streaming is huge: “Storing, processing, and transmitting billions of audio files requires vast energy-hungry data centers, matching or exceeding the carbon pollution of past physical formats like vinyl and CDs”. Younger music fans perhaps more conscious of environmental impact and factors such as this.

I feel one of the problems of C.D.s coming back to the fore is the devices to play them on. Some people play them int heir cars. Though the proliferation of portable devices is not as pronounced as before. Though there are a lot of buying options. For something like a modern-day Discman, there are these alternatives. The Discman was notorious for making C.D.s jump and skip. They were a little flawed in that respect. Newer models and devices do seem to be a bit more dependable and problematic. I was pleased to read news that young music listeners are interested in and looking for all-in-one C.D. players:

“John Lewis report that searches for CD players are up 96% since July, possibly owing to students heading to university and buying the systems for their rooms. The £79 Crosley Voyager, and the £129 Pure Classic C-D6 are both sold out online, with the Voyager scheduled to return in October. Portable CD players are also popular.

This tallies, of course, with sales of CDs themselves. A report this year found that the growth of CD sales is up 16%, compared with vinyl’s 2.4%. HMV reports that sales of CDs are up 10% year on year – thanks to artists often providing unique content on the format. “K-pop has been a massive driver, with BTS the most obvious example of artists that have led the resurgence,” says the managing director, Phil Halliday. “But it goes much wider than that. We’re seeing very strong CD demand around artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande and Olivia Dean.”

The fact that a vinyl record is about £35, compared with £12 for a CD, is no doubt a factor.

Tom Morgan-Freelander, the deputy editor of the technology magazine Stuff, has noticed the change over the past two years. He puts it down to consumers wanting to move away from using their phone, a better audio quality, and limited disposable income. “It’s: ‘I don’t want to spend money on a turntable and the speakers that go with it. I want to spend £150 on an all-in-one system that comes with the CD player,’” he says.

The CD revival is part of a wider fashion for retro tech. As well as the vinyl resurgence and cassettes becoming popular items to buy, there’s the vogue for wearing wired earphones over AirPods. “The vinyl revival re-established our appetite for analogue, and now we’re seeing that broader love for physical music drive a genuine surge in CD players,” confirms Katrina Mills, the category buying lead for audio and imaging at John Lewis”.

The C.D. boom might give way to the U.S.B. Artists putting albums out in this format, though I don’t feel it will catch on in the same way and be as prolific. It seems like we have enough physical formats, and there is not that same portability. A lot of teens and those in their twenties are going retro with boomboxes. Others like having wired headphones and walking around with a portable C.D. player. Also, there are the optics that are a big reason for the C.D. drive: “Someone walking around with a portable CD player and wired headphones is signalling their sense of taste and cultural capital,” says brand strategist Alexi Gunner. He has labelled this trend “performative audiophilia”. Cost is a major factor. There is no real way of lowering vinyl significantly, as it costs a lot to make them and they are hefty items. Also, you have to get a turntable and cannot move around with it. Great if you want to spend some time and listen to music in one spot and enjoy the pleasures of a vinyl album. Though I am not sure how many younger listeners, especially Generation Alpha, are going to be able to invest in this. C.D.s are cheaper, and they do seem to be more convenient. The danger is chains like HMV shrinking. Stores are closing because of reduced custom. A lot of record shops only stock vinyl or may not do that many C.D.s, so people have to buy online. Many are buying C.D.s without having a player. Superfans are collecting albums on different formats. The fact so many are browsing for players means that people want to actually play the compact discs. Many buy vinyl for its aesthetic quality, though C.D.s are less appealing. Physical sales are doing well, and vinyl is closing in on C.D.s:

“According to Music Week analysis of BPI figures based on Official Charts Company data, vinyl sales are driving that performance – and the format is closing in on CD for supremacy in terms of volume. Based on the current trajectory, vinyl should become the leading format later this year.

After 19 years of decline, album sales across all physical formats grew for a second consecutive year in 2025, maintaining 2024's 1.4% growth level to come in at 17.6m units.

During the first half of 2026, physical albums sales increased further by 3.7% year-on-year (8,125,574 units). The rate of growth for physical music increased again in Q2 with year-on-year consumption up 6.1% (3,950,111 units), compared with 1.5% growth in Q1.

The strong performance reflects another successful edition of Record Store Day, alongside major new releases and the continuing robust catalogue business. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Guohua Song/Pexels

Drew Hill, MD Proper Music Distribution, said: "It’s fantastic to see physical music enjoying such a robust first half of the year, driven by double-digit growth for vinyl. While the CD has remained a stalwart format, the fact that vinyl sales are up overall, and are on course to overtake CDs in units, is a testament to the format’s incredible appeal.”

Harry Styles has the biggest physical release so far in 2026 with Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally with 157,189 physical units.

Following 100,000-plus units in the opening week for Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, the US artist already has the second biggest physical album so far this year (66,587 physical sales in 2026.)

In the latest chart week, Muse are already performing strongly with 26,996 physical units registered in the first three days.

Based on consumption across physical, downloads and streaming, Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving leads the way for overall albums consumption with 384,869 units in 2026 (and 663,322 units in total since its release in September 2025). The Art Of Loving is No.3 on physical sales in 2026 (64,086 units).

Vinyl is, of course, driving the performance of physical sales with the format on course for a 19th year of consecutive growth.

Neil Gibbons, chief operating officer, Key Production Group, said: "After 19 consecutive years of growth [for vinyl], it’s great to see physical music sales continuing to accelerate, with vinyl leading the way. CD orders at Key Production have also remained steady, and our research shows the format is also finding a new audience, with nearly half of Generation Alpha – 46% – listening to CDs. This is a clear sign that all physical formats, including CDs, continue to resonate with fans of all ages, and the demand for something tangible remains strong."

The half-year vinyl results for 2026 show an impressive growth rate of 16.4% year-on-year (3,796,251 units) – beyond what you might expect almost two decades into a sales revival”.

Long may we see the all-in-one player rise. More people seeking them out. There are great portable players. The technology a bit more robust. Some younger listeners want that retro feel, though artists offering their albums on C.D. means fans can give directly to the artist and have that physical connection. I feel the C.D. is more accessible to younger listeners than vinyl. I do wonder if C.D. singles will come back. Let’s hope that this trend continues. That we see more and more people buy C.D. and the players. These new findings are so…

PLEASING to see.