FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Claret: Chasing the Shot…

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

 

Claret: Chasing the Shot…

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THIS is a limited series…

where I go inside John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow. The first instalment looked at the earliest memories. It was an introduction and preface, really. Setting the scene and sharing his memories. Why photographing his sister is so meaningful. Some great anecdotes and recollections. For this second part, I am looking at part of a chapter called Chasing the Shot. The next couple of chapters will see me look at his shots for Never for Ever. I am going to use some photos from the Never for Ever chapter, as there are very few in the Chasing the Shot one, so I am casting a little way ahead, which I hope people do not mind. I will finish off this chapter in the next part. In terms of the rainbow colour spectrum, this and the next edition will focus on red. Shades of reds and words associated with them. I will then move to purple. This one sort of bridges between that early experience photographing Kate Bush and the extraordinary shots for Never for Ever. Stills from video shoots and some great photographs people might not have seen. I will get as far as page fifty-seven. John Carder Bush recalls how he photographed his sister “during her early and teenage years, when she was experiencing changes and the usual confusion that teenagers go through. She hated having a camera appointed at her; there was none of the willingness of the little girl from Cathy”. That is a bit of s revelation for me. I through that there was always this ease. I guess, when you are a teenager, you become more self-conscious, aware of your privacy. She might not have wanted to be photographed. The Victorian ware-house where a lot of those Cathy shots were taken became a dojo with a weighty kicking bag suspended on a wire across the room. This area was a “very intense place smelling of feet and sprayed sweat”. Not a spot for a teenage girl “to find a corner for dreaming in”. Some of that reservation and reluctance to be photographed stemmed from her once-idyllic spaces between transformed and losing some of their romance and purity.

That original aura was gone. The grain loft from the Cathy shoots was still unclaimed. It was somewhere that was a safe space for “Catherine’s imagination to leap and gambol while her brothers screamed and clashed below her and doves nested in the roof beams above”. That fascinating period between Cathy and the childhood photos. When Never for Ever came out in 1980, Kate Bush was twenty-two. The years between saw transition and change. John Carder Bush not really that involved with images and shoots for 1978’s The Kick Incise and Lionheart. Even though he was looking after his sister and dealt with a lot of the business side, there were other photographers snapping his sister. I am looking forward to the Never for Ever chapter(s) and his memories. John Carder Bush notes how he photographed his sister professionally in almost an accidental way. Once the success of The Kick Inside was realised and exceeded expectation, the record label organised photoshoots with photographers of their choice. John Carder Bush thought there would be a rehearsal with a session of their own. There was, however, a chance for John Carder Bush to photograph his sister. The environment of the session was nothing special. A wash-house with karate instructions scrawled on the walls. A velvet curtain ion the background supplied by their mother. The shots “seemed as though they came from a play or film, a real moment caught, that stood out”. John Carder Bush observes how these photos were taken just before Kate Bush understood how “glamour, the casting of a spell, could be translated from reality onto flat paper”. The photos were taken in October 1977, in the same place he took the Cathy photos a decade before. The relaxation was back. The photographer realising how much he missed that trust and bond. Family around. Hannah Bush singing as she swept the yard; Robert Bush playing Schubert in the front room. The dog popping in every now and then to see what was happening. John Carder Bush was not a professional at that point, so EMI did not encourage him. He didn’t have a high-end studio and this massive portfolio.

What is glaring is how John Carder Bush notes how those sessions were sometimes silly and ill-advised. His sister not having approval over the final shots. Though photographers like Guido Harari and Gered Mankowitz had this connection and they took some wonderful photographs, Kate Bush learned she could not trust “her image to be dictated by other people”. Control was the answer. It was decided that he would photograph his sister again. There was a new responsibility. This ascending star was now a commercial success, so there was this pressure. This task demanded a “different standard of acceptance”. John Carder Bush was not exploiting Kate Bush for his career. There was that trust between them. He was used to working with black-and-white. He felt that medium as powerful as a poem. Shooting in colour was a shift for him. Skipping a few paragraphs, John Carder Bush writes how photographing his sister meant that he became “a hunter of that look”. That follows his recollection of falling for an America actress, Jean Seberg, and her as Saint Joan in a 1957 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play of the same name. He also saw Siobhán McKenna – whose iconic Molly Bloom soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses would inspire Kate Bush to write The Sensual World (she could not get permission from James Joyce to use original text in 1989 but got permission in 2011 when she rewrote The Sensual World and it became Flower of the Mountain) -in a theatrical performance of Saint Joan. He wanted that same reaction and magnetism from his sister. Whilst he was attracted to those two actresses, the dynamic was different here. Her innate beauty and unique beauty, it was a case of chasing that shot and that same sort of photo would come. That same ‘wow factor’. “When I look at her though a lens, it is like looking at the flow of a person, personality, projection, physical presence, gesture, posture, pose, animation, fascial expression, thoughts, all moving like streams and rivers, brooks and waterfalls”. Seeing photos of his sister in the same iconic setting as Seberg and McKenna, he wondered if they were doing to the owners what those treasured photos had done to him. “Like an arms dealer, the photographer seldom takes responsibility for who gets shot in the heart”.

John Carder Bush recalls how he bought an L.P. of Siobhán McKenna reading poetry. Among which was that Molly Bloom soliloquy. He played it to death, whilst his six-year-old sister hummed along to it. The seeds already planted! I do love how a photo of an actress playing this iconic role indirectly led to one of Kate Bush’s most treasured songs. People told John Carder Bush how they could tell a photo was his. That brother-sister bond. For him, it was the setting that was most important. Although portraits did not need a lot of space, there needed to be a distance between the photographer and subject. A connection between generations. You can imagine how some of the Cathy photos distributed some of the family routine and space at East Wickham Farm. How these spaces would be transformed and almost been cut off. It was not long until John Carder Bush’s children would race into rooms and stop dead and turn around because the rooms they are used to playing in were now for photography. The privacy was important. Not using professional studios was important. No need to commute and spend loads of money. A small team (hair stylists, make-up artists and clothes stylists) would come to his flat. Kate Bush was at home there and could wander in wearing jeans and a jumper. The challenges of Victorian flats – which I know about as I live in one – is the high ceiling and lack of heating.  Heat rises and so it was an issue keeping warm. That said, the space and height could be advantageous. Canvases and  background rolls could be hung. Though, as he remembers, there was one incident when he was up a ladder and photographic equipment and camera came crashing down. He fell off the ladder and avoided hitting them and being cut by broken glass. Modifications were made. A typical studio day with his sister started with collection of shopping for lunch and tea breaks for half a dozen people. Lights and backdrop were put up. The dining room became the focus for hair and make-up. The importance of the kitchen: a “bolt hole where a constant stream of cups of tea would be prepared throughout the day”. Finishing this two-parter on that Chasing the Shot chapter, John Carder Bush  talked of his memories. The hair and make-up taking a while to perfect. That odd low hum and morning mood. One of his children a sand-in for his sister. Taking these Polaroids. He would stand on a ladder and shoot down so that Kate Bush, hair and make-up and the clothes stylists could see where he was heading.

 

Escaping the kitchen, he would wave the Polaroid  and “watched the image coming through, then back into the ‘studio’, back into the warm hazy smell of celluloid from the film, chemicals from the Polaroids and that ever-fizzy, cheerful smell of hairspray, to pass the Polaroid around”. There would be adjustment as Kate Bush made suggestions. More Polaroids before the actual shots were taken. A lot of going up and down the ladder,  changing magazines going from colour to black-and-white, and seeing what worked. The shots were artistically demanding but also physical. Especially, as he notes “with the weight of the Hasselbad with a long lens”. That dilemma of being in the creative and technical zones at the same time. John Carder Bush’s martial arts training helped him as he was “able to assume postures and positions that allowed me to get a more favourable angle on a shot. I would always go for a sequence using a tripod, but most of the time the camera was hand-held and I moved my angle of view, which meant constantly firing off  the lights to check  the meter readings and adjust the aperture”. That take us to the end of the first half of that Chasing the Shot section. The final ‘red’ part of the rainbow (as we are going deep with Kate: Inside the Rainbow) gets us to the point of Never for Ever. It is fascinating reading John Carder Bush’s words about shooting his sister and the realities. Whilst quite involved and like balancing a lot of things at once, it was also homely and charming. Insights into his world and those early-career moments with a women who would very soon be exposed to the wider world. I think that John Carder Bush’s photographs are so remarkable and distinct. For that reason, I would urge everyone to buy…

HIS wonderful 2015 photobook.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Fiona-Lee

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Fiona-Lee

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THIS is the second…

of a few artist I am grabbing from a recent Rolling Stone UK feature. It is one where they list the artists who are going to define future music. Among them is the fabulous Fiona-Lee. Before coming to some interviews, here is a bit of information about an artist that you need to know about:

“I’ve been very influenced by the storytelling of folk music, but I have always wanted it to sound really big,” Fiona-Lee tells Rolling Stone UK, explaining the emotional charge that runs through her work. “I don’t want it to be background music; this is something you’re gonna fucking listen to!”

Like her heroes Sam Fender and Bruce Springsteen, the Yorkshire native’s songs read like intimate thoughts but are delivered with the gusto of someone who wants the whole world to hear. In common with the singers she reveres, Lee makes the personal universal, telling vital stories through the most intimate lens. “It’s all too common how every woman has been in a similar position with a man,” she spits on the title track from new EP Every Woman, over a menacing guitar line that reflects her anger. Later on in the song comes a ripping guitar solo, showing that she wants these messages to be delivered to arenas and stadiums.

“Are you threatened by me? / Cause I’ll knock you over when I get the chance, honey,” she sings to her own self-doubt on the song ‘Imposter’, sounding ironically like a singer with the world at her feet”.

I am coming now to an interview from last year from Clunk Magazine. Fiona-Lee was discussing, among other things, her debut E.P., Nothing Compares to Nineteen. It is shocking reading about the challenges and traumas Fiona-Lee faced when she moved to London as a teenager. Rather than it instantly being this great move where she had all these opportunities, there were some events that dealt her a huge blow:

“Eight years is a long time to spend on a debut release, but for emerging artist Fiona-Lee, the journey to her first EP has been as significant as the destination. She joined me to discuss the winding path to finding her sound, the raw vulnerability of her songwriting, and the power of taking one’s time. Though not from a musical family, Fiona grew up surrounded by her dad’s classic rock collection, with Genesis, Led Zeppelin, and U2 forming the soundtrack of her early years. It was at the age of fourteen, years after abandoned childhood piano lessons, that she finally picked up a guitar — and she never put it back down. “I just got really obsessed with playing the guitar, and then started singing and writing,” she explains, recalling how she honed her craft through countless gigs in Hull, “cutting [her] teeth” on live performances near home.

Fiona was eighteen when she made the big move to London — into her manager’s office basement. Whilst the opportunity felt like her big break into the music industry, it quickly turned sour. The nineteenth year of Fiona’s life was filled with profound personal challenges, including an increasingly abusive management relationship and the loss of a friend to suicide. Her new EP’s title ‘Nothing Compares To Nineteen’ denotes the gravity of this year of her life.

The EP is a culmination of five years of songwriting, a collection Fiona describes as “a really good representation of the past, like, all my life up until this point.” She really wanted to capture the critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. “It’s about that big period of change, where you go from being a kid to being an adult,” she reflects. “It’s about a lot of the really uncomfortable growing pains that everyone goes through in some way or another.” Her tracks explore themes of loss — be it fractured friendships, first heartbreaks or the grief of losing a friend.

These past five years have also led to changes in Fiona’s songwriting process and sound. In the past, she wrote all her songs by herself, starting with lyrics jotted in her phone (formerly in notebooks), followed by guitar exploration. “You have to kind of just let the song write itself,” she explains, acknowledging how “hippy dippy” that might sound. Recently, she’s really been enjoying experimenting with co-writing. Working with other musicians also led Fiona to move away from her solo acoustic beginnings, instead landing on her vision for something “really big and exciting and almost euphoric, uplifting.” She says that getting “into a room together and just play[ing] these songs” with former Catfish And The Bottlemen drummer Rob Hall, was particularly formative, allowing everything to fall into place. Looking ahead to 2025, assembling a full band for live performances is one of her key aspirations. “I want to be able to bring the feeling that I’ve created in the EP to people live in a room,” she explains, noting the limitations of a solo guitar performance for capturing her evolved sound”.

Despite more collaboration in her music, Fiona is keen to stay involved in the production side of things as much as the songwriting itself. This hands-on involvement evolved naturally over time, and she finds it really important. “I think, especially as a woman, it can be really hard to say what you want and put your ideas out there because it’s so male dominated,” she reflects. Beyond making one’s voice heard, she keenly emphasises the importance of patience for other young musicians. “Don’t stress about time. Take your time to get to know who you are as a person,” she advises, adding that she’s “a really big believer in manifesting.” Whilst she knows it’s cheesy, she insists that she really does believe she’s manifested this life, and that believing in oneself is of utmost importance.

Throughout our discussion, one thing becomes abundantly clear: this is an artist who values authentic expression above all else, hoping her music allows listeners to “feel empowered in being vulnerable.” As she poignantly observes, “We’re all just humans trying to fucking get through life… You can have such a horrible experience but then make it into something so beautiful,” and this EP is just that”.

I am coming to an interview from Rolling Stone UK from last year. Early supported of Fiona-Lee, we discover more about her past into music. Though I have not included the question here, she was asked about tackling the subject of suicide in her music. Nothing Compares to Nineteen is an extraordinary E.P. in so many ways. In terms of what it addresses. Rathert than it being a bleak or heavy listen, there is an energy and momentum to the tracks:

“What’s your journey in music been like so far to this point?

I’m not really from a very musical family but I’ve always been surrounded by music – my dad always has music on in the house. When I turned 14 or 15 I started playing guitar and went from there, but it does feel like I’ve had a couple of false starts. I moved to London when I was 18 and had a really weird manager and I was like living in his office basement. I talk about that on my debut single ‘Mother’ and it wasn’t the best situation, a really weird one to be honest. But I’ve always been obsessed with guitar music.

Who were your formative influences?

Kings of Leon, early on, and Bruce Springsteen has been a big one too. I remember discovering PJ Harvey and Jeff Buckley when I was 17 or 18 too and got really into them. Sam Fender has always been a big influence too, certainly in the way he writes about things and manages to deliver what it is essentially pop music with a really important message.

There’s a common theme among those of artists who are strong, defined storytellers. Has this shaped your work?

Yeah and I’m a big fan of Alanis Morissette. Jagged Little Pill was a massive influence for me, in terms of storytelling but also a sense of anger and not taking any shit. I found that really inspirational and empowering.

I first discovered Sam when I was 17 and it was just really inspiring to see the things he talks about. Because I think there have maybe been some similar experiences we’ve shared and I think it sounds like we use writing in the same way, where it becomes a cathartic and therapeutic thing to do.

How does it feel to know your debut EP is out in a couple of weeks?

I never really think about upcoming things, but it is exciting because I’ve honestly been writing these songs since I was 20 and I’m 25 the day after the EP comes out. It’s been a five year period of writing these songs and it feels like an achievement that I’ve finally done it”.

I think I might finish off with an interview from this year. Every Woman is the latest E.P. from Fiona-Lee. That came out in April. I wonder if she has plans for an album in the future. I feel she grows stronger and more compelling with each release. Hotpress spoke with Fiona-Lee back in March, ahead of the release of her second E.P. The Yorkshire-raised artist “discusses Glastonbury, touring with CMAT, and finding confidence in subtlety”:

“Much of 2025 was spent building momentum, with the singer earning increasing acclaim for her brand of introspective indie. It’s a sound that combines driving reverbed guitars (Sam Fender meets Chastity Belt) with themes like toxic masculinity and mental health, delivered with sobering maturity.

Fiona-Lee has been hard at work too, finishing her second EP Every Woman (out April 17). The follow-up to September’s Nothing Compares To Nineteen, the upcoming project keeps the vulnerable stuff, but feels more assured. Imposter syndrome and narcissists posing as friends are some of the subjects under the microscope.

“The EP is about being a young woman today, and learning how to back yourself in difficult situations,” Fiona-Lee explains. “As a woman, and especially when you’re younger, it’s easy to doubt yourself in certain confrontations with other people.

“It’s about learning how to really back yourself, and how to sit with uncomfortable feelings, to get to that other side of clarity and peace. That’s how I felt throughout the whole process of making the EP. Before I wrote the songs, I had a lot of self-doubt and questioned myself a lot. On the other side of it, I’m a lot more confident and self-assured.”

She also made a point of recording all the guitar parts herself.

“Women are not encouraged in the same way that young men or boys are to play lead guitar and shred or whatever, you know?” Fiona-Lee says. “I’ve grown a lot more confident with all of that, writing those kind of parts. I feel like I’ve not cut any corners and I’ve given it everything.

“There’s some more folky influences and vulnerable, softer moments. When I was younger, I always thought that, as a woman, you had to be really loud to be heard – that’s how you got people’s attention. I’ve realised there’s a lot of confidence in being subtle, gentle and quiet.”

Go and follow Fiona-Lee. She is a remarkable artist that you definitely need to know. She has some tour dates in July and August. Can and see her if you can. I do want to quickly include a review of Every Woman from DORK. They heralded the power in vulnerability that comes through on the E.P. I have heard the E.P. and it instantly affected me:

“Fiona Lee makes the kind of music designed to stop you in your tracks, every word she sings carrying enough weight to make you really think about the point she's making. Across her second EP, 'Every Woman', she tackles a variety of difficult subject matter without sugarcoating the reality that lies behind it, and each of the six tracks feels more vital than the last.

Much like Sam Fender or even CMAT, she spares not a single second nor anyone's feelings when writing about the things we should all be paying attention to. The title-track is built on erratic guitar that intensifies the urgency of Lee's lyrics as she sings about the all too common instances of sexual assault being brushed under the rug and the importance of holding men to account for both their actions and that of those around them.

She slides between energy-filled outpourings and moments of much more stripped-back candidness with the ease of an artist many years into their career. Funnily enough, 'Imposter Syndrome' comes across as her most self-assured track to date. Starting off quite subdued and simple, the lyrics focus on trying to focus on fighting the internal voice that tells you that you aren't good enough, while the melody builds before eventually erupting into something much bigger that feels like a real moment of catharsis. The EP is built on these huge guitar parts that allow Lee to showcase what can happen when women in music are given the same encouragement as their male counterparts.

'Not My Friends' is perhaps the most anthemic of the tracks on offer here; it's catchy but remains intimate and is where Lee's introspective way of writing is at its best. Closer 'Victim' is a world away from the frenetic rock sound of the rest of the EP; her vocals are softer and lighter, combining with a simple acoustic guitar that adds to the melancholy that lies within her words.

Ultimately, 'Every Woman' shows that there is power in vulnerability, while pushing Fiona-Lee that little bit further into the spotlight she is so deserving of”.

I think Fiona-Lee is going to have a very long future in music. Rolling Stone UK have named her as an artist who will define future music. With some great E.P.s under her belt and this growing fanbase, I do think that the next few years will see her play bigger and bigger venues and gain a lot more momentum. There is something about her music that is connecting with people. For those unaware, you really do need to…

SEEK her out.

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Follow Fiona-Lee

FEATURE: Spotlight: XO

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

XO

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ALTHOUGH their mini album…

Need to Know, is not out until 16th October, there is a lot of excitement and buzz around a great British girl group. On 26th June, Spice Girls’ Wannabe turns thirty. It was first released in Japan. It has got me thinking about the girl groups of the 1990s and how there was this great scene. Perhaps less common now, there are a few terrific British girl groups reviving the scene. FLO and Say Now among the frontrunners. I feel XO – though I am not 100% keen on their name, or FLO and Say Now’s -, are going to be around for many years. I want to come to some interviews with Summer Askew, Shali Bordoni, Zoe Miller, Emmy Statham and Reanna Sujeewon. The quintet released their debut single, Lovesick, last September. Their members hail from Liverpool, Hong Kong, Essex, Derby and London, so you have this blend of local cultures, accents and stories. They bring this into their music. Their different personalities and energies mix beautifully and harmoniously. Not to compare them with Spice Girls – though I hope they don’t mind me doing so -, I do hear a tint of that in their music. Also, U.S. heavyweights like Destiny’s Child. Though some would say they have more in common with more modern girl groups like Little Mix. I am being guided by Rolling Stone UK for a few features, as they provided their recommendations for the future of music in 2026. This is what they said about XO:

“XO – the group formed of Summer Askew, Shali Bordoni, Zoe Miller, Emmy Statham and Reanna Sujeewon – are the latest British girl group eyeing up world domination. And from what we’ve heard, we wouldn’t put it past them. ‘Real Friends’, which arrived last year, is a Charli XCX-penned paean to female friendships, while their latest release ‘Hotline’ is an all-out banger.

There are big tunes, but also a sense of empowerment too. “What we really want to get across is that idea of being very confident within yourself,” says Reanna to Rolling Stone UK. “We’re all very different people but we’ve come together so easily and we have space for everyone.” An all-embracing mantra, then, which will no doubt come in handy when world domination beckons…”.

I do wonder what XO planned for the summer. They have their album out in the autumn and some live dates to promote it. Before that, there will be this desire to see them perform. Perhaps some more singles from the album. I would love to read more interviews, as they are a fascinating group. However, there is an interview form last year I am starting out with. There are a couple of chats from last year, in fact. The first is one I referenced for a recent feature about girl groups and the likes of XO. Whilst not as intense and busy a scene as the 1990s and 2000s, there is this growing girl group market. XO very much among the very best. Rolling Stone UK spoke with XO last year around the release of their debut E.P., Fashionably Late:

“What’s the story behind your formation and how did you land on your sound?

Shali: Do you know what’s really weird, with the music, we never had a conversation about what it was exactly that we wanted. We all come from performing backgrounds and we’e all danced a lot, so whenever we heard a track it was case of wondering can we groove to it? That was a question before we even assessed genres.

Zoe: That’s it with the EP as a whole, it’s so important to us that the music is just fun and we’re trying our best not to overthink anything because we grew up with the 2000s era, people like Fergie. They just did what they wanted, they had a good time and it was all the vibes in the world. We want to bring that back and just have fun. Make people feel good, let loose and let your hair down.

The Fergie comparison is interesting. Was there any other girlbands you liked growing up?

Zoe: We’ve got to give a nod to the Spice Girls, because they’re iconic.

Shali: Girls Aloud, the Sugababes, Pussycat Dolls. like they’re so iconic.

What’s the things you’ve bonded over aside from music?

All: Food!

Zoe: Horrible taste in men!

Summer: It’s funny because we were lucky enough to go on a schools tour which we were quite sceptical of to begin with, because we had no fan base and we were starting from the ground up with no idea of how these songs were gonna sound. But that was so important, because we built our bonds that way and that was really important for us, going from London to Glasgow for 8 hours. You’ve got to get along and then on stage as well, it was such a great opportunity and something happened. The first time we got on stage was in a school in the middle of Birmingham and to see the journey from that first performance is mad. We’re interacting with each other, we’re a team on stage.

What’s the role of a girlband in 2025 when groups like Blackpink and Katseye have shown that the whole sound and image of such a thing has changed?

Shali: There’s space for everyone. We all bring something different to the table, whether that’s the size of the group or the genre of music. Because we can never do what they do like them, but we did see them in London and it gave us a little kick up the ass.

Reanna: What we really want to get across is that idea of being very confident within yourself. We’re all very different people but we’ve come together so easily and we have space for everyone.

And finally, Zoe you’ve talked about world domination in 2026. Tell us more…

Zoe: We’ll have a cozy Christmas, go into hibernation and hit the ground. At New Year you’ll see the fireworks and then just start hearing our song ‘Ponytail’ everywhere. We’ve got more music, bigger tours and 2026 will be the year of XO!”.

This is a girl group that built their fanbase performing at schools. Now they are playing big venues and will play some amazing venues in November. Included is Manchester’s Academy 3. NME spent time with XO last year. Even though they are their own groups, I would like to see collaboration and interaction between FLO, Say Now and XO. A chat about the current scene and the music and girl groups they admire:

“They’re certainly hungry to deliver it.  XO’s five-member line-up was pieced together in a single day in September 2024 by Colin Barlow, a record exec who worked closely with Girls Aloud, and London-based Massive Management, whose roster includes All Saints singer Shaznay Lewis. Like hundreds of other hopefuls, the five talented young women talking to NME today answered a “very vague” ad in showbiz newspaper The Stage – “Can you sing and dance? Do you like the Pussycat Dolls?” – and turned up not knowing what to expect.

On the day, prospective band members were whittled down relentlessly as their auditions were filmed on Steadicam. “It was like, bang bang bang. Dance, cut! Sing, cut! Dance, cut!” Miller says. “And then it got to about 8pm,” Bordoni continues, “and [our managers] pulled up five chairs and were like: ‘Congratulations, you’re in the band!'”

The new members of XO were so in the zone that they didn’t realise until later that they already had connections: Askew and Statham used to compete against each other at talent shows. “Literally, as I was about to run off to get my train back to Liverpool, I was like, ‘Can you all just give me your name and number so I can make a group chat?'” Askew recalls.

Four members of XO grew up in different parts of the UK, while Bordoni spent her formative years in Hong Kong. A week after their audition, they reconvened in London for their first official band meeting, where their managers played them a selection of demos. “The very first song they played was ‘Ponytail’,” Sujeewon says, name-checking a rhythmic earworm from the EP, “and we loved it immediately. It’s become a real fan favourite.”

XO say they had no problem finding a unified musical vision because of their dance backgrounds. “When we get the choreo done for a song, it’s like boom, it’s ours,” Statham says. But once they bonded over a shared love of beat-driven 2000s bangers by Timbaland and Black Eyed Peas, they began to put a stamp on their sound. ‘Silly Boy’, a strutting highlight from ‘Fashionably Late’, was co-written by the band after a familiar experience of everyday sexism.

“We’ve learned so much from each other. We’re a team now” – Emmy Statham

“We were in an Uber because TfL wasn’t working – classic! – and we drove past this pub full of football men going ‘wahey!’ at us,” Miller recalls. “And I was like, what if we wrote a song about being catcalled on the street, with a whistle as its motif?” Bordoni adds. Five months later, they brought the idea into a songwriting session with artist-producer Upsahl (Dua Lipa, Madison Beer), who helped them to flesh it out. “That song was a big moment for us,” Statham says. “We love seeing fans sing it back because it came from our hearts.”

They won’t have to wait long before this happens again. XO have just announced a second UK headline tour for May 2026, including a show at iconic Glasgow venue King Tut’s, and promise more new music “early next year”. They’re not touring schools anymore, but given that grounding, do they think of themselves as role models? “I’m not gonna act any certain type of way just for someone to look up to me,” Miller says. “But I’m not going to act like a dickhead either.” Bordoni chips in: “We’ll never act differently, we’ll always be ourselves. That’s our biggest thing as a band: we want everyone to feel confident in being themselves”.

I am going to end with an interview from this year. Official Charts featured XO around thew release of the incredible single, Hotline. This chaotic, fun and deeply connected group are definitely going to be play huge festivals. I feel they might make it to Glastonbury next year. Headline slots await them. They have the talent to be around for many years to come:

“Hey girls! Happy Hotline release week. How are you feeling?

Reanna: We're obsessed, we can't stop smiling!

Emmy: I'm so glad it's out while the sun's shining!

Zoe: The EP was only out in October, but it feels like we haven't released music in years.

Shali: There's been so much anticipation between the five of us, we've been buzzing waiting for this to come out.

Emmy: Because we're all performers, to be behind-the-scenes is hard for us - we're just dying to get XO back out there again. We're so excited!

How did you know Hotline was the song to come back with?

Shali: When we first hear a song, we visualise the video immediately. In the video, we come out of the lift one girl at a time. Last year we wanted to establish our friendships and relationships between each other as a group, and this time we wanted to focus on each girl's individual characteristics. It's a bit of a reintroduction.

Reanna: It's completely different to when we first heard it. We rewrote parts of it, Zoe put in the middle eight, and engulfed it into the XO universe.

And this single leads into your debut mini-album, Need To Know...

Reanna: We're so excited! We've been sitting on a lot of these tracks for a really long time, even since the first EP, because we knew the journey that we wanted to take. We've come into this year with a 'boom!'; we know what we're releasing, we're just excited to get it all out. Last year was a lot of research and development in real life, we were learning as we went. Now, we've figured out the plan. We've got such sick things to come!

On the title Need To Know, what's one thing you think we need to know about XO?

Reanna: We're always laughing, nothing's ever that deep. To laugh through life is the best way to do it.

Shali: Absolutely, I'd say our humour. Between the five of us, we have really silly humour. Part of the reason why we prefer in-person experiences with our fanbase is because you're able to have that personal connection. We've got really exciting things planned this year that'll allow us to focus on that more.

Summer: It's all about the vibes, it's all about having fun. Nothing's that deep.

Zoe: We've got a lot of music coming out that isn't what people are expecting from us. That's really exciting. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but we're switching the vibes a little bit. Our job is creative, and it's so important to us to make people feel something new through what we're creating.

Emmy: We also want to learn from the artists that came before us and the team around us. We never want to lose the source of our creativity. When we go into a session, we don't deep it - it's vibe on vibe only. That carries through everything we do together. Ultimately it's a brand, it's a business and it can get quote confusing. But ultimately, we don't want to lose sight of why we find this so fun.

Shali: We really want people to get to know our individual styles, too. We have a shared passion and similarities, but each of us have different hobbies we enjoy.

It's always important to embrace that individuality, even when united by one vision...

Emmy: It's super rare. You couldn't get five girls who are, on paper so different, from how we dress to the music we listen to and what we do in our spare time. You'd think 'we'd never put them together' but, from our audition day, we just clicked straight away. That's something so special.

Zoe: If you imagine we were all still at school, it's like you've taken one person from each table in the school hall and put them together. That's be beauty of music. You might not be doing the same things, but you can be one. You don't have to look or sound like your best friends, you can be yourself and so loved and important”.

One of the leading lights of modern British girl groups and Pop in general, the extraordinary XO marry elements of U.S. groups and U.K. ones of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Above all of that is their individuality. They are not a group led by committees and happy to sing any words and dance any way. They definitely have that determination to be true to themselves and have that sense of personality and authenticity shine through. If you have not yet connected with this fabulous fivesome, then spend time with…

THE astonishing XO.

___________

Follow XO

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential July Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kelela

 

Essential July Releases

__________

JULY is a pretty…

IN THIS PHOTO: FLO

exciting month for album releases. I am recommending from the list here. Historically, a lot of the very best albums are released between June and September. It is always a busy time for great albums. This July is no different. I am starting out with one album from3rd July. It may well be the most anticipated album of the year. It is Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II. The follow-up to her 2005 album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, the releases from it so far show that she is still very much at the top of her game. An artist who has been so consistently brilliant sin e her 1983 debut. It is an album that every music fan should pre-order. There are multiple options in terms of vinyl choices and having it on C.D. or cassette. Whichever one you go for, this is going to be album that I am sure will sit alongside the best from this year:

“The new album is the continuation of the iconic counterpart Confessions on a Dance Floor. Madonna sums up her new record best by quoting the first few lines of her song, One Step Away, “People think that dance music is superficial, but they’ve got it all wrong. The dance floor is not just a place, it’s a threshold: A ritualistic space where movement replaces language.” Madonna adds “When Stuart Price and I first started working on this record, this was our manifesto”: We must dance, celebrate, and pray with our bodies. These are things that we've been doing for thousands of years — they really are spiritual practices. After all, the dance floor is a ritualistic space. It’s a place where you connect — with your wounds, with your fragility. To rave is an art. It's about pushing your limits and connecting to a community of like-minded people. Sound, light, and vibration Reshape our perceptions Pulling us into a trance-like state. The repetition of the bass, we don’t just hear it but we feel it. Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time”.

Four great albums from 10th July that you need to pre-order. One is from another iconic act. I shall come to them soon. I want to start out with Holy Wave’s i’m DADA. I would advise people to pre-order this album, as it is one that will stay in your head long after you have heard it. If you are not familiar with Holy Wave, they are a Austin, Texas-formed Psych-Pop band who formed in 2008. Although I am fairly new to the band, hearing their recent material confirms that i’m DADA is going to be a tremendous listen:

“Working alongside experimental duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete at their studio El Derrumbe in Ensenada, Mexico, the sessions folded community into the album, though its emotional core had already formed over months of pre-production. Joo Joo Ashworth, mixing engineer and longtime friend, also provided a pivotal presence helping crystallize the album’s rhythmic language and subtly expanding the band’s sound. The songs began reflecting conversations about fatherhood and partnership, breakups and estrangement, the queasy acceleration of AI, and what it means to remain present and principled while the world lurches unpredictably forward.

This tension is not announced but absorbed into the music. Holy Wave stretches their familiar sense of woozy atmosphere into something leaner and more direct. There are more loops and samples woven throughout than before, grooves that feel constructed, cyclical, hypnotic. Some tracks drift toward dub’s elastic spaciousness; others pulse with cinematic downtempo gravity. There is a fresh sense of momentum throughout the record, rhythms that pull forward, dream-saturated textures, sheets of fuzz, and softly suspended vocals.

If earlier Holy Wave records often felt defined by their sense of drift, i’m DADA feels newly grounded. The album doesn’t abandon immersion; it disciplines it. Grooves settle, repetitions accrue weight, and the music is composed and unshaken amongst its heavier themes. What emerges is not reinvention but a sharpening, with Holy Wave sounding less like a band drifting through atmosphere and more like one deliberately shaping it amongst the chaos”.

An album I am really excited to hear is Kelela’s New Avatar. I really love Kelela, so it is going to be a thrill hearing her new album. Go and pre-order the album here. If you need a bit of background and personal insight into New Avatar, then Rough Trade have you covered. This also is going to be among the best albums of the year in my view. Kelela is a truly wonderful artist:

“My origin story as a songwriter and artist set the context for the catharsis I experienced while making new avatar. I wrote my very first songs in a punk house. The indie scene I was part of provided me with an outlet for genre-defying experiments that illuminated intersections I was hearing in my head. We didn’t spend tons of time  on songs cuz the kids in that scene didn’t care about nailing it. It was (lowkey) about messing up, giving 0 fucks and dismantling the need to be perfect in the first place. It took the pressure off and allowed my first vision of myself to blossom. I used a similar approach with this body of work - moving through with a lot of intention while capturing the freedom and spontaneity that inspired my inception as an artist.

What you’re getting with this album is another facet of my world expressed with a new level of conviction, sometimes in the form of love+devotion and other times in the form of rage.” – Kelela”.

I am a big fan of Suki Waterhouse. Her upcoming album, Loveland, arrives on 10th July. The British-born, U.S.-based artist follows up 2024’s Memoir of a Sparklemuffin. That was an incredible album. The singles she has released from Loveland finds Waterhouse at her peak. Someone whose music instantly makes its way into your heart, do go and pre-order Loveland. Speaking with Variety recently, we get to learn more about what Loveland will offer:

“Balancing family life with her burgeoning career is one of the main topics of “Loveland,” Waterhouse’s third album, which comes out on July 10. It’s her first release after signing with Island Records, the label that’s home to reigning pop girlies like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Olivia Dean.

When her contract with Sub Pop ended, Waterhouse says there was “a fascination for me of, what’s it like to be signed to a major label? I wanted to go on that ride and see for myself.”

So far, so good. Waterhouse’s collaborators on “Loveland” include “Espresso” hitmaker Amy Allen, Taylor Swift go-to Aaron Dessner and Lorde producer Joel Little, in addition to the musical partners who have been there from the start, Natalie Findlay and Jules Apollinaire. “For the first time, I had the option to work with some of the biggest people in the industry, and it’s kind of crazy,” she says. “I’m like, really?”

The 14-track “Loveland” — for which Waterhouse cites the Stone Roses, PJ Harvey and the Replacements as sonic inspiration — thematically swings between nostalgia for the wild days and nights of her youth and longing to be settled with her family. “There’s this kind of recklessness and abandon, which is always the feeling that I want to chase,” she admits. “And then there’s also this part of me that’s very much missing and yearning for the intimate, cozy moments in my life. They’re all very equally true to me.”

There’s even a track named for Notting Hill — a groovy piano-led love letter to “running around with a hangover in my early 20s” and wondering when you’ll meet your own Hugh Grant, just like in the Richard Curtis classic. Turns out, her apartment across the street is also “really where I fell in love with Rob,” she says, blushing.

“The music that I was making when I first started was very much in reaction to toxic relationships and heartbreak and that painful rollercoaster of girlhood,” Waterhouse adds. “And it’s been interesting this time around to have my heart cracked open in a different way.”

It’s not hard to tell that on “Loveland,” Pattinson is Waterhouse’s muse. The album’s opening song and lead single, “Back in Love,” is a joyous trumpet-backed ode to getting her own spark back postpartum, as well as in their relationship.

“I felt like my identity had been cut open in becoming a mother and also having a lot of expectations on myself. Internally, there’s been quite a lot of turmoil and just wondering if I’m doing the right thing. And especially, oh my God, the hormones right after you have a baby are so intense,” she says. “It’s like [I got] belief back in myself, and then also being … I don’t want to say back in love with my partner, because it sounds like I was out of it, which I was never. But it’s also a new relationship. Your old relationship has been wiped out, and so it’s building that new one and kind of celebrating the beauty in that, like, we’ve survived this”.

There are another eight or nine albums I want to cover. The next is The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues. This is going to be another massive album. Madonna and The Rolling Stones releasing albums within a week or each other. Two legendary acts putting out tremendous work. This might be the final album from The Rolling Stones. Make sure you pre-order Foreign Tongues:

“Foreign Tongues, the incredibly vibrant 14-track new album from the Rolling Stones, follows less than three years after the band’s universally acclaimed, Grammy Award-winning Hackney Diamonds, which topped charts worldwide and achieved multi-platinum success. Preceded by the upbeat and infectious lead single ‘In The Stars’, Foreign Tongues was brought to life in under a month at Metropolis Studios in West London, with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood reuniting with Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt. The result is a dynamic and forward-looking record that captures the band’s unmistakable sound while pushing into new sonic and lyrical territory, further cementing their unparalleled legacy.

The album features standout performances from Jagger, Richards and Wood, alongside their core collaborators including Darryl Jones, Matt Clifford and Steve Jordan. It also includes a special appearance from Charlie Watts, captured during one of his final recording sessions before his passing in 2021. Additional contributions come from an impressive line-up of guest artists, including Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney, Robert Smith (The Cure) and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers”.

Moving to 17th July, there are a few albums I am keen to spotlight. The first of the trio is Gracie Abrams’s Daughter from Hell. The Californian artist is very prolific. Her most recent album was The Secret of Us of 2024. Her debut, Good Riddance, came out in 2023. Her third album in three years, go and pre-order Daughter from Hell here. Rough Trade have provided no information on the album. However, this article quotes Gracie Abramas. She reveals more about Daughter from Hell and what inspired its title:

“Gracie Abrams opened up about the inspiration behind her upcoming album and the meaning behind its title, Daughter From Hell.

In an interview on TikTok Radio, the singer shared that the album explores the uncertainty and transition that often come with being in one’s 20s.

"This album as a whole is about this in-between decade, sort of our 20s, where one foot is in your post-adolescence and the other is in your future," she said.

The “That’s So True” hitmaker revealed that turning 26 led her to reflect more deeply on her life and relationships.

"I think that being 26, for whatever reason at this point I felt like I've been reflecting in more meaningful ways than I have in the past. I think I credit my relationships with my family for everything, especially when it comes to feeling super alone or like you're floating away from your body or something, like all of that kind of scary existential stuff," she remarked.

The singer went on to discuss her close bond with her mother, which also influenced parts of the album.

"I feel so rooted in conversations with my mom, like I Facetime her six times a day. And I think when I was like in the studio that day I had no intention on making a song that kind of referenced our relationship but I feel like we've earned the relationship that we have and kind of thank you note adjacent writing on this album," she said”.

The second of three albums from 17th July that you should pre-order is Tricky’s Different When It's Silent. Another long-running artist who is still putting out incredible work, you do need to check out Different When It’s Silent. Here is some important detail. I have been a fan of Tricky since he was part of Massive Attack and worked on their earliest albums in the 1990s:

“The legendary artist and producer Tricky announces his new album, Different When It’s Silent, via False Idols.

His 15th studio album and first full-length release under his own name in six years, Different When It’s Silent is a direct, focused record that reconnects with the distinctive sonic language that has defined Tricky’s work since his groundbreaking 1995 debut, Maxinquaye.

The album’s first single, “Out Of Place” arrives as a powerful closing moment for the record. Featuring longtime collaborator Marta, the track pairs Marta’s restrained vocal with Tricky’s urgent, almost punk-like delivery. The contrast between the two creates a dynamic finale that captures the album’s stripped back intensity. Originally written for Marta’s own album, Tricky ultimately reclaimed “Out Of Place” for Different When It’s Silent.

Different When It’s Silent follows a prolific period of activity. Since 2020’s Fall to Pieces, Tricky has released music under several different guises, including the collaborative project Lonely Guest, the Fifteen Days project with producer Mike Theis under the name Theis Thaws, and last year’s joint record Out The Way with Marta, al via his own label, False Idols. Yet returning to an album under his own name took on a different shape.

“In my mind it was another side project” he explains. But after hearing the material, his manager Alan McGee felt the songs clearly belonged to a Tricky record.

Recorded between Tricky’s home in France and sessions in Bristol, the album draws strongly on the musical community that shaped him. Central to its sound is the voice of Bristol singer Mitch Sanders, whose soulful falsetto runs through much of the record. Their connection reflects a shared musical background and an instinctive chemistry that carries through the performances.

Across fourteen tracks, Tricky blends skeletal blues, brooding electronics, distorted guitars and stark hip-hop rhythms into a sound that feels both stripped-back and expansive. The album moves fluidly across styles while maintaining the restless experimentation that has defined his work for more than three decades.

“I just love making music” Tricky says. “I’m grateful I’ve had the chance to live this life and keep creating.”

With Different When It’s Silent, Tricky delivers one of the most focused and powerful records of his career - a reminder that artists who build their own language never fall out of time”.

Four albums to recommend from 24th July. Before them, there is Yard Act’s You’re Gonna Need a Little Music. A great album due on 17th July, go and pre-order t. In terms of what you need to know, NME announced the arrival of an album from one of our best young bands. If you have not heard Yard Act, then this is a perfect moment to connect. I have never seem them live, though this is a band that I really do need to see one day:

“The Leeds band will soon return with their third album, set for release on July 17 via Island Records (pre-order/pre-save here). It’s their first new record since 2024’s ‘Where’s My Utopia?‘.

Now, they’ve shared the first taste of ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ with ‘Redeemer’, which takes Yard Act down a much darker sonic path than previously. Over a stooping bassline and skeezy guitars, frontman James Smith proclaims: “Redeemer / You stole the sun / Now you orbit is the bullshit of the damage done”.

The band worked with Nine Inch Nails bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen on the album, and recorded it between LA and Leeds. It also marks the first time the band made an album live in the same room.

“The first two records were both laptop records essentially,” Smith said in a press statement, adding that ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ was written in an “uninterrupted five month period” of creativity. The band went on to produce “40 or 50 songs” from this time period, with Smith adding: “It felt like freedom. It felt like everything I’d wanted from being in a band”.

On 24th July, Body Type’s Tally is released. A group I have been following for a while now, I am looking forward to Tally. You can pre-order the album. One that you will want to add to your collection. Not a great deal of information around the album. However, there are recent interview like this that do give a bit more insight and explanation. A deeper look at a group that everyone should follow. They are a quartet that formed in Sydney just over a decade ago. They consist of Sophie McComish, Annabel Blackman, Georgia Wilkinson-Derums, and Cecil Coleman:

“Body Type third record Tally, via p(doom) records. Here, the everyday bits of life—taking a lift up to a boyfriend’s apartment, divvying up a bill—are transformed into sublime and surreal thrills. This is a luminous rock record, chronicling mundanity’s mystical implications, the deformations of romance and love’s confounding elasticity. Combining big, jagged riffs, moody post-punk and 60s pop, this is Body Type’s most self-assured and expansive record to date, which coincides with their 10th anniversary as a collective. It’s the sound of a band maturing and taking stock, but where wit and playfulness still reigns supreme”.

A terrific British girl group, FLO released their debut, Access All Areas, in 2024. Their second album, Therapy at the Club is going to be extraordinary. Pre-order it now. They are a London trio formed of Jorja Douglas, Stella Quaresma, and Renée Downer. A huge summer release that surely will see them play a load of festival, they are helping to revitalise the girl group market in the U.K. Alongside others like Say Now and XO, there is this new wave coming through:

“With their next chapter, Therapy At The Club, FLO expand their emotional honesty into a fully realised creative universe. The concept reimagines the club not just as a place of nightlife, but as a site of release, confession and self-possession — encompassing the moments before, during and after the night out. From mirror affirmations and pre-game chaos, to late-night Uber conversations, dance-floor catharsis and the clarity of the morning after, Therapy At The Club captures how women process desire, heartbreak, confidence and healing in real time, together. It is both fantasy and reality: cinematic, fashion-led and emotionally raw, grounded in sisterhood as a form of survival.

Sonically, the new music leans into dark, euphoric R&B and pop with sharper edges, built on vocal mastery and diaristic storytelling. Lead single “Leak It” sets the tone for the era — playful, charged and unapologetically self-aware — exploring what happens when desire spills over, secrets surface and control is reclaimed. Across the new songs, FLO move fluidly between intimacy and euphoria, turning the club into a space where vulnerability is power and feeling everything is the point.

As a trio built on discipline, joy and deep creative trust, FLO represent a new model for the British girl group: one rooted in authorship, harmony and cultural impact. Balancing softness with strength and ambition with authenticity, they are shaping the future of R&B and pop on their own terms. FLO are not looking backwards — they are setting the standard for what comes next”.

Shania Twain’s Little Miss Twain arrives on 24th July. You can pre-order it here. Last month, CountryLiving published an interview with Shania Twain ahead of appearance at the ACM Awards. The Country genre is one that has been flourishing in recent years. Artists such as Ringo Starr and Beyoncé putting their stamp on the genre:

“I feel that the new generation coming up has a more free-spirited approach to songwriting, and to their musicality,” she tells Country Living. “I feel like country music is expanding. And I feel like the windows have been opened and the air is getting refreshed.

“So we have a nice influx of fresh air, new artists, and the joy is not bringing in the new and get rid of the old, because that would not suit me very well,” she says, laughing. “I think it's all about being together.”

“Part of my excitement is always to see my old pals that have been around for years in the country music industry, but also to meet the new artists coming up,” she says. “And watch the performances, and just get a feel for where we're going. This is the excitement for me.”

To Shania, the future is bright. “Where are we going? I get inspired by seeing what's possibly to come,” she explains. “Certainly there are more females now. And that just broadens the horizons in general, also, for the audience. The audience wants to see a little bit of everything. They want to be inspired—especially the global audience. They demand it”.

There is one album from 31st July I am ending with. Before that, 24th July promises a treat in the form of Tyla’s A*POP. This is a modern great. Pre-order her second studio album here. Another album that could well make its way into the best-of-the-year lists. Tyla is a modern phenomenon. I am keeping my eyes peeled and will listen to its album when it is released, as I have admired her music for some time now:

“A*POP — is the sophomore masterpiece from two-time Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum global superstar Tyla. A bold evolution from her debut, this 14-track album mesmerizes with Tyla’s signature sultry vocals, seamlessly blending amapiano, pop, and R&B. A*POP is both a statement and a movement — a declaration that African music is pop music, with Tyla leading the charge at the forefront of a global shift. Featuring standout hits like “IS IT,” “CHANEL” and “SHE DID IT AGAIN (feat. Zara Larsson), A*POP invites you into Tyla’s immersive, vibrant world — a defining second album that cements her as a true global icon”.

Do make sure you pre-order Ariana Grande’s petal. July is offering up an embarrassment of riches regarding quality. It is clear petal is going to win a slew of huge reviews. Grande is one of the biggest Pop artists in the world. Go and pre-order petal here. The new single, hate that i made you love me, is a tantalising window into the album. Even if you are not a fan of Ariana Grande, I would still advise you to buy the album. Such an amazing songwriter and singer, all of her albums are such an incredible experience:

“Ariana Grande returns with a new studio album Petal, the follow-up to Eternal Sunshine, is executive produced and co-written by Grande and Ilya, reuniting her with the “Problem” hitmaker.

Grande describes Petal as “something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.” The album marks her return to music after a period of blockbuster screen success, notably in the Wicked franchise”.

I am going to wrap up now. There are so many great albums out next month. From Ariana Grande through to The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Suki Waterhouse and FLO, there is so much in there. Something to suit so many tastes, I hope my recommendations have provided some guidance. July providing to be a very…

HOT one for new albums.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Whitney Houston

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Avedon

 

Whitney Houston

__________

BORN in California…

PHOTO CREDIT: David LaChapelle

in 1963, we sadly lost the great Whitney Houston in 2012. She is more than worthy of appreciation in tis feature, as she is one of the most influential artists ever. Houston is one of the most awarded and acclaimed artists ever. One of the best-selling music artists of all time - with sales of more than 220 million records worldwide - this icon helped break down gender and racial barriers through her artistic achievements and music videos. Prior to coming to a mixtape containing twenty prime Whitney Houston cuts, AllMusic provide a detailed biography of a much-missed legend:

“Whitney Houston was inarguably one of the biggest pop stars of all time. Her accomplishments as a hitmaker were extraordinary. Just to scratch the surface, the mezzo-soprano powerhouse became the first artist to have seven consecutive singles hit number one, from "Saving All My Love for You" (1985) through "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" (1988). Her version of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" (1992) became nothing less than the biggest hit single in rock history. Whitney Houston and Whitney, her first two albums, each went diamond platinum, followed by a string of additional multi-platinum LPs including the likewise diamond-earning soundtrack for The Bodyguard. Houston was able to handle big adult contemporary ballads, effervescent, stylish dance-pop, and slick contemporary R&B with equal dexterity. The result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by few artists of her era, and helped her become one of the first Black artists to find success on MTV in Michael Jackson's wake. Like many of the original soul singers, Houston was trained in gospel before moving into secular music. Over time, she developed a virtuosic singing style given over to swooping, flashy melodic embellishments. The shadow of Houston's prodigious technique still looms large over nearly every pop and R&B diva who has followed. A six-time Grammy winner, Houston was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, eight years after her tragic death.

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 9, 1963. Her mother was gospel/R&B singer Cissy Houston, and her cousin was Dionne Warwick. By age 11, Houston was performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at her Baptist church; as a teenager, she began accompanying her mother in concert (as well as on the 1978 album Think It Over), and went on to back artists like Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan. Houston also pursued modeling and acting, appearing on the sitcoms Gimme a Break and Silver Spoons. Somewhat bizarrely, Houston's first recording as a featured vocalist was with Bill Laswell's experimental jazz-funk ensemble Material; the ballad "Memories," from the group's 1982 album One Down, placed Houston alongside Archie Shepp. The following year, Arista president Clive Davis heard Houston singing at a nightclub and offered her a recording contract. Her first single appearance was a duet with Teddy Pendergrass, "Hold Me," which reached number five on the R&B chart in 1984.

Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston, was released in February 1985. "You Give Good Love," its second single, became Houston's first hit, topping the R&B chart and hitting number three on the Hot 100. Houston's next three singles -- the Grammy-winning romantic ballad "Saving All My Love for You," the brightly danceable "How Will I Know," and the inspirational "The Greatest Love of All" -- all topped the Hot 100, and a year to the month after its release, Whitney Houston hit number one on the Billboard 200. It eventually sold over 13 million copies in the U.S., making it the best-selling debut ever by a female artist. Houston cemented her superstar status on her next album, Whitney. It became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one, and sold over ten million copies in the U.S. Its first four singles -- "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" (another Grammy winner), "Didn't We Almost Have It All," "So Emotional," and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" -- all hit number one, an amazing, record-setting run of seven straight. In late 1988, Houston scored a Top Five hit with the non-LP single "One Moment in Time," recorded for an Olympics-themed compilation album.

Houston returned with her third album, I'm Your Baby Tonight, in 1990. A more R&B-oriented record, it immediately spun off two number one hits in the title track and "All the Man That I Need" and sold over four million copies. Houston remained so popular that she could even take a recording of "The Star Spangled Banner" (performed at the Super Bowl) into the Top 20 -- though, of course, the Gulf War patriotism had something to do with that. Appeal across mediums fueled Houston as she began focus on an acting career, which she hadn't pursued since her teenage years. Her first feature film, a romance with Kevin Costner called The Bodyguard, was released in late 1992, just after she married singer Bobby Brown. It performed well at the box office, helped by an ad campaign that seemingly centered around the climactic key change in Houston's soundtrack recording of the Dolly Parton-penned "I Will Always Love You." In fact, the ad campaign undoubtedly helped "I Will Always Love You" become one the biggest singles in pop music history. It set new records for sales (nearly five million copies) and spent weeks at number one (14), later broken by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day," respectively. Meanwhile, the soundtrack eventually sold an astounding 18 million copies, and also won a Grammy for Album of the Year. "I Will Always Love You" itself won Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

Once Houston had stopped raking in awards and touring the world, she prepared her next theatrical release, the ensemble drama Waiting to Exhale. A few months before its release at the end of 1995, it was announced that she and Brown had split up; however, they called off the split just a couple months later, and rumors about their tempestuous relationship filled the tabloids for years to come. Waiting to Exhale was released toward the end of the year, and the first single from the soundtrack, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)," topped the charts. The album sold over seven million copies. For her next project, Houston decided to return to her gospel roots. The soundtrack to the 1996 film The Preacher's Wife, which naturally featured Houston in the title role, was loaded with traditional and contemporary gospel songs, plus guest appearances by Houston's mother, as well as Shirley Caesar and the Georgia Mass Choir.

In 1998, Houston finally issued a new full-length album, My Love Is Your Love, her first in eight years. Houston worked with pop/smooth soul mainstays like Babyface and David Foster, but also recruited hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott, Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and Q-Tip. The album went quadruple platinum and received Houston's most enthusiastic reviews in quite some time. Moreover, it produced one of her biggest R&B chart hits (seven weeks at number one) in the trio number "Heartbreak Hotel," done with Faith Evans and Kelly Price. Additionally, it yielded the Grammy-winning "It's Not Right But It's Okay." She also duetted with Mariah Carey on "When You Believe," a song from the animated film The Prince of Egypt.

Arista released the two-disc compilation Greatest Hits, a multi-platinum anthology that featured one disc of hits and one of remixes and included new duets with Enrique Iglesias, George Michael, and Deborah Cox, in 2000. It was also announced that year that Houston had signed a new deal with Arista worth $100 million, requiring six albums from the singer. The self-styled comeback album Just Whitney arrived in 2002, followed by One Wish: The Holiday Album in November of the following year. Two years later, her private life became more public through the 2005 reality television series Being Bobby Brown. She eventually divorced her husband and went into intense rehabilitation for drug addiction.

An album of new material was initially set for release by the end of 2007, but delays pushed it -- titled I Look to You, featuring collaborations with Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, R. Kelly, Akon, and Diane Warren -- back to September 2009. It became Houston's first number one album since the Bodyguard soundtrack. She toured the world in 2010, and talked about beginning recording for her next album, but entered outpatient rehab in the summer of 2011 for continuing drug and alcohol problems. That fall, Houston filmed a role in a remake of the 1976 musical film Sparkle, starring alongside Jordin Sparks. In early 2012, rumors swirled that Simon Cowell was courting Houston for a mentor spot on The X Factor, but before anything came of it, tragedy occurred. On February 11, the day before the 2012 Grammys, Houston was found dead in her bathroom at the Beverly Hills Hilton. The cause of death was found to be accidental drowning caused by heart disease and cocaine intoxication. The Grammy ceremony paid tribute to her life with a Jennifer Hudson performance of "I Will Always Love You." Houston was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020”.

I will end there. I am keen to get to a mix of some of the best Whitney Houston songs. Showcasing her huge consistency, range, brilliance and power, these songs come from an artist who I feel has few equals. In terms of who she has influenced, you can include Mariah Carey and Rihanna. This is an artist whose influence and wonder will…

LIVE forever.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Victoria Monét

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

  

Victoria Monét

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BECAUSE the supreme…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dalvin Adams

Victoria Monét is playing some U.K. dates next month, I wanted to include her in this Modern-Day Queens. The Atlanta-born artist released the single, Let Me, last month. JAGUAR II was the debut studio album from Monét. It followed the 2020 E.P., JAGUAR. There was an expanded edition of JAGUAR II. However, there is a new album coming along soon. I did want to highlight this incredible artist, as she has a sound that is like nothing else. I feel she possesses one of the best voices in modern music. I will get to a recent interview from NME. However, before getting there, there are a couple of other interviews and features worth highlighting. Earlier in the year, at the Black Music Action Coalition Grammy Event, Victoria Monét discussed mentorship and nepotism in the music industry:

“The Black Music Action Coalition’s Grammy Week parties are always stylish events for a good cause, bringing out major stars and up-and-coming artists and many of the top executives in the music business. Wednesday night’s event at Sun Rose in Hollywood.

The evening, honoring the influence of hitmakers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis on contemporary music, was hosted by the pair in associated with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Victoria Monet, and also featured the presentation of the first-ever BMAC Music Maker Impact Award to Culture Collective founder Jonathan Azu, recognizing his leadership and commitment to advancing long-term music careers.

The ace house band, led by Adam Blackstone, set the soundtrack for the evening, and a highlight was multiple Grammy winner Jon Batiste sitting in with some dazzling jazzy piano soloing.

However, a highlight was a measured but provocative speech from Monet about mentorship, nepotism and gatekeeping in the music industry. It follows below in full.

“Good evening. It is such an honor to be in a room with people who believe in the power of music, not just as entertainment, but as a force of connection, healing, culture, and opportunity.

As a musician, I’ve learned that talent alone is not what carries you through the music industry. Talent is everywhere. What truly makes a difference is access, and more specifically, mentorship. Having that someone who sees you, who believes in you, who’s willing to share not just their wisdom, but their pathways to success.

But I also want to talk about two other layers of this industry. Those two things are gatekeeping and nepotism. So let me define both clearly. Gatekeeping is when individuals or groups control access to opportunities, information, or resources, deciding who gets in, who gets heard, and who gets supported.

Nepotism is a practice of favoring relatives or close personal connections, especially in hiring, promotions, or opportunities, and sometimes regardless of merit. The truth is, the music industry exercises both.

But I feel like instead of asking, how do we eliminate gatekeeping and nepotism, because realistically power structures will always exist, I would want to ask, how do we use them responsibly?

Gatekeeping is not necessarily negative. Nepotism is not inherently negative either. It depends on who and how they are used. They become harmful when they are exercised selfishly or to preserve comfort instead of cultivating excellence.

Put yourself in positions of influence, creative, financial, cultural, not just to advance your own career, but to become a bridge for others. Be discerning, yes, have standards, absolutely. But when you see someone who is talented, aligned, hardworking, and deserving, open the door.

I want to encourage everyone in this room to do something that we all have the power to do, and that is to use our access intentionally. Be the person who says, “I’ll make the introduction, I’ll pass your name, I’ll advocate for you when you’re not in the room, I’ll give you a shot because I recognize your potential and your hard work.”

The goal is ethical gatekeeping and purpose-driven nepotism. That is mentorship in action, and BMAC is a perfect conduit to exercise this type of Black excellence.

Because one of the most powerful things we can do in this industry is to remember that we didn’t get here alone. Someone answered a call, someone took a meeting, someone shared information that they didn’t have to share anymore. And the legacy we leave will not be defined solely on our accolades, our streams, or our credits, but by who we helped rise alongside us.

Let the frequency of music resonate. My hope is that we don’t just chase success, but we circulate it.

I also want to take this time to acknowledge a duo that proves this concept seamlessly, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, whose legacy goes far beyond iconic records. Their commitment to excellence, integrity, and lifting others as they climb sets the standard for what true leadership in music looks like. Welcome to the stage, Jimmy Jam”.

I do want to go back to last year before bringing things up to date. Not only is Victoria Monét one of the best artists in the world. She is this incredible stylish and fashionable figure for many. Individual and distinct, she is ever-evolving. There is careful craft behind it. I do want to drop in a bit of the interview with InStyle, as it is quite illuminating. Revealing new sides to the brilliant Victoria Monét:

“Victoria Monét may have taken home the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2024, but she has a long history in the music business. Over the past decade, the 35-year-old R&B singer has been releasing music while writing for singers like Ariana Grande, Jhené Aiko, and Brandy. But the release of her 2023 single On My Mama and the subsequent album JAGUAR II catapulted Monét to stardom—an achievement she had spent her whole life working toward.

Beyond her music, Monét has always been mindful of her image and how it shapes her public persona. As a little girl, watching movies and musicals sparked Monét's love for the glamour of celebrity. She takes a lot of inspiration from her favorite movie stars—like Halle Berry in Introducing Dorthy Dandridge (1999). "Her beauty just enamored me," Monét tells InStyle. "It always seemed like she didn't need to do too much to seem very elegant and timeless but also somewhat natural." She took these early lessons to heart, carefully crafting her image to match each stage of her career. Currently, she's in her JAGUAR era. Bombshell waves, sleek updos, and soft-glam makeup are go-to's as part of her highly-curated presentation.

"When I think of myself, even though it's kind of an unnatural thought, I think of a product—it's about consistency," says Monét. "Every time you pick up a Coke, you want it to taste the same. You want to make sure the packaging is recognizable, and the taste is consistent. That's what I've tried to do in each micro era of the rollout of JAGUAR, just making sure that people understand when they come to my brand, they know what to expect."

In the new Hulu x Sephora three-part docuseries Faces of Music, Monét delves further into her relationship with beauty and its deep connection to music. Along with Chappell Roan and Becky G, she explores the inspiration behind some of their most iconic beauty looks. Here, InStyle chatted with Monét to learn more about her beauty influences and the ins and outs of her routine.

On Her Mama

"While Monét was drawn to Hollywood glamour, she also observed how beauty impacted the women around her. 'Watching my mom, I saw how transformative beauty can be — how she walks differently and holds her head higher when she feels beautiful,' Monét reflects. Her mom also instilled in her the importance of a nighttime beauty routine. 'She’d put rollers in her hair, brush her teeth, and apply Pond's Beauty Cream,' Monét recalls. 'It was all about those old-school remedies, the way you should sleep to wake up beautiful.'"

On Hairstyling

Monét is a big fan of experimenting with her hair, constantly changing the color, texture, and length. She typically gravitates toward lighter shades. "I've always wanted lighter hair, so I’ve gone through a bunch of phases of lightening it a little bit," she says. She used to get sew-ins and lighten her leave-out to match, but recently, she’s turned to wigs. "Using wigs has allowed me to experiment more without having to dye my own hair," she says.

Colors that deliver "sun-kissed drama," like honey blondes and caramels, are her go-to shades. However, she’s not afraid to mix it up with other colors. "For this past Fashion Week in Milan, my hair went from black to a gingery red and back to ombré blondes," she says”.

I will wrap up with a new chat from NME. As she has an album coming soon, Victoria Monét spoke with NME about her music and her upcoming stadium tour with Bruno Mars. A lodestar to her, they have this history. Labelmates back in 2013, he was a guiding light to her. A prolific and acclaimed songwriter, Monét worked on multiple Ariana Grande albums. With new music coming later this year, it is a perfect time to catch up with a stunning artist:

“Today, Monét describes her awards success as a “paradigm shift” that gave her a cruel taste of tall poppy syndrome. “Something interesting happened,” she says, “where my social media [comments] went from ‘we love you, you’re the underdog’, to, like, ‘Why does she get the Grammy? She’s too old, she’s not even a new artist.'” Monét was only 34 at the time, but her 15 years of climbing the industry ladder gave her perspective. “I was like, ‘Of course this happened to you, because you worked really hard and just didn’t stop,'” she recalls.

“People think I’m seated with my legs crossed, holding a cocktail. But I’ve been working really, really hard”

Gripes from ageist haters also galvanised her long-term ambition. “Even though I showed why I deserved the Grammy before, I also have to show why I deserve it after – for the people who didn’t think it should be mine,” she says. She made a conscious decision to put some clear water between ‘Jaguar II’, which she expanded in 2024 with a deluxe edition and the festive spin-off ‘A Jaguar II Christmas: The Orchestral Arrangements’, and her currently untitled second album era.

“There’s something nice about going against the grain and not putting something out so fast,” she explains, “because you may be doing it out of spite, or putting something out that feels unnatural to you, just based on what the world is expecting of you as an artist. I feel completely like this is a new chapter. I’ve untethered myself from that [‘Jaguar II’] frequency.”

When the new record eventually drops, fans will be given more insight into Monét’s personal life via an as-yet-untitled song she describes as “very anthemic”. “It’s about my relationship status, pretty much, [having] the freedom to explore and meet new people guilt-free,” she says. Though Monét’s decision not to rush her new album rollout is an artistic one, she admits she did sometimes feel “a bit guilty for quote-unquote ‘going away'”.

I am going to end there. It will be exciting hearing a new album from Victoria Monét. I really loved JAGUAR II, so I will definitely check out her next album. Monét is also a trained chef. Last month, she graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). That has launched the careers of 20,000 hospitality professionals since 1975. This multifaceted queen, we do need to treasure Victoria Monét. If you are slightly new to her music or do not know much, then I would strongly encourage you to do some digging and find out more about…

A true great.

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Follow Victoria Monét

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Whole Story: Inside a Fascinating KBC Article, Issue 7 (Sept 1980)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips

 

Inside a Fascinating KBC Article, Issue 7 (Sept 1980)

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THIS will be one of the last…

visits to The Complete Kate Bush Club Newsletter Writings of Kate Bush. There are some more that I want to cover. However, for this series, I will move in other directions and focus on other things. I did want to reference something she wrote for Issue 7 of the Kate Bush Club. Published the same month as her third studio album, Never for Ever, was released, she discussed some of the songs. What it was like getting the album out. What she wrote for the seventh issue of Kate Bush Club was a window into the creative process. There was a big leap between 1978’s Lionheart (her second album) and Never for Ever. The first album in her twenties, and now acting in the role of producer – alongside Jon Kelly -, this was an artist more in control of her sound and direction. Because of that, you felt something was released in terms of her creativity, ambition, breadth and depth. Never for Ever arguably her fullest and most unshackled album. Truer to her own visions. She would take a further leap two years later with 1982’s The Dreaming. I wanted to bring in the entire article, as there is a lot to note and discuss:

“Now, after all this waiting it is here. It's strange when I think back to the first album. I thought it would never feel as new or as special again. This one has proved me wrong. It's been the most exciting. Its name is Never For Ever, and I've called it this because I've tried to make it reflective of all that happens to you and me.

Life, love, hate, we, are all transient. All things pass, neither good or evil lasts. So we must tell our hearts that it is "never for ever," and be happy that it's like that!

The album cover has been beautifully created by Nick Price (you may remember that he designed the front of the Tour programme). On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it's for you to bring them to life.

The first stage of making Never For Ever happened last summer, when I actually decided to be brave enough to go ahead and "produce" with Jon Kelly, trusting him as a friend and an extremely talented engineer.

So, with that settled, we "produced" our first master tapes. We put down Blow Away, Egypt, Violin and The Wedding List at Air Studios, with the bright and bubbly Jon Jacobs as assistant. As you will see besides communication, "Jons" are also a theme of the album. Never a day passed without at least two or three Jons popping in to say hello, and as the album grew, so did the number of Jons, reaching a total of fifteen turning up on the last day, all in the same room. A fatal move to say, "John?"

Having been rehearsed with the band for two days, the tracks went down, and our first "productions", with the help of ideal musicians, were a success. All the tracks full of "Air" and "space", Jons and tea!

Early this year we moved into Studio number 2, Abbey Road--the land of beatles, tea, smiles and sticky buns--where we met another bright and bubbly John, John Barrett. John became an important part of the album and completed a threesome, like Teddy with Andy Pandy and Loopy Loo (Jon Kelly and myself).

Kate Bush talking about the air and space in the songs. Allowed to breathe more life into her work. Expand her horizons. With the help of technology, her chosen musicians and her production instincts, Never for Ever did release something. Also, that excitement and grandeur of being at Abbey Road Studios. Plenty of tea and marvellous hospitality. Jon Kelly a perfect and inspiring partner as producer. It is interesting too hearing Bush discuss the title of the album. How it is ‘for Ever’ and not ‘Forever’. Even so, that idea that everything will pass. Getting some personal explanation about why that title was chosen. Bush did record a title track during the Lionheart sessions I think. Producer Andrew Powell saying how beautiful it was. Bush did not like her vocal on it, so the song was never released. A gem that fans would love to hear. Those two Johns/Jons beside her. Those adorable nicknames! This child-like trio! The space The Beatles recorded in, it clearly meant a lot to Kate Bush:

I would always use a notepad with each page designated to a song, each song needing various instruments, effects, harmonies, etc., which I would list and tick off appropriately. This helps my memory, and keeps some kind of logical working order. Thanks to dear Andrew Powell, where I learnt the necessity for a "prod.'s pad"!

The basic process is to put down all the backing tracks first. Then all overdubs, including vocals, and then to mix. The responsibility as a producer was something I felt a great deal--you have to keep on top of everything, and sometimes it can be difficult. It's hard to push people you love; talking and drinking are easy to give in to. But the trouble, sometimes, was we we’re having too much fun.

We always work until the early hours in the studio. It's a very creative time, and with Roy Harper and Sky working at Abbey Road, too, we were rarely alone, and felt very at home. However, discipline did exist, so all was completed with care and tender hearts. I really deeply appreciated the understanding and respect from all the musicians, and after all I am only little, a female, and an unlikely producer! But as I squirmed and contorted my way through explanations of visuals and audials, they stood patient, calm and open, and not one uttered "You weirdo!", unless in jest.

Without everyone (and the Fairlight) it would never have been the same. You move me, thank you, you are inspiration.

There are ten tracks, and if there is a main theme, it's about human communication and its difficulties.

Babooshka is about futile situations: the way in which we often ruin things for ourselves.

Delius is a tribute to an extraordinary man both in body and spirit.

Blow Away is a comfort for the fear of dying, and for those of us who believe that music is perhaps an exception to the Never For Ever rule.

All We Ever Look For is about how we seek something, but in the wrong way, or at wrong times, so it is never found.

Egypt is an attempted audial animation of the romantic and realistic visions of a country.

Wedding List is about the powerful force of revenge, an unhealthy energy which in this song proves to be a "killer".

Violin is for all the mad fiddlers, from "Paganini" to "Old Nick" himself.

That kind nod to Andrew Powell. How Bush was taking notes and that advice regarding the producer’s pad. Whilst it seems mechanical or formulaic writing lists and ticking things off, it meant she was organised and had this focus. Bush learning from her first two albums and the production process. Knowing how hard it is to producer. Everything is on her shoulders. What she says about having too much fun. Maybe it got too relaxed or it was a little unfocused. A chance to unwind. Bush conscious of having to be strict or at least keep that balance between letting her musicians chill and talk and making sure each song is as brilliant as it can be. Those brief notes about the tracks. Each song’s inspiration and theme so different. It gives to an idea of how extraordinarily imaginative and varied Kate Bush is as a writer:

The Infant Kiss is about a governess. She is torn between the love of an adult man and a child, who are within the same body.

Army Dreamers is about a grieving mother who, through the death of her soldier boy, questions her motherhood.

Breathing is a warning and plea from a future spirit to try and save mankind and his planet from irretrievable destruction.

Each song has a very different personality, and so much of the production was allowing the songs to speak with their own voices--not for them to be used purely as objects to decorate with "buttons and bows".

Choosing sounds is so like trying to be psychic, seeing into the future, looking in the "crystal ball of arrangements," "scattering a little bit of stardust," to quote the immortal words of the Troggs.

Every time a musical vision comes true, it's like having my feet tickled. When it works, it helps me to feel a bit braver. Of course, it doesn't always work, but experiments and ideas in a studio are never wasted; they will always find a place sometime.

I never really felt like a producer, I just felt closer to my loves--felt good, free, although a little raw, and sometimes paranoia would pop up. But when working with emotion, which is what music is, really, it can be so unpredictable--the human element, that fire.

But all my friends, the Jons, and now you will make all the pieces of the Never For Ever jigsaw slot together, and It will be born and It will begin Breathing”.

That impossible conundrum. Putting songs together and choosing the right sound for each song. How there must have been so much trial-and-error and stressful nights. That lovely nod to The Troggs. You do get a real glimpse inside her mind and music loves. How honest and pure her words are. That unpredictable fire of human emotions. How production was this opportunity for Kate Bush to connect with her loves. Despite some drawbacks and challenges, it was her most moving and astonishing experience to date. With some trusty friends and this masterplan completed, or at least coming to a close, there must have been this great energy, excitement and curiosity from fans. As it was, Never for Ever went to number one in the U.K. It was the first studio album by any female solo artist to reach number one in the U.K. Extraordinary that it took until 1980 for that to happen, though it tells of the barriers women faced and that it was harder for women to get exposure and to compete. Bush breaking boundaries and setting a record. She was unaware of this whilst in the weeds at times. Those tough times when songs were not coming together. It was all worth it. Nearly forty-six years after its, release, Never for Ever remains…

A glorious album.

FEATURE: Can’t Make Up My Mind: Why There Needs to Be Greater Industry Support, Outcry and Allyship Regarding the Backlash Women Face Concerning Their Appearance

FEATURE:

 

 

Can’t Make Up My Mind

IN THIS PHOTO: CMAT performing at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in May/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

 

Why There Needs to Be Greater Industry Support, Outcry and Allyship Regarding the Backlash Women Face Concerning Their Appearance

__________

THERE seems to be…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Rodrigo performs in Barcelona for Spotify’s Billions Club Live, on 8th May, 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Spotify

no winning when it comes to women in music. Always seemingly there to satisfy the male gaze, no matter how they dress themselves and what they look like, there will be criticism and attack. Body-shaming, sadly, is nothing new in music. Artists like Lizzo and Jorja Smith have experienced it in recent years. Women who are independent and confident subjected to abuse and seen as terrible role models. Those who are distinctly there to go against the male gaze seen as unattractive and also abused. A recent example of two incredible women in music both being put under the lens for different reason, it makes me wonder why there is relative silence from the industry and men. CMAT is a brilliant Irish artist who released her latest album, EURO-COUNTRY, last August. It was an award-nominated and critically-acclaimed work from one of our greatest living songwriters. A woman who is so funny, honest and open. An idol and inspiration for so many women and girls, she has been subjected to recent body-shaming. I shall come to Olivia Rodrigo. Her album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, is released on 12th June. Both modern-day queens and geniuses. They should be afforded nothing but respect and enormous opportunities. In terms of criticism and the public, there is a lot of love and respect. Though one cannot ignore the toxic and damaging dialogue around how they dress. It affects so many women in music. Spectrum-opposite in terms of the nature of backlash and how each dress; CMAT being body-shamed and criticised because she is seemingly an affront to the male gaze. Olivia Rodrigo more indulging it. Each under the microscope recent. It seems women are constantly being shrunk and limited in terms of how they dress. Though that may be the point. How women have always and, tragically, currently are there to be controlled and diminished. Control taken from them.

How are women supposed to dress? This is the question Laura Snapes asked in her fascinating and illuminating article for The Guardian. I shall come to that. This article includes reaction from CMAT. This ideal body size and look seems to remain. If women do not conform, they have to face vile abuse and misogyny:

“The Irish singer-songwriter says her rise has been increasingly ‘tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin’

The Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has responded to ongoing abuse she has received about her body and her weight following an appearance last week at BBC’s Radio 1 Big Weekend.

The musician, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, wrote on Instagram on Thursday that she had felt “compelled to wade in and speak for myself” after learning of the abuse being directed at photos taken of her on stage at the Sunderland festival on 24 May.

“It is literally so boring for me, a gorgeous genius, to keep having to yap on about how horribly I am treated because of my body,” she wrote. “I would love to stop but I cannot because it keeps happening, at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous.”

CMAT shared screengrabs of a Substack essay by a music fan going by Front Row Feels, which “summed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness,” she wrote.

The essay compared the treatment of CMAT with fellow Big Weekend acts Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean, who didn’t appear to be subjected to the same level of abuse online.

“What struck me most while scrolling through those toxic comment sections was the glaring disparity in how different women on that same lineup were treated,” Front Row Feels wrote, adding that Larsson and Dean “were granted a level of grace and basic humanity that was completely denied to CMAT”.

CMAT pointed out to “well-meaning” commenters that her body size was not a choice: “I am not being defiant. I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.”

She said that though she was grateful for her success, it is “increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin”.

“There is no relief from this – nobody can protect me or save me from this, and all that is demanded of me is more and more work as every environment I am placed in becomes more hostile,” she wrote.

Last year the singer-songwriter released Take a Sexy Picture of Me, which criticised the scrutiny women face on their bodies and appearance”.

 

I want to highlight sections of that Laura Snapes article. It is an article that raises a lot of questions and makes me wonder why there is not backlash and condemnation from more in the industry. Especially men. That sense of pacifism or ignorance is troubling. How “backlash over their appearances that came from the scummy bottom of the internet” is rampant. The scuzzy and scummy bottom of the barrel of the Internet:

“Even subverting the male gaze won’t stop you from being accused of pandering to it. In the styling for Rodrigo’s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, the 23-year-old pop star is wearing babydoll dresses in tribute to the 90s female punks – Kathleen Hanna, Courtney Love, Kat Bjelland – who revamped the cropped nightgowns into the “kinderwhore” look, shredding and smearing them with makeup to confront men with the discomfort of their unwanted objectification. A concert in Barcelona during which Rodrigo wore a puffy floral number prompted mass online commentary calling her “pedo bait” and “Lolita”. “That’s been making me so upset,” Rodrigo told the New York Times’ Popcast, published yesterday. She pointed out how illogical these comments were: in the past, she has performed in a bra and shorts, to no outcry, “but me fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be childlike was inappropriate”.

Rodrigo continued: “I think it shows how we really normalise paedophilia in our culture. And also it’s just this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is like, ‘Don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’”

If CMAT is supposedly an affront to the male gaze, but Rodrigo is indulging it, what sliver of ground is left? Even the inverse empowerment narrative is a trap. As CMAT pointed out, many “well-meaning” people have tried to claim her as a figurehead of the body positivity movement, but, she wrote, “I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk-rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.” Every possibility for how a woman in the public eye might look has been co-opted by an agenda that would rather tell her who she is rather than listen to who she is saying she is.

We are in the midst of a massive conservative retrenchment around femininity that is also being manipulated by bad actors. To me, the groundswell of comments such as these towards CMAT and Rodrigo comes with a distinct tang of bot farming, a coordinated attack boosted by figures or movements with a vested interest in shrinking the ways that women can exist in public. It’s misogyny’s latest pathetic costume: a bunch of losers stacked up in a grubby trenchcoat, fooling everyone”.

Whereas a lot of this backlash and misogyny is from bots and a select group of desperately pathetic people, it is still hugely damaging and systematic of a growing and poisonous masculinity. Women almost forced to be someone else to avoid being attacked or face abuse. That not only affects them. It affects and resonates with all women across the industry. What does seem galling is how there is very little in the way of condemnation from the industry and particular men. Allyship, when we do hear about it, quite selective. Male artists maybe supporting women and talking of their brilliance. Booking them as support acts on tours, or hyping queens coming through. When it comes to issues around gender discrimination, divides, misogyny and abuse right across the industry, why is there a near unanimous silence? It is not a controversial subject facing up to those who attack and marginalise women. There does need to be more activation and words from men in the industry. Whilst it does not fix the problem and stem the relentless sewage of the Internet, it does seem more and more than women are alone in trying to tackle and speak out against the male gaze and misogyny. I think back to Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves “Cosmetic surgeries are at an all-time high, Ozempic is bringing back 'heroin chic' and the manosphere on the rise - after four waves of feminism, what went wrong? Despite decades of progress, modern womanhood feels more challenging than ever. Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert reveals how today's misogyny emerged from another turbulent era: the late 90s and early 2000s. Spanning the past thirty years of pop culture - from Madonna to Taylor Swift, #GirlBoss to OnlyFans, Real Housewives to trad-wives - Girl on Girl shows how every form of media, heavily influenced by the rise of porn, has warped women's relationships with themselves and others”. It is so horrifying and disheartening having to read of constant misogyny and objectification. How body-positivity is such a risky thing. If you do not fit into the male gaze then you are condemned and abused. Artists like Olivia Rodrigo accused of sexualising child-like imagery when her babydoll dress look is a statement of power and defiance. Inspired by icons like Courtney Love and Kathleen Hana. This misogyny. If women are confident and show their body and are sexy then they are seen as bad role models and inappropriate. If they cover up and comfortable and themselves, then they are also exposed to weird, disturbing and misogynistic comments. Where is the outrage from the industry?! Where are the male voices speaking out?! They do not have to go through the same thing to emphasise and call out the misogyny. I feel that the silence is deafening. Body-shaming, misogyny and this impossible dilemma for women regarding how they should dress. There seems to be no end in sight for the sludge and slurry of misogyny. Having to have these same conversations…

TIME and time again.

FEATURE: Stay Forever… Looking Ahead to Twenty-Five Years of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

FEATURE:

 

 

Stay Forever…

PHOTO CREDIT: Parlophone

 

Looking Ahead to Twenty-Five Years of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

__________

EVEN though the…

twenty-fifth anniversary of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head is not until 8th September, I will be posting anniversary features of Fever around that time. The album was released on 1st October, 2001. It was a strange and turbulent time in world politics. Three days after Can’t Get You Out of My Head was released, the terrorist attacks in the U.S. shocked the world. Not that the two are related, obviously, but this joyous sand incredible single came out days before one of the worst tragedies in world history. What does ensure if this single that was seen as one of Kylie Minogue’s very best. Perhaps her ultimate lead single, it was an extraordinary and tantalising taste of Fever. Many argue it is her finest album. It is hard to disagree. Even though there are a lot of producers credited and the album was recorded at multiple studios, there is this cohesiveness and consistency that means Fever remains intriguing and fresh to this day. I know there will be something special to mark twenty-five years of Fever. Whether it is a reissue of the album or an event where Minogue performs the album in full, it is among the most impactful and important albums of the 2000s in my opinion. Ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary, I want to explore an infectious Pop classic. Despite a scarcity of lyrics – repeated lines and a chorus made up of ‘lahs’ and ‘lah’ – it is the perfect combination of Minogue vocal blends (sultry, playful and hypnotic) and incredible songwriting. Written and produced by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis, I remember when the single came out. I only just started university, and I had been a fan of Minogue since childhood. I was stunned and struck by Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

Before getting to reviews and features around Can’t Get You Out of My Head, I want to bring in sections of an interview from The Guardian published in September 2001. It was a pivotal evolution. In terms of how Kylie Minogue was perceived. Now in her thirties, this was not the artist that shot through in the 1980s and had this string of great Pop songs. Although they were very much of their time, they still were hugely popular. Can’t Get You Out of My Head and Fever was a more mature and nuanced sound. An artist who was absolutely at the top of her game. One of the greatest artist who has ever lived:

“She's here today to promote her eighth album, Fever, and what will be her thirty-fourth consecutive UK hit single, the hypnotic 'Can't Get You Out of My Head'.

Kylie knows it's good. With the previous album - her first for her new label, Parlophone - she was struggling to re-establish herself as a pop princess after a relatively disastrous period working with credible rock names such as The Manic Street Preachers. When the first Parlophone single, 'Spinning Around', went to number one last year, she cried with relief. But this time, there's just a quiet confidence.

'I feel like I'm on a wave and I actually know how to stand on the board at this point,' she says. 'I feel quite solid. I don't know where it's taking me, but everything feels really good.'

She's 33, and she's been famous for half her life. We talk about the way she'll turn on and 'become' Kylie. 'You have to,' she says. 'There's no way you could maintain that all the time. If you get up and do a Saturday morning kids show, you don't wake up and be that person. You go, you get ready, and 20 minutes beforehand, you start to become... It's no different to anyone else. I go to work as well.'

Her close friends don't call her Kylie. They call her Min. She says she sometimes feels guilty about those friends - how others get smiley Kylie, and they have to settle for grumpy Min. When you're always performing, she explains, 'home is the only place you can have a long face and really mope about'.

I point out that stroppy pop stars are the norm, that we like our celebrities to have attitude and angst. But Kylie is a trouper, an old-fashioned professional who believes that the show must go on: 'Perhaps I'm more old-school than my years in that respect. It's just where I came from, working in TV, where it's not about you, where you don't get anything done without everyone else.'

Kylie was 11 when she appeared in her first TV soap, 17 when she left school and entered our living rooms as the feisty mechanic Charlene in Neighbours . We've watched her grow up - making shiny, infectious production-line pop for Stock, Aitken and Waterman's south London Hit Factory, ditching the froufrou frocks for sleeker, sexier clothes, and finally taking control of her music as well as her image by leaving the SAW stable and signing to hip dance label DeConstruction.

Frequently derided in her early career, she has now become something of a national treasure, sitting next to Prince Charles at a charity dinner one night, hanging out in cool clubs the next, equally at home on the covers of Vogue and Smash Hits. We've seen her change her looks, change her music, change her boyfriends, change her record label (three times), reinvent herself. But through it all, Kylie has been careful to keep a little mystery back. Part of her appeal is that she has always been something of a blank canvas, a screen on which we can all project our Kylie fantasies.

This is why so many big-name artists and photographers agreed to contribute to her 1999 art-book, Kylie. Why designer Patrick Cox recently told Vogue: 'She's a living Barbie doll. All gay men want to play with her, dress her up, comb her hair.' Why there barely seems to be a band, songwriter or producer in Britain who hasn't clamoured to work with her at some point.

If you ask her about them, she will tell you about her relationships with Michael Hutchence and later with the photographer/director Stephane Sedanoui, but she tends to tell the same anecdotes each time. She has decided exactly how much to reveal. 'I'm aware that you have to give so much, because if you make yourself unavailable, people want it so much more. It's a very fine line. You have to hand over some of your private life, but pretty much the same stories get rehashed. People want to know if you've got a boyfriend, who he is, what he does.'

Her current relationship is with James Gooding, a 26-year-old model who has no interest in being part of any Kylie media circus. Which is why she is unwilling to talk too much about him, beyond saying that they are happy together. 'As far as being able to keep a lot of my private life private, I don't use any of that to exploit my career, and in a very subtle way, I think, the media understands that,' she says.

What she does enjoy talking about is the technicalities of her job. About how, in her last tour, she descended from the roof on a dazzling silver anchor that was actually 'a bit of MDF with shiny sticky-backed plastic on it'. After one of the London shows, the fashion designer Matthew Williamson came backstage wanting to know how she'd managed the frequent fast costume changes. They happily discussed press-studs and poppers and how she'd walk calmly to the side of the stage, then be enveloped by frantic dressers trying to strip off her outfit and fit the next one, like mechanics in a Grand Prix pit stop. 'I could have talked for ages about it,' she says, 'because here was someone who understood”.

Recorded in Surrey, England and with amazing B-sides in the shape of Boy, and Rendezvous at Sunset, there are few singles that have made such an impression. A multi-platinum-selling smash that charted at number one in multiple nations ()including the U.K.), I will bring in some reviews of a genius Pop track. It is amazing that both S Club 7 and Sophie Ellis-Bextor turned down Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Both acts were on a high and in a great period, though neither could afford to turn the song down. I think it was a big mistake. It sound perfect for Kylie Minogue, though. In 2020, The Guardian voted for the best U.K. number one singles ever. Can’t Get You Out of My Head charted at a respectable seventeen. “This perfect fusion of hypnotic dance pulses with melodic majesty and is a global smash that even the anti-pop brigade can enjoy” is how they define this song. Though maybe not ideal for S Club 7, you wonder why Sophie Ellis-Bextor refused this gem:

“Written by then semi-retired pop star Cathy Dennis and the former Mud guitarist Rob Davis, it was initially offered to S Club 7. Quite rightly, their manager Simon Fuller rejected it, before it was rejected again, more surprisingly, by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. It took Kylie 20 seconds of listening to the demo for her to realise the track was special. And what an opening 20 seconds it is: straight out of the gate there is that pulsating, unnervingly timeless bass line, instantly recalling electronic pioneers such as Kraftwerk and New Order (Kylie performed the song’s bootleg mashup with Blue Monday at the Brits in 2002, arriving on a giant CD) before the chorus arrives earlier than expected on a hypnotic flurry of “la, la, las”. (Also of note: the oft-ignored meandering organ flurries that lurk behind the verses, subtly massaging the song’s forward momentum.)

Preferring constant shape-shifting and delayed gratification (the title line and the “la, la, la” chorus only coalesce, brilliantly, in the song’s final 30 seconds) over traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the perfect fusion of dance music’s hypnotic pulse and the melodic majesty of pop. It’s also surprisingly mid-tempo, giving it the eerie sensation of always being slightly slower than you remember it, almost as if the memories she sings about are fading.

Despite the song’s near fatal brush with S Club 7, this was always a Kylie classic in the making. Blessed with the perfect pop voice, she delivers each line with just enough blank space for the listener’s own interpretations. Is it about a crush? A recent heartbreak? Does the person Minogue is singing about know about the obsession? What is the dark secret she is harbouring? Even those infamous “la, la, las” take on several functions, catalysing an irresistible earworm, a delirious, dancefloor-ready singalong moment and a distraction mechanism for the recently brokenhearted.

If 2000’s more straightforward Spinning Around rightfully brought Kylie back to pop’s top table after a few years lost in indie, then Can’t Get You Out of My Head – complete with its sleek, retro-futuristic video of robotic dance moves and fashion-forward hoodies – elevated her to a new level of pop-culture ubiquity”.

In another feature, The Independent crowned Can’t Get You Out of My Head the best Pop song of this century. Quite a high claim considering it was released a year into the century. That said, twenty-five years after its release, few songs have challenged this masterpiece. The Independent write that the “pop queen’s artistic zenith is just as thrilling as it was two decades ago, while the album it launched, ‘Fever’, is her ‘Thriller’, ‘Nevermind’ and ‘Back to Black’ rolled into one”:

“Fever, Kylie’s eighth studio album and the record that gave the world “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, turns 20 on 1 October. With six million copies sold, it is by some distance Minogue’s most commercially successful LP. And, by consensus, her artistic zenith.

The record’s stand-out moment is, of course, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”. The Sistine Chapel of chart bangers was written in just an afternoon by first-time collaborators Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis (of Seventies glamrockers Mud). And yet it feels like the eternal pop song. It’s hard to imagine a time when it didn’t exist. And it’s just the start of Fever’s hit parade.

There is also “Come Into My World”, another Dennis-Davis composition added at the 11th hour (Kylie recorded it the night before flying to Germany for a photoshoot). Also jostling for prominence are “In Your Eyes”, one of the five Fever cuts for which Kylie receives a co-writer credit, and the heartfelt title track, which thrillingly burnishes Kylie’s credentials as Queen of the Dancefloor. “I feel like I’m on a wave and I actually know how to stand on the board at this point,” is how Kylie characterised this period of her career in an interview with The Observer in 2001. “I feel quite solid. I don’t know where it’s taking me, but everything feels really good.”

If she didn’t have a firm idea where she was going, she of course knew exactly where she was coming from. Minogue may be the timeless pop star – as beloved today as in the 1980s when “I Should Be So Lucky” made Charlene from Neighbours the face of the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory. Yet, in a way, Kylie’s career more closely resembles that of a classic rock act, with early success followed by a wilderness period and then a glorious comeback.

Kylie’s lost years were in the late Nineties. Signing to dance label Deconstruction, she alarmed fans by pursuing an “indie” direction with her sixth album, Impossible Princess – hastily renamed Kylie Minogue in the UK following the death of Princess Diana two months before its release. Whatever its name, the record wore its indie disco influences on its sleeve. “Too Far” was Kylie doing Garbage. “Some Kind of Bliss”, the first single, opens with a barrage of Britrock guitars. It sounds like Menswear smuggled on to a Kylie tune.

Impossible Princess/Kylie Minogue was a modest success, shifting nearly 70,000 units in the UK and peaking at 10 in the charts. But because it was not a stone-cold smash, open season was declared on Kylie, who’d had the nerve to look beyond pop music by working with the Manic Street Preachers and Soft Cell/Virgin Prunes producer David Ball.

“A total fraud,” sneered the NME. Virgin Radio put out an ad campaign proclaiming, “We’ve done something to improve Kylie’s records: we’ve banned them”. The pop industry relishes nothing so much as a female artist on the back foot and Kylie copped the full force of a backlash.

She didn’t let the jeers affect her, however. And, having quietly signed to Parlophone, in June 2000 Minogue delivered a steamroller comeback with “Spinning Around” (written by Paula Abdul) and the follow-up album Light Years. In a sense, Kylie was starting over. Which is why Light Years resembles, to some degree, a scrappy debut from a new artist with something to prove. And why Fever, released just 13 months later, feels like one of those classic second LPs that takes everything great about its predecessor and doubles down on it. It’s Kylie’s Thriller, Nevermind, Paul’s Boutique and Back to Black rolled into one.

“Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was written with Simon Fuller’s S Club 7 in mind. It was he who had suggested Dennis and Davis work together. But he passed and the track was instead offered to Sophie Ellis-Bextor. She demurred too, which is how it found its way to Kylie’s A&R team of Miles Leonard and Jamie Nelson.

Kylie was played a cassette demo with lead vocals by Dennis. Before the first chorus had kicked in, she told her people to tie down the rights to the song. Such was her enthusiasm that she performed “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” on stage at Hammersmith Apollo in March 2001, months before she recorded it. “We did it in the back of the garage of my house in Epsom,” recalls Davis of his time working with Kylie. “She was very sweet. She brought food for everyone in the house. She’d learnt the song. A lot of singers who have been actors or actresses, it makes them a little more professional. Your average vocalist will probably turn up on the wrong day or they’re hours late. But she was very conscientious.”

“Can’t Get You Out of My Head” had come as a bolt from the beyond to Davis and Dennis (who would go on to write “Toxic” for Britney Spears). During the recording with Kylie, Davis had a specific sensibility in mind. “When it was produced, I was listening to Daft Punk,” he says. “They were very futuristic at the time. But they used samples. We didn’t use any. And Kylie just brought her sound – it’s one of the things that worked. We did work on the vocal production to get the right sound for her. It’s basically copied from Cathy’s first vocals. It’s pretty identical to that.”

Fever came together quickly. Kylie bounced between 11 producers – among them Britney Spears collaborator Steve Anderson and Dido/Natalie Imbruglia producer Pascal Gabriel – and recorded it in Olympic Studios in London, Hutch Studios in Chicago and Windmill Lane in Dublin.

While it’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” that continues to drive listeners to hyperbole and beyond, the entirety of Fever deserves to be feted. From the funk shimmer of “More More More”, to the Daft Punk-esque “Love at First Sight” via the sci-fi disco of “Give It to Me”, this is a record brimming with cybernetic cool.

The album sold and sold. It debuted at No 1 in the UK and peaked at three in the US. And the reviewers were ecstatic. Rolling Stone identified the contradictions that made it so compelling – noting it was “full of old-fashioned hooks and newfangled techno hiccups, campy as a tent full of Boy Scouts and yet easy on the cheese”. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, in particular, would quickly transcend music to become a cultural artefact. It launched the career of designer Fee Doran, of the Mrs Jones label, who created the future-shock hoodie that Kylie wears in the video. And it has inspired tributes from the strangest of places. Adam Curtis took inspiration from the song when making his recent through-the-looking-glass documentary about the invisible forces that shaped social change through the 20th century – which he, of course, named Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

Curtis was, if anything, late to the party. Paul Morley, the purple-prosed bard of rock intellectualism, had in 2003 used “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” as an inspiration for an entire book, Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City. Typically for Morley, the tome is a dense and digressive exploration of the history of pop music. It starts, however, with the author in an unusually clear-eyed frame of mind and listening to Kylie. The book correctly identifies “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” as a feat of true art. “Something happened during the production of the song, during the processes that built the song up from an idea into a thing, that made it something more, a piece of music that is much more than the sum of its parts,” he gushes. “In fact, its clear abstract likeability outstripped the momentary hopes for its commercial likeability because somehow it became not a calculated representation of a great pop song but actually a great pop song full stop.”

That’s just a rather overwrought way of the author saying that he really, really liked the tune. And, of course, Kylie does not need the approval of middle-aged music critics. Her validation is in her millions of fans and of her ability to continue creating fantastic music. “People love to hear ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’… just as much as they love hearing Kylie’s Eighties songs,” says Kylie covers artist Jade Chamberlain”.

There is no denying the legacy of Can’t Get You Out of My Head. It is an immortal Pop song that could only have been performed by Kylie Minogue. In terms of turning a wonderful song into something timeless. That is her talent. I want to end with part of the Wikipedia entry for this track. In terms of how we see its legacy:

“According to author Lee Barron, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" "further established Minogue's cultural and commercial relevance in the new millennium". He said the song "with its hypnotic 'la la la' refrain and the deceptively uncomplicated, catchily repetitive beats and synth-sound, marked yet another clearly defined image transformation from the camp-infused Light Years to an emphasis upon a cool, machine-like sexuality". Everett True of The Guardian wrote the song continued Kylie's transition from the girl-next-door to "flirtatious, sophisticated persona" that started with the release of "Spinning Around" in 2000. True said the success of "Can't Get You Out of My Head" was one of the motivating factors behind "manufactured" pop music gaining "new postmodern respectability" and marked a "clear shift in attitude towards pop music among the 'serious' rock critic fraternity".

Publications such as The Guardian and Rolling Stone recognise "Can't Get You Out of My Head" as Minogue's signature song. In 2012, the UK agency PRS for Music, which collects royalties on behalf of songwriters and composers, named "Can't Get You Out of My Head" as the most popular song of the decade, receiving the most airplay and live covers in the 2000s decade. In 2025, the song placed 27 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs”.

I wonder what Kylie Minogue will say on the twenty-fifth anniversary on 8th September. This simply staggering moment in music definitely took her career to new heights. Although some critics were sniffy and sexist, there were those who saw the brilliance of Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Twenty-five years later and it remains this era-defining song. The early-2000s was a golden time for Pop, though I feel it gets defined by a slightly dirtier and more provocative type of Pop. Though Kylie Minogue’s 2001 smash is definitely sexy and bold, it is not the same as the Pop around her at that time. Even though that sound is influential today and you can see that torch being carried, people do not talk about Kylie Minogue’s 2000s work and how important that is. How many artists today and clearly indebted to her genius. Twenty-five years after Can’t Get You Out of My Head, few other songs have come along in Pop that are as instantly memorable. Kylie Minogue very much still a Pop queen in 2026. Can’t Get You Out of My Head is one of the greatest songs…

EVER recorded.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Static Dress

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard

 

Static Dress

__________

THIS is a brilliant band…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olli Appleyard of Static Dress/PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard for NME

that you need to listen to. Static Dress released their album, injury episode, late last month. I will end with a review of that album. However, I will come to some reviews first. In May, NME spoke with Static Dress’ lead, Olli Appleyard. NME note how “the Leeds quartet fight the fast fashion of the music industry with multimedia escapism and unflinching dedication to the art form”:

“The Leeds four-piece laid the first bricks upon their formation in 2019 and have since been called everything from art-hardcore to emo. As people tried to decode them, tracks like 2019’s hazy, Deftones-coded ‘Clean.’ and the throwback 2000s metalcore of ‘Courtney, Just Relax’, which appeared on their 2022 debut album ‘Rouge Carpet Disaster’, helped put them on the British heavy map. Soon, they were opening for Bring Me The Horizon and headlining tours in the USA, a nation whose cities currently dominate their streaming stats.

Such accolades are insignificant to Static Dress. Visionary-in-chief Appleyard is a purist, determined to solely make art for art’s sake. His considered yet dogged approach, where ideas often stew for years, enables the band to flesh out their concepts for maximum impact. Take March’s ‘A Live Death Display’ event: a secret, phone-free gathering in an untouched London cinema, where fans could play the band’s self-made Rouge Carpet Disaster: The Video Game upon arrival. A film was then screened, announcing their second album, ‘Injury Episode’, before the group hit the stage for a surprise gig.

“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people” – Olli Appleyard

Moments before showtime, Appleyard turned to his bandmates – George Holding (bass), Sam Ogden (drums) and Vincent Weight (guitar) – as the four took stock of the fantasy they brought to life that night. He recalls the occasion not with cockiness, but a sense of conviction: “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing.” Behind the scenes, his desire to make moves of this calibre has been regularly shot down by risk-averse industry figures. But “when it pays off,” he tells NME, “there’s people patting you on the back who told you it was a stupid idea.

“People who work in music will be like, ‘Well, you didn’t hit this metric,’” he fumes, still livid about past experiences. “Measurements which people used to rely on so heavily for value, worth or position of a band now don’t mean anything anymore. The minute the [dominant] app – a creation that someone else controls – changes, the music industry loses all scope, meaning or understanding. It’s crazy how you can have absolutely no grasp on anything and have a job in this.”

ame terrifies Appleyard. It can breed toxic echo chambers – he cites Kanye West’s recent comeback attempt – and parasocial fan relationships. He praises Lewis Capaldi for “authentically” handling his fame, and empathises with Chappell Roan, who’s been torn apart for setting basic boundaries. “Someone will ask something of me, I’ll say, ‘I can’t right now,’ and they’ll scorch you online for not giving them what you wanted,” he says. Exercising his right to a guarded life should not undermine his genuine appreciation for Static Dress’ fanbase. “This isn’t transactional,” he stresses.

“I don’t want to be walked over. We’ve had people in the industry actively try to ruin us before” – Olli Appleyard

Appleyard vents these frustrations in ‘Injury Episode’. The storyline, he tells us, follows two sisters. Representing the perfect form of celebrity, they are objectified, driven over the edge and killed by “greedy” and “obsessive” townspeople. “The people cannot live without them, so they bring them back to life and create this amalgamation of both of them; they go, ‘Oh, that’s not what I want,’ and discard them.” The pair appear circled by paparazzi vultures on the album artwork, all signs of life drained from them.

Appleyard admits he “can’t keep up with the pace of the modern day” on the slow-burning alt-rock of ‘…Hospice’, the preceding lyric “engrave each moment / into a memory” resonating with him even more since his head injury. While many songs explore the wider points we’ve discussed, they also offer deeply personal snapshots of his own life. The ear-splitting ‘Nostalgia Kills’ tackles emotional addiction, the dichotomy of “the used and the user”, and the release he found in letting life take the wheel: “Close your eyes and enjoy the ride”.

The production on ‘Injury Episode’ is human and ugly, often soaking vocals in harsh distortion and capturing the erratic frenzy of four musicians in the room. It reclaims the studio in Static Dress’ fight against the rapid-fire “conveyor belt” of formulaic, polished music. “It makes no sense,” Appleyard mutters under his breath, refusing to name any specific culprits on the grounds that online spats only make problems worse. (He once experienced that first-hand with Machine Gun Kelly.) He’d rather lead by example, proving why the dedication, space and time to wholly serve the art form should be the only end goal.

“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people,” he declares. “I can only resonate with people who try really hard to push the boat [out]. When it’s something built with time, nurture and passion put into it, I’m like, ‘Thank god.’” The album’s closing track nails this mindset, exploring why items made with the care of your own hands trump anything that could be purchased. “It’s finding the value in people’s time, rather than cost, money, or status”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard for NME

Static Dress want to be the ultimate escapist band. In a world exclusive first interview, Kerrang! spoke with Olli Appleyard “for a passionate and brutally honest deep dive into the importance of staying true to yourself, never compromising on your vision, and keeping the magic of music alive…”:

“In a way, Static Dress can be understood as the antidote to disposable music culture. Their artistry transcends songs and albums; they’ve created an entire universe across lore-strewn, meticulously detailed music videos and a multitude of notably analogue formats from comic books (to accompany their 2021 EP Prologue) to a video game extending the world-building of 2022 debut Rouge Carpet Disaster.

Nothing is ever done the simple way. Instead of sharing a festival line-up on the grid, a task that could take seconds, Olli will print the poster out, tape it to the wall, photograph it, edit it and only then upload it. The band often tease announcements through cryptic puzzles; before telling the world of their album launch event, A Live Death Display (in which phones were banned, and saw fans queuing down the street), they sent fans to a mini-game in which they had to figure out how to walk over to a stack of CRT TVs – a signature of the Static Dress aesthetic – and push a big red button. Indicating that more was afoot, an updated version directed players from that same stack of TVs warning them ‘Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s there’ to another TV and the limousine from the recent human props video. Next to it was a safe with a four-digit code to crack.

In all of this, Olli is creating with pure intentions. When people invent ways to sully art with cheap, prescriptive routes to making money, it feels personal. He wants to lead by example and be the change he wants to see, even though he knows his intentions can be misread.

“In the past, my confidence in what I was doing got confused with arrogance to a lot of people, and I get it,” he says. “That wasn’t what I intended to do.”

Self-importance, this is not – it comes from a place of deep care. This is someone for whom music is everything, for whom it gave sanctuary and community. You’d be hard pressed to find a figure in all of the alternative world who cares as deeply as Olli does.

“For me, music should be about two things,” he suggests. “You’re either spreading awareness for something, talking about real topics – a band like Speed is a great example, raising money for shit, always helping people, and with the Download boycott [in 2024, against Barclays sponsoring the festival and their alleged links to arms companies that trade with Israel], they created real change.

“Or you've got bands who provide escapism. I think about younger me who just wanted to get away from everything all the time. I had a really, really, really horrible time just being myself – somewhere there is the 16-year-old me who absolutely doesn't fit anywhere, hates everything and was scared to go outside – and anything to take me away is awesome.

“The four of us, we all like very different things,” Olli says of his bandmates – guitarist Vin Weight, bassist George Holding and drummer Sam Ogden – “but the one thing we can all agree is the term ‘real band’. When there’s shit happening onstage, you can hear mistakes, you can hear things going wrong, I’m like, ‘Thank fucking god.’ When I turn up now and I see more laptops than members in your band [I think], ‘Oh no, this is just not good anymore.’”

Injury Episode is the antithesis of that. While it represents a refinement of Static Dress’ ideas, it relishes the unvarnished and imperfect, with the same rigorous attention to detail they’ve always had. They spent days just working on guitar tones. Sam – who attracts an enormous level of respect among his peers in the drum world – bulldozed through most of these songs in one take. There was no over-manicured editing on computers and all four members worked as a unit, under the gaze of producer Erik Bickerstaffe from Loathe, who also produced their debut. At some point, we also hear all of them sing”.

“I want to keep the magic of the music alive,” he says, not wishing to override it with his own dirty laundry. “I don’t feel like it’s the done thing anymore because social media [expects you] to lay all your cards out on the table, and it’s like, ‘Oh, are you depressed? You’ve got to tell the internet about it!’ I want to be my own person. I don't want to ever look holier than thou, because, unfortunately, I'm just human and so are rest of the guys.”

He’s spent enough time in the hardcore scene for the idea of band and fan being on an equal level to seep deep into his bones, and as such, it seems anathema to him to make anything about himself. When he suffered a head injury on tour in the U.S. while opening for Dying Wish in November, and had to miss a string of shows, sharing a video explaining his absence was a step outside his usual boundaries, even though he understood it was necessary when people had paid to see them. “That destroyed me inside.”

One-on-one, he’s often startlingly open. He’s strong-willed and unfiltered, resolute in his opinions, frank at all times. He’s funny and kind, even offering to carry K!’s heavy bags halfway across the café. He talks to people on the counters in coffee shops like this one, something he learned from Sam – “Just talk to anyone and life’s pretty good.” He wants to be generous with his time when fans approach and politely say hello. If you’ve ever wondered who the ‘real’ Olli Appleyard is, he’s right in front of you”.

Before ending with NME and their review of injury episode, The Line of Best Fit chatted with Olli Appleyard. It is amazing how Static Dress created this buzz and intrigue ahead of the release of their second album. The Line of Best Fit write how “some lucky fans managed to sneak a peek at injury episode by solving a cryptic mini-game. Winners were invited to an abandoned theatre, somewhere in central London, for a private screening of a self-directed short film. According to reports, the line to get in was a maze in itself”:

“After Static Dress first broke news feeds in 2019, all anyone could talk about were memories from 20 years ago. With a black-and-white wardrobe and dye jobs that deserved the cover of Hot Topic’s mailorder catalogue, the band was widely associated with Gen Z’s Myspace revival. However, press are still splitting hairs over where they belonged in the scene. During the rollout for injury episode, they’ve been called post-hardcore, metalcore, screamo, alt rock, alt-pop, and simply alt. So which is it?

“I disagree with the revival tag,” Appleyard says, settling the debate. “The only thing we are is an emo band. We want to make music that’s emotional, intense, and as dramatic as it can possibly be.”

While intended for more mature audiences, injury episode doesn’t skimp on drama. Like a classic noir, the album opens mid-downpour, replaying the famous last words from Static Dress’ major label debut, “So close to being free, why would I stop now?” Just don't go in expecting a shot-for-shot remake. “It’s a lot darker,” Appleyard says in reference to its visual cues. “I wanted to bring in the sepia tone of a film like Batman Begins. It gives off this horrible dynamic that really shines through.” Once a permanent fixture, the band’s lime green wallpapering has been replaced by granite columns and marble tile. Even their trademark handcam is toned down. In the video for “human props”, flash bulbs pop against soft oppressive lighting, an effect that contrasts nicely with the seamless transition between Story of the Year at their absolute fieriest and the drowning despair of Portishead.

“I don’t want to lose our identity,” Appleyard clarifies. “Using CRT and handcam footage made us stand out. But I don’t want that to be our brand forever. I want everything to keep moving forward.”

“To be honest, at times, it’s pretty hellish,” Appleyard answers when questioned about working within the industry at-large. Before anyone twists his words, let’s be clear: Static Dress don’t take their success for granted. Signing with Roadrunner and now Sumerian presents plenty of perks (like, say, a tour with Poppy?). But given how fast their font size has grown on festival posters, the band are wise to exercise caution. “We’ve seen how fame and celebrity affects and destroys the lives of people we now consider our peers. As much as it’s great, there is a really ugly side to it as well.” Dishonest journos, piggish execs, and other shady inside men are brought to light during injury episode. “There are a lot of callouts on this record,” he says. Funnily enough, Appleyard has the copycats to thank for inspiring “the best song we’ve ever written.” Crafted with equal parts grace and guile, “dull blade disguise” rips away the veneer of artists who’ve followed them too closely.

“We’ve constantly had our style bitten,” Appleyard vents. “I create for myself because I enjoy it, but there are people who take from us to survive because they’re inauthentic. They act like friends, but the second they’re not taking from us anymore, they’re no longer hitting us up. We’ve dealt with a lot of people in the music industry who’ve used us.”

Bad actors behind the scenes aren’t the only ones at fault on injury episode. Static Dress raise issue with today’s assembly-line production. “We’re making robot music,” Appleyard says. “No one is coming up with anything new or original. Everyone’s just getting lower and lower in tuning. It’s gotten to the point where guitars sound like machines.” In splitting with this trend, Static Dress refused to entertain any studio trickery. The album wasn’t played to a grid or overdubbed to death, making it impossible to recreate live without backing tracks. Often, songs were recorded in single takes. “When people refer to us as nostalgic, I think they’re just remembering when alternative music sounded like it was made by real people.” For some older millennials, featuring Underoath recalls the raging hormones of Christian summer camp (okay, maybe that’s just me talking), but “Nostalgia Kills” severs all ties to the past. Riding the rails between math rock, mallcore, and nu-metal, it’s a thrilling ride that ends with the biggest breakdown of either band’s career”.

Reviewing an album that is “deliberately more intense listening experience than their breakout debut”, Static Dress have delivered one of this year’s best albums with injury episode. NME provided a glowing four-star review. At the moment, Static Dress have some U.K. dates coming in July. They then head to the U.S. for a run of incredible dates. Go and see them live if you can:

“Static Dress are easily one of the most ambitious rock bands around today. They introduced fans to second album ‘Injury Episode’ via an interactive art exhibit at a vintage London cinema and have put on a series of pop-up, phone free gigs that go against almost every rule in creating hype. Last week, they shared a terrifying survival horror game that ties the lore of the new record to 2022’s ‘Rogue Carpet Disaster’. “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing,” vocalist Olli Appleyard told NME recently during their appearence on The Cover.

That unwavering self-belief and creative vision can be felt across ‘Injury Episode’, a frantic 15-track album that drags the scrappy fury of ‘00s post-hardcore into 2026. For newcomers, the genre is a stylistic mix of brutal aggression, melody and tender emotion that inspired early My Chemical Romance, Bring Me The Horizon and Taking Back Sunday records, before they all moved onto something more arena friendly.

Static Dress glance at a similar path with ‘…hospice’. The searing grief-stricken track might pack an emotional gut-punch as Appleyard reflects on loss, but it’s also impossibly catchy and made for cathartic singalongs in festival fields. For the most part though, ‘Injury Episode’ is an unapologetic collection of screamed vocals, crushing riffs and chaotic energy that couldn’t care less about daytime radio playlists or TikTok virality. The album starts with a janky computer keyboard and the whispered mantra “so close to being free, why would I stop now?” that opens the door to the emotional purge and soaring escapism that follows.

‘Nostalgia Kills’ is an unrelenting assault of post-hardcore that features influential scene legends Underoath while ‘Dull Blade Disguise’ echoes Welsh emo titans Funeral For A Friend at their most cutting, with the repeated ask of “Are you satisfied?”. The rugged mosh pit anthem of ‘Questioning’, the playful rage of ‘Classic. Death. Pose.’ and the aching heartache of ‘Adult Diamond’ are undeniably Static Dress.

The band are tighter across ‘Injury Episode’. It’s the first record all four members of the band (Appleyard, bassist George Holding, drummer Sam Ogden and guitarist Vincent Weight) have written on after spending the past few years touring the world together. Appleyard pushes his vocals beyond the expected clean and screamed vocals too. Hushed warnings, distorted yells and guttural roads give the knotted record a theatrical edge.

This is a deliberately more intense, more complex record than ‘Rogue Carpet Disaster’, one that feels like Static Dress are trying to connect more deeply with whoever’s listening. It’s a fearless approach to guitar music that’s more interested in storytelling than mass appeal”.

I shall end things there. If you are unaware of Static Dress, this is a Leeds band that you really do need to know. The phenomenal injury episode is “music made not to be just heard but felt. It’s unvarnished, conceptual, bleeding emotion from every vein. Surely, this has to be a cult classic in waiting”. Those are words from Kerrang! in their review. It is evident that this band are going to…

CONQUER the globe.

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Follow Static Dress

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: The Shirelles

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: The Shirelles’ Beverley Lee, Doris Kenner-Jackson, Shirley Alston and Addie 'Micki' Harris/PHOTO CREDIT: Gilles Petard/Redferns 

 

The Shirelles

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ONE major reason for…

IN THIS PHOTO: Shirley Owens, Beverly Lee, Addie Harris, and Doris Coley, of the Shirelles, circa 1968.PHOTO CREDIT: CSU Archives /Everett/Alamy

including The Shirelles in this The Great American Songbook is that they were an influence on The Beatles. The legendary Liverpool band were fans of girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Alongside The Ronettes and The Marvelttes, they were not only impactful on The Beatles and other groups who came through in the early-1960s. The Shirelles’ impact on girl groups who followed is immeasurable: “The influence and impact of The Shirelles was massive – not only did they lay the blueprint for future female stars to follow, but their crossing of racial demographics in both the US and UK, before that of other Motown acts, has been noted as reflecting the early success of the Civil Rights Movement. They have since been awarded multiple honours for their contributions to music, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and named one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time by Rolling Stone in 2004”. Before ending with a playing of their essential tracks, here is some biography about the iconic girl group:

“How They Started Off

All of the band members went to the same high school, Passaic High School New Jersey, which is where they met each other. They formed the band in 1957 and during one of their rehearsals in the school gym, one of their teachers suggested that they should enter the school talent show. They were interested in the idea and decided to write their own song for the show. That was how their first single I Met Him on a Sunday was created. Their performance in the talent show was dazzling and they became instant sensations.

One of their ardent fans at the time was Mary Greenberg, daughter of Florence Greenberg. She insisted that the girls should meet her mother who owned her owned music record at the time. At first the group was reluctant, but eventually they agreed to do so. They auditioned in the Greenbergs’ living room and managed to capture the heart of Florence Greenberg who went on to sign them to Tiara Records. This marked the beginning of their journey to fame.

Studio Records

The Shirelles kicked off their career at Tiara Records. Their first single was released by Tiara but licensed by Decca Records. However, The Shirelles were not able to command the fame that they had hoped for with Decca Records. Florence Greenberg was also dissatisfied with the performance of Tiara and Decca Records. As a result, she decided to start up another record studio, Scepter Records.

At Scepter Records, Florence Greenberg approached experienced songwriter Luther Dixon to help out with the girls’ music careers. They released hit after hit. The first song that they released with Scepter was Tonight’s the Night, that was co-written by Shirley Owens, the group’s leader. It went on to reach number 39 in the charts in 1960 and ultimately propelled them to fame. Will You Love Me Tomorrow was their first song to hit the top of the charts and among the seven top 20 hits that The Shirelles managed to produce. These two songs were recently selected by Rolling Stone in its list of the greatest songs of all time.

Legal Problems

The Shirelles were famous in the United States and even started to tour internationally.

In 1964, The Shirelles were told that there was no money left in the Greenberg trust fund.

The Shirelles were famous throughout the United States and even started to tour internationally. In 1963, Dixon left to work at Capitol and his position was taken over by Stan Green. The first song that he produced with the girls was Foolish Little Girl which debuted at number four in the pop charts. However, subsequent recordings were a lot weaker.

In 1964, The Shirelles were told that there was no money left in the Greenberg trust fund. This fund was created to protect the band’s earnings. Given their surge in popularity and sudden lack of money, The Shirelles decided to leave Scepter. However, a court injunction prevented them from doing so. On the other hand, Scepter Records continued to release material from the band’s back catalogue, with no commercial success. When the legal problems concluded, The Shirelles decided to remain at Scepter for another four years.

The Beginning Of The End

By 1968, The Shirelles had not produced any song that had made it into the top 20. In 1968, one of the group’s members, Doris, left to raise a family. This left The Shirelles as a trio. The group then signed with United Artists Records in 1970 and later RCA in 1971 – their last record label.

Doris later returned to the group and they continued performing together until June 10, 1982 when Mickey Harris died of a heart attack while they were performing a show at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta.

This incident broke the band for good and the girls went their own way. In 1989, the original Shirelles group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Throughout the 1990s, there were at least three ex-Shirelle bands, each with one of the original members”.

I absolutely love The Shirelles, and their influence on girl groups and music in general is staggering. They do not get talked about enough. The New Jersey quartet definitely deserve a salute. I have compiled a twenty-song playlist of their best songs to end. To show just how incredible they were. One of their finest songs is their rendition (they recorded it first in 1960. Gerry Goffin wrote the lyrics and Carole King composed the song. She included the track in her 1971 masterpiece, Tapestry) of Will You Love Me Tomorrow. When it comes to the answer to that question, it is clear thar there is…

NO doubt about that.

FEATURE: Flower of the Mountain: What Should Be the Next Kate Bush Book?

FEATURE:

 

 

Flower of the Mountain

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

What Should Be the Next Kate Bush Book?

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IT may well already be…

in publication or about to be released. There may have been some self-published Kate Bush books but, in terms of books this year, I have not seen anything announced. Perhaps there will be some later in the year. It has been quiet on the articles front. Normally, you would get something about her. Last year did see three of her studio albums have big birthdays. Never for Ever turned forty-five. Hounds of Love turned forty, and Aerial turned twenty. There was a bit more activity and necessity last year. Though it has been unusually quiet, so I wonder if there is not a call for a Kate Bush book now or if people suspect that she might announce a new album very soon, in which case there would be spreads, articles and books to coincide with that. That is fair enough. Even so, artists get books written about them all the time, and most of them are not provoked by an anniversary or anything specific. An author takes a particular angle or focuses on a particular part of an artist’s career. With Kate Bush, we had Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book on Hounds of Love. Max Cookney’s Kate Bush: On Location – is a brilliant book. I think a Netflix Kate Bush documentary is in the works. There have been a couple of smaller documentaries released fairly recently. It is a period where Kate Bush is still very much active and relevant. Kate Bush’s video/short film Little Shrew (Snowflake) recently picked up an award:

“The animated short film, Little Shrew, that Kate directed, inspired by the war in Ukraine, is now a prize-winner! The four-minute film, which was released in late 2024, picked up the Animation prize at this year’s Carmarthen Bay Film Festival in Wales.

Kate has expressed her delight on the win in a short statement: “How wonderful! Little Shrew is incredibly excited that she’s been awarded such a huge honour. Thank you so very much from her, myself and all the team. We are over the moon!”.

I think I misgendered Little Shrew when writing a feature about the song, but I love how that incredible and powerful character is a she! Also, the fact Kate Bush is delighted to get awards after all these decades. It always means so much to her. It also shows that her work and music is very much highly regarded and important.

I have not seen any announcements of new Kate Bush books. Is she an artist harder to write about, or is there another reason? The Beatles have had thousands of books written about them, and we get a few a year. Or more. I do feel like there is scope and potential for more Kate Bush coverage. In terms of her modern influence, perhaps that will be covered in a documentary. Though a book that gets interviews from artists influenced by Kate Bush and their experiences of her music would be amazing. I have said before how very few of her albums have made it into books. The Dreaming and The Kick Inside were covered by Laura Shenton, though both could well fit into the 33 1/3 series. And Aerial. I also feel that Never for Ever gets overlooked. I feel that there is a lot to write about Bush’s third studio album. Despite there being some great biographies written about Kate Bush, there are ways we can be forensic. Max Cookney’s Kate Bush: On Location is brilliant highlighting the spaces and places Kate Bush was in and how they connect with her music and legacy. So many different musicians have played with her. How they added to her work. Writing about them. I am still doing a series where I explore characters in Kate Bush’s work and discuss themes connected to them. I feel something similar to that in a book would be awesome. There are superfans, tribute acts and those who have been with Kate Bush since the start. It is wonderful we have documentaries and podcasts where they can get together, but rarely do they make it into a book. I have also said how it has been a long time since a photobook came out. In terms of filling gaps without going too far or producing a book with no merit or purpose, I think that there are many ideas. It would be a shame if 2026 saw no new Kate Bush book. Or very few.

I am not sure whether Kate Bush needs to grant permission. I don’t think so. Such an important and genius artist should have more written about her. You can’t force a moment or a book. Writing one has to be earned and justified, I think. An interesting and original idea. I don’t think any new biographies will be written, though this is not to say that everything about her career and life has been covered. A book could cover a specific period. Perhaps pre-The Kick Inside and that time before 1978. The road to the debut. I do feel that we will get a Kate Bush album this or next year. It is a prediction, as you can never truly know when things will arrive when it comes to Kate Bush. That is one of the great pleasures! It gives impetus to new works. I feel the past four or so years have been among the most exciting and important of her career, and yet only articles written about it. Icons like David Bowie have had books published about them this year. A couple of Madonna books coming. The summer marks fifty years since Kate Bush finalised her record deal with EMI and it sort of began her career. It would be another catalyst, if any were needed, for authors to get writing. By the time you read this, something might well be announced. There are so many ideas I have, though I don’t think I am a good enough writer and have the time to commit to a book. Will a new Kate Bush fanzine or a one-off fanzine edition be published at any point? I am sort of itching for some new text. Having a Kate Bush book on the shelf later this year (or next) would be something all fans…

WOULD love to see.

FEATURE: Reasons to Be Hopeful: Why a Recent Event at The Trouble Club Put Things Into Focus for Me

FEATURE:

 

 

Reasons to Be Hopeful

IN THIS PHOTO: The phenomenal author, journalist and broadcaster Caitlin Moran joined fellow queen, the journalist, author, broadcaster and podcaster Bryony Gordon onstage for The Trouble Club on Wednesday, 20th May, 2026. Her upcoming book, How to Be Hopeful, is released on 17th September, 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Caitlin Moran

 

Why a Recent Event at The Trouble Club Put Things Into Focus for Me

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I am not hopeful…

PHOTO CREDIT: ClickerHappy/Pexels

at the moment. Not by a long shot! Though I think I will be…soon. On a personal level, I am living with a spike in a mental health downturn and, coupled with that, huge job dissatisfaction and depression, which has created a feeling that I have not had since I was a child and dreaded the Sunday night theme of Antiques Roadshow. A jaunty theme that played on Sunday evenings let me know – with brutal and tweed-blazered glee – that school was tomorrow. Not that I hated school, but it was a deep knot in the pit of my stomach. That is how I feel now. A cocktail of insomnia, depression and a real unhappiness in a current role. Whereas a decades-running antiques show on the BBC was the catalyst for a Sunday evening crisis and churn in the stomach, in 2026, it is un-soundtracked. A solemn silence that gives way to a near-tears numbness. That I almost need to brace myself for. Though I can do something about that. On a local level, the streets where I live and walked today (25th May) are festooned and engulfed with cans, broken glass and assorted litter. A result of Arsenal lifting the Premier League trophy for the first time in over two decades – and the only time they will for the next twenty-or-so, let’s be honest!-, the response to a moment of collective joy manifested itself in a disrespectful and drunken show of idiocy and inconsideration that means on the hottest day of this year, local refuge collectors have their work cut out! Or, as it is a bank holiday, it will probably be worked on tomorrow. Which means the streets where I live and beyond – Finsbury Park to Highbury – look absolutely awful! Football fans are bloody awful when it comes to littering, fighting, causing mayhem and generally being loud and obnoxious. Especially men. Not too tarnish them all, but why does competitive sport do this to people?! On a national level, as I type this on a day when temperatures in the capital have well exceeded thirty degrees centigrade, there is no urgency or alarm. Some may say it is a heatwave and it is normal. There is nothing normal about the temperature being this high in late-May! It is a sign of climate crisis that should alarm us and spur us into action. And yet, when I hear the news and the forecast being read, there is talk of this being a record day in terms of heat for May. Almost like it is an achievement, rather than something that should chill every one of us to the core (there is a little bit of information from the BBC about the climate crisis, though it is buried away).

IN THIS PHOTO: Cate Blanchett/PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker

Beyond that, there have been news stories and things happening that has also provided a body-blow to any sense of hope. On a less serious and appealing way, actress Cate Blanchett said this regarding her experience on film sets: “I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” said Cate Blanchett at the Cannes film festival, criticising the pervasive sexism of the film industry, almost a decade after the #MeToo movement. “It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting” she said, referencing #MeToo, the campaign that aimed to raise awareness of sexual abuse against women after the bombshell allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. “There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me,” Blanchett said. “And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying ‘me too’. Why does that get shut down?” In 2018, when she was president of the jury in Cannes, Blanchett took part in a red-carpet protest. She and 81 other women appeared on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, representing the total number of female directors who had been selected for the Cannes competition lineup, compared with the 1,866 male directors who had been selected over the same period. “I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same,” she said. “You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace. I think it has an effect on the work,” she added”. In this article from The Guardian , the headline ran: “Films more likely to star an actor called Chris or a talking animal than a woman over 60, study finds”. They write how the brilliant “Emma Thompson (is) among voices supporting anti-ageism campaign, which has uncovered striking findings in top-grossing UK films over past three years”. From this, we can see that Hollywood is still massively ageist. Especially against women. Older men might not helm many films, especially bigger box office draws, though the reality for women is far bleaker. They are not deemed bankable, desirable, important, worthy. A sense that they will tank a film or put cinema-goers off if they are the stars. I have great admiration for the brilliant younger actresses who are among the most talented we have seen in generations. However, this idea that it is only young women who can star. If you are a woman over sixty then you are seen as past-it or somehow overage. These brilliant women over sixty have that experience and talent. Yet so much of the focus is on appearance, sexual desirability, a ‘cool factor’, or this ageist bias that is misogynistic and insulting. How there needs to be a new #MeToo movement in Hollywood – though Cate Blanchett also observed how the movement got killed very quickly.

IN THIS PHOTO: Emma Thompson/PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Marsland/WireImage

It is the same in music. Not as extreme as in Hollywood, but ageism still very much rife. One of music’s greatest voices and humans, Kylie Minogue, bravely revealed that she had a second cancer diagnosis in 2021, after receiving treatment for breast cancer in 2005. She is planning ahead to a new tour and there will be celebrations later in the year when Fever – one of her masterpiece – turns twenty-five. Can’t Get You Out of My Head turns twenty-five. The fifty-seven-year-old arguably at her peak. Or this new era that shows she is as vital and extraordinary as ever! And yet, her name has not popped up when it comes to major festivals and their headline acts. I often rant about massive gender equality on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage. Where as Minogue last year? Why no headline slot at Reading & Leeds this year? Only one (again: one) woman over the age of forty has headlined Glastonbury in its history. I don’t know how many have at Reading & Leeds, though ageism still hugely affects women in music. Also, briefly, go and watch the Kylie documentary on Netflix. as it has won a slew of hugely positive reviews because of Minogue’s openness and honesty. A portrait of one of the all-time greats in music. In terms of the stations they can be played on and how the media – and I am culpable to an extent – focuses on new, young female voices and there is far less time and effort spotlighting the brilliance of women over forty. Misogyny and sexism rife and blooming through the music industry. From a lack of women in professional studios to incidents of sexual abuse and assault, an industry I love so much is also in need of a revolution or reaction. And it is always women who have to shout and lead the initiative. Bar a very small percentage of men who will ally themselves, it is always, always women. The ones who are victimised, abused, rejected, overlooked and marginalised are the ones who have to fight for justice and change! And women are dominating music. It has been the case for years, yet, say, from 2019 to now, most of the best and most important albums and tours are created by women. That was the case last year; it will be the case this year. Most of the finest and most exciting new artists are women. However, what should be reflected in playlist dominance, festival glory and this affect where the whole industry changes – whether from a patriarchy to a matriarchy, or basically treating women with respect! – and women throughout are giving their flowers, rights and respect, it is not happening at all. Artists like Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) talking about it and her ongoing experiences. The misogyny through the industry. Award ceremonies like the Ivor Novellos male-heavy. Most major award ceremonies struggling to affect gender equality or, in some cases, taking a step back. Most big radio stations still have male-heavy playlists.

There might not be an easy answer or quick change. Though there needs to be greater urgency from men. So so few talking about these issues on stage or in interviews. A one-sided fight almost. Why should issues created by men be tackled by women?! This current situation leaves me feeling lost and without much hope. Though I am hopeful that, in years to come, things will drastically improve. We are seeing small steps at the moment, though far too major problems and barriers remain. Women over forty very much face an uphill struggle regarding playlisting, bookings and getting column inches. Not to mention the lack of options for women who have children and want to continue their career and tour!  These are words  that we should never have to read: “The attorney general is to review the sentencing of three teenage boys who raped two girls in separate attacks, after criticism their sentences were too lenient. The boys, two aged 15 and one 14, were not given custodial sentences for the attacks in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in 2024 and 2025. They "brazenly filmed" the rapes on their phones and later shared some of the footage online. The teenagers were given youth rehabilitation orders (YRO) and walked out of court with 10 rape convictions between them”. In the sense that boys who filmed a rape and bragged about it should not be let off with what is essential a mild slap on the wrist! The traumatised girl who was raped said the sentence and outcome was like a rock smashing into her face. It goes to show that the justice systems is set up and run by men. It is there to benefit men! Women and girls have fewer legal rights. This recent article is well worth a read. It is horrifying that we live in a world where we have to campaign for women and girls’ basic human rights. That they get justice. Rape cases should never ever be almost trivialised with such insanely lenient repercussions for the perpetrators. This makes me lose all hope too. Again, there will be change and improvement, though it mostly women again who will have to do the work and battle to make things better.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Trouble Club’s CEO and owner, Ellie Newton/PHOTO CREDIT: Ioana Marinca

From personal stress to global mess, what reason is there to be hopeful?! A recent highlight was attending The Trouble Club. Run by CEO and owner, Ellie Newton, she has just made the Forbes 30 Under 30 List for 2026, “The Trouble Club is a women's community dedicated to meaningful conversation, connection, and curiosity. Its current leader took over at 23 during the COVID-19 pandemic, inheriting $80,000 in debt, 70 members, and just $10,500 in annual revenue. Since then, the club has grown to more than 2,300 members and has brought in $1.7 million, including $670,000 in 2025. The Trouble Club has facilitated hundreds of thousands of conversations across politics, culture, and society as it seeks to grow its two locations to a larger global network”. You can follow The Trouble Club on Instagram. I have been a member over three years, and I cannot recommend it highly enough! They hold dinners, breakfasts, book clubs, social events and, above all, their brilliant talks and events. Where women across the media, politics, the arts and beyond speak (my current wish-list for speakers includes Michaela Coel, Kathy Burke, Miriam Margolyes, Dr. Myriam François, Angela Rayner, Lauren Laverne, Gillian Anderson, Tracey Emin, and Florence Welch). Last Wednesday - 20th May -, the most memorable event I have been to was a conversation with Bryony Gordon and Caitlin Moran. Hosted by Ellie Newton, she was her usual phenomenal best (not that she ever needs an executive assistant, but that would be a dream job as she is someone whose stock will continue to rise. Such an inspiration). And how this event made such an impact is that I (and everyone else) left with a real and true feeling of hope. I always love being at Trouble Club events and being surrounded by the amazing members. There are a few men at the events, but it is largely women who attend.

A couple of the questions at the Q&A (held at the end of the interview) were brilliant! I can’t remember their names, but one of the few men at St Marylebone Parish Church, London for the event, was very funny and asked a great question. A woman threw a question back as Caitlin Moran that she had asked Paul McCartney years ago. Stunning the former Beatle, Moran asked whose face he would replace his own with if he were ever in a car crash and that was an option. Or would he keep his own? To note: McCartney weas horrified and left the interview but later felt bad and invited Moran to his house to do sleeve notes for his then-new album. She felt bad, or that she would offend him/make things worse, and declined his kind offer. Cheekily posing that question to Moran was genius! It was a joyful evening, not least because of the friendship and love between Bryony Gordon and Caitlin Moran. How frank and open they were. Gordon’s new book, People Pleaser, is one you should buy. On 17th September, I will be racing down to Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus to buy a copy of Caitlin Moran’s How to Be Hopeful: “Not getting enough sleep, doomscrolling on your phone, and feeling acid anxiety every time you watch the news? You’re not alone. One morning, Caitlin Moran lay in bed and realised: she had finally reached Peak Despair. The point where, in books and movies, the heroine decides to move to a remote farmhouse, walk an ancient, 600-mile pathway, or adopt a baby hare. The moment where someone goes on a quest to find … hope. But this - this is not that kind of book. Caitlin tried - but it turns out remote Welsh farmhouses are really expensive. No-one with a job can walk 600 miles. And it’s incredibly hard to get access to baby hares in Crouch End. And so, Caitlin decides instead to go on a domestic quest. To see if you can stay in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, but feel better about the frantic modern world by trying to make better days. Leaving social media, eschewing 24/7 news for local newspapers, sitting on buses without headphones, and listening to what people are really saying. Picking litter, donating blood, rewilding a garden, and the hardest thing of all - learning to fall back in love with the world again. Over the course of a year, Caitlin finds that life can be radically transformed when you rebel against the news cycle and algorithms that want to keep us angry, adrenalied, and anxious. You can’t change the world - but you can change your days. And, once you’ve changed your days, maybe you could change the world. Just a little bit. Being hopeful is a decision. How To Be Hopeful is the diary of how one person made that change”. It is almost like a blur taking in everything that was discussed at the event but, in such a gorgeous venue and surrounded by incredible women – and a few men too -, I came away very much feeling truly hopeful. Bryony Gordon was absolutely brilliant, and something Caitlin Moran said put everything into perspective. About keeping your side of the street tidy and clean. How there are big issues and horrible things happening. And we shouldn’t ignore them. But just take care of you and those close to you. A year where you live hopefully and do little things that are productive and positive. The issues of the world will still be there, but by changing your own days, it will make you more hopeful about things in general.

Apologies if I am butchering that – luckily, Caitlin Moran will more than likely not see this! -, but I have booked a ticket to see her at St Mary's Church Marylebone. I would consider myself to be a pretty ardent (is that the right word?!) feminist, though not one that is vocal and as proactive as I should be. As Caitlin Moran said, introverts and those who might be neurodivergent for instance, want to sit at the laptop with a cup of tea and might not want to do a podcast or be extroverted. It is harder for me in that sense. One reason why I do not do regular Kate Bush podcasts (though I will in January 2028 for fiftieth anniversary celebrations and, as Caitlin Moran briefly sung a bit of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights – and rudely had her microphone cut! -, she is someone who would provide real depth into the song’s brilliance and legacy) is because I am quite introverted. So I write as much as I can and I try to make a difference that way. Though I am committed and compelled to do more. Whether signing a petition, writing to my M.P., joining a protest or doing whatever I can to make a difference, it is often hindered by a lack of hope. That lethargy. I was revitalised by that brilliant conversation between Caitlin Moran and Bryony Gordon (and Ellie Newton). Though I am still very much fearing turning up to work tomorrow and I am appalled by the news and ageism/misogyny blighting the film and music industries, I do need to find a way through. Or a way or living more hopefully! It is amazing how something as minor as attending a Trouble Club event can shift things so drastically. This is very much a feature to promote them and become a member, but it was also a way for me to exorcise something. Or try to get stuff off of my chest. Exciting events ahead. Emma-Louise Boynton on Thursday (28th May) at The Ministry. That will be spectacular, as I have seen her speak for The Trouble Club before, and she is so engaging, thought-provoking, articulate, compelling and phenomenal. I wanted to finish by saluting Caitlin Moran, Bryony Gordon, Ellie Newton and The Trouble Club, as they have impacted me at a time when I did need a reason to be hopeful. And I have! I am confident that things for me will (slowly, mind) improve, I also have my fingers crossed that, in the wider world, things turn…

A lot more hopeful.

FEATURE: Spotlight: COBRAH

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Julius Hayes for NME

 

COBRAH

__________

THE fantastic COBRAH…

PHOTO CREDIT: Israel Riqueros

played London’s 02 Kentish Town Forum tonight (27th May), before heading to Manchester tomorrow and Brighton on Friday. If you have not heard of this brilliant Swedish artist then, like me, you are a little late to the conversation. Before getting to some recent interviews and a review of the exceptional Torn, I want to bring in an article from Hannah Ewens for The Guardian. It investigates how and why a “wave of hedonistic, feral female pop stars are rejecting respectability”. It is interesting what Ewens observes and what  Charlie Harding, co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop, says about the magnetic COBRAH:

“Five years ago, sad-girl bedroom singer-songwriters such as Olivia Rodrigo and Holly Humberstone resonated with a generation spending their formative years in lockdown. Once the pandemic lifted, gen Z reclaimed feckless post-9/11 underground culture as “indie sleaze” and partied through the rubble of their own wrecked prospects. In came smudged eyeliner, shredded tights and the return of electroclash thanks to artists including the Dare and Fcukers.

That 00s sound is “definitely influencing music right now,” says Lo. She celebrates its “rawness and roughness”, which she thinks stemmed from “people not giving a fuck because they’re not being filmed” in an idyllic pre-cameraphone age. “That need to revolt against the norm is building inside us like a pressure cooker. The aggressive ‘getting punched in the face while I scream’ sonic landscape of Slayyyter’s song Crank makes that possible.”

In 2026, the influence of those scenes has mutated into sleazy electro-pop – from throbbing drum’n’bass to hyperactive EDM – delivered with rock-star energy and rap-influenced vocals. The production is aggressively maximalist, all grubby guitars, blown-out synths and addictive hooks. Meanwhile, its energy is rooted in impulsive, raunchy mid-00s US culture: MTV’s Spring Break, Britney with the brakes off, and the proliferation of online porn and reality TV (often both at once, in shows such as Girls of the Playboy Mansion).

Cobrah is now getting broader recognition for her aggressive, sexually charged club music, and was asked by Demi Lovato to feature on her new song Fantasy. Many of Cobrah’s songs – the industrial, icy Brand New Bitch, the hedonistic Good Puss – are about chasing extreme highs. “Everything else just feels very lame and tame,” she says. By leaning harder into her sexuality in her lyricism, she says, “I’ve become more like myself. The opposite of diluted: concentrated.”

Harding suggests that by revelling in hedonism, these artists are “straddling stereotypes of women being unhinged and hysterical while being the masterminds behind the whole endeavour”. You could read it as a reclamation of the mid-00s era, when dishevelled white-girl stars were assumed to be out of control: we know now that Hilton was just cosplaying as an airhead, although Britney Spears wasn’t so lucky, losing the right to run her own life when she was placed under a conservatorship that lasted 14 years”.

I wonder whether an artist like COBRAH is misinterpreted or seen as this provocative and hypersexual artist because of the production and sound of Torn. It is cracked up on so many songs. What we learn from Mixmag and their interview from February is how the “radical Swedish popstar Cobrah shifts from erotic provocateur to a more romantic, lyrical mode on her debut album ‘Torn’. Mixmag’s first cover star of 2026 speaks to Gemma Ross about needing to feel challenged as an artist and how shedding the kinkwear is allowing for a clearer portrait”:

“I have to become my own fantasy,” she says. “You’d never see me on the streets of New York filming a video, because the fantasy needs to be otherworldly”. Over the years, the visuals that support Cobrah’s bolshy, bass-heavy music and soft, sweet vocals have told a story of her progression, building the lore that she’s crafting around this fabled world. “When I’m home, I like to be in slacks, I like to bake, I like to do my comfy things,” she confides. “But as soon as I go to perform and become Cobrah, I need to feel that tension and force.”

After almost a decade spent gaining eminence as a kinkstress, Cobrah is eager to veer the fantasy in a different direction. The box she’d often been placed into was starting to feel like a celebration of image, rather than sound, and not a testament to her musical talents. Recognising that this lifestyle is still very much part of her, this wasn’t going to be a complete reset, but a chance to show fans her rarely-seen softer side. “I felt a little locked into a niche,” she says. “When you see the word BDSM, a lot of people turn away because it can sound scary and aggressive. I want to be a musician in the first room, rather than being in handcuffs in the first room.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Willemskantine

"I wanted to be my own vessel, and now I feel like I've established that,” she explains. “It's much more exciting to try to not compete, but to experiment. I envisioned the biggest of things for the Cobrah project at the start, even though it was very niche in the beginning,” she continues. “I didn’t see myself as niche, but maybe that’s because I'm so consumed in what I do. I'm like, what do you mean I’m avant-garde? I'm Britney!”

On her forthcoming debut album ‘Torn’, Cobrah is toning down the eroticism and opening up in a more romantic, lyrical way. The first singles released as part of the wider project, ‘Hush’ and title-track ‘Torn’, have a more subdued, more delicate approach, where her usually brazen club production takes a backstep, and her vocals come to the front. At the same time, visuals feel stripped-back – she’s dressed in nude colours, wrestling with a mirrored image of herself, or dancing in a shadowy silhouette – all nods to how she’s letting this past version of Cobrah phase out.

It’s taken time for Cobrah to put her efforts into a full-length album following a gradual progression of EPs over the years, from 2019’s ‘ICON’, 2021’s self-titled ‘COBRAH’, and 2023’s ‘SUCCUBUS’, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. When COVID stunted an opportunity to perform at Texan showcase festival South by Southwest, which promised to be her breakthrough moment, Cobrah felt the hit, but sees it as a blessing in disguise retrospectively. “It had an impact on my career, but I’m also really grateful for that pushback. Now I can do my debut album, and many more things that I wouldn’t have been able to five years ago.”

At that time, and even before she grew to prominence, Cobrah longed for a taste of fame. “As a child, I remember hearing these kid stars on the radio, and I knew I wanted to be that. I was really drawn to the artist lifestyle early on,” she recalls. Though still young when she broke out under the cloak of Cobrah in her early 20s, she couldn’t help but feel late to the game. “You always think that you're the oldest in the room, but looking back, I was so young. I’ve felt this longing to do what I'm doing now since I was a child, so to be 21, I felt like I’d already missed decades of doing music, and I had to figure out a lot of things for myself.”

“This album is called ‘Torn’ because it's a little scattered, it's a little torn,” she says softly. “I feel like it will have more connection with the audience because it's more of a pop album, so there’s less of a backing track, and more of a conversation. It's just 100% me,” she adds. Like its namesake, the cover imagery for single release of ‘Torn’ represents one of Cobrah’s points of inspiration when writing the album, depicting stretched skin breaking and splitting. “I was really inspired by stretch marks,” she says, “and in the beginning, I was inspired by mud and dirt. Usually everything is so polished – there’s latex and clean lines – but this feels more gritty in a sense”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Julius Hayes for NME

I am moving to NME and their cover interview from February. I do think that Torn is an evolution for COBRAH. If her past is defined by bangers about female pleasure, there is a softer and more personal touch on her album. That is why I am spotlighting her now. Her catalogue is richer and more varied, and we are witnessing this metamorphosis:

“Before the release of her last EP, ‘Succubus’ in 2023, inklings of a larger project had begun to take shape. It was a creative itch that COBRAH was dying to scratch. “I’d always wanted to make an album, and the stars had never aligned for that opportunity,” she says. “Then, when I finally got to do it, I felt like the culture was catching up to me, I was on people’s mood boards…” she drifts off. “At first I was really annoyed. And then, when I was gonna make more music, I thought: ‘Fuck it. I’m over myself, I’m ready to move on.’ If the world has caught up to what I’m doing, then I’m clearly not doing the thing I’m intended to anymore.”

This shift in thinking would go on to form her debut album’s title track, ‘Torn’, a cross-examination of the push-and-pull the singer felt about inhabiting COBRAH, the character, after all these years. Across flourishes of slow synths and deconstructed techno, her musings spin a tale of inner conflict (“Why do these thoughts at night keep washing in? […] Why don’t I know what I should do?”) acted out by duelling selves. In the accompanying video directed by Julius Hayes, the two COBRAHs flit from possession to embrace, foreplay to rejection, before only one is left on the edge of suffocation, a darker self watching on.

‘Torn’, the gritty and uncharacteristically personal album, continues to carry the torch for this metaphoric skin-shedding. It finds inspiration in the beauty of growing pains and treading new paths, while reckoning with the bravado-packed BDSM-pop of her earlier work to reveal the artist behind the domme. “I’ve always been slightly afraid of putting myself personally into my art and maybe that my own life wasn’t good enough to write about, or not interesting to listen to,” she says, “but with ‘Torn’ I’ve really tried to switch it back. COBRAH is what I feel and do, not the reverse.”

To call the project a total rebirth would be misleading, as the album still pumps with plenty of industrial grit on club-ready bangers like ‘Platinum’ and ‘Excuse Moi’. But here too are experiments that take an axe to heart-raising BPMs in favour of the strung-out, some so hauntingly left-field – such as ‘Charming’ – they were nearly left on the cutting-room floor. That song is part of a handful of outliers that explore love’s trickier sides, along with ‘Dog’, which trades in themes of dark romance and dreams of the domestic. Lines like “I wanna house, up on the hillside / I wanna die together, you just wanna feel right” offer surprising moments of candour.

At a time when sexual liberation in the mainstream feels increasingly on the wane, thanks to attacks from the conservative right, COBRAH’s abrasive, pleasure-seeking anthems feel more important than ever. And while ‘Torn’ may depart from the more overt trappings of the ‘BDSM-pop’ moniker for which she is known for, COBRAH’s softer touch doesn’t come without its harder edges. “What’s important to me when I make music is that it comes from a place of dominance, of confidence and fun,” she says, “I want to make really beautiful things that tingle me. And I think being sexy – and especially being in charge and being sexy – really tingles me.”

With the challenge of completing her debut album now well behind her, COBRAH has her sights set on letting ‘Torn’ play out on stage in 2026. Plans for an upcoming tour, netting some of her biggest audiences to date, have encouraged the artist to think bigger in all aspects. Ahead of her Coachella debut later this summer, COBRAH teases an ambitious lean into the theatrical passions of her teen years, stepping away from the booming sound systems and rave-ready BPMs dominating her club performances and instead slipping into the role of storyteller”.

I am interested in PAPER and their interview from earlier in the year. Torn is a huge moment for COBRAH. If you have not listened to her music, I would urge you to explore this incredible woman. “With Cobrah’s first full-length LP, Torn, the Gothenburg-born, Stockholm-based artist aims to reinvent on her established formula while maintaining her creative interiority”:

“I love that. How did it feel stepping into the creative director role for this album? How was it making the videos?

It was beautiful to be in such control. I have an image-rich mind. When I write music, I usually see what the music video will be like. For “Hush,” I knew that it sounds like we’re riding in a car. So I did that for the video. A year ago, I knew what Puppy, my monster lover, would look like. Everything works together. What I didn’t know was how much I had to direct. Like does the monster have ears or not? What color are his fingernails? What shade of beige? You have to be very meticulous. But it was very fun. It took some time for this album to come out but it’s because I was looking for people I could be equal with in the creative process. It only came together this well because we were all unified in my vision for it. That’s quite rare.

This album is more lyric-focused than your previous works. Did that change the writing process at all?

It felt like I was birthing myself again. Those first EPs were my first birth, my first trial. There was super heavy production and vocals as a sample, rather than what I do now which is text-driven. An album is much longer, so I was able to explore more. I went back to the beginning and it felt refreshing. The good thing about the people I work with is that they’re very in tune with how I feel. It’s supportive. I had doubts when I wrote “Charming” and “Really Hard.” These songs stick out to me on the album.

“Charming” is my favorite track. It’s so poppy.

Yes! Thank you! It’s really honest and truthful. Everytime I hear it I get a little in love and a little sad at the same time. It hits home with people because they can tell it’s real. That song and “Really Hard” weren’t even going to end up on the album. I thought they wouldn’t resonate with people who like my previous works. The writing process was unique for me. I used to approach writing by making a couple songs then picking the coolest. For this, we made 30 demos. We tried so many things. I felt like I could lead with who I am as a person on this album.

It feels like a hard pivot, but it’s still very you. There’s lots of parallel themes and production choices to your past work.

You’re always at the core of your artistry. If you play an instrument, anytime you go a while not playing it, you come back to the same chords when you pick it up again. It’s genetic. It’s not skill, it’s your body knowing that. I expanded with the Cobrah universe but stayed true to my genetic sound. I’m always sultry and soft because that’s the core of Clara, who I am as a person. I’m happy that authenticity comes through.

If you could give a past version of yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

To have patience. I’m extremely impatient. I lose value of the present. I’d give myself that advice today because I don’t think I’ve learned anything.

And what’s ahead for Cobrah?

I have some exciting collaborations. I can’t tell you who yet. I’m excited to expand this Torn universe with collaborations and live shows. I keep getting asked what’s next. But I’ve been pregnant with Torn since last year. So I’m excited to enjoy it”.

The final interview that I am spotlighting is from CLASH. I do think that Torn will be labelled as sleazy Pop or trash because it seems like it is hypersexualised and prurient. Listened closer to Torn, and you find that it is a much more sensitive and reflective album than many might assume. As CLASH write, this “Scandi pop provocateur Cobrah peels back the nude latex layers on herself, and the years-long conversation around her artistry”:

“On the appropriately titled ‘Torn’, Cobrah tears up the rulebook of her own making and finds her middle ground. “I feel like I’ve found a nice little pocket where things are Cobrah and pop, clubby, sexy, soft, goth and dom. All of these different variables that I try to indulge in as an artist.” Cobrah, real name Clara, speaks of emotional exposure, shifting the conversation about sexual politics and spotlighting the succubus to raw, real life experiences. The sultry touch of her earlier work is not lost, especially where wispy vocals and coy lyricism is concerned, but a newfound embrace for vulnerability is also tapped ino. She candidly chronicles the highs and lows of relationships, plus unimaginable traumas. Not your typical pleasure-and-plain running thread. Album closer ‘Really Hard’ for instance, is about a car crash Cobrah experienced in Australia, she discloses.

In full creative control, Cobrah’s debut LP invited back trusted collaborators Isac Hördegård and Hannes Roovers, whom have followed her since the start her 2018 debut single ‘IDFKA’. Illangelo, Machinedrum, and Tove Burman also make appearances. “I’m a very intuitive writer,” she states. “I used to feel that what I was writing wouldn’t be Cobrah if it wasn’t the very iconic sound that I’ve made up. I am Cobrah, and whatever I do and write is my artistry, and I don’t have to think of fitting into my own image. I’m allowed to explore, I’m allowed to be more diverse – that was the mindset I tried to have with the album.”

March sees Cobrah heading on a North American and European tour, followed by a first-time pit stop at Coachella. With ‘Torn’ ushering a redefined sense of self, expect an evolved, liberating take on her engineered pop sound. “I’m trying to bring this album to life, so I can already say I’m gonna play you the whole album,” she says of her upcoming shows. “Before, when I’ve toured all of my songs, the discography has not been that big. I am working with dancers now and I’ve built this show together with my music video director, with the same choreographer that I worked with on the music videos. You can expect something that is very clubby and very fun, that we’ve built together to tell a longer story.”

Pushing past the boundaries of a distinct club-driven sound, do you see this album as moving away from those roots, or more as an expansion?

I’m not closing any club doors. I’m just opening some theatre doors, hopefully. This is more of a development, rather than moving on from something else. ‘Hush’ is quite clubby, but not like those high-paced, clear club hits. It was important for me to tell the story of also opening more doors, or doing something else by putting those songs at the front of the campaign. I don’t think it would be as clear to people that I am shifting a focus in my storytelling. For the tour that’s going to come, I want to also bring that cinematic vibe that I’ve had in this campaign. It will still be a very sweaty show, no matter what.

‘Torn’ was a test for me. It was written in 2023, it’s almost three years old. All artists say that they don’t look online but I do. Everyone was so happy, I was like, ‘they get it, they just get me!’ My relationship with my fans is getting better and better by the day. They understand what’s going on in my head. That is something that I never really tried to see before. I felt like I was really safe with what I put out. Now I feel like I’m stepping on thinner ice, and it’s been received with just as much excitement as before. So it’s cool to see that people get it no matter what I do, and it makes me feel even freer with the next music that I’m writing. I can really write what I like in life, and no matter how it sounds it’s gonna be appreciated because I made it.

Do fiercely queer Cobrah fans influence how you show up in clubs and festivals lineups, almost as a form of advocacy in electronic spaces?

I am deeply thankful for the fans that I have. My intention was never to have a very gay, loving fanbase, and when I got it, I was like, “these are the best people in the world.” They know how many centimetres of nails you have on; they can see it from 20 metres. They know which brand your shoes are. They know you paid £1000 for those shoes!

And they equally appreciate the effort that you put into the music; the songwriting, the clothing and the videos. There’s no other fanbase that fully gets who a pop star is and can be. That relationship is very precious. I stick very much to advocating for the things that I know most of the music and aesthetic does. I try to keep that political line quite sharp, really. It’s very clear. It’s a wonderful thing to play gay clubs. I love playing gay clubs.

From Zara Larsson’s ‘Midnight Sun’ success to Robyn’s return to music, Scandipop is having a huge moment. How does it feel to ride this wave?

Sweden’s a really good base for me. I’ve tried to move away from here but I can’t. Something keeps me here all the time. I write all my music here, all the people I work with are based here. I’m really happy that the Swedish pop stars are coming back. Robyn, Zara Larsson, Lykke Li and me. We all probably wrote this [into existence] in 2024 or something. It takes some time to write an album. It’s really cool that we all synced with this new Scandipop era, without it being planned.

I don’t feel any pressure from the industry here. I feel like I’ve been successful at what I do because I like to be very isolated. I only work with my friends, and on the weekends I like to bake cookies. I stay in my own lane and I create from a very happy space, even when I write these emotional songs. I really don’t feel pressure or any sense of competitiveness. I just try to stay in my bubble as much as I can. I feel like I’m the best artist when the world doesn’t exist outside”.

As COBRAH is in the U.K., I was particularly interested in spotlighting her. I am going to end with a positive review for Torn. An album I think is up there with the very best of the year so far. It is impossible to avoid falling in love with COBRAH and Torn. The Quietus submitted to her incredible power and charm on a captivating debut album:

“At a time when outsized egos seem to dominate world leadership, it feels soothing and somewhat hopeful that more and more artists dare to envision other forms of power and new realities. Rather than embracing a version of feminism in which women adopt stereotypically masculine traits in order to gain recognition, Cobrah proposes alternative ways of being powerful within oneself and embracing the complexity of it. You might argue that they are burning down the patriarchy one brazen, wonderfully arrogant line at a time. As she sings on the album track ‘Excusez Moi’, Cobrah “honestly doesn’t care, it’s all about her”.

We’ve witnessed this in various forms over the past few years, most recently in Robyn’s single ‘Sexistential’ from her upcoming album of the same name and FKA Twigs’ Eusexua. Both exemplify a type of music that, through experimentation and extremity, tries to encapsulate female sexuality and inner life. For their own good and for the good of the world they are demanding to be seen and recognised. Artists such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras and Ashnikko have succeeded in doing so – the latter even enlists Cobrah on the hot hit ‘Wet Like’. These artists seem more empowered and, in Cobrah’s case, more vulnerably layered than ever before. They dare to provoke and push boundaries, individually and together, not only through playful, audacious words but through very well-composed beats.

With her hushed vocals, theatrical fetish-feminine lyrics, and electronic hyperpop soundscapes Cobrah has repeatedly shown that she knows how to have fun and entertain her audience at the same time. On her debut album, she maintains her sex-positiveness while trying something new. “I love doing characters. I love making things up and being extreme – and I’m still doing that on this album – but I’m also peeling it all off and presenting my real self as a character”, said Cobrah upon the release of Torn.

On the album’s title track, ‘Torn’, first released in 2025, Cobrah shows a more pared-back version of herself. Her vulnerable lyrics are submerged within a chorus driven by a heavy, almost overwhelming electronic bassline, articulating what words alone cannot: the feeling of being completely (heart)broken. Dark in tone, this track is one of the most powerful on the album. The lyrics to songs like ‘Charming’, ‘Snow White’ and ‘Really Hard’ are similarly sentimental and melancholic but calmer in their electronic, floating soundscapes. “Cause I’ve tried to be sweet, tried to be real. I have tried to stay cool, I’d do that for you, it’s so stupid of me…”, she sings in ‘Charming’, once again revealing a softer, more sombre side of her artistry. In this way, she holds up a mirror to a very human experience – the feeling of being hopelessly in love. But within the virtual embrace of the album, she also asserts complexity and confidence, claiming that she’s “too good to be true, too good to you”.

‘Hit Girl’ creates a hypnotic state of mind as Cobrah shifts between high tempo and humming pauses, dissolving into one another. She remains a strong and powerful presence on her debut album Torn, and the more graphic, sensual, and arrogant catwalk tracks – ‘IG’, ‘Platinum‘ and ‘Unoriginal’ – only enhance this. ‘Dog‘ breaks the softness of the album for good: “It’s a ‘fuck me’ song, there’s no singing, it’s quite rough and graphic,” she says. Yet her femininity is no longer demonstrated through fetishistic themes alone. And that is perhaps one of the album’s greatest strengths. In our highly technologised world, there is a hunger for sincerity in its many forms, and Cobrah definitely answers that desire. Each track on Torn harbours unique surprises and embraces different moods through brilliantly composed electronic soundscapes that compel you to surrender and listen carefully to what Cobrah is urging you to feel.

Although part of a broader wave of innovative, sex-positive, and intense female and queer artists, Cobrah’s debut album creates a slightly softer universe of empowering electronic beats and escapist release for those who dare to join her. In an erotic, BDSM, underground sphere, she draws you in, claiming ownership of her desires and emotions alike. And this time, in a more stripped-back version than before. The album’s complexity between catwalk, hard ballroom-inflected beats and emotional tenderness makes it a work of art – one that will resonate just as powerfully in an underground club, the solitude of heartbreaks or cycling through the city feeling utterly uplifted”.

If you can get tickets to see COBRAH or are in a position to see her live later in the year, then it is something you definitely need to do. Torn is a spellbinding debut album that marks a new lyrical phase for this Swedish queen. A brilliant artist and producer, COBRAH is inspiring so many other people. I thinks he will be doing this for…

YEARS to come.

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FEATURE: Spotlight: Truthpaste

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Truthpaste

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A lot of love and praise…

is pouring in for the Manchester-formed five-piece, Truthpaste. Their debut E.P., I Don’t Know Either, was released in April. I will end with a review of the E.P. Before getting there, there are a few interviews that I want to include. I am starting out with an interview from last year. Still Listening Magazine chatted with Truthpaste last year around the release of their debut single, See You Around:

“For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

Esme: We are friends in a band called truthpaste.

Claire: and we met at uni in Manchester, but none of us are from Manchester.

James: It’s sometimes hard to say but essentially pop music with elements of folk and electronic.

Esme: We like to have fun with our music, it varies a lot. Sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's fast, sad, happy, angry, you name it.

Theo: We basically try to write catchy melodic songs -

Euan: Anthems of sorts.

You’ve built a strong presence in both Manchester and London, playing venues like The Windmill and Band on the Wall. How have those two music scenes shaped your identity as a band?

Esme: We had a really nice scene in Manchester with catbandcat, and a bunch of people in our year at uni  who played a lot of experimental music. There’s a lot of stuff going on in Manchester like the Curious Ear gigs and our friends that run Skribble as well and things going on at venues like the Carlton Club. Last year we lived in this huge house with a bunch of different musicians, people would be walking past our house hearing all this crazy folk and experimental music coming from inside

Euan: Being surrounded by weird and wonderful music for five years definitely had an affect on our music. I think people are a lot more free to make stuff in Manchester, which makes a difference, and we’ve really enjoyed playing alongside bands like ANOTHER; COUNTRY $$$$ over the last couple years.

Esme: London is different though, it’s so big. A bunch of us grew up in London, so when we moved back it was kinda rejoining a scene we used to be a part of in different musical projects

Theo: I used to be in a band called Rattletooth which played at the Windmill a bunch, so it’s been nice playing to and with familiar faces but now as Truthpaste

James: But yeah returning to London has more been exciting than daunting for sure

Truthpaste is described as a "movement of fun." What does that mean to you, and how do you make sure the sense of playfulness stays at the heart of what you do?

We don’t take ourselves too seriously and I think that’s a really important quality in art these days. we want to invite everyone in, sometimes music is a bit intimidating and we just want everything to have a truly good time.

Euan: We just try to have fun whatever we’re doing, whether we’re rehearsing, writing a new song or playing live.

Claire: All those little jokes you make in rehearsals whilst you're just being silly with you mates, some of those moments make it into our songs.

Esme: Being playful and unafraid to look ridiculous at times definitely helps us create more weird interesting stuff - I love throwing in the occasional random lyric that we’ve sung as a joke because sometimes I think that that’s just as meaningful as any poetic metaphor. We play around a lot with what we do genre wise, which is why sometimes we are hard to place, and along with switching round a bunch of instruments in our live performances we keep the audience on their toes and I think that makes the live show fun as you may say.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

Theo: Vagrant Stanzas Martin Simpson - used to listen to it in the car with my dad when I was like 12/13 then rediscovered it in lock down and everything I've done on guitar since then has been down stream from that. Also maybe Surfa Rosa - Pixies coz I've listened to it hundreds of times and it never gets old and I can do the washing up to it.

Claire: A Seat at the Table by Solange. It's important to me because I loved it at the time and i still love it. It's beautiful, and it reminds me to be resilient and resistant.

Esme: Marquee Moon by Television, it just sticks with me, just because all the interwoven parts are so beautiful and almost classical. I’d love to make music like that!”.

I am going to move to DORK and their interview with one of our most exciting young bands. Truthpaste do have a couple of London gigs coming in July, but I hope there are more dates in their diary soon. They are such a thrilling proposition. I have not seen them live myself, but it does seem like they are a truly memorable live act:

“We don't really do "one sound", but with debut EP 'I Don't Know Either', they're making a very convincing case for all of them at once”.

“Their first steps as Truthpaste feel fittingly hazy. "The first song we wrote together was 'See you around', I think," says Esme. "In my mind, it was 'Singing to You'," counters Euan. "Yeah, it was one of those two." What's clearer is how things have grown since. "It's fundamentally quite similar, but it will evolve more," says Euan, while Esme points to a shift in scale: "I think we're trying to do bigger sounds now, 'never gonna give' and 'bus song' are bigger sounds."

Their new EP brings together songs that have been part of their live set alongside newer, more full-throttle moments. "These are songs we've played since the beginning, so we're very ready for them to be out," Esme explains. "It's exciting, and it's a good kind of relief. Each song is very different, but it all comes together and feels right, and I guess that's what we're like as a band too."

Before any of that, though, there was the graft. Early Truthpaste gigs were "loads and loads of live shows in Manchester, mostly to all our friends at first and then suddenly not," says Esme. Theo pinpoints a turning point: "After we did a Tunes on the Terrace at Band On The Wall, it felt like we picked up because people we didn't know actually heard us." A modest milestone, but a meaningful one - nothing like the realisation that strangers are voluntarily paying attention.

From there, things moved quickly. "Then we found Josh at Memorials of Distinction and released 'see you around', and the rest is history," Esme says. That relationship would eventually lead to a wider partnership with Dirty Hit, though the band didn't immediately clock it happening. "Dirty Hit came to our show last year, and we all got along, but we didn't know it was happening," she explains. "Our manager kept it a secret from us for ages and told us in March." A surprise label signing reveal is arguably the best kind of admin.

Relocating from Manchester to London added another layer to the mix. "For a year half of us were still living in Manchester, so we had a long-distance band relationship which was hard," says Esme. "Last year we had to spend time perfecting the ones we had, but now we're mostly in the same place, we can write new stuff more easily, which is exciting. And yes, London has been very good to us indeed." Theo sums up the practical side with admirable brevity: "Practically, yeah."

Despite all the movement, the band aren't interested in settling into one fixed identity. "We've got our sound, but it's definitely changing," Esme says. "We're never going to lock ourselves into one thing." That philosophy is arguably their strongest asset: the freedom to follow an idea wherever it leads. As for expectations around the EP, Truthpaste aren't exactly setting traditional KPIs. Their main ambition? "To be used as frisbees." At least it's recyclable.

Looking further ahead, the band's long-term goals are similarly… specific. "Greece." Fair enough”.

Before getting to a review of I Don’t Know Either, I am keen to highlight a brief chat DIY had with Truthpaste. They got to know “London’s latest entrancing experimentalists”.  I only discovered the band a few weeks ago, but I have heard them played on some pretty influential radio stations. Their debut E.P. receiving a lot of acclaim. This is a quintet that you need to know about:

“Driven by the quintet’s diverse tastes, Truthpaste are an outfit who pull together folk, electronic, and orchestral motifs under one delightful and distinctive umbrella. Originally formed while at university in Manchester, the group’s early output came together in small house-share bedrooms. Encouraged by a local scene that embraced both their weird and more delicate inclinations, the band developed a playful, organic approach to songwriting that’s shaped debut EP ‘I Don’t Know Either’ - a project that balances off-kilter and intimate tracks with new focus on their live sound, all while never losing their warm, melodic core.

Ahead of their turn playing The Great Escape fest this weekend, we catch up with the band - made up of Esmé Lark (lead vocals, saxophone), Theo Murchie (guitar, vocals), Claire Sun (violin, vocals), Euan McNeill (bass, guitar, vocals), and James Ballarò (synth, lapsteel, guitar) - for a very Serious And Professional chat about the story so far…

Describe your music to us in the form of a haiku.

Do you like this song? 

Listen to it online then 

Kind of weird if not

What are the stories behind your first instruments?

Esme: I started playing saxophone when I was 10, I wanted to play the harp but I wasn’t allowed because it was too big. 

Theo: My parents bought me bongos for my first birthday.

Euan: I got piano lessons as a kid, not much of a story to it… 

James: I had piano lessons, I also had guitar lessons for two months and then the teacher stopped coming and I never saw him again.

You formed at uni in Manchester - tell us a bit more about those early days. 

Theo: I moved to Manchester to make myself a star - it’s always referred to as the city of dreams. 

Esme: Theo went to Manchester because I went to Manchester. 

Euan: I came to Manchester because it had a reputation for cool music and bands.

Esme: I wanted to be in Joy Division… But really, it was really nice; we had lots of very talented friends and the first year we were all trapped in our rooms making weird computer songs, and then everyone emerged and it was a rebirth - lots of bands making good music.

Did you have any fave local venues? 

James: Fuel?

Esme: Fuel was the first venue for everyone, it’s very tiny and hot so 20 people constitutes a whole crowd and makes you feel quite famous. 

Euan: Peer Hat, Castle Hotel… 

Esme: We love White Hotel - we never played there, but maybe one day we will”.

I’ll end with a review of I Don’t Know Either from Still Listening. It is definitely among the very best E.P.s of this year. It will be interesting to see where Truthpaste head from here. Make sure that you connect with Truthpaste on social media. A band fully worthy of all the hype they have received:

“I discovered Truthpaste by catching their set before The Orchestra (For Now) at Scala, and as much as I adore TO(FN), the cataclysmic clunkiness of Joe Scarisbrick's screamed vocals made me yearn for the twee melodies and plucked guitar of Truthpaste, nought but an hour prior. They have been my go-to band since then; and most of their gigs are still a tenner or less — so please see them while they are still relatively unknown! Get in on the ground floor of the Truthpaste skyscraper!

This new batch of songs are all taken from their live shows, and are recorded in a neatly faithful way, which is a testament to how clean their shows sound. They always seem to know how to make their tunes fit within a room. Often with big, brash modern bands, everything just sorts of melts together into clatter, but the range of tones within their works are too broad: James Ballarò's sharp drumbeats, Theo Murchie's plucked guitar, Esmé Lark's utterly wonderful vocals and sax, rounded out by Claire Sun and Euan McNeill on violin and bass respectively.

‘Never Gonna Give’ is a live set staple, beginning with really hypnotic swirls of synth punctuated by Lark's vocals. Truthpaste's lyrics are on the more abstract side, sure, but still show characters in their little emotional battles, "I'm never gonna give you what you want" goes the repeating cry in ‘Never Gonna Give’. Their lyrics paint little charming portraits, but it's hard to universalise them or get specific without being abstruse — think of "We wrote this verse in Nathan's shed", it seems like a fun little in-joke, but doesn't really connect to anything. But perhaps that's the point!

I seriously enjoy the sense of whimsy that Truthpaste bring to the table in every aspect of their music. They are very good at being fun, which most bands are not. They seem like people who you might enjoy hanging out with, as opposed to the usual self-styled edgy south-London scene adjacent artists — which they might be mildly taking the piss out of in their new music video which accompanies ‘Never Gonna Give’.

Truthpaste are a band you will approach with a smile rather than a vacant expression. Even their names seem personable in a kids' picture-book way! Lark, Sun, Murchie — it's all very quaint. It's refreshing in an age that was definitely dominated by seriousness and cynicism, especially amongst bands who could never strive for anything above violence and takedowns. Reminds me of "No More Sprechgesang" by The Itch...

‘Bus Song’ has been out for a while now, and is a really lovely song with an excellently-edited music video to accompany it. It builds and has a lovely call-and-response deal between Murchie and Lark that works so well, and the lyrics make me think that they're one of the first bands of the post-Windmill scene that write lyrics about being older than their mid-20s. Even Squid (who are now in their mid-30s) haven't particularly grown up from their youthful abstractness, and to cross the pond, Car Seat Headrest's Will Toledo is penning songs like he's still in college.

And the final song, ‘Friendship Is The Truth’, is a little more subdued but definitely still Truthpaste. It's slow but very poignant, and showcases Sun's subtle violin at its best. The scope of Friendship makes me wonder if they're going to attempt to produce a Long Song — one of those 12-minute crescendocore epics that every modern musician eventually decides that it is their god-given right to create. (eg. The Magician, Basketball Shoes, Heath)

Truthpaste are excellent, and still working on new songs that always sound sparky and bright, live or not. Truth to Truthpaste!”.

I am going to wrap up now. Truthpaste are definitely going on to big things. They are a band you instantly connect with and know that they’ll have many years in the industry. Even though these are the early days, you can tell they will be playing big stages soon. I Don’t Know Either is a huge statement from…

A distinct and exceptional band.

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FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Tam Lin (The Empty Bullring)/My Mother (A Coral Room)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Angelo Deligio

 

Tam Lin (The Empty Bullring)/My Mother (A Coral Room)

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THIS part of my Kate Bush series…

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

pulls together two that were released twenty-five years apart. One an underrated and virtually unknown B-side of a chart success. The other is a highlight of Bush’s 2005 masterpiece, Aerial. I still have enough ammunition to include all of her studio albums (bar Director’s Cut). The Kick Inside offers up a few more characters than most, though there are B-sides, early demos and rare songs that have interesting characters in them. I am going to get to My Mother in the second half. Bush’s mother was mentioned in the Aerial track, A Coral Room. In other parts, Kate Bush’s brothers and father will be discussed. This is one of at least a couple of songs where Kate Bush’s mother is mentioned, though not by name. She is mentioned in Moments of Pleasure from The Red Shoes. There are quite a few characters/people in that song, so I am including her here. First off, I am coming to a song that was a B-side of Breathing in 1980. That was the first single from Never for Ever. The Empty Bullring is a fascinating song. I am going to lead off with Kate Bush revealing the inspiration behind the song:

“This is a song that I first had ideas for quite a few years ago. It is really about someone who is in love with someone who is obsessed with something that is pretty futile. They can’t get the person to accept the fact that it is a futile obsession. To put it into a sort of story form: he became a matador, and got gored so badly that he couldn’t carry on. But at night he climbs out of the window and runs off to a bullring, when there is no-one there, and he fights a bull that doesn’t exist. (…) Tamlain is a girl in a traditional fairy story, who is locked up in an ivory tower.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1983”.

There is quite a bit to unpick before we come to the character I want to focus on, Tam Lin. It was a big decision for Kate Bush to put an original song as a B-side. Until then, it was album tracks for the most part that formed the B-sides. That made sense. There was limited scope regarding how many tracks could be released as singles. So putting other album tracks as B-sides meant that buyers could discover these songs that were not single-worthy but worth listening to. In many cases, I felt like too few singles were released from albums. By the time we get to Kate Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever, that decision to put a new or unknown song as the B-side to the first single. In terms of comparisons, there is not a great connection between Breathing and The Empty Bullring. Kate Bush produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly. It may have been the case previously that EMI wanted the B-sides to feature album tracks. Bush keeping her powder dry and not wasting new songs. It also meant more of an album could be put out. By 1980, things had changed in her career. She was a massive success. Never for Ever would reach number one in the U.K. I shall come to a feature that notes how The Empty Bullring is a minor track. I do feel like it is a hidden treasure because it is so fascinating. That idea of focusing on a matador and a bullring. It is a world away from that you might expect. I am not focusing on the matador. Kate Bush became a vegetarian in the 1970s and is someone who hated the idea of any cruelty to animals. The notion of bullfighting would have horrified her. The Under the Ivy fanzine appeared in 1985 and 1986: “Rather curiously they presented the fanzine as “a protest against the traditional Kate crawly-bum-lick crowd”. The fanzine was meant as a means of “enjoying ourselves at the expense of the terminally over-serious Lionhearts with their vegetarian and animal rights fixations”. It does seem like there was a perception that many of Bush’s fans were too woke or hippy-dippy. That animal rights was something that was to be written off. However, I do feel like The Empty Bullring is intriguing on multiple levels. You have the idea of violence against animals and why someone would risk their lives to bait an animal.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images (via The Guardian)

Many bullfighters are killed. I have no sympathy with any of them, as this celebrated form of animal cruelty should be banned. This song I suppose takes us to Spain. One of the few countries in the world where this idiotic practice continues. You can imagine how a woman who lives with a bullfighter would cause her sleepless nights. That psychological aspect. Is bullfighting about someone who loves to see animals suffer? Is it the adrenaline rush? Is there some sort of idea that a noble sport is being upheld? In terms of contemporary popularity and perception around bullfighting, it is this ‘sport’ that generates very little public interest. Last October, EL PAÍS highlighted a hot political conversation that is dividing public opinion in Spain:

“77% of the Spanish population rejects bullfighting, according to a report published in February by the BBVA Foundation. On October 7 it lost, however, to another growing movement within the country: the alleged defense of the Spanish soul.

Juan Antonio Carrillo Donaire, a professor of administrative law at the University of Seville and bullfight aficionado, ventures into less-explored territory: the one that lies between the two trenches. “The worst thing that has happened to the fiesta is this shift toward opposing political positions. Within the bullfighting world itself, there is a pernicious approach. Their protection strategy is flawed: I don’t believe bullfighting is part of our national heritage, but rather a specific cultural manifestation rooted in certain Spanish territories. A person from [the northern regions of] Cantabria or Galicia will not identify with it, and they may even experience it as an attack [on their own identity].”

A survey published on October 8 by the Ministry of Culture provides figures to support this argument. Attendance at least once a year at events involving bulls remains at a mere 8% — and only 5.9% at actual bullfights — the same as it was before the Covid pandemic. However, this figure rises to 30% in the regions of Navarre and La Rioja. The age groups with the highest attendance figures are the 45-to-64 bracket, and most especially the 15-to-24 group. Despite the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommending that Spain prohibit attendance by under-18s, admission is still permitted for anyone aged 14 and older.

Bullfighting is the cultural activity that generates the most opposition: 68% of Spaniards say their interest in it lies between 0 and 2 (on a scale of 10), a percentage that exceeds 80% in the regions of Catalonia, Galicia and the Canary Islands”.

There is that aspect regarding someone fixated. I do feel like there was a slightly political motivation. Breathing is about a foetus who is sort of protected by the womb when there is nuclear threat and horror outside. Though the smoke and poison gets in. “breathing her nicotine”, as it is said. This idea that salvation and peace is lost: “We've lost our chance/We're the first and last”. The Empty Bullring is also about violence and something barbaric. I don’t think that her sympathies lie with the matador. Though I like this notion that he gets gored and is near death but still has that thrill of the chase. Going to an empty bullring and hallucinating the animal. It is a really compelling idea that has largely been overlooked. I will mention my selected character soon.

Before that, this is what Dreams of Orgonon had to say about a B-side that I feel is very strong and compels deeper investigation and discussion. A track that many Kate Bush fans do not know about, notable because it was the first non-L.P. B-side:

“An ephemeral B-side, “The Empty Bullring” tells its story in under 2-and-a-half minutes. A short tragedy, the song takes the shape of a lament by a matador’s lover. The song’s opening line, “disappears through a window/out of my mind/trying to keep him at home,” is a choppy summation of Bush’s POV, but it’s followed by an intriguing literary reference: “leaving me here/like Tam Lin in her tower,” an homage to the Scottish legend of Tam Lin. While Bush’s recollection of this story is off — Tam Lin is a male character who isn’t actually trapped in a tower — and as a result makes the allusion incoherent, it’s still a marker of the song’s cultural literacy. The matador goes “out into Rome,” rather than Spain, the world’s bullfighting capital alongside Mexico. There’s some historical accuracy here — ancient Rome was known for its bullfighting. Yet the juxtaposition of Scottish folklore and the Roman Empire makes for a weird hodgepodge of settings, making history a backdrop on which continuous cultural battles are fought rather than a linear tradition of events.

So what battle is fought in “The Empty Bullring?” Obviously there’s the song’s focal image of a bullfight, which the matador loses: “the throw of the rose/it’s all you lived for/but you’ve lost it all.” The matador has a fatal obsession with “taking [his] red cloak/to regain something,” perhaps a sense of masculine pride which he’s been deprived of all his life. Rather than finding fulfillment at home in his relationship, he’s enraptured by “glory and gore,” seeking out a destructive lifestyle that took him away from the pleasures of life. Bush ends the short song with the bullfighting tragic hero losing everything, having prioritized a momentary victory over long-term happiness.

“The Empty Bullring” is most notable for being the first non-LP Kate Bush song to back one of her singles. It’s a minimalist track, with no instrumentation apart from Bush’s piano playing and little treatment in terms of production. Compared to its despairing A-side “Army Dreamers,” the track is considerably smaller in its scope, carrying a classicist tragedy on a catchy major third-minor third riff. Constructed from bits of other songs, “The Empty Bullring” does what its protagonist never could, accepting its place as a perfectly acceptable minor work in the Bush canon”.

It is interesting that Kate Bush takes us to Rome. This historic setting for bullfighting rather than Spain or Mexico. Rather than be political and note the futility and cruelty of bullfighting in Spain and Mexico, Bush detached herself from that argument slightly. Even so, we get this sort of gladiatorial approach. Rather than a matador, more of an ancient fighter. Risking his life and love for some futile victory.

In the lyric, Kate Bush sings “Leaving me here/Like Tam Lin in her Tower/You are going/To the empty bullring/Taking your red cloak/To regain something”. There is sort of a mix of older Rome and contemporary Spain in this song. In terms of what was in Bush’s mind. She sets the song in Rome, though I always envisaged the bullfighter as a more modern matador. Tam Lin is a legendary figure from Scottish folklore, best known as a mortal man who was kidnapped and enchanted by the Queen of Fairies. He is the subject of The Ballad of Tam Lin (Child Ballad 39), which tells the story of his lover Janet, who rescues him from fairy captivity through immense bravery. I instantly think of The Kick Inside’s title track. The track was inspired by an eighteenth-century English and Irish murder ballad, The Ballad of Lucy Wan (or Lizie Wan). Bush took the core scenario of the folk song and completely flipped the narrative to give the female protagonist agency. It seems to be the case with The Empty Bullring. Comparing the ill-fated or lonely woman to this legendary figure. If there is some confusion or the genders are switched, I do like how there again is some agency given to the woman. She rightly seen as the affected and mistreated party. The man is not glorified or seen as noble and right. Instead, we get this image of a woman in Rome like someone captured and kept in an ivory tower. If you do not like the song because of its musical slightness, I feel the lyrics  compel offshoots and spotlight. How it can draw you to literature and poetry. Bush was no stranger to this. In terms of getting inspiration from text and a ballad. This blog provides more depth to a character from an under-played Kate Bush song that we should discuss more:

“In the Ballad of Tam Lin, young women are told to avoid the beautiful woods of Carterhaugh. It is said that these woods are guarded by a fairy knight who extracts a toll from any maiden foolish enough to wander there. This may be a ring, an item of clothing, or even the woman’s virginity.

Despite these warnings the young Janet decides to visit the woods. While travelling through them, she plucks a rose and Tam Lin appears. The fairy asks Janet why she has come to his woods. Janet responds that Carterhaugh had been gifted to her by her father, and that she would come and go as she pleased. The two spoke for a time and presumably had sex. Though Janet is often described as having been seduced by Tam Lin, it is just as often implied that she knew exactly what she was doing. She was presumably aware of the warnings about Carterhaugh and chose to travel there anyway – significantly, Janet is also described as wearing a green dress – a colour said to be the favourite of the fair folk.

After her liaison with Tam Lin, Janet returns home, and shortly begins showing signs of pregnancy. When her father confronts her about this, Janet refuses to name the father, saying only that it was a fairy knight. She then returns to Carterhaugh and meets again with Tam Lin – in some versions she goes to Carterhaugh to gather herbs or flowers, which is sometimes believed to indicate that Janet intended to abort the child. When Tam Lin appears, the two speak again. Tam Lin reveals that he is not actually a member of the fair folk, but instead a human stolen by the fairy queen. He had one day been riding his horse with his grandfather when he fell, the fairy queen caught him and carried him away.

Tam Lin also reveals that he is in fear for his life. Every seven years, the fairy folk must pay a tithe to hell – one of their own people. Tam Lin believes that this year, he himself who will be chosen and begs Janet to help him. He tells her that the tithe will be paid on Halloween, and a cohort of fairies will ride through on their way to pay it. Jane will recognise Tam Lin from his white horse, and pull him from the saddle. Tam Lin tells her it will be difficult, as the queen will transform him into all manner of shapes to force Janet to let go, but that she must not. If Janet is able to successfully hold on to Tam Lin, he will be freed”.

I am coming to the second side and A Coral Room. A gem from 2005’s Aerial, A Coral Room is a song that takes my mind in different directions. I will come to Kate Bush’s late mother, Hannah. She died in 1992. Still in Bush’s mind when she wrote this beautiful song, this is what Bush said when speaking with Front Row in promotion of Aerial: “There was a little brown jug actually, yeah. The song is really about the passing of time. I like the idea of coming from this big expansive, outside world of sea and cities into, again, this very small space where, er, it’s talking about a memory of my mother and this little brown jug. I always remember hearing years ago this thing about a sort of Zen approach to life, where, you would hold something in your hand, knowing that, at some point, it would break, it would no longer be there”. I want to talk about the importance of her mother and how she featured through Kate Bush’s work. I do like that idea that she is immortalised in a couple of songs. On Moments of Pleasure, the lines that stand out are these: “And I can hear my mother saying/"Every old sock meets an old shoe"/Ain't that a great saying?”. That homespun and humble saying that stuck with Kate Bush. She reapproached the song when she recorded Director’s Cut. Moments of Pleasure is featured on this 2011 album. How Hannah Bush was very much in her daughter’s mind. In one of Ariel’s standout tracks, we get this emotional moment. Bush was a new mother in 2005. Bertie was born in 1998. She was thinking of her own mother and this little brown jug. How this, perhaps, insignificant brown jug holds so many memories. For A Coral Room, there is a storm and hidden civilisation in this brown jug. “My mother and her little brown jug/It held her milk/And now it holds our memories/I can hear her singing/“Little brown jug don’t I love thee”/“Little brown jug don’t I love thee”/Ho ho ho, hee hee hee”. I imagined a young Kate Bush being served milk from this brown jug. Being kept all of these years, it is one of the last physical objects that connects her to her mother. If it breaks, then that is it. In holding to this brown jug, this is Bush still holding to her mother. I wonder if this brown jug is still intact and whether it was pride of place in the Bush kitchen when she was making Aerial?

What I love about A Coral Room is that there is this mix of the past, present and historical. Fantasy and an amazing aquatic world. This brown jug is much more than that. I don’t know if it true, but Bush talks about the brown jug in the song. How it breaks: “I hear her laughing/She is standing in the kitchen/As we come in the back door/See it fall/See it fall/Oh little spider climbing out of a broken jug/And the pieces will lay there a while”. An older Kate Bush thinking about her mother and maybe casting her mind back to childhood. Vision of her mum laughing as the children ran in. Kate with John and Paddy. Her brothers. The idea the jug is broken and a spider coming out. Bush not wanting to pick up the pieces, as that will mean that her mother might be gone. She may have to throw the jug in the bin. There is this fascinating structure on A Coral Room. The end, Bush sings this, somewhat gnomically: “In a house draped in net/In a room filled with coral/Sails at the window/Forests of masts”. The broken jug lies on the floor of this house. Like all the water has flowed out and is flooding this housed. Drowning memories and her past. The opening of the song is this: “There’s a city, draped in net/Fisherman net/And in the half light, in the half-light/It looks like every tower/Is covered in webs/Moving and glistening and rocking/Its babies in rhythm/As the spider of time is climbing/Over the ruins”. This romantic and historical notion of this spider crawling over the ruins. Then, the spider returns as the jug is dropped near the end. It is almost like a poem that compels you to explore the Linea and their meaning. I sort of feel like this brown jug is one that is filled with water and has this civilisation in. Rather than it being a fantasy, Kate Bush using it as a metaphor for memories and the life she had when he mother was alive. Rather than being literal and discussing childhood and what the jug symbolised, she brings in fantasy. It may seem boring or one-dimensional, so we get these lines: “There were hundreds of people living here/Sails at the windows/And the planes came crashing down/And many a pilot drowned/And the speed boats flying above/Put your hand over the side of the boat/What do you feel?”. I love this underwater world and this carnage. I am fascinated by the images and psychology. What Kate Bush was considering when she wrote about boats and planes. Is A Coral Room Kate Bush’s most poetic song? In terms of it being more like poetry than a song, it is a masterpiece that I would love to have seen a video of.

Perhaps an animated video directed by Kate Bush, it would be emotional, fantastical and dreamy seeing her bring this song to life. It is a pity that this track was omitted as a potential single. King of the Mountain is the one and only single from Aerial. I do feel like Mrs. Bartolozzi and A Coral Room would have made great singles. I have not seen any especially engaging fan videos of this song. I hope one day, Bush will allow creative and  directors to make videos of songs not released as singles. An animated version of Hannah Bush laughing and a young Kate Bush. It would definitely be an effecting moment! Of course, Bush might have a double intent when it comes to coral. The idea of coral in a reef. If thinking of a soft coral, “These do not build reefs. Instead, they resemble plants or trees, growing flexible, woody-like skeletons for support and fleshy tissues for movement”. Using the soft coral as a metaphor for motherly protection and support perhaps. Although Bush has used colours in her songs and given them significance. Symphony in Blue from 1978’s Lionheart references blue and red. Emotions and psychological connections. Hannah Bush worked as a staff nurse at Epsom Grove Hospital, where she met Robert Bush. He was a doctor. I mention this, as the colour coral, in some cultures, is tied to health and protection. Not a coincidence that A Coral Room mentions her mother, the former nurse. This interesting feature tells us of the meaning, symbolism and characteristics of the colour coral:

“The coral colour carries rich and varied meanings. Its warm, natural tones make it a symbol of vitality and energy, qualities that evoke a sense of renewal and dynamism. It is the colour of creativity and communication: coral stimulates expression and dialogue, making it ideal for environments where collaboration and socialization are encouraged.

In many cultures, coral is also associated with protection and health, thanks to its roots in the marine world. In particular, in Eastern cultures, coral is considered a symbol of prosperity and good luck, as well as an amulet against illness.

From a psychological standpoint, coral has the power to influence our mood: it stimulates optimism, reduces stress, and fosters a positive and dynamic atmosphere. It is a colour that evokes joy, warmth, and hospitality, making it the ideal choice for creating welcoming and stimulating environments”.

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

I will end with why A Coral Room has huge personal significance for one person. I am not sure how close to 9/11 A Coral Room was written, but it was in her mind. That idea of a lost city. If we feel in A Coral Room, it is about an ancient city where planes and ships crash ands sink, it touches on the tragedy that befell New York in 2001. The most seismic event in my life in terms of I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. The devastation and massive loss of life sitting alongside the personal and still-raw loss of her mother. How poetically Kate Bush talks of both events. One is a universal tragedy; the other a painful personal loss. Sputnikmusic reviewed Aerial and, in addition to agreeing with me that A Coral Room is one of Kate Bush’s best songs and should have been a single, they make some compelling observations: “To begin with, she speaks in an abstract way, describing an abandoned city, before apparently touching briefly on the events of 9/11. Then, it gives way to Kate speaking as directly as she ever has in her entire career. The words 'my mother' appear to hang, haunting, in the air for just a moment, as the piano stops in sympathetic mourning. But then, as soon as the moment appears, it goes, as Kate forges on. 'I hear her laughing/She is standing in the kitchen/As we come in the back door...' This has got to be Kate's most open, confessional song ever, highlighted by the music (just her and her piano - it may have come about 14 years after Little Earthquakes, but this track highlights just what an influence Kate was on Tori Amos)”. Kate Bush considered not including A Coral Room on the album. What a loss it would have been for fans not to hear this song. Though Bush felt it was too personal and something that was still so painful to her. So brave that she did release the song. How haunting the song is. An abandoned and dusty city flattened and torn apart by unspeakable horror. And the heartbreak of this brown jug and her late mother. Almost the last piece of her beloved mother smashing on the floor. Graeme Thomson notes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush how his two highlights were unadorned piano tracks. Both connect to motherhood. A Coral Room and that domestic brown jug signifying a part of her mother. Mrs. Bartolozzi is a fictional character, though one that ties to motherhood. A woman doing laundry as mud is traipsed in. I see Bush or her mother as the heroine in the song. Both raw and unlayered. To get the biggest emotional hit.

Graeme Thomson writes how there was no safety net on A Coral Room. No vocal backing to hide any cracks or emotional wobbles. No instruments apart from the piano. This was Kate Bush, as a new mother, singing about her departed mother. Hannah Bush died just over thirteen years before Aerial was released. The Red Shoes released twelve years before Aerial came out. The Red Shoes contains Moments of Pleasure, where Bush sings of her mother. Even though there was this passing of time, it was evident how meaningful her mother still was. How important she always was. In terms of the hospitality she provided when musicians would come to East Wickham Farm. Bush’s crew and musicians hosted by this smiling and lively Irish mother. The love that she gave to Kate Bush and how empowering that was. A strong woman that the young Kate Bush looked up to. That kindness, generosity, charitable side; forgiveness and seeing the best in people, the positivity. That came largely from her mother. Thomson observes how A Coral Room takes us to 44 Wickham Road (In London), at a “time of relative innocence”. A location where Bush wrote, among other songs, Wuthering Heights. An early song, Atlantis, also mentions coral. A blue city “covered in coral and coral”. Making a huge emotional and quality leap on A Coral Room, this song is “an oblique and impressionistic” piece. It is one that “cut far deeper than the more formal pitch of ‘Moments Of Pleasure’, which covered similar ground in much more awkward shoes”. The final thought about this song hit the nail on the head, and it is a big reason why it is so easy to pick apart the lines and create interpretations: “She had once again perfected the craft of saying without telling”. I want to end with a 2023 article from The Guardian. Darren Hayes revealed how A Coral Room gave him a roadmap for his own life and cracked him wide open. The former Savage Garden lead shared personal struggles and a song that no doubt resonated with others. Thank God Kate Bush wisely and bravely kept this album on Aerial, as it has saved and spoken to so many people:

“The seventh song on the album, A Coral Room, really spoke to me when I heard it. In 100 years’ time someone will study that song and say: “She’s Keats, she’s incredible.” There are so many layers of metaphor in the song. She paints this picture of a sleepy seaside town with fishermen’s nets draped over tiny boats, almost like a spider web. And then she takes a step backward and describes that spider web as being the fabric of time itself. She eventually opens up about the loss of her mother, but it’s in such a gentle way; there’s such a reverence to the way she sings these two words – “my mother”. She then sings about this one object – a brown jug – that her mother kept in a room full of treasures, and gave her mother so much joy, that she would sing to it: “Little brown jug don’t I love thee.”

There’s this piano riff that sounds like time slowing down, and Kate describes the jug falling and breaking. The first time I heard it my heart ripped out of my chest because I realised this was her mother falling ill, or leaving this plane. Then she brings back this metaphor about the spider, and now it’s something terrifying because a little spider crawls out of the broken jug. And I think about that association we have when life leaves something and insects move in. I’m reminded of when I was a little boy in Queensland, I had an ancient pet cockatoo named Bobo who used to swear like a trooper and had no feathers. He died in the middle of the night and I remember finding him fallen, and cockroaches and ants had already come in and started the process of decomposition.

It just speaks to me about how precious time is, and how precious the tiny moments are that we have with each other. I think so much about my own mother who I’m very close to – she lives in Brisbane and I live in Los Angeles – and I see my own life in A Coral Room’s cinematic vignettes.

IN THIS PHOTO: Darren Hayes/PHOTO CREDIT: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

A Coral Room is one of many songs on Aerial where Kate really looks at motherhood – both her relationship to her own mother and her experience of having her child, Bertie, and how that changed her. It profoundly touches me.

In the 11-year break I had between albums – 2011’s Secret Codes and Battleships and 2022’s Homosexual – my self-esteem took such a hit because my identity was so wrapped up in my vocation. But I really needed to have a decade or more of experiences of life – or maybe just find friends who weren’t on the payroll. In that time I got to have this incredible parenting experience – I became a godfather to the daughter of one of my best friends who I met while studying at an improv school in LA. One day a week, for the first three years of her life, I got to co-parent. That human experience really helped me heal a lot of childhood stuff.

When I started in Savage Garden I had this gaping hole in me which was the huge trauma of my own childhood. I really was escaping, and it was wonderful because I got to become someone else, but I was never comfortable with fame and attention. Having hits was an amazing accident that’s given me an incredible life. But I’m not really made for that. Offstage I feel very fragile. I’m a sensitive person. So Kate Bush’s career has been a real roadmap for me in terms of having hiatuses. She made me realise that I can do things my way and the right people will wait and be patient.

There’s something about Kate Bush that’s very Gaia, very Mother Earth. She has an inviting, inclusive energy and she embodies everything that it means to be feminine in a way that is incredibly empowering. And she proves it’s possible to do everything on your own terms without ever compromising”.

That thing about how Bush’s most personal songs can be all-inclusive and goes beyond the individual. Many modern artists and modern Pop is about a single event or a very personal pain or annoyance that some can distantly connect with. In an empty or less deep way. Bush opening her heart and imagination to create this song where her mother and this brown jug are in her memory, it goes far beyond Aerial. Many, including Darren Hayes, found strength and significance in A Coral Room. Perhaps releasing it as a single would have been too painful and exposing for Bush, though it is the one song I wish she had. A masterpiece from a genius double album, it takes us to the end of this feature. In the next part, I think you will be pleased with my song choices, as they will highlight some discussion-worthy characters that will take me in all sorts of places. An ill-fated bullfighter in Rome that we can link to a Scottish ballad and folk story, to Kate Bush’s mother and sunken, fallen civilisations and cities. The sheer range of her imagination and breadth of her songwriting genius knows no bounds. Two prime examples from…

THIS extraordinary woman.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Sienna Spiro

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

 

Sienna Spiro

__________

ALTHOUGH I did spotlight…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Sienna Spiro played London’s The Roundhouse on 19th May, 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Ben McQuaide

Sienna Spiro last year, I do feel it is worth reproaching one of modern music’s greats. Someone who is among the greatest voices we have. Her debut album, Visitor, is released on 3rd July. I want to bring in some recent interviews with her, plus a live review. Sienna Spiro has some big dates ahead. She plays Wembley Stadium on 6th June. The twenty-year-old from London artist went viral on TikTok with covers in 2021. Spiro reached new audiences with songs like Maybe and her debut E.P., Sink Now, Swim Later. I will finish with a recent live review. However, before then, there are some interviews from this year worth covering. No surprise that this artist is getting so much excitement. I will start out with the Los Angeles Times, and their interview with the voice of a generation. Hours before starting her U.S. headline tour, we get some insights into the world of Sienna Spiro. An artist amazed that she was so far from home but adored by hundreds and thousands of people who have never met her. Thues adoring U.S. audience:

“At 16 she enrolled at East London Arts and Music, a performing arts academy she describes as “the up-and-coming version” of London’s prestigious BRIT School, whose alumni include Adele and Winehouse. Her academic career didn’t last long, though: On her first day of classes she posted a TikTok of herself covering Finneas’ song “Break My Heart Again” that triggered a wave of interest from various record-industry types; soon she dropped out and began regularly traveling to Los Angeles to work on music.

Today Spiro says she has a “love-hate relationship” with the town where she estimates she spends half her time. “I’m very English, and I think something about English people is our honesty — you don’t really have to guess what people are saying. What was shocking to me when I came here was that people didn’t say what they meant.

“I was very, very lonely, and it was hard to make music when you feel that,” she adds. “I make sad music, but it’s hard to be a teenager and be away from your family and your friends and be in a place where you kind of have to play pretend being an adult.”

Did suffering among the two-faced liars of L.A. ever lead her to question her commitment to music?

“No. It just made me question how I was doing it. And not everyone’s a two-faced liar. There are some good ones out there.”

Was she ever at risk of becoming a two-faced liar herself?

“Oh, I’m too English for that,” she says. “If I did that, I’d get a slap.”

Spiro started releasing singles in 2024 and quickly signed a deal with Capitol Records; last year she opened for Teddy Swims on the road and turned heads with “You Stole the Show,” a luxuriously gloomy slow jam with echoes of Adele’s “Skyfall.”

For “Die on This Hill,” which she wrote with Michael Pollack and Omer Fedi (both of whom went on to produce the song with Blake Slatkin), Spiro wanted to capture the feeling of “when you go above and beyond just to feel something reciprocated back from someone,” she says. But if the writing came quickly, the recording didn’t: Spiro jokes that she cut “900 different versions” of the song, including one she says sounded like Silk Sonic and another that sounded like Lauryn Hill.

“I was desperate for something up-tempo,” she says, given that virtually everything she’d dropped so far had been a ballad. Yet Fedi pushed her to cut the tune live with just her on vocals and Pollack on piano. They did four takes, according to the producer, one of which forms the basis of the record that eventually came out.

“Very old-school, very human,” Fedi says of the process. “Maybe I’m corny but with Sienna, less is really more. Her voice is so special, so big and upfront, that you just want to put a giant flashlight on it and let it shine.”

In early January, Spiro gave a bravura performance of “Die on This Hill” on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show; one clip on TikTok has been viewed more than 70 million times. For that appearance, she wore a retro mini dress printed with an old photo of Johnny Carson behind his desk; for a recent performance in the BBC’s Live Lounge, she wore a different dress showing the faces of the four Beatles.

On stage at the Troubadour, her dress features images of the Chateau Marmont and the Capitol Records tower — a bit of setup, she says, for her next single, “The Visitor,” which is due March 13. Spiro has been slowly assembling her debut album for the past two years, but with headlining concerts to play, she’s reaching back for some of her oldies from 2024.

Some, not all.

“To be real with you, some of my early stuff wasn’t the most authentic,” she says as her drummer starts thwacking a snare during sound check. “I was trying to be someone else because I really wasn’t comfortable with myself”.

I do want to go all thew way back to January, as there is a really interesting Music Week spotlight. Making confessional Pop that is striking a chord with so many people, it is no wonder that there is this huge demand for her. Upcoming dates in Wembley will see her playing to a home crowd. Adoring fans showing their love and support to Sienna Spiro. She is one of our most important young artist. I am looking forward to listening to Visitor on 3rd July:

“Instead, her formative musical influences came from the extensive record collection belonging to her father.

“My dad is a huge fan of soul and jazz,” she says, listing the likes of Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye and Teddy Pendergrass. “But I was always drawn to a lot of the female vocalists in his collection like Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and Sarah Vaughan.”

Another significant moment in her musical development came when she got her hands on an iPod Touch.

“My cousin downloaded some songs for me and I listened to them back to back, everyday: Somewhere Over The Rainbow, a song by Michael Jackson and Set Fire To The Rain by Adele.”

In fact, the Tottenham-born superstar’s multiple platinum album 21 proved a creative touchstone for Spiro.

“I was amazed that you could do something like that,” she says. “It was a vocal-driven pop album, but it had so much of a soul influence to it. I was surprised that mainstream music could sound like that.”

Music provided much needed solace during her time at school which she describes as “terrible”.

“I hated it and I was so miserable,” she adds.

This was partly due to her struggles with ADHD and autism, which were undiagnosed at the time.

“There were so many things where I was like, ‘Fuck, why can’t I do this properly?’” she explains. “My handwriting would always change and never look the same twice. It made me feel so insecure. It was only later that I found out it was a symptom of ADHD.”

Spiro goes on to say that discovering retrospectively that she was on the spectrum explained so much.

“I now look at being neurodivergent as having a superpower,” she reflects. “It allows me to do all this stuff creatively.”

After her GCSEs, Spiro quit school and, on the sly, sent an application off to the East London Arts & Music (ELAM) academy.

“I didn’t tell my parents I was applying,” she notes.

Still, they were supportive.

“They had a bit of trust in me,” she says. “I’m a very stubborn person and I’m going to do what I’m going to do. They knew that saying no would not go down very well.”

She found out that she was on the waiting list to get in a week before the course was due to begin.

“I was at Reading Festival and I emailed everyone at [ELAM] with a list of reasons why I needed to go there,” she smiles. “I think I bothered them so much that they let me in!”

Her strong pull towards ELAM – whose alumni include members of FLO and Girli – was vindicated: she finally felt like she was a part of something (“It was amazing to finally find like-minded people”).

It was also here where she met her manager, Miriam Maslin, of Method Music.

“Sienna’s had a great, close-knit team backing her right from the start,” Maslin tells Music Week. “The key to her success so far has been in the culmination of hard work, drive and talent. We’re incredibly excited for her to write her first album and look forward to an even stronger year ahead.”

Spiro appreciates the strength of their bond.

“There are so many times she could have left and she didn’t,” she says. “Miriam’s really my teammate.”

The then 16-year-old had already begun putting clips of herself singing online. The early performances of a blonde Spiro – belting out tracks by the likes of Joy Crookes and Drake while sitting on the floor of her emerald-tiled bathroom – show her natural talent shining through.

“I posted my first TikTok on the day I started at ELAM, and it blew up a little,” Spiro says, adding that she started to get DMs about her assured performances. “I was so confused, I was like, ‘What is happening?’”

Word of the newly viral star quickly spread to Capitol Records in the US.

“Sienna was the first signing for Lillia [Parsa, president, Capitol Music Group] and me when we came to Capitol,” says Capitol’s Tom March. “We were both blown away by her voice and knew straight away we had to sign her. I remember in our first week we were chatting and we asked each other if we had heard of Sienna Spiro. She had no music out but we had both independently met her before starting work together. We also both love working with the team at Method, so it really was a no-brainer.

“Capitol Music Group is the right home because we’re fully focused on artist development and growing our roster,” March continues. “I believe that is showing in the new artists we are breaking.”

Indeed, Spiro now has a following of 1.7 million on TikTok, not to mention 58.5m likes.

 

“TikTok is a great discovery platform,” Spiro says. “I wouldn’t have any of this without it.”

Among her many achievements so far is her first Top 10 single, Die On This Hill, which peaked at No.9 last year and has 141,525 sales to date, according to the Official Charts Company. Clearly, TikTok is leading people to spend time luxuriating in Spiro’s releases, as a monthly listener count of 13.5 million on Spotify attests. The singer is pleased people are drawn to her music as she intended.

“I don’t make songs for them to be cut down to 20 seconds for people to listen to every five scrolls,” she says. “Songwriting is a story; it’s like writing a book – it’s intentional. You can sometimes fall into the trap of making music for other people, but that’s dangerous.”

Spiro is clear-headed on the subject of social media.

“I’m a 20-year-old girl, I’ve used it since I was 13,” she says. “I doomscroll all the time and my brain feels dirty afterwards. It’s about how you use it and how you handle it. You have to be a strong person.”

The songs Spiro had been writing up to this point formed the acclaimed Sink Now, Swim Later EP, which came out in February of 2025.

“At that age you’re going through so much uncontrollable change in your body, and in your relationships,” she says. “I was so overwhelmed. And I’m a control freak, so I was documenting my experiences through the songs.”

The EP included Cyanide, co-written with Couros Sheibani, with its stark lyrics (‘Maybe I should drink some cyanide, anything to make me disappear... just wanna be thin’).

“It’s quite dark, so I won’t get too into it,” Spiro says now. “It’s a confessional – stuff I needed to say out loud but couldn’t say any other way than through that song.”

Meanwhile, Maybe. (co-written with Max Wolfgang and Sol Was) depicts a toxic relationship (‘All I wanted was to be your hostage, for you to tie me up and never leave me’), which led to domestic abuse survivors reaching out in solidarity with the singer.

“It was heavy,” she admits. “I was shocked by how many people experienced that, yet the messages were from a place of gratitude – they were thankful that [the song] had helped them leave their situation.”

Reflecting on her rapid rise, she admits being that “bit delusional” has helped.

“I’ve been so set on one thing my whole life,” she says. “I’d still be doing this even if no one was watching.”

Looking back, Spiro says her rollercoaster 2025 was “surreal”, but hints there’s even more to come this year. Not least of all her debut album.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to write an album,” she smiles. “I’m working on it now and it’s a secret! You’ll hear it when it’s ready to be heard…”.

The penultimate interview I am sourcing is from ELLE from April. They say how her “cinematic croons appeal to a particular demographic”. I would say it has much broader appeal. They say how hopeless romantics and yearners will connect with her music hardest. “It’s spellbinding and brooding—intimate yet unguarded, lovelorn laments you’d normally bury deep in the pages of a diary but secretly hope someone will hear. Her voice sprawls and swells through acrobatic dips, a sound fashioned after influences formed early, courtesy of her father, who loved artists like Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Adele, and Amy Winehouse”:

“What does it feel like to be a woman in music right now?

In my experience, being an artist and a woman is a little bit easier than I’ve heard it was in the past. What has been really shocking to me is the way the women who work behind the scenes are treated. I have a female manager, and even though you just see my face [onstage], we’re completely equal. She deserves so much more respect than she’ll probably ever get credit for. I’m not going to lie, it’s a boys’ club. I think for performers, it’s still not perfect, but it’s a little bit better.

Is there a woman whose vulnerability or creative approach helped you to show up more fully in your own work?

Definitely Raye. As I started working in the industry, she released that song “Ice Cream Man,” [about being sexually abused by a music producer]. I, thank God, haven’t had any problems like that. But she talks about dark and scary things, and I look up to her using her voice. Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On was about war, and it was one of the most beautiful albums. Nina Simone always said something. I’m not saying everything has to be preachy, but I really respect and love when artists use their music to actually say something.

As someone going through a breakup yourself, what song of yours would you recommend listening to?

I think my saddest song for a breakup that killed me is called “I Don’t Hate You.” The thing that’s sad about breaking up is when you can’t be angry. Not being able to hate someone after they’ve done the most heinous thing to you is really hard and sad.

Thinking about your debut album, would the ending be hopeful or heartbreakingly realistic?

I’m writing about something specific at the moment, something I’ve been thinking about for two years and going back and forth [with]. It’s a real thing that’s always on my mind, and so that is going to be very dependent on how I actually end up feeling about it. I can only wait and see, to be honest.

What has the process of making your album revealed about you and your artistry?

I have a little bit more confidence than I did, which is a nice thing in a way, because I used to doubt everything, but I have a bit more confidence. I’m really inspired at the moment and I’m very excited”.

Gaining support and plaudits from Swam Smith and Elton John among other huge artists, Ary Russell spoke with Sienna Spiro for Interview Magazine, as she was closing off her U.S. tour. It is interesting what they discuss regarding her style and being influenced by the '60s. If you label her music as Sad Girl or not, I do feel that her love of Sixties fashion should bleed into her work more. I would love to hear more '60s-tinted tracks. Some with psychedelic edge. Some leaning towards 1960s Folk and Pop groups. There is a bit of that, though I feel like there is a strand and strain of music that could well weave its way into Spiro’s world very soon:

“RUSSELL: I wanted to talk about your looks. I see the sixties vibe. Who or what’s been on the mood board for you as an artist and specifically for this tour?

SPIRO: I love the personality and character of the sixties, and how individual it is. It took me a really long time to find my style because I grew up, honestly, hating my body. It took me a while to be comfortable being looked at on stage. But I love the silhouettes from back then and I’ve grown into myself and feel a lot more confident than I used to. Nancy Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, and Francoise Hardy are amazing women who I just admire a lot. And those paper dresses or the little box dresses. I just love that.

RUSSELL: I love the look of a romper with go-go boots back then.

SPIRO: So cute.

RUSSELL: How are you balancing making sure that you’re paying homage to these artists that have inspired you while also putting your own stamp on your identity as an  artist?

SPIRO: Well, just listening to music, you’re naturally influenced subconsciously. The way I sing is the main way I pay homage to  those artists because that’s how I learned to sing. There’s this famous quote from Frank Sinatra, he said, “A singer, to me, is somebody who tells a story.” I keep that in mind whenever I’m singing and I always try and bring myself back to what I wrote the stories about.

RUSSELL: Yeah.

SPIRO: But my music is, for the most part, pretty stripped back. I love the humanness of music from back then. You couldn’t auto-tune, you couldn’t punch in. I record everything in one take and there’s barely any chop-ins. All the instruments are recorded by people. You hear the little mistakes.

RUSSELL: The cries.

SPIRO: You hear the breaks, you hear rubbing from my dress. That is so personal. The guy I work the most with is Omer [Fedi] and he’s taught the most about singing because I used to do every riff, and every run.

RUSSELL: You’re Christina [Aguilera].

SPIRO: I was trying to prove myself because I actually didn’t think I was a good singer growing up. So every chance I would get to over sing, I would do it. He’s the one who taught me less is more and you can only do what the song wants.

RUSSELL: That way when you really want to do more, it feels like—

SPIRO: A moment.

RUSSELL: Your music is very evocative of sad girl vibes. When I ask this question, I don’t want you to take this in the wrong way.

SPIRO: Don’t worry.

RUSSELL: Do you see yourself writing happy songs in the future?

SPIRO: I have to write wherever I’m living. I’m not sad all the time. I just find it easy to pull from that emotion. It’s a sad set, I’ll be honest with you. I would love to make some upbeat songs.

RUSSELL: When you’re looking out into the crowd and you’re singing, literally pouring your heart out, what is the reaction that you’re typically seeing from the crowd?

SPIRO: It’s all different. I was doing a show in Philadelphia the other day and I saw this girl in the front row crying, and it just looked like she’d been through so much pain. I’ve lived through all these songs, so I know what it feels like. I really love the people in the audience. It’s a very special group of people. There is such a mutual understanding in that crowd, which is so rare”.

There is a live review I want to finish with. I would urge people to pre-order Visitor ahead of its 3rd July release. Last month, Sienna Spiro played one night at the iconic Roundhouse in north London. CLASH provided a brief report on the night. I do hope that there are more gigs in the U.K. If she platys at a venue like O2 Forum Kentish Town, then I will definitely come and see her. Sienna Spiro is an artist who I feel will gain the same sort of acclaim and popularity as Adele. I would not be rurtp9ised if she gets a huge run of U.S. dates and her own residency in time:

“She’s just visiting, this isn’t permanent. Sienna Spiro emerges at North London’s Roundhouse venue to the screams of fans, the realisation that this is it, she’s here for one night only.

A recent run of singles – ‘Die On This Hill’, ‘The Visitor’ and ‘You Stole The Show’ – have amplified the hype around her name, and this home city show underlines her star quality.

Of course, Sienna Spiro has recent to celebrate. In the hours after the lights go off she will announce plans for her long-awaited debut album – it’s called ‘Visitor’ and will be released on July 3rd.

Revelling in importance, Sienna seems to urge us to seize the day – and that flickering message runs through every second of this show”.

Visitor is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated and exciting debut albums of this year. The first full-bodied release from an artist spoken about in the highest terms. She is spellbinding. If you do not know Sienna Spiro, then go and follow her. I hope to see her live, and I will definitely spotlight Visitor soon enough. There are so many amazing music queens coming through with the promise to endure for years. However, in my opinion, there are very few…

AS good as her.

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Follow Sienna Spiro

FEATURE: Beyond Expectation… Why the Modern Impact of Kate Bush's Music Moves Me

FEATURE:

 

 

Beyond Expectation…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

Why the Modern Impact of Kate Bush’s Music Moves Me

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THIS documentary…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sarah Louise Young in An Evening Without Kate Bush/PHOTO CREDIT: Shay Rowan

will no longer be available to listen from this link soon, though I do feel that it should be available somewhere else, or it is going to be repeated at some point. The series, Superfans!, is from BBC Radio 6 Music. Where Amy Lamé speaks with dedicated fans of legendary artists. Kate Bush was featured last month. It was insightful hearing from different people who have been fans of her work for years. Why she means so much to them. Everyone from Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) and Sarah Louise Young (who is the star of An Evening Without Kate Bush) revealed their unique relationships with Bush and her music. I did learn quite a lot from the documentary, and I am going to refer to it again for another feature. One thing I did overlook is the extent of the important male fandom. I know that superfans include Guy Pearce and Elton John are massive fans. I was surprised both were not interviewed that for that podcast. I always write about how Kate Bush connects with women. Female artists that have incorporated her work into their own. I have overlooked men and how Kate Bush captivates them. I might have thought a lot of male attention was because of her beauty or something not related to the songs. The odd song or two. That is not the case. So many men have a deep understanding of her work and it goes way beyond Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). That song is back in my mind now. Not only did I hear from male devotees of Kate Bush. There were also some fascinating words from Dr. Lucy Bennett. She is the co-founder and co-chair of the Fan Studies Network. Bennett noted how Kate Bush’s work resonates with women because there is a vulnerability and openness to it. She cited This Woman’s Work as an example of where that is especially and potently true. I shall come back to my thread of men who hold Kate Bush dear.

There was a moment when she talked about Hounds of Love and the phenomenon around that. Especially Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). I have said it multiple times, though I shall repeat it here. 2022 saw it featured on Netflix’s Stranger Things. It created this whole new interest in Kate Bush. I always refer to artists and famous people who are inspired by Kate Bush. What is more affecting and impressive is the variety of ordinary fans from all corners of the global who are fans of Kate Bush. TikTok and the viral spread of he music there is one of the great joys. Hundreds of TikTok videos were examined. This was by Dr. Lucy Bennett and Dr. Rafal Zaborowskui from King’s College London. They looked at hundred of TikTok videos and noted how people were not only listening to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). They were dancing to it too. How Bush’s music does provoke physical interaction and revelation. Dr. Bennett also said how a previous study saw her speak with people following Kate Bush’s 2014 residency. Before the Dawn. That request not to use phones and film the shows. How that pre-technology nostalgia came in. People connecting with the shows who were not distracted by technology. Bush, in the flesh, was so powerful and meaningful. That is interesting. Though technology and modernity is instrumental in ensuring her music reaches new people. It is a powerful connective tool where fans can share their relationship with her music. A song like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has a very special place in many people’s hearts. They were using the song to tell their own stories. I have never considered this when writing about Kate Bush’s influences. How it is as meaningful to people we have never heard of. Her songs have saved lives, brought people back from the brink of suicide and death. It has saved relationships and also made them confident to come out and reveal their sexuality. Something deep and truly profound.

And we may never know the absolute degree to which Kate Bush influences and touches people. From someone living in an apartment in New York who is battling addiction, to someone in Australia who is very young and is agog at the majesty and power of her music. As Bush does not tour and is not seen in the spotlight much, platforms like TikTok are a way of sharing their impressions of her music. Also, important when it comes to discovering he music in the first place. That new study convinced the term, affective nostalgia. Older fans who were reconnecting with the song, and a curious new generation hearing it fresh. I also enjoyed hearing Dave Cross speak about meeting Kate Bush and his relationship. He co-founded the Kate Bush fanzine, Homeground, in the 1980s. He founded it with Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris, Peter Fitzgerald-Morris, and he is very involved with her music and career as part of Kate Bush News. You have fans having a borrowed nostalgia for a time they did not live through. Though you also have those who were fans from the start. In 1985, when Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was first heard. There is this emotional space on TikTok where fans can connect the music and interact. Dr. Bennett notes how it is not about replacing one audience with another. More about renewal, where different generations have this meeting point. Something that would have been harder pre-technology. As there are not Kate Bush fan conventions or fanzines anymore, how easy is it for these different generations to interact naturally and easily? Some interaction I am sure, though viral moments are an accelerant of that fire. TikTok is a platform where fans around the world can have this shared feeling. That Superfans! episode ended with Lewis and Kenneth from Watford. They are teenage fans. Discovering her through her use in videos on YouTube (often in the background), what is also notable is the shift of technology and how she is discovered. Once it was radio and the music press. Now, video and streaming is more instrumental. No big revelations there, though her fandom has widened and expanded like never before because of this easy access and how we can also interconnect and speak with one another online. In a positive way when it comes to Kate Bush. This community. Us Lovehounds.

What was common through those interviews was how Bush’s music was a break from regular Pop. It is genuinely different and much more fascinating. Neil Hannon noted that. As did the teens at the end of the episode. How a song that is over forty years old seem radical and fresh today, as it is a break and breath of fresh air from the, ironically, TikTok Pop. The same-sounding stuff. Though Kate Bush’s music is more significant than the fact it is original. That physical connection with songs like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), and how people are able to express themselves through her. On 30th July (Kate Bush’s birthday), Lewis and Kenneth are going to a series of Tube stations around London and playing Kate Bush songs on the piano. Raising money for War Child. You can find out more here. I think that her male fandom should be acknowledged. The feeling that it is mostly women who understand her music. I have overlooked it. How young children and older men love her music. There may be different reasons they love he music compared to girls and women. This 2024 article ended by saying that Kate Bush “has always been, every woman’s secret teenage soul, and most men will never ever understand”. I do feel that this is wrong. Superfans! showed how all genders have deep affection for Kate Bush. They understand her music and it is as much a part of their soul as for women and girls:

“All very understandable. By the ever-punishing metrics of the modern music industry, Bush represents a vanishing utopia of female musicianship: the artist left alone to stay true to herself to make the music she wants to make at the pace she wants to make it. Call Bush “precious” to female musicians and they’d probably laugh bitterly in your face: for them, “precious” would be the impossible dream.

With the recent death of One Direction’s Liam Payne, there’s been a lot said about the pressures of the music business, particularly regarding the young. One is reminded that Bush was also young when she started out: 19 at the time of her first hit, Wuthering Heights (the first number one to be penned by a female); even younger, a veritable child star, when she started writing material.

Yet here she is, still running up that hill, decades later. Though, as yet, seemingly with no interest in capitalising on her new Gen Z fanbase, to perchance dust down the leotards and take a whirl around the heritage circuit. Even though if she did, the fuss might make the response to the Oasis reunion resemble a lacklustre raffle at a village fete”.

All of this fandom and appreciation of Kate Bush is for music that was released years ago. When she does eventually put out a new album, there will be another swell of affection. Even more people discovering her music. A whole new relationship and dynamic. New music and Bush in the 2020s, I do feel that we cannot assume it is only women or a certain type of person that love her music. From artists through to men and boys around the world, there is that shared love. Each person has their own relationship with the music and reasons for loving Kate Bush. And that is something…

TRULY wonderful to see!

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Wilting Petals

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

Wilting Petals

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AT certain time sin her career…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed during the cover shoot for her 1989 album, The Sensual World/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush did experience some burn-out and personal loss. I guess it happens with most artists, though she especially did encounter quite a bit of heartache and fatigue. In terms of the latter, shew was working so hard on her albums, which meant that there were periods where she needed to rest up. It happened after Never for Ever was released in 1980, and again after The Dreaming in 1982. That idea that an artist would make an album and then promote it extensively. Kate Bush, as a producer, spending so much time in the studio and working into the small hours on various details and elements of the albums. It meant, by the time the thing was released, she had precious little energy as it was. Then there would be the issue of having to go on interviews and be involved in that whole thing. It was draining. After The Sensual World was released in 1989, there was this period of struggle. Not to say that The Red Shoes suffered because of it. That 1993 album has moments of gold, though there years after The Sensual World did provide Kate Bush was some struggled. Graeme Thomson notes, in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, that there had bene a fundamental change on The Sensual World. I have written about this topic before, though I want to approach it from a different angle this time around. If 1985’s Hounds of Love is an album in full bloom. This verdant garden of wonder with nooks ands crannies’ to explore. Songs that reveal new layers with each listen was The Sensual World a slight wilting of the petals? I do think it is one of her best albums, though there was a struggle perhaps to keep that consistency. It is less ambitious and big as Hounds of Love. Bush was definitely slowing to a degree. Graeme Thomson notes that there was a “slackening of intensity” when it comes to the sound. The production maybe overcompressed on her sixth album.

I do not agree that The Sensual World is cold and distant at times. There are songs that are not as good as her best. It is evident that Bush did face a struggle into the late-1980s. I have said before how the scene changed dramatically. In the mid-1980s, the most popular and commercial albums could be linked to Hounds of Love. There was not a vast difference between what Bush was doing and what other artists were, though her masterpiece was distinctly her own. Things were dramatically different by 1989. What is notable is that 1989-1993 was one of her most challenging periods. There was personal tragedy and loss that affected her drive and career. Losing friends Alan Murphy and Gary Hurst within a relatively short period of one another. In 1990, there was a box-set, This Woman’s Work, released. Bush said that the box-set marked the end of an era. She said how she will never work with Murphy and Hurst again, so it was this closing of a chapter. Bush took six months off. Bush said that she was obsessive about her work.  “But now I can see that there’s a part of me that loves not being tied to a project, that loves just to be able to go off”. She was speaking with Q as part of an HMV Special mini-edition in 1990. I guess there would have been some doubts from critics regarding Bush’s genius. Near universal acclaim for Hounds of Love, she did release The Whole Story in 1986. Even if the new single, Experiment IV, did not get huge reviews and was seen as good as a Hounds of Love cut, she still had enormous backing and support. The Sensual World was an acclaimed album. It reached number two in the U.K. What I is considering is whether critics expected artists like Kate Bush to get bigger and bigger. If Hounds of Love was this peak. Epic and open, did they feel a 1989 was going to be even vaster? 1989 was a transition year, where grungier, Electronic-heavy trends of the 1990s were coming in. Perhaps less polished than what we had in the 1980s, it was a hard call for Kate Bush.

It was clear that personal circumstances and her intense work rate meant that there was a slight slowing. Telling that Bush revealed in 1990 that she needed to actively take a break. It is arguable that The Sensual World is less commercial or instantly impactful as Hounds of Love. A couple of natural singles, though a few of the songs less engaging. 1990 is a year that is particularly interesting. I do want to source a couple of interviews from that year. Music Collector spoke with Kate Bush in September 1990. They named her ‘The High Poetess of Rock’:

“The end of the eighties saw Kate Bush, now in her early thirties, releasing her seventh album, The Sensual World. She described it as her most feminine yet, and when compared to say, Hounds Of Love, it's certainly a more relaxed but perhaps less striking collection. Having said that, the title track (lifted as the first single) made the top ten, notable for its infuriating catchy rhythm, based apparently on the literary style of James Joyce. A song written for the John Hughes (director of The Breakfast Club ) film This Woman's Work [Hold on here! That was the name of the *song*! The movie was She's Having A Baby. Maybe the reason the writer got this so egregiously wrong is that the movie was never released in Britain! -- Ed], unfortunately got swamped in the pre-Christmas market, and ended up as only a minor hit.

The Sensual World album also sees a new departure for Kate: the use of the Bulgarian acapella folk group, Trio Bulgarka but lyrically, the most ambitious track has to be "Heads We're Dancing".

As we enter the nineties, Kate Bush's records appear increasingly out on a limb. Although she's always enjoyed a cult following, her current recordings are in competition with a youth-dominated world of House, Rap and Hip-Hop sounds. It'll be interesting to see if the deep, thoughtful and highly polished music which she records can sustain its success as the decade continues. With Kate Bush, you're never quite sure what's coming next! Whenever people have written her off in the past, she's hit back with her boldest and most adventurous work. With twelve years of recording success under her belt, Kate has emerged from the depths of middle-class Essex [ESSEX?? Everybody knows she's from Kent! -- Ed] to a unique status in terms of critical acclaim and respect within the music industry. Very few artists could go as long as her between album releases, only to see their work come straight back to the top again and again. She's consistently topped even her own high standards, and for that reason alone, you can't help thinking that Kate Bush, The Whole Story is incomplete. The best is yet to comer!”.

I will wrap up with more of that Q/HMV interview that I mentioned. It would be unfair to say that Kate Bush was in decline from 1989 onwards. She was working relentless since 1978, and it’s true that it was hard for her to easily fit into the contemporary music scene in one of the most changeable and exciting times for British music:

“Q: Have you begun to formulate your next move?

Yes, I have, but I can't tell you because it's probably oing to change! I want to find a balance between the observer and the observed. I love making music, and as long as I'm doing that, even if the albums don't sell, there'll be a certain amount of recognition. I feel I have to accept that, and learn from it and not run away from it any more.. .

Kate Bush relaxes with a Silk Cut-a habit common among ballet dancers past and present-and is asked once again to contemplate the life of isolation. In other words, to select her desert island discs. Sitting as we are in the legendary Abbey Road studios, her choice of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour could not be more appropriate, followed by Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts ("tremendously influential on me and the whole of modern of modern music with the repitition and sampling "), her friend Nigel Kennedy's The Four Seasons ("There's something light and uplifting about it"), The Trio Bulgarka's Strati Angelaki (on the Bulgarian compilation LP, Balkana), Donal Lunny's last album (called Donal Lunny) Eberhard Weber's Fluid Rustle ("a lot of fond memories"), Billie Holliday's I love You Porgie ("the singer of singers. Lindsey Kemp used to use this one in a show of his, and the combination of her sining and his theatre was terrific") and Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb.

Q: A song of your own?

"The song The Sensual World. Cloudbusting has fond memories for me because of the book and the video, but The Sensual World because musically I'm jolly pleased with it-and it was hell to make! "

Q: And your book?

"Oscar Wilde, in particular The Happy Prince. That's a strong story for me; I heard it a lot when i was little. It's so sad. I guess that's the Irish. We all like the beauty of sadness, but I do think there's a real Irish link of the happy with the sad. Everything contains the opposite-the little observer and the little observed. This is my plan, to get the balance.. . "

I have spoken about Kate Bush’s late-1980s and early-1990s. That era when she will still very much ibn the public consciousness. Though there was a feeling of slowing. Some of her faithful maybe not as committed. The Sensual World gained plenty of positive reviews. Though I keep thinking about what Graeme Thomson writes in terms of the production sound. A certain coldness on an album that Bush says was her most personal to that time. Loss and heartache definitely contributed to that, though most of that happened after the album came out. Bush did struggle a bit into the 1990s. Trying to keep inventive and adding something new, things around her had shifted considerably. This perfect rose perhaps losing some of its shine ands beauty. Though, let make it clear: there is no way that any Kate Bush album came be sense as disappointing ore a failure. I feel The Red Shoes is great and warrants more respect. If 1989 onwards was seen by some as a slight dip, the majestic Kate Bush hit a new vein of genius…

WITH 2005’s Aerial.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Lou Hayter

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

 

Lou Hayter

__________

THERE only need to be…

one reason for including Lou Hayter in this Modern-Day Queens. There are actually many that I want to explore her incredible music. She is one of the U.K.’s best D.J.s. In fact, recently, she shared an Instagram post (which you can see underneath too) of her behind the decks playing for Spotify. It was actually for the new Kylie Minogue documentary, Kylie, which has won rave reviews. It is unflinching honest and real. You get to see new sides to the Pop icon. The fact that Lou Hayter was D.J.-ing and got to hear Kylie Minogue sing and be in this space where people saw this amazing and moving documentary. The fact Hayter was there is testament to her talent. The London-based artist, D.J. and producer is a modern great. I love her because of her music, but also because she is a big Steely Dan fan. I have written about her/this before, and I always note how there is not enough Steely Dan-adjacent and influenced music today. Why are artists not keeping that torch burning? Lou Hayter covered Time Out of Mind (from Steely Dan’s 1980 album, Gaucho), for her album, Private Sunshine (2021). As there are not many very recent interviews, I am heading back to 2024. That said, she did put out material last year, including a collaboration with the Black Science Orchestra on Wish You Were Mine. I feel that we will get another album from Lou Hayter soon, but I also want to shout out her incredible D.J. talents. One of the most respected and loved in the U.K., her sets are always incredible. I am keen to see her play in London soon, so I shall keep me eyes out as we approach summer. Before I finish this feature, there are a few interviews published in 2024 around the release of her most recent album, Unfamiliar Skin.

I am starting with an interviewing chat from Fifteen Questions. This is one of my favourite websites, as they always ask interesting questions. Around the release of Unfamiliar Skin, they spent some time with the queen Lou Hayter. I have been of her music for many years, and I think that she gets better and better. I think all of her albums – and her work with New Young Pony Club – are sublime, though her masterpiece is still ahead of her:

“According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I think even younger for me, my formative influences when I was 5 I stand by as well and I feel the same about them as I did as a child. Things like Uncertain Smile by The The, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Satie’s Gymnopedie, Level 42 and Madonna - I was listening to them around age 5 and I’m still completely obsessed with them.
At 13-16 I was definitely more discerning in my understanding of them I suppose and records like Portishead's Dummy, Tricky's Maxinquaye, Goldie's Timeless etc were coming out which really shaped me. I was buying records every week and soaking everything up.

What is your current studio or workspace like? What instruments, tools, equipment, and space do you need to make music?
I don’t have much at home, just my laptop, a midi keyboard, a condenser mic and Logic really.
That’s why I sample a lot because it allows me to have sounds I can’t create myself at home and it sounds kinda finished already. I’m an ideas person rather than a gear person - no gear. all the ideas. The opposite of the saying, haha.

Sometimes gear slows you down and complicates things I find. Then I take the demos to the studio to work on with my engineer.

From the earliest sketches to the finished piece, tell me about the creative process for your current release, please.

Sketches could be samples, snippets of lyrics or whole songs that I sing into my phone (often in the middle of the night).

Then, when I have time, I flesh out the demo on Logic on my dining room table. When it sounds good enough I take it to my engineer Greg Flemings and we work on it in the big studio, re-recording all the vocals etc until it sounds finished.

Do you feel that your music or your work as an artist needs to have a societal purpose or a responsibility to anyone but yourself?

I am true to myself politically and I am vocal on social media about where I stand. I have always stood up for what I believe in and for the oppressed, since I was kid I would go to marches.
But my music itself doesn’t have a political slant. I guess being a female producer in such a male dominated industry is political in itself though.

Once a piece is done and released, do you find it important that listeners understand it in a specific way? How do you deal with “misunderstandings?”

That’s interesting. I think you can’t control how people receive things. You can present it in a certain way and I think visuals help a great deal with positioning.

But once it’s out in the world it has a life of its own.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Yes there’s an alchemy in making music or performing it for me. For other people they might find that in something like cooking. But for me music is the highest form of art I think. The most expressive and directly emotional thing. The type of art that moves you straight away.

It’s magic, you can’t touch it, it’s just sound waves and vibrations - so it’s also the most abstract form of art”.

I am going to end with an interview from CLASH. The astonishing and hugely lauded producer was in conversation with CLASH in 2024. She is one of our greatest talents. Not only as a producer and songwriter. I think her D.J. career is one that also deserves its own interviews. In terms of her inspiration, favourite sets and cities, and other D.J. queens that she loves:

“As it turns out, Lou is a natural night owl. “I’m drawn to that hypnagogic state, between wake and sleep, that’s when tonnes of ideas come into my head. I’ve lost so many ideas because I can’t quite translate it from my head into a voice memo!”

Finessing her approach over time, Lou Hayter found herself transformed into a flow state during the making of this album. She’s learned to trust herself, and that sense of surrender seeps into the free-flowing creativity on the record. “For the first time, I’ve found the music channels through me without thinking. Obviously, on some level you’re thinking… but you’re just letting things go, almost like a stream of consciousness. Sometimes you don’t understand the idea yourself, but there’s a trust that it will galvanize into the right thing, like a jigsaw puzzle.”

It’s all rooted in a sense of self-trust that has taken years to build. “I think you have to trust yourself, first and foremost. And that was harder this time, because I produced it myself… so everything was on me.”
“It was scary and exhilarating at the same time. But I think the most you take on board different people’s opinions, the more you dilute yourself. And I think it’s important not to do that.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Haruki

Inspired by her surroundings – “there’s a high bar for creative work in London” – Lou pushed herself harder and harder. Working with a defined idea of the sonics she wanted to use – 00s era R&B godheads such as Neptunes and Timbaland, the Compass Point catalogue – she was able to give the record a particular character.

Starting with lead single ‘Scorpio’ – a “reboot” as she terms it – Lou set out to create something distinct from her prior work. “I wanted to push myself. I could have done ‘part two’ of the first album, but I felt a lot of people have begun making music like that, and it’s become saturated. I wanted to go elsewhere, for a while. This was a sound palette that just really interested me.”

Album cut ‘In My Heart’ splices together Aaliyah’s imperial run of singles with her own sense of disco deviance, reflecting Lou’s passion for “space age” R&B production. “It’s that slightly sinister, very modern sound… that’s something I wanted to channel.”

Namechecking the likes of studio guru Rodney Jenkins as a point of inspiration, Lou admits that the results are 100% her own. “It goes through me and comes out the other side… so it always ends up sounding like me.”

At heart, Lou Hayter remains a passionate music fan. She has a collector’s instinct, yet remains able to chop up these sounds into something totally distinctive. Take the album title, ‘Unfamiliar Skin’ – “it has a duality,” she insists. “I am new under this skin as a producer, constructing a different sort of sonic universe.”

She’s passionate about the idea of an album, allowing songs a space to be “found”. The producer explains: “The other thing I aim for is – no filler. And I do think this is a good album, from start to finish”.

There is actually one more interview to come to. This is from the Standard. Righty naming her as one of London’s coolest women, Unfamiliar Skin “shows an artist in full control of her music and puts her firmly in the fast lane”. It was one of the best albums of 2024, and I feel it should have won awards. I also predict that Lou Hayter is going to have an amazing summer:

“After the sunshiney Eighties feel of her debut solo album Private Sunshine, this latest one is darker and more ambitious with its retro-future sci-fi art-pop. David Bowie would surely approve of its eclecticism, the way it balances personal intimacy and otherworldliness, and an uncanny ability to, well, get under your skin.

“The title Unfamiliar Skin came from a conversation with a friend where we were talking about affairs and how the pull of unfamiliar skin is so compelling to somebody in a long relationship,” she says. “But it has a duel meaning because I’m in an unfamiliar skin as a producer.”

Lou first came to attention as keyboardist in the Mercury-nominated New Young Pony Club (the year Klaxons beat Amy Winehouse to the prize), right at the height of what is now called Indie Sleaze but was then New Rave. While she has fond memories – “It was fun, like summer camp.” – her songwriting only started as the scene ended.

After establishing herself as a successful DJ, she’s now flourishing as a solo artist, bringing to bear her vast musical knowledge: “For the record, I was thinking about Compass Point Studios, the early 2000s space age, Neptunes-style production, and Massive Attack in the Blue Lines era.”

The songs tell stories of the highs and lows, the betrayals and the compromises, of love affairs: the sleepy acquiescence of OK OK, the wired solitary yearning of 3AM, the JG Ballard mind control eroticism of Frequency, which Hayter insists is based on her real abilities: “I have an increasing sense of Extra Sensory Perception. I feel I can communicate beyond the physical. My family laughed me out of the room when I told them that.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Carly Scott

It is a vivid, nocturnal neon album, which is represented well in the video to In My Heart, a Ghost in the Shell-style anime, made by former member of The Horrors, Tom Furse. Furse also created the video for album title track, which uses AI to morph Hayter’s face onto classic movie characters, so we get to see her as Sean Connery in Dr. No and, less of a stretch, Claudia Cardinale in 8 ½. This is a classic kind of British pop music, where the effortless appeal belies an uncompromising sophistication.

Hayter says she surprised herself with how her ideas came together: “It’s exciting. I didn’t know I was going to make this record, it just poured out of me. For the first time I felt I wasn’t overthinking, I was channelling. That was interesting for me, to listen to it and think what is this record? Like ‘In My Heart’, when I was making that, I knew I had these elements, and I knew they were going to work together but I didn’t know how. It suddenly fell together but I wasn’t expecting it to sound like that myself”.

If you do not know Lou Hayter or connected with her when she was with New Young Pony Club, you have to check out her solo work. Go and see her D.J. You can read more about her D.J. highlights and bio on her official website. The queen that is Lou Hayter is a jewel in the music scene. One of our finest D.J.s, and a phenomenal producer. Despite the fact she has been in the industry for a long time, I do think that her best and most glorious days…

ARE coming soon.

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