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

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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

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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.

__________

Follow Static Dress

Official:

https://staticdress.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/staticdress/

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyXCtviNSt-HgYhvrgrkctQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Lqdsv7Ff4GNq9PM3Yd0vi?si=nocW-UuqScCCXsx8SNeS2w

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

__________

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?

__________

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

__________

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.

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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.

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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.

___________

Follow COBRAH

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FEATURE: Spotlight: Truthpaste

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Truthpaste

__________

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.

___________

Follow Truthpaste

Official:

https://truthpaste.band/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/truthpa5te/

Bandcamp:

https://memorialsofdistinction.bandcamp.com/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@truthpa5te

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxjYsiqQ4r7EK8rKh520vRA

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1jX7jSANud3GSSMfs41KPs?si=C8Jq576jTzibBBeqRoW9Kw

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)

__________

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.

__________

Follow Sienna Spiro

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/siennaspiro/

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd5sMkyvImc50eLIpwy3UaQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/02gSuSAWEdWa5UOvqzjX6v?si=gk3dUoxITRuTETH5di5XuA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/officialsiennaspiro/

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

__________

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.

@ryleebranscum this is the coolest thing ever #fy #strangerthings #el #eleven #target ♬ Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) - Kate Bush

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

__________

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lou Hayter 🍒 (@louhayter_)

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.

_________

Follow Lou Hayter

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Furse

Official:

https://louhayter.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/louhayter_/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@lou.hayter

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GZ18L0i6k1mxAjo3GzINM?si=S-XxSWJmQxaJnJ5apD7FIg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/louhaytermusic

YouTube:

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

INTERVIEW: Kris Drever

INTERVIEW:

Kris Drever

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IT has been a huge pleasure…

interviewing the terrific Kris Drever. The beloved Scottish artist released his latest album, Doing This for Love, in April. It is a beautiful album that will summon emotions and reactions the first you hear it. You will also come back time and time again as different songs settle themselves into your heard. Between his solo output and work with the Folk trio, Lau, Drever has established himself as one of the most celebrated and acclaimed figures in contemporary Folk music. Among his awards and honours are Folk Singer of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and Best Newcomer at the Horizon Awards. Doing This for Love is Kris Drever’s first solo album in six years. Twenty years after the release of the traditional Scottish Folk storytelling on his debut album, Black Water, he continues to release music that stops you in your tracks. Doing This for Love is ten guitar-led meditations on the unglamorous heroism of everyday life - the 4 a.m. alarm clocks, the thankless shifts, the quiet sacrifices made in the name of keeping others whole. I ask Kris Drever about his recent U.K. tour and how that went, when music and Folk came into his life, what the writing process was like for Doing This for Love, and what comes next for him. A wonderful interview with the simply awesome Kris Drever. This is a very special artist who recently released one of the…

BEST albums of this year.

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Hi Kris. You have recently completed a run of U.K. tour dates. What was it like playing in so many interesting places, and did you have a particular favourite venue or crowd?

It was a really lovely tour. There’s not a lot of time to hang out in different towns, but a lot of the drives were truly spectacular. I don’t think I’ve ever driven direct from Aberdeen to Dunvegan before for instance. 10/10 would recommend.

I couldn’t pick out one show for the crowd, but I loved putting a full stop on the whole enterprise with my full band gig in the Queens Hall in Edinburgh. Mega!

How important is getting your music to audiences and performing on stage? Is it the aspect of music you enjoy most, and how has your relationship with live work changed or evolved through the years?

It’s always been a huge part of the job. I’m more a musician than a performer, but I like to share what I’ve made with people. I work hard at making new songs that I can stand behind in terms of their quality and craft, and for me the thrill is seeing how other people connect with them. I started as a sideman for other performers and have always taken my musicianship seriously, and one happy by-product of that is that I am quite fluent as a guitarist, and that is where the element of performance comes into it for me. It’s certainly not my dance moves.

“We like a story, but we also like to see ourselves in art of all kinds”

You are one of the most celebrated and respected Folk artists. Can you tell me when you discovered music and when Folk came into your life? How did growing up on the Orkney Islands infuse and direct the music you were raised on?

I come from a Folk music family and so it had always been there. Although I didn’t start playing until I was thirteen, It seemed like a totally normal part of my life. I don’t remember when I started singing; I just always had that interest.

Orkney is by mainland standards a small community, but it has always had a very visible number of musicians, and there’s a strong social scene around it. It’s a thing that people do, and that I suppose has influenced my drive to play and sing. There’s a quite magical atmosphere around the place, which stirs something reflective in me, and reflection is one of the main aspects of most writing. We like a story, but we also like to see ourselves in art of all kinds.

Even though you are recording music for the fans and it is not all about awards, you are an award-winning artist. Is that quite humbling and wonderful getting accolades from the likes of BBC Radio 2 and the Scottish Traditional Music Awards?

Being recognised by your peers is deeply moving. Writing and practising can be pretty solitary pursuits and it’s a huge part of my life, so to have that work recognised by others in the field is reassuring and encouraging.

Let’s discuss your fifth album, Doing This for Love. Maybe a cliché question, but can you first reveal the meaning behind the title, and did it come before you had written any songs, or something that stuck out when you were writing and recording?

It’s something of an umbrella title. The idea that we’re all doing things daily for the benefit of others, even if it’s mostly subconscious. It’s not just the glamorous or romantic stuff. It’s all the everyday tasks we perform to make things a little more comfortable for the people in our lives.

I noticed quite late in the writing process that this theme kept recurring, and I liked how much it encapsulated.

“I like humour and pathos and detail. I’ve learned a lot through the act of writing itself, really”

What did the writing process for the album look like? Did you have a particular routine and space where you were writing, and were there any particularly challenging moments or emotional ones that affected the process and tracklisting?

My writing process takes place wherever I am, although truthfully I don’t get much done on tour. It often takes me a long time to get something that I’m happy with in even one song, let alone ten or twelve, so there’s always a lot of self-doubt. There was a moment shortly before I started recording where I’d lost all confidence in the project, but thankfully I have good friends who can help me through these times. Notably my co-producer Euan Burton, who persuaded me to book time in to track the album on the back of me admitting my loss of belief in the songs.

Tracklisting for this record was purely a musical decision; there’s no narrative to the collection as a whole.

It would be fair to say that your music has become more personal and introspective, perhaps. Ruminative, beautiful and relatable. Do you have any particular songwriting heroes and inspirations when it comes to how you write?

As I’ve gotten older I’ve spent more time with myself, and so I think it’s natural that I write from that point of view. I don’t have any grand pronouncements about the state of the world to make, but I do have opinions, and the only way I can see to include those in my writing is through my own eyes. Anything else would be soapbox, and that’s not where I’m at my best.

I have heroes of course, Tom Waits, Michael Marra, Elvis Costello, Adrianne Lenker, Joni Mitchell, and on and on. But I try not to go down the route of using music as inspiration for more music. I like humour and pathos and detail. I’ve learned a lot through the act of writing itself, really. When I was a kid, of course I tried to write Radiohead songs or Beatles songs, but that imitation is a way to learn how to do it rather than a way to create complete works that come from your own heart.

I especially love Stil the Boy. What was the story behind that, and do you have a personal favourite cut from Doing This for Love?

Thank you. That was initially an idea I had about the parable of the prodigal son. I think in the end though it’s more about being kind to my younger self; I have kids now, and I sometimes think about how I’d react if someone talked to them like I talk to myself. It started as a more specific idea, but the more I wrote, the more I liked its loose ends and blurry edges. Your interpretation of that lyric is every bit as valid as mine.

Obviously, your guitar work is sublime, and your voice carries the albums, though the musicians you work with provide colour, flesh and life to the songs. How did you choose the collaborators, and are these musicians you have worked with before? How vital are their contributions?

They are the most vital part of this record. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have worked with lots of my heroes (Euan Burton, Louis Abbott, Rachel Lightbody), and honestly they just get better and better. I have a core of people who I’ve been working with since 2014 or so, and the common language that we’ve created and the time we’ve spent together just make it feel like anything is possible. It’s so important to be able to describe ideas and be understood.

I get to travel a lot and I do some quite diverse work, which means I’m often meeting extraordinary musicians from outside my usual circle. There are several of those on these songs, and what they’ve contributed blows my tiny mind! Michelle Willis, Trent Freeman, Matthew Herd, Cahalen Morrison and Rachel Sermanni are all extraordinary musicians, and truthfully my directions to any of these was minimal/negligible. I think I have a keen sense of who is going to be a good addition to a song, but they’re the experts. I just listen and marvel.

I think that British Country music is growing and gaining more attention, though perhaps Folk is a genre not as embraced and discussed as it should be. Do you feel like it is under-discussed and respected, or have you found that the genre has grown in stature and status through the years?

I think this discussion is pretty circular, as is my relationship with Folk music, be it Sottish, English, Irish, American etc. The good stuff always floats up, and while a good record is visible, it changes people’s idea of a particular genre. I think to an extent genres are mainly useful for the sales arm of the music industry, but It’s also true that Folk music seems more accepted by the music press at the moment. It seems to have shrugged off some of the lazy stereotypes that plagued it when I was growing up.

“I’ve started tentatively writing again, but that just goes with the territory. I won’t start looking towards another album until I have something that feels right”

Scotland especially has a great and fertile Folk scene. Why do you think that this is? Are there any other Folk artists we should keep an ear out for?

It’s musician led to a large extent. There are so many excellent players in the country, and more appear all the time. I think instruments that used to be a bit of a novelty (pipes, fiddles, banjos, accordions etc) have become normal, and more importantly, when people hear them, they hear them being played well. It’s very easy to hate an instrument if you only ever hear it being murdered.

Re: artists to keep a look out for, I’d say, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Miwa Nagato-Apthorp, Michael McGovern, Niamh Corkey, and Charlie Grey and Joseph Peach. There are loads more, though.

What comes next for you? Have you already got seeds for a future album, or are you focusing on touring at the moment and taking a break before the next chapter?

I’ve started tentatively writing again, but that just goes with the territory. I won’t start looking towards another album until I have something that feels right. Having said that, I’d love to get it together quickly, and I feel like I’m in quite a good place to do that.

I am doing some more touring though, and I have some festival performances with the sublime Cahalen Morrison coming up.

Finally, and for being a good sport, you can name a song and I will end the interview with it. What shall we go with?

Do you mean one of mine? If so, let’s do Still the Boy.

__________

Follow Kris Drever

Official:

https://www.krisdrever.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/krisdrever/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/14T0l4AeAGbmAZjpQNdcqk?si=g3et5MRvRmG6DuLnoJfeHg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/krisdreversings

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/krisdreverguitar

FEATURE: Mondern-Day Queens: Ecca Vandal

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Sean McDonald

Ecca Vandal

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MANY people have probably heard…

of Ecca Vandal, though there are some who are not aware of the brilliance of this wonderful artist. Rather than include her in Spotlight – as she has been recording for a while now -, I thought best to include her in Modern-Day Queens. As that is what she is. It is a good time to connect with her music, as she released the album, LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW, on 22nd May. I am going to come to some recent interviews with Vandal. One from late last year, and a recent one ahead of the release of her latest album. I am going to start out with Earmilk and their article that reacted to news of the announcement of LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW:

“Rock audiences are always looking for what’s next, especially when it comes to women pushing the genre forward. Two decades ago, it was Paramore, led by Hayley Williams. More recently, artists like boygenius, St. Vincent, Japanese Breakfast, Willow, and Courtney Barnett have carved out space on their own terms across indie, alternative, pop, and traditional rock. Now, Ecca Vandal is stepping into that lineage with her upcoming album LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW, out May 22 via Loma Vista Recordings.

To put it mildly, Ecca Vandal is shock value personified. Her bright blue hair and micro bangs, eclectic vintage style, and inconceivable vocal range (that shifts from soulful riffs to guttural scream-singing in the same bar) are only part of the draw. On paper, it might read like a rock artist starter pack, but in practice, it never feels forced. When she steps onstage, there’s a clarity to who she is. There’s no posturing, no performance of identity. And in that, there’s an unspoken invitation for listeners to meet her with the same honesty.

​​A Sri Lankan Tamil–Australian artist, emerging from Melbourne’s DIY punk scene, Vandal has built a reputation for high-energy performances and a sound that resists easy categorization. Pulling from punk, hip-hop, jazz, and electronic, her music moves with intention, often exploring identity, power, independence, and self-expression without settling into a single lane. Drawing from artists as different as Nina Simone and Fugazi, Vandal has long leaned into contrast. This time, that instinct is sharpened into a central idea: subtraction—letting go of what drains your energy and distorts your sense of self.

“The systems. The trends. The illusions of connection. I find empowerment in being loud and noisy, especially as a woman in this global moment who grew up in a culture that told me I could not be those things,” she says.

That mindset shows up immediately in the song rollout. Her latest single, “SORRY! CRASH!,” lands with a kind of unfiltered energy that feels intentionally untouched, resisting the urge to be polished into something more digestible. It follows earlier releases—“CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE,” “BLEED BUT NEVER DIE,” "BLEACH," "MOLLY," and “THEN THERE’S ONE”—that together point toward a record that supports saying what you feel exactly how you want to, delivery be damned.

A powerhouse lyrical anthem, “BLEED BUT NEVER DIE" is a breakout song on the record. It showcases various aspects of her vocals, including a smooth singing voice in the bridge following a rock-n-roll heavy chorus. The stretched lullaby-ish lyrics "I'm done with fools like you" juxtaposed against the scream chorus is subversive for a stereotypical rock song and it works excellently.

“CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE" is a fan favorite record. The high-pitched shriek paired with the pumped-up electric guitar and intense drumming that opens the song pulls you in immediately! Vandal is almost saying, I won't and can't be boxed in.

The song “THEN THERE’S ONE” has a distinctly different flair. Coming in at just 1 minute and 19 seconds, she gets straight to the point. With just vocals and a synthesizer, she showcases the musical appetite of her South Asian culture in electronic form.

A big part of Vandals message comes from how the album was made. She recorded and produced the project alongside Richie Buxton in his childhood bedroom in bayside Melbourne.

“We cut out everything that didn’t serve us, the timelines, the metrics, the pressure to ‘stay visible’ online. We tuned out of the feed and turned inwards," she says.

"In Richie’s childhood bedroom, we built a tiny home studio, four walls that became a universe. The internet was painfully slow, so we were truly disconnected from the online game. Deep in bayside Melbourne, far from our inner-city friends, that little room became our whole world for nearly two years. It held all our chaos and all our clarity, a little ‘playpen’ where we could live, play and experiment like teenagers again. We started making things with our hands again, tangible, imperfect, and real. We wanted to celebrate long-form, the idea of an album as a whole body of work, while the world was chasing 15-second snippets and algorithm-friendly noise. So we left behind the room packed with industry chatter and opinions, and created our own little haven. And honestly, it was magic. The best decision we’ve ever made.”

That sense of intention—of pulling back to move forward—sits at the center of LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW. Even as Vandal steps onto bigger stages, including her upcoming Coachella debut later this month, stage show at Lollapalooza, and a tour supporting Deftones, the project feels grounded and deliberate. It’s less about being everywhere at once, and more about choosing exactly where and how she wants to be heard”.

The first interview I am coming to is from Alternative Press. They write how, although Ecca Vandal is not new to the industry and released her first recording back in 2014, 2025 was her breakout year. It was a good moment to spotlight an extraordinary and super-talented artist. In terms of sound and talent, I don’t think that there is anyone like her on the scene. You can imagine her working alongside some of her contemporary heroes very soon:

“Born in South Africa with a very traditional upbringing, Vandal was exposed to an eclectic array of music — however disparate it may seem from her current sound. “In the home, it was gospel music. It was soul music. It was traditional South African music, and it was also Sri Lankan music because my parents came from Sri Lanka before they came to South Africa.” And though punk offered a real perspective shift years later, much of these early sounds have seeped into her work today. There is, I realize quickly, authenticity and self-knowledge deep in the bones of everything Vandal does. “Gospel music is heavily choral, and everyone's singing in beautiful harmony at the top of their lungs. It's so expressive, and that's something that I learned from that music as a kid. How to really express yourself fully… I would say Sri Lankan music is incredibly beat-driven. It's party music and incredibly fun. You’ve probably heard those rhythms done so beautifully by M.I.A. It's called Baila, celebration music — and that was the music that we partied to as kids.” She takes time thinking of each answer — it’s been years since Vandal has done an interview, though the nerves she warned me of have yet to show up. She’s fluid, honest, and intuitive — just like the version of Vandal that’s gone viral in our feeds.

Though she has siblings, they are older, growing up was a solitary experience, especially when it came to finding an identity. Left to her own devices, sourcing of her own music and style rested entirely on Vandal’s shoulders. “My friends were looking to other people, and I really wanted to find icons that I could follow. But I honestly didn't really resonate with a lot of people… I just was more interested in the way people express themselves.” I notice Vandal rarely, if ever, seems to complain — everything comes with a hefty side of gratitude. “I just had a lot of time on my hands as a child. I was sad that I couldn't go to the club with my sisters, so I had my own little party at home.” Alone, Vandal pored obsessively through whatever records were within reach, without a mentor, but also without a voice in her ear dictating the good versus the bad, in versus out. Vandal sought nothing but an expression she could relate to. And she first found that in jazz.

“No one was telling me that jazz was cool. I just realized that it made me feel something, and I wanted to know a lot more about it,” she says, wide-eyed. Allowing her new passion to run rampant, Vandal secretly auditioned for jazz music school in Australia — and was accepted, against her parents’ wishes. “That was the moment I was like, ‘Oh wow.’ It totally blew my mind and opened up a world of music that I didn't really know existed.” Quickly, she was a fixture hugging the wall at jazz clubs, consuming as much instrumental music as possible, though Vandal’s world was just beginning to expand. School soon led her to Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and the broad landscape of vocal jazz. But though the world as she knew it had grown wider, Vandal’s scope was still narrow. Then one day, a friend handed her a Radiohead CD.

“That CD, and guitar-based music in general, changed my world… I became obsessed with punk music. I had a really shitty little guitar, so I started playing really badly into my Garage Band.” Coming from the refined technicality of jazz, she’d immediately found what she had been looking for. “I was drawn to the way that they just freely expressed themselves and used their voices — and that was exactly what they intended to do. It was loud. It was unapologetic. I wanted to do that myself. It inspired me to go, ‘I want to say something and express my own feelings in that way too.’”

When, as young people, we home in our interests — especially if it falls under the “alternative” umbrella — the next step is often to find the “scene.” Spawned from Black Flag in Hermosa Beach, there was the male-dominated Los Angeles hardcore scene of the 1980s. In the early aughts, emo’s third wave — primarily straight, white kids — held communion on Warped Tour black tops and in MySpace forums. The 2010s saw a tight, exclusive, and drug-addled network of American Apparel-ed folks holding court in downtown NYC.

“By this time, I was in Australia, so I didn't really find myself within specific communities or scenes at all. I didn't really feel like I fit into any scenes there. I grew up in a very white neighborhood. I went to a very white school. I didn’t feel like I quite had a place to go, even though I was discovering alternative music. It didn't feel like I was quite included in that space. It was just me discovering all of this stuff on my own. Community is super important to music and to art, but also, I'm not really interested in ‘scenes because I think that really separates a lot of people, especially for people of my skin color and women as well, you can feel very unwelcome in certain spaces. So I'm not about scenes at all, but I definitely believe in community and building community. I'm all about that. I'm still finding my community. If I'm honest, I'm still finding who that is and where that fits in the world. That's why I love traveling so much”.

What really grounds her has been the people she’s surrounded herself with. And like everything, intention is at play — “It's really important that I surround myself with the right people… I feel like if I can have a little bit of a family travel with me, that's everything. It's really kind of a family band in a way.” But though she’s been rightfully particular about the inner circle, its bounds are flexible for the right fit. “I'm really drawn to people who have an opinion and who are really strong within themselves,” she explains. “People who've had the experience before me and who are willing to share it and to give me advice freely. Because I've been around a lot of people who have had the experience but don't necessarily want to share their experience or their story.”

That’s another thing Vandal hasn’t had to wait long for. Her feed is a checkerboard of icons, now mentors — there she is, an arm wrapped around Travis Barker, or Shirley Manson, or Hayley Williams — though she describes to me how these aren’t passerby flicks with a famous person. Each photo pays homage to an “OG” who has played a role in Vandal’s ascent. “It's love and practical support. I've been on calls with them, asking for advice. They give me real support, not just like, ‘Oh, I've reshared your video.’” In fact, it was Manson who bestowed one of the most important pieces of advice Vandal has yet to receive: “Don’t change a thing”.

Prior to coming to a new feature and interview from The Guardian, I do want to drop in a live review from LOUDER. They observed how Ecca Vandal was a breath of fresh air and a star in the making. I agree that “she's got the songs, the skills, the attitude and the aura to become alt.rock's next 'new' star”:

“If you search on YouTube, there's a seven year old video of Ecca Vandal brilliantly covering Rihanna's Bitch Better Have My Money (with a bonus coda involving Kelis' Milkshake) for Australian radio station Triple J's Like A Version series. We bring this up not simply to illustrate the South Africa-born, Melbourne-based singer's vocal dexterity, and excellent taste in music, but to point out that although she's still very much an emerging artist, Vandal hasn't been fast-tracked for success, and has already put in hard yards: in fact, her earliest singles emerged a full ten years ago.

Having just performed at Reading and Leeds festivals, there's no real need for Vandal to be playing two nights at the 150-capacity Sebright Arms, but we're glad that she chose to do so. When she first emerged, the singer cited the likes of Bjork, Mr. Bungle, Fugazi and Deftones as influences, and while you'd be hard-pressed to hear elements of those artists in the succinct alt. hip-hop of Then There's One, or the fabulously raging pop-punk of Bleed But Never Die, those inspirations speak to her ambitions to follow her own path as an artist, shunning obvious or more easily-accessible routes to success.
She's a wonderfully dynamic, effervescent performer too, in-your-face and boundlessly energetic, holding the attention of everyone in the room from the moment she appears on this east London basement venue's non-stage, and retaining it throughout an all-action set.

Fred Durst has taken Vandal under his wing, having brought her on tour in Europe with Limp Bizkit earlier this year, regularly inviting her onstage, and back in April the singer shared a 'pinch me' moment on Instagram, revealing that she'd been jamming with Wes Borland and Rage Against The Machine drummer Brad Wilk at the legendary Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, California. All of which suggests that Vandal isn't nervous or awed about the prospect of stepping up into the big leagues. Nights like this - and songs as good as the superb, utterly infectious Cruising To Self Soothe - suggest that she's more than ready.

The music business is notoriously cruel and fickle, but it'd be great to see her given the opportunity to shoot her shot”.

I am writing this ahead of the release of LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW, so some more reviews might come to light between now and when this is published. Though there is one I have found and want to include. I am moving now to The Guardian and their recent conversation with a brilliant Australian artist who should definitely be in your sight. Go and listen to her music. Her anticipated and extraordinary new album is a “punchy rejection of ‘faux-sincerity’ and music being reduced to TikTok-able snippets”:

“On the first Friday in May, a procession of tattooed, pierced and mostly 20-something devotees crowded into a beers-and-burgers dive bar in Sydney’s Newtown. What was originally billed as a listening party for Ecca Vandal’s second album, Looking For People to Unfollow, had evolved into a surprise live set. Bounding onstage, Vandal was a blur of movement and brilliant blue hair, locking eyes with fans in the front row as she, alongside bassist Richie Buxton and drummer Dan Maio, tore through new material with garage-band intensity. Less than 24 hours later, the trio swapped the intimacy of Newtown for an arena where they opened for Interpol and Deftones.

Despite the ease Vandal projects in rooms of any size, the pre-show jitters never disappear. “It’s a very challenging set that we play – musically, physically and vocally,” Vandal says. “Playing music people have never heard before is also a really big challenge. But those nerves just disappear when people are showing you love.”

There’s been a lot of love coming Ecca Vandal’s way of late, thanks to a run of standout singles including Cruising to Self Soothe and Bleed But Never Die. When I meet her at a busy Newtown cafe days after the two Deftones shows, she is still processing the long road to releasing an album she fully believes in. “It’s about to come out in a few weeks, but it’s been a journey of four years,” she says.

Those four years – during which Vandal went “completely offline” – began with a period of soul-searching after her 2017 self-titled album and guest spots with artists including Hilltop Hoods, Alice Ivy and Sampa The Great. While moving freely between genres in those years, she says, “I had a lot of people saying, ‘You’ll be really successful if you just pick a lane.’” She decided instead to do what she wanted.

Vandal began working on the new album in the Melbourne apartment she shared with Richie Buxton, her partner in both music and life. Making music in a tiny apartment, however, became untenable: “I was trying to track really, really heavy vocals [and] we got knocks on our door going, ‘Can you keep it down?’”

The pair decamped to Buxton’s parents’ house down the road and set up in a garage without an internet connection. “We were like kids again, messing around with instruments, trying things out,” she says. “I didn’t have to keep anyone in touch with what we were doing.”

Those intimate recording sessions found her “the most raw I’ve ever been lyrically”. Inspired by Buxton’s beats and riffs, she channelled a tangle of her own emotions and experiences as a woman of colour against the backdrop of seismic world events such as the murder of George Floyd. At the core of the album, she says, is a “search for true connection” and “trying to fight against the faux-sincerity of the online world”.

Midway through the Newtown listening party, Vandal’s manager stepped onstage to gently inform the room that the second half would shift away from rock and into more beat-driven territory. Vandal hopes fans will engage with the album as a whole. During the writing process, she says, she and Buxton “were noticing that the world was just so obsessed with 15-second snippets. To me, that was really uninspiring. I just wanted to celebrate long form again.”

Looking For People to Unfollow is also the strongest showcase yet of Ecca Vandal’s richly textured, powerful voice, equally at home on hip-hop hooks and punk howls – a “guttural and disordered” register and “the complete opposite of, like, polish and refinement and beauty”.

What was the best year for music, and what five songs prove it?

1993. Oh My God – A Tribe Called Quest; Method Man – Wu-Tang Clan; My Name is Mud – Primus; 93 ‘Til Infinity – Souls of Mischief; Serve the Servants – Nirvana/

What music do you clean the house to?

Anything by Aphex Twin

What’s the song you wish you wrote?

All I Need by Radiohead

What is the last song you sang in the shower?

Singin’ in the Rain

If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?

Bitch Better Have My Money

What underrated song deserves classic status?

Multi-Love by Unknown Mortal Orchestra

What is a song you loved as a teenager?

Björk’s Hyper-ballad. Still love it today

What song do you want played at your funeral?

Out of Time by Blur

What is the best song to have sex to?

Left & Right by D’Angelo”.

I will come to a review of LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW. A deserved and undoubtable Modern-Day Queen who is going to continue to grow and I cannot wait to see where her career takes her, LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW could well stand with the best albums of this year. Given how many people are behind her and the quality of sound, Ecca Vandal is a sensation! If you are new to her, then I would suggest you follow her. Currently touring and heading to Europe soon, she will come to the U.K. on 28th June for Outbreak Festival.

CLASH shared their review of LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW. I was not aware of Ecca Vandal before his year, so I am listening back to her 2017 eponymous album. Since then, she has released singles. There is a lot of justifiable excitement around her new album. A hugely admired and respected artist:

“With her eponymous debut album in 2017, Ecca Vandal had established herself as a genre-bending force to be reckoned with. The Sri Lankan, South African-born, Melbourne-based artist remained unconcerned with fitting into preconceived parameters and instead, leaned into the thrill of travelling from one sound to the next, honing an eclectic, diverse sound. After the album’s release, Vandal began to separate herself from the outside world, eventually going offline for four years and, joined by her producer/collaborator Richie Buxton in his childhood bedroom-turned-studio, the seeds of ‘LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW’ were planted.

Such an immersive process is unsurprising, considering the insular world that Vandal’s music channels, one that is deeply personal while also tied to larger, universal commentaries on politics, identity and more. “I find empowerment in being loud and noisy especially as a woman in this global moment who grew up in a culture that told me I could not be those things,” Vandal shared, in a statement announcing her sophomore release. ‘LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW’ hears Vandal’s self-assured voice soar across an expansive 17-track album, which fluctuates from jolting punk melodies to softer meditations.

‘LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW’ can roughly be split in half. The first opens with an immediacy: ‘EYES SHUT’ hears guitars and drums reminiscent of an old MTV promo, as Vandal tackles the privileged and wealthy. “They’re playing God / And saying nothing’s wrong,” she warns. ‘SORRY! CRASH!’, the album’s lead single, carries the same energy; I’m reminded of Idles’ ‘War’ in its thundering percussion. “Light my dread up in neon,” Vandal commands, “I gotta get my name all up in lights.” It’s an evocative exposure of the in-between of chaos and control, and a highlight on the album.

Vandal’s roots in skater culture strengthen as the album continues. From the viral hit ‘CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE’ that pays homage to skaters in its sound and visuals, to the clear pop-punk parallels in ‘BLEED BUT NEVER DIE,’ each song rings like the perfect melody to glide along to. It is clear that Vandal’s musical roots are in jazz music; her ear for such melodies and ability to find the right groove in a chosen song is clear.

Then, about midway through with ‘OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY,’ we ease into the second half of the album with a synth-driven tune, short but sweet with a cry for connection in the midst of feeling lost: “Screaming hello / To find my echo / ‘Cos we’re still chasing / To feel.” The trip-hop immersion of ‘THEN THERE’S ONE’ is the standout of the album — even at just over a minute long, the song is bound to get stuck in your head, happily so, and we yearn for it to be even longer.

‘BLEACH’ settles into the second half with the perfect blend of Vandal’s array of sounds, hip-hop meets punk meets pop. The dance-driven beats continue on ‘DO IT ANYWAY,’ playfully upbeat with a story of throwing all caution to the wind — for better or for worse. The album closes with two politically-charged anthems: ‘GHOSTS’ addresses historical whitewashing, rejecting empty promises and in turn, reclaiming power: “We’ll tear down the statues made of stone,” Vandal declares, “We’re living facts that brown and black is gold.” If those in power will not listen, as they claim to do, Vandal will make certain that she is heard. The final track is ‘CAME HERE FOR THE LOOT,’ a dismantling of oppressive forces and false idols. Vandal challenges greed, conspiracy theories and more, and with a nu metal blend of hip-hop melodies and abrasive guitars, the album closes with a slow melodic unwind, and Vandal’s final words: “I won’t wait.”

Always unpredictable, and defiantly so, ‘LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW’ hears Vandal elevate her eclecticism to new heights, with lyrical storytelling that stands politically and socially aware, while embracing the fun of contrasting melodies along the way.

8/10”.

I am going to round things up now. Anyone new to Ecca Vandal should go and listen to her music. LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW will be out by the time this is published. Always eclectic and constantly moving, CLASH’s words about how Vandal’s voice “elevate her eclecticism to new heights”. That she does have this political and social conscience, but she can also be personal and there is this fun and energy weaving through her music. Incredible melodies and real spark. I think VERTICAL WORLDS might be my favourite song from LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW. Whichever song of Ecca Vandal’s is your top choice, you can’t deny she is an artist in her own league. A big reason why I wanted to…

SALUTE this queen.

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Follow Ecca Vandal

PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Pardini

Official:

https://eccavandal.com/

TikTok:

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

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/eccavandal/

Twitter:

https://x.com/eccavandal

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0NhKCHTPG7Sz62S3zxV1Cf?si=OgFNhU5BREegGgFo2_hc_A

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/EccaVandal

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR63liUZuyn4YdjX3O1PtiQ

FEATURE: Spotlight: Ellie O'Neill

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Ellie O'Neill

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A debut that ranks alongside…

the most impressive of this year, Time of Fallow came out on 20th March. It is the work of the incredible Ellie O’Neill. I am going to spotlight an artist that you should know about. There are a few interviews with O’Neill that I want to cover and explore, so that we can get a bigger impression of a musician who has a growing fanbase. It is clear that Ellie O’Neill is going to be a star. She is garnering a lot of attention and love. Music Week spoke with Ellie O’Neill around the release Time of Fallow came out. It is a stunning album:

“You recorded Time Of Fallow way back in 2021 – can you put into words how you feel about it finally coming out?

“It has had a long life already, so I’m definitely excited for it to be out. I don’t see music as a product, so that’s partially why I was slow to get it released. For me, a song is out when I’ve written it and I’m like, ‘Perfect, I love that.’ Before, it felt like the songs were already released, because I had shared them with people at so many gigs... I’ve played a lot of gigs! But it was cool to have time to find the thread that connected the songs. The title encompasses the weight of their content, but also the fact that it was a downtime and an isolated experience for me to write them, a time of learning, of going inwards to then re-emerge afterwards.”

How would you define the music you make?

“The first record I ever loved was a Christy Moore album, and folk and country are definitely a part of what I make, but when I listen to songwriter music like Arthur Russell, I feel closer to that. But I don’t know where I fall and I don’t really care. In school, I was learning guitar, but I would never sing. Then I learned a KT Tunstall song or something and I was like, ‘Oh my God, cool, I can play and sing at the same time!’ [Laughs]. I would always be really shy and then when I’d sing on stage I would be totally chill. I just loved the feeling. It’s not about the hit that you get from being good at something in front of people. It’s more of a deepening or a grounding that you feel, because you actually can’t do anything else in that moment.”

As an independent act, how have you found the industry?

“It is definitely hard to survive and it can be an unbelievably elitist industry. Most people you meet have some kind of safety net. I really appreciate when well-known artists are transparent about the challenges for people coming up. Everything is weighed against you, so you have to be smart about how you manage that. I’m really lucky to have got to this point, to be talking to you about my songs. It’s pretty crazy. But when I tell my friends who aren’t in music how much things cost, they’re like, ‘What?!’ If you go into it not expecting that, then maybe you’d be more shocked, but I’m not in it for the money. If I was, I would be very, very upset all the time [laughs]!”

Do you think your stance on not viewing music as a product could ever change?

“I really hope not. I don’t know if I can make good things while thinking only about the audience. For me, music is private, a little safe thing I want to protect. That idea is really important to me. It’s not about what happens at the end, it’s about getting to know yourself or your instrument more and what you feel right now. I wrote most of the album in my bedroom in my parents’ house, with my brothers running around or while literally putting on my boots to play a [Gaelic] football match. It demythologised this whole ‘cabin in the woods’ idea of songwriting. The songwriting part of me is the thing I want to cultivate and keep alive, because it makes me feel so good. It makes me feel everything. If that can be a lifelong companion, as I hope it will be, then that will be a massive yes for me”.

Back in January, The Line of Best Fit interviewed Ellie O’Neill. They write how her “music and identity is driven by the rejection of prescribed paths and a search to discover her own authentic voice”. I have only just connected with this wonderful artist. I am curious if she will be playing near London at some point:

“We go back to the beginning, and her earliest influences. She wasn’t from a particularly musical household. “I think music was kind of a left-field thing for me to be so into. But my dad did teach me my first chords: a song called ‘Bright Blue Rose’ written by Jimmy MacCarthy, which is so, so beautiful.” She took formal guitar lessons but was the only girl in the class of six, so mostly taught herself at home. She rinsed her parents’ Michael Jackson and Christy Moore CDs. Aged 19, she discovered Judee Sill; then, later, Leonard Cohen and Adrianne Lenker.

In April 2024, O’Neill opened for Lenker on the Irish leg of the Bright Future tour, including an unforgettable show at St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny. The two artists bonded a little off-stage over their shared horror of the internet. She has also supported Irish folk artist John Francis Flynn, who was so impressed that he invited O’Neill to duet with him in the main set.

The audience at the ICA are won over in a similar way. They’re here to see Dove Ellis, and when O’Neill steps on stage, they’re still chattering and chuntering, but as soon as she opens her mouth and starts to race around the octaves, their attention turns rapt. It is pin-drop silent for the songs, while the din that follows each one just keeps escalating, not least because of the way she ends them, with a flight of falsetto or an abrupt and punchy stop. By the end, the atmosphere is raucous. As O’Neill plays the final descending chords of “Peter’s Song” and ducks out, one Ellis fan turns to his mate, both of them looking mildly dazed. “That was incredible,” he grins. “We can go home now.”

O’Neill’s distinctive, tuned-down, freewheeling guitar-playing has attracted almost as much attention as her voice, and she says there’s a clear parallel between her interest in reinventing artistic form, and her sexuality. “I think trying to find a way around the guitar that isn’t given to me is similar to what you have to do as a queer person – finding a route that isn’t given to you. In terms of both queerness and art, you don’t have a map so you have to crash your way through, even if that’s in a very personal, silent way. I think there’s obvious reasons why a lot of queer people are artists or activists or both.”

At some stage, she will get another band together, but at the moment she’s most energised by the idea of ambitious studio work. “Before I’d made my first thing ever, I was really purist about it, like, ‘I want to be able to replicate it live’, and now I don’t care about that. I’m just interested in being surprised about what I can make, thinking, ‘There’s so much more I can do.’”

Her most recent release is an elusive, hypnotic second single, “Little Sister”, which took twice as long to write as “Bohemia”, at a whopping 20 minutes. “It’s an example, I think, of how lots of things are almost suspended in your mind, or wherever you keep them, and then they just come up in the stream.”

Of late, she has been writing in a more direct and grounded vein. “That’s really freeing. To say, ‘It doesn’t all have to be like a dream.’ The gateway for me was starting to write portrait songs as gifts for people. I did the first one during Covid. Do you know that feeling of, ‘Oh actually people that you love don’t live near you, probably forever, and you just won’t see them all the time’? It’s such a crazy thing to me. But it’s nice to feel that at least you have that song”.

There are a couple of other interviews to include before finishing off. Hotpress spent some time with Ellie O’Neill last month. In this amazing interview, she spoke about, among other things, “football, slowing down, boundary-pushing Irish artists, and touring with Adrianne Lenker”:

“Ellie has made no effort to dull down the edges of her own Irish identity for broader international appeal – with lyrics referencing Skibbereen, Auburn Street in Phibsborough, “Cailleach and Clothrú”, and the “curve of the Samhain moon”.

“I feel like Irish artists have always done that – especially the good ones,” she notes. “If you're writing from a true place, you're not filtering that for the sake of commercial gain, or for the sake of an end product. I always think about the amount of times that Sinéad is referencing parts of home that are just immediately Irish."

But, as she points out, "Ireland is obviously a cultural moment – and that can be a good and a bad thing for an Irish person writing music."

"Because it can just be picked up as fodder in that machine," she elaborates. "But you have to just do it. You have to just write whatever you need to write, and hope that it means something for you, and hope that it means something for somebody else as a secondary bonus.

“It's my way of understanding myself, and my life, and the people around me as well. So not using that would be a disservice – and an untruth, probably.”

Although Time of Fallow has yet to be released at the time of our conversation, Ellie is already looking forward to having “a bit of silence again” in her head, to carve out a path towards her next project.

“I just want to keep writing songs, and keep growing. I really feel like I'm still so new to it, in terms of the length of my career, the length of my understanding of the craft of writing songs – and, hopefully, the length of my life.

“But the funny thing for me is that once the song is written, it's already out – I've had that moment with it," she says of the release. "So in a way, this moment is for other people”.

It is worth coming to CLASH and their interesting interview with Ellie O’Neill. I do think that there are so many tremendous Irish artists putting out music of the highest order. Go and listen to Time of Fallow as soon as possible. It genuinely is one of the best debut albums of this year:

“Congrats on the reaction to ‘Time Of Fallow’ – you must be thrilled! How does it feel to finally have the album out there?

Very good!

I’ve read the earliest song on the record was penned while you were still an English Literature undergraduate – how important were you studies on your creative process? Do you hear reflections of your literary heroes / heroines in your own lyrics?

I think everything I write is informed by everything I read and love. I like to feel in communion with other writers and I feel closer to writers I love a lot of the time rather than musicians.

Some of the impetus for completing the recordafter you were forced to move back home during the pandemic. What was that experience like?

I had always lived between home and Dublin, so it was normal to me, except I had more time in the house than before. It wasn’t an impetus for completing the record, and I wasn’t forced to move back, I chose to, like a lot of people my age at the time. I felt lucky to have the privilege of doing that, and wanted to use my time well.

I’ve read you would write after your family had gone to bed – do you think that’s a factor in the slightly hushed quietude on the record?

I think it’s quiet at times because I am singing about intimate things, and I write mostly with headphones on to hear my own voice clearly and go deep so I don’t need to project that much. It is also not quiet at times, there’s diversity of tone and projection across the album, I think. It’s easier to write in solitude.

‘Seabird’ is a deeply affecting closing statement, did you always conceive of it as the final song? The album’s structure is also curious – did you enjoy toying with notions of linearity through this?

I don’t think this song is really what I would call ‘affecting’, I think it’s full of lightness and ease. That take on the record was just a rehearsal, it’s very laid back and blossoms easily for that reason. I never conceived of my songs as an album, so nothing was written as a functional thing, just expressions and outpourings”.

There are some really positive reviews for Time of Fallow. Coming back to CLASH, they note how there is a lot to consider and chew on with regards this album. Even though a lot of the words might ring personally to Ellie O’Neill, her songs are universal. She is an artist I am really looking forward hearing more from. I do hope to see her perform live one day:

“There’s something transformational about the music of Ellie O’Neill. The Irish songwriter’s debut album ‘Time Of Fallow’ picks you up in one space, and deposits you in another – listening to it, you’re left feeling like a pebble in the current, pushed downstream to pastures new. A pared-back selection of alt folk minimalism, these sketch-like pieces are uniquely powerful, resulting in a debut album that leaves a palpable impact.

Music that discusses memory, grief, desire, and self-reckoning, the material on ‘Time Of Fallow’ was penned in the aftermath of the pandemic, a time when Ellie O’Neill was forced to return to her family home on a County Meath council estate. A period of personal change, the songs came to reflect her queer identity, while also looking more broadly at community, heritage, and the quiet evolution Ireland itself was embarking on.

In short, there’s a lot to chew on across the space of this remarkable debut album. Lead single ‘Silent Water’ contains a heart-stopping beauty, while songs like ‘Anna With The Silver Arrow’ or ‘Sister Of The Sea’ contain real complexities. It’s all set to wonderful music, of course – the pirouetting guitar lines, the undulating melodies, given enough space to breathe a little in the minimalist framework.

Recalling Laura Marling or Karen Dalton in its stark simplicity, ‘Time Of Fallow’ was recorded in a matter of days at Analogue Catalogue in Newry, a tape-first, female-run studio. There’s a unique atmosphere to ‘Sean’s Song’ for example, the sound of someone putting themselves out there on the line. ‘Witness’ is framed by truth, while closer ‘Seabird’ rises to the heavens, a soul unleashed.

Rooted in a very specific locality, ‘Time Of Fallow’ broadens its scope to become something universal. A wonderful experience, Ellie O’Neill’s debut album should be treasured.

8/10”.

You really do need to go and follow Ellie O’Neill. Even though I am quite new to her music, I do feel like I am going to be listening to her years from now. There is something about Time of Fallow that gets under your skin. She is going to sit alongside the best songwriters in modern music and I feel that she will hit that peak…

VERY shortly.

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Follow Ellie O’Neill

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Khoury

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/elliekatelily

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7FCg4FGsuJfM2o6aE83UHw?si=hYQIhcUFSGuq3r8AjAbDVA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/ellieoneillmusic

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb7JkUe4fM8flv2ygQcZTdg

FEATURE: All the Clubs Have Been Closed Down: The Specials’ Ghost Town at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

All the Clubs Have Been Closed Down

IN THIS PHOTO: The Specials (left-right: Lynval Golding, John Bradbury, Terry Hall, Jerry Dammers, Neville Staple, Roddy Radiation and Horace Panter) photographed on the roof of the Coventry Odeon, 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Chalkie Davies/Getty Images

The Specials’ Ghost Town at Forty-Five

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THIS must rank…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Specials in NYC circa 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Allan Tannenbaum/IMAGES/Getty Images

alongside the most urgent and powerful singles ever released. On 6th June, 1981, The Specials released Ghost Town. It reflected unemployment and violence in inner cities. It was a chart success around the time where were riots happening in British cities. There were also tensions within the band, meaning it was the final that featured all original seven members. Even though The Specials were struggling and there were inter-band hostilities, the music press hailed and commended a vital piece of social commentary. A song that seemed to reflect this haunting and dark mood. One of the best songs of 1981, there is a modern-day relevance to Ghost Town. In the sense that there are protests and disruptions today. Far-right protestors and those who feel they are ‘patriots’. Pro-Palestine groups arrested and seen as the enemy. Clashes and groups of protestors pitted against one another. Violence and aggression in streets. Though not as extreme as was seen in 1981, there are aspects of what The Specials documented in Ghost Town and what we are seeing. Some would say the situations are different, as Ghost Town was released at a time of mass unemployment, urban decay and Black British youths clashing with police. Today, there is a different sort of threat. The youths were reacting to being victimised by police and a perceived racist agenda. Around the U.K., things were pretty bleak. In terms of The Specials, The band would travel around the country and see shops with the shutters down. Clubs closed down. It was despairing. The tour for The Specials’ More Specials album in late-1980 was a terrible breaking point. The band were exhausted from recording and touring. Members angry at bandleader Jerry Dammers, as he insisted on including ‘muzak’ keyboard sounds on the album. There were gigs that saw audience members attack one another. It was such a terrible time, I am surprised the band continued at all! 1984’s In the Studio was released under the name, Special AKA, but it would not be until 1996 when we got an album from The Specials. It was a cover that did not include all the original members.

We sadly lost Terry Hall in 2022. Even though Jerry Dammers wrote Ghost Town, Terry Hall provided the lead vocals. Full of weight and foreboding, he also made the song one that has endured to this day. Ghost Town went to number one in the U.K. upon its release. In 2020, The Guardian voted for the best U.K. number ones. Ghost Town came second. The dark power of the song and “its harrowing wail of a chorus, plunges you straight back into the anger, violence and despair of the early 80s”:

“In early 1981, the Specials were both at the top of their game and in their death throes. They had enjoyed a dizzying, agenda-setting rise to fame. Seven top 10 singles and two gold albums in two years; an entire youth subculture formed in their wake; a record label, 2 Tone, that seemed to guarantee success for anyone who signed to it: Madness, the Selecter, the Beat, the Bodysnatchers.

But the Specials were falling apart. They were overworked and riven with internal disagreements about the jazz and easy-listening-influenced direction leader Jerry Dammers was taking them in. They were a band born out of political and racial tension. They had changed their name from the Coventry Automatics and started playing a punky take on ska, with lyrics pleading for racial tolerance and unity, after a 1978 gig supporting the Clash was disrupted by the National Front. But now political and racial tension was threatening to engulf them. Guitarist Lynval Golding was seriously injured in a racist attack in south London. Gigs on their late 1980 tour were marred by audience violence: in Cambridge, Dammers and vocalist Terry Hall were arrested and charged with incitement to riot after trying to stop the fighting. The band announced they would quit touring.

Things came to a head in the studio while trying to record their next single, Ghost Town, a song Dammers had spent a year writing, horrified by what he had seen on the road: “In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down. Margaret Thatcher had apparently gone mad, she was closing down all the industries, throwing millions of people on the dole. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. It was clear that something was very, very wrong.”

Ghost Town was powered by despair and anger, both at the state of a country in which unemployment had risen by nearly a million in 12 months, and by 82% among ethnic minorities – “government leaving the youth on the shelf, no jobs to be found in this country” – and the state of the Specials (“Bands won’t play no more / too much fighting on the dancefloor”). It was all set to deeply unsettling, doom-laden music: a loping reggae beat topped with eerie, jazz chords, stabbing horns influenced by soundtrack composer John Barry and, instead of a chorus, a harrowing wail. The band fought so much during its recording that the studio engineer threatened to throw them out. Ghost Town was eventually completed and released in late June, around the same time the Specials played a benefit show in their home town of Coventry, inspired by the racist murder of a local teenager, Satnam Gill. The NF marched through the city on the same day; rumours they were also planning to attack the gig meant one of the biggest bands in the country found themselves playing to a half-empty venue.

The day before Ghost Town reached No 1, Britain erupted. There had been riots in Brixton the previous month, sparked by a new police stop-and-search policy named Operation Swamp 81 after Margaret Thatcher’s 1978 assertion that the UK “might be rather swamped by people of a different culture”: 943 people – the vast majority of them black – were stopped by plainclothes officers in six days.

On 10 July, a second wave of rioting spread across the country: Brixton, Southall, Battersea, Dalston, Streatham and Walthamstow in London, Handsworth in Birmingham, Chapeltown in Leeds, Highfields in Leicester, and many other cities including Edinburgh, Luton, Sheffield, Portsmouth, Preston, Newcastle, Derby, Southampton, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Stockport and Cardiff all reported “riots” of varying degrees. In the past, No 1 singles had occasionally alluded to recent events or a prevalent mood – the blissed-out ambience and dippy logic of the Summer of Love was encapsulated by Procul Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale and the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love; a sense of trepidation around the moon landings found a voice in David Bowie’s Space Oddity and Zager and Evans’s In the Year 2525 – but nothing before had developed the terrible currency of Ghost Town, and nor has anything since.

Backstage at Top of the Pops for their No 1-crowning performance, Hall, Staples and Golding announced they were leaving the band: the Specials effectively broke up”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Simon Dack

Originally published in 2007, UNCUT shared a piece earlier this year about Ghost Town. An extraordinary and incredible relevant track today, they got insight from “Terry Hall, Jerry Dammers and more on the final, epic single by the band’s original line-up: “It was about the state of the nation… and the state of The Specials”:

“JERRY DAMMERS (writer, organ): The song tried to link my personal feelings to the political situation. It was about the state of the nation, and the state of The Specials. And it was about being famous and going back to Coventry. That song was my sad farewell to Coventry, because becoming a pop star had made it unliveable in for me. I suppose I was depressed. It seemed like things that I’d dreamed of from the age of 10 were falling apart. I’d split up with my girlfriend of eight years. I think everyone in the band felt lost.

There was a feeling of dread. But “International Jet Set” had been about how weird it is to be in a pop group, and I’d realised the public don’t want to know. So I mixed it with the political. Because that feeling of dread was also in the country. The thing that stuck in my mind was before a Glasgow gig, which is where I got the original idea for “Ghost Town”. There were very old people out on the street, selling cups and saucers from their houses. I’d never ever seen that before, or since. And in Liverpool, all the shops had cast-iron shutters. I guess it’s commonplace now. But something had changed.

I’d been writing “Ghost Town” for nine months. It was a roots reggae song, and I’d heard “At The Club” [by Victor Romero Evans], produced by John Collins. It was really quirky, dub with a drum-machine. I brought John in because my control of the situation was evaporating. He did a fantastic job. He turned it into a pop song.

When we went into the studio, The Specials were in a worse state than even I knew. There was a rebellion against me directing the music. Roddy was… mad, basically, trying to kick holes in the control room. Neville turned on me. Also, we used a diminished chord, which is never used in reggae. In the Middle Ages, that was regarded as the devil’s chord [devil’s interval], and people were hung for playing it. So to Lynval particularly, it felt alien. He kept saying, “It sounds wrong! Why are you doing this?” There was a lot of ganja smoked, a lot of drink drunk, which added to the paranoia.

The riots happening as the record went to No 1 was uncanny. They were caused by Thatcher’s policies. The record probably fanned the flames. A lot of rock bands have sung about a revolution. We actually had one. When someone got killed in the riots, I felt terrible. There was that scary thing, the Jamaican thing about the killer tune – powerful part of reggae.

Terry Hall (vocals): I was leaving the band anyway. That was laid out, that the three of us were going. But we wanted to see “Ghost Town” through. From the initial meeting with Jerry, when he played me “At The Club”, I just thought this one idea was brilliant, and we’ve got to do it. But “Ghost Town” was the tip of a mountain of other stuff. It had to stop.

I don’t think we ever arrived at the studio as a seven-piece. We couldn’t be there at the same time without arguing. The others wanted input into what we did, but it wasn’t allowed. I was cool with that, because it was Jerry’s band. And what he needed was this beautiful mouthpiece. The music was great. My problems with Jerry were political. We had different roots, hearts in different places. If you’re middle class, admit that’s where you’re from.

“Ghost Town”’s lyrics were so simple. The middle-eight talked about the “boom town” when Coventry was factory heaven, until the early ’70s. Pretty much all my family worked in car factories. Then all of that stopped, and you watched people die off, one by one. You could name any city. But when I sang it, it was about Coventry.

For me The Specials was like a really brilliant film about a band, attempting to escape Coventry, and take on the world. And we failed miserably on the outskirts of Coventry. Because even in London, it wasn’t the same. “Ghost Town” took us back to Coventry. It was about the decline of the city, and The Specials.

“Ghost Town” getting to No 1 changed very little, if anything, socially. It didn’t change anything for the band. Doing it on Top Of The Pops, I had a walking stick, and I thought, ‘If one of ’em comes near, I’m gonna twat ’em!’ There were fist-fights in the dressing room. The three of us went in afterwards and told Jerry, “We’re out.” That was 1981, now it’s 2007. He still asks me why we left The Specials. Haven’t got a fucking clue, mate, do you know what I mean? I haven’t got a clue, mate, or do you really want to get into it?“.

There are a couple of other features I want to cover off. Steve Pafford marked forty years of Ghost Town in 2021. Whilst Britain was aflame and in the grip of violence and division in the summer of 1981, “Coventry ska miscreants The Specials captured the mood of the country with the ominous sound of one 45 which turned out to be their swan song. An ’80s summertime special and a half, this is Ghost Town”:

“No better band was positioned to epitomise these trying times in a single song. With a mix of black and white members, The Specials encapsulated Britain’s burgeoning multiculturalism. They were an integrated and socially-conscious group with deep respect and knowledge of ska, the music style that originated in 1950s Jamaica, a precursor to reggae. But ska alone was too tame a style for that moment in history.

The Specials blended in just the right ingredient with their nonchalant punk attitude, a style that came to be known as two-tone, which, as 2 Tone, just happened to be the name of the record label formed by band founder, keyboard player and main composer Jerry Dammers. 2 Tone skyrocketed between 1979 and 1981 with The Specials contributing more than their fair share of hits such as Gangsters, Too Much Too Young and A Message To You, Rudy.

Ghost Town is simultaneously The Specials’ creative peak and their last shining moment. During the recording the song the band was imploding. Problems started surfacing during atour of the US in 1980 supporting The Police. Money and the old cliché of sex and drugs and rock n’ roll had a corrupting effect on the lads who up to that point travelled up and down the UK in a beat-up van and were united by a single purpose of getting the music out there.

Matters hardly improved when it became clear during the work on the second album that Jerry Dammers wanted a change in direction while the rest of the band were happy to continue with the rough punk-ska style that they excelled at. Ghost Town is a result of the music experimentation that Dammers kept pushing the band towards. Alas, it would ultimately turn out to be the band’s swan song.

At first glance, the unusual, disjointed arrangement of Ghost Town makes it an unlikely chart topper. The extensive use of the diminished chord at the beginning of the song and before the line “Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?” plus the foreboding sound of those woozy, lurching organ chords followed by haunted, spectral woodwind punctuated by blaring brass. It was not exactly the usual fare for your typical Radio 1 listener, put it that way.

Then again maybe that was exactly what was needed during that summer of ’81. Influenced by Joe Meek’s electronic experiments on The Tornados’ 1962 hit Telstar, producer John Collins made use of the windy sound effects that announce the track, played on Transcendent 2000 synthesizer beloved of Joy Division and Thomas Dolby.

It was all set to deeply unsettling, doom-laden music: a loping reggae beat topped with eerie, jazz chords, stabbing horns influenced by James Bond soundtrack composer John Barry.

Making Ghost Town even more unusual is the clarinet-like synth part played by Jerry Dammers on a Yamaha keyboard, a vaguely middle-eastern riff that at first seems incongruous yet somehow combined with the doom-laden bass and the portentous, nightmarish vocal chant makes the sum of its parts an irresistible combination. For aficionados the full length 12″ version includes a beautiful trombone solo by Rico Rodriguez and additional Hammond organ parts, both omitted from the single edit.

At this juncture it’s easy to take Ghost Town out of context and remember it as some sort of a semi-novelty hit, especially with that almost comical Tarzan-meets-pack-of-hyanas wailing in what passes for a chorus. But with the depressed social situation of 1981 as its backdrop the utter bleakness of the record is stark and startling.

And it follows that in Ghost Town’s promotional video — aired on the 18 June episode of Top Of The Pops as a new entry at No.21 — the Coventry crew cram into a 20-year old Vauxhall Cresta and cruise some of the three “Ds” of London: the derelict, the dilapidated and the deserted corners of the capital; once industrial now gentrified locales that are probably worth an absolute fortune now.

The band marked the song’s performance debut in the Top Of The Pops studio two weeks later, on 2 July. It was a suitably downbeat episode with only Bad Manners, the more lighthearted side of the ska revival coin, in camp carnival mode doing the Can Can in a dress to counteract the doom and gloom. Ghost Town had zipped up to No.2 and was on its way to the top, although “Smiling” Terry Hall’s decision to amble around the stage supported by a walking cane remains baffling. “The nation is sick”, perhaps? No doubt it was a statement of some kind he wasn’t spelling out. Either way, The Specials were in no mood to celebrate — the band was imploding, and matters would come to a head the following week”.

In 2021, as the U.K. was in lockdown during thew COVID-19 pandemic, the eeriness that Ghost Town talked about the and the streets being empty and things being shout, chimed at a time when people could not really go out. Dylan Jones wrote for GQ about his relationship with the song and why Ghost Town is meaningful and resonates today. One that I hope gets new inspection and praise ahead of its forty-fifth anniversary on 6th June:

“And breaking that silence wasn’t just the sound of petrol bombs and broken glass, it was the sound of “Ghost Town” by the architects of the recent two-tone revolution, The Specials. Not only was this one of the most important records of the early 1980s, it remains one of the most evocative, provocative singles of all time, a prime piece of agitprop that still has the power to shock. With its melancholic wailing, its hypnotic lope, its ominous organs and “The people getting angry” chant, there is no better mirror to the societal privations of 1981, a year that often felt on the brink of collapse. It’s one of the most baleful records to ever make No1. While punk was largely a cultural insurrection, repeatedly using thematic working-class imagery – the brutalist modern tower block being the most obvious manifestation of this, a symbol of post-war progress that very quickly became a totem of social deprivation – “Ghost Town” was a direct response to the urban distress that The Specials’ leader, Jerry Dammers, saw around him. The band had already had huge success as the standard-bearers of the multiracial 2 Tone organisation (which included the likes of Madness, The Selector and The Beat) and had had hits with “Gangsters”, “A Message To You Rudy” and “Rat Race”, among others. Inspired by punk, they had their own grudges to articulate and they were doing it through the medium of ska.

“Britain was falling apart,” said Dammers. “The car industry was closing down in Coventry. We were touring, so we saw a lot of it. Glasgow were particularly bad.” In Liverpool he saw shops closing down, more beggars on the streets, little old ladies selling their cups and saucers on tables outside their homes and he started to see the frustration and anger in the young faces of those who came out to see his band. He felt that there was something very, very wrong affecting the country. “The overall sense I wanted to convey was impending doom. There were weird, diminished chords: certain members of the band resented the song and wanted the simple chords they were used to playing on the first album, It’s hard to explain how powerful it sounded. We had almost been written off and then ‘Ghost Town’ came out of the blue.”

The Specials were advocates of late-1970s postmodern ska, the inventors of two-tone and – for the briefest of times – quite simply one of the coolest, most important British bands of the post-punk period. They were a gang – five white men, two black – who dressed well, spoke sharply and didn’t look like they wanted to be messed with. In the space of just two years, from 1979 to 1981, the original Specials managed to embody the new decade’s violent energies, morals and conflicts – though always with an ironic and often sardonic detachment that kept the band cool as the 1980s grew increasingly hot. Their records defined a slice of a generation who weren’t sure they wanted to be defined in the first place. They were slightly yobby – the NME called their debut album “a speed and beer-crazed ska loon” – but they had an underlying social conscience. They would turn out to be temporal, but they left their mark in the same way The Clash did, or The Undertones, by connecting. Sure, the band were earnest, but they were studiedly sarcastic, too, which endeared them to everyone from ageing punks to their younger siblings. Not only that, but they came from Coventry, Britain’s very own answer to Detroit, the epitome of the post-war urban wasteland, the quintessential concrete jungle, and felt they had a right to bleat about anything they wanted to, especially the determined onslaught of Thatcherism.

PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Young/Shutterstock

Nineteen-eighty-one was a desperate year in the UK. Youth unemployment was rife as the country felt the bite of Thatcher’s cuts and riots were erupting all over the country, riots that appeared, with eerie synchronicity, at the same time as “Ghost Town”. It even felt like a riot, or rather how a riot felt just before it kicked off, or maybe just after it, when all the dust had settled. Dammers’ record was an apocalyptic portrait of inner-city oppression set to a loping beat offset by an unsettling and vaguely Middle Eastern motif: “Government leaving the youth on the shelf… No job to be found in this country…” The single sounded like the fairground ride from hell, a snake charmer of a song, complete with strident brass, madhouse wailing and dub-style breaks. The video was just as bleak, featuring a road trip through some of the least salubrious streets of Central London. The week after the song was released – bingo! – there were riots and civil disobedience all over the country.

The 1980s riots were devoured so much by the international media that the burning oil drum became as much a part of modern British iconography as the white suits in the 1981 television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited – and for a while seemed to appear in any film about the British underclass, surrounded by a gang of Rada-trained professional cockneys and a smattering of generic gangsters, drug dealers and punky fishnets molls. To the outside world it looked as though rioting was what any youth cult worth their salt did when they’d grown tired of posing for style magazines or making bad pop records.

Living in London you certainly got the feeling you were somehow living under siege. In South London, conflict gave an edge to every transaction in a corner shop, every late-night walk home from the Underground. Walk into a Brixton pub and you felt eyes upon you. Television coverage of the riots painted them clearly as battles between residents and the police force, although what they really did was create even more racial tension between blacks and whites on the street, between neighbours of different ethnic backgrounds, between people who knew each other and of course those who didn’t. I had a friend who was chased down Gresham Road near Brixton Police Station by some of his black neighbours just because he happened to be white at the wrong time of day. He sought refuge in a (black) neighbour’s house, who promptly called out to the gang chasing him, who ran in and kicked the living daylights out of him. Police aggression made everyone paranoid, and made people who had previously lived quite happily side by side turn against each other because it seemed like the safest thing to do”.

I have probably not done full justice to Specials’ Ghost Town and its brilliance. Why it was such an important song. There are articles like this and this that I have not been able to include, but you should check them out. Incredible how The Specials themselves trying to keep it together at a time when the country was divided and there was all this air of foreboding and doom. It is such a pity that the seven original members cannot get together for another performance of this song. However, the legacy of Ghost Town is huge. The despair and depression in the lyrics reflected a public mood. A protest song, a bitter commentary on Thatcher's England and a country on its knees, I feel we will be discussing Ghost Town for decades more. Forty-five years after its release, we get to discuss a song that…

DEFINED its era.

FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Rose: My Sister You Were Born…

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

Rose: My Sister You Were Born…

__________

I am not certain…

how many features it will take, though I am determined to work through as much of John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow as possible; commenting on some of his observations. Unfortunately, not a lot of the photos from the book are available online, though I would urge everyone to get the book. I am picking the colours of a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) and choosing different shades of these colours as titles and chapters. Even though I cannot include many photos, I will put in songs and interviews around the time. There are 288 pages, so I may have to skip some parts. Though, there is so much to uncover and investigate. I am going to include this synopsis in each feature:

“A MUST-HAVE COLLECTION OF RARE AND UNSEEN PHOTOGRAPHS OF KATE BUSH.

WITH ESSAYS BY HER BROTHER, JOHN CARDER BUSH, ABOUT KATE'S LIFE AND CAREER.

Stunning and unique images from throughout Kate Bush's career including:

Outtakes from classic album shoots and never-before-seen photographs from The Dreaming and Hounds of Love sessions

Rare candid studio shots and behind-the-scenes stills from video sets, including 'Army Dreamers' and 'Running Up that Hill'

Includes original essays from Kate's brother:

From Cathy to Kate: Describes in vibrant detail their shared childhood and the whirlwind days of Kate's career

Chasing the Shot: A vivid evocation of John's experience of photographing his sister

'For me, each of these images forms part of a golden thread that shoots through the visual tapestry of Kate's remarkable career. Storytelling has always been the heartbeat of Kate's body of work, and it has been a privilege to capture these photographic illustrations that accompany those magical tales' John Carder Bush”.

Over a decade since Kate: Inside the Rainbow was published, I do think that it is one of those books that every fan should own. Rather than quote everything in the book – as it would take a while! -, there are selections that are well worth focusing on. I am going to look at the first fifty pages or so for this first outing.

The book is so gorgeous to hold. It is a coffee table book that has this tactility. The foreword is on page nine. It gives us an insight into John Carder Bush’s photographic relationship with his sister. “For twenty years, I was involved with my sister’s creative career as she rode the waves of the front line of fame. During the time, the way I experienced ordinary life shifted dramatically; it seemed that there was a heightening of a certain assort of awareness that came out of this intense and unique involvement in so many aspects of music and visuals arts. Everyday life took on a new significance that was accompanied by a sense of wonder at the natural phenomena occurring around me, and from the interactions I had with other people. Rainbow, clouds, thunderstorms, sunset, dawn, snow, clusters of coincidence, synchronicity, a deep conversation with a total stranger, acts of kindness, acts of love, acts of forgiveness, all became stunning and seemingly artistic manifestations of existence”. His relationship with his sister began before her career started. Snapping her at their East Wickham Farm from when she was a young child, he obviously sensed that his sister was hugely creative and a gifted artist. Capturing her as she was young and at school, he then continued to chart her life and career almost from the start. Shooting her albums covers from 1982, the years before that did see him collaborate. Though I think his most intense bond and best photos were taken for 1985’s Hounds of Love and 1989’s The Sensual World. How he must have remembered fondly the years and decades before when he was shooting this young girl who was exploring her surroundings and being exposed to music and culture around her. He continues: “Photographs are objects from the past; as soon as you have released the shutter the images goes to the top of a stack of recollections. And, of course, the past can be as intangible as a rainbow; ill will keep changing with each person’s individual perspective”. It is interesting how John Carder Bush mentions his involvement in martial arts and how that ties into his photography.

“As the author of this book, I know the way I see those years has been considerably affected by my experiences in the martial arts, both training in and teaching them”. Martial arts could be seen as a filter. Carder Bush saying “however hard we try, we cannot truly know another person’s inner story”. -Photographers can caption and essence of the artist and some of their personality. Even so, you cannot capture everything. The truth comes from their songs and interviews. John Carder Bush’s Cathy was published first in 1986, when Kate Bush was twenty-eight. It was reprinted in 2014, which prompted a number of media interviews. Reminiscing about their childhood and time together. How his sister was always creative “1973 and 1974 were very intense creative years, with often a couple of new songs a week”. John Carder Bush, Kate Bush and Paddy Bush siblings in an Anglo-Irish family.  That Irish side pronounced and important. How they often took summer holidays in Ireland. Their Irish mother filled the house “with Celtic beauty and her singing”. This would have inspired a young Kate Bush (or Cathy, as she would have been known). The Irish side glamorous and enhancing, whereas their English side was “grey, sedate and boring”. The wild flowers and beautiful landscapes of Ireland paired to the smog and ice of England.  Skipping to page thirteen, John Carder Bush remarks how the “Anglo-Irish mishmash of influence, religions, music and dance was the emotional nest Cathy dropped into in 1958”. I can only imagine what love there was for her. They enjoyed this “hard-earned, middle-class comfort” in an old and beautiful house that was surrounded by urban development. Living in Welling, it was formerly in Kent. Now, it is in South East London, as the Greater London area has expanded into other countries. I have stood outside of East Wickham Farm and looked into an area where a very young Cathy would have wandered and completely lost herself in. I have not seen the house, though looking at early photos of her there, it seemed like this peaceful paradise! John Carder Bush remembers how, when Catherine was trying meant to be practising violin, she was much more interested in the piano.

The piano had been given to their father by Professor Aesop. “She was writing songs about anything that moved her”. Writing a song a day, pets, friends, imaginary loves and elves were fodder. Nobody suspected that her early songs and curiosity for the piano would lead to a career. As the songs grew, the family were aware of something taking shape; “the flower left to grow in its own safe surroundings was blossoming in an exotic and unique way; like a rare daffodil among orchids”. They looked forward to being invited into the piano room to hear a new song. John Carder Bush writes how his sister’s generation was the first when many parents tried to direct them into what they wanted them to be. Rather than moulding them into an image of themselves, they were more open to the child’s own course. Because of that, even though there was reluctance, her parents had mixed reactions. Robert, her father, was a musician himself and could see she had talent. Her mother, Hannah, felt differently. A “haphazard, uncertain life of the ‘wandering musician’”. Strong and independent, when Cathy left school aged sixteen to study mime and dance and work on her own music, she moved into the same house as John (or ‘Jay’) in Brockley. It was there that her debut album, The Kick Inside, came together. Fascinating how John Carder Bush notes the confidence the Bush family had. All taken unconventional directions in the mid-1970s, his sister did “about two years of karate and took two examinations in the Shotokan style”. It must have been emotional for John Carder Bush to see his sister go from Cathy/Catherine to Kate Bush. How their relationship shifted when Wuthering Heights was played on the radio. He writes how, one frosty morning when he was shooting through the stations, Wuthering Heights was playing on three different stations at the same time!

I look at some of those early photos where his young sister was sat at the piano. Her skipping and dancing in the garden or photographed in trees, under the ivy or the surroundings of East Wickham Farm. I will comment on the next chapter about Kate Bush, chasing the shot. A different shade and type of red in this rainbow. The first edition of this run is about the childhood and young years. John Carder Bush fondly admiring his sister’s confidence and determination. Her belief in her own ability. She wanted to sail the ship alone. Not be dictated to. That courage. “These days, it might not seem so remarkable because my sister, and a few other people like her, have opened the way to music greater control by the artist, whether male or female. The dominant role of the record company has severely diminished since the 1970s, when the route was the only way you could get potential music out to an audience – there was no other choice”. A great memory he has is when she was eleven, Carder Bush sent some of her poems to a poetry magazine. The edited would print them if she changed a few lines. His sister felt, if they did not like them, then she didn’t want them in the magazine. You can feel that self-confidence and belief in the early photos. A steeliness and confidence that definitely shines through. A unique artist, “her songs go deep into the human psyche, and her music is as sophisticated as that of any classical composer; they are not mere decoration to enjoy for a week and then be discarded for something else”. Before ending the foreword, John Carder Bush says people might not realise there is a connection between kyudo and photography. Both “depend on precise timing to get results”. Like a photo, when the bow is “at full draw and you are totally focused on the target, the moment you releaser the arrow is dependant on all the physical and mental conditions being just right”.

He notes that, when you are looking through the viewfinder, the decision to release the shutter is dependant “on very similar conditions coming together”. The title of the book coming into focus: “During those years inside the rainbow, these two arts became inseparable for me, and each seemed to be a way of refining the other”. I feel this gives us a greater insight into his photography talent and how he captured his sister. He casts his mind back to 2014 and Kate Bush’s residency, Before the Dawn. How he regrets not being able to take photos during the show, traditionally done during dress rehearsal. He drove into the English countryside which was the production base for Before the Dawn. He was going to be filmed reciting the poem he wrote for Jog of Life from The Ninth Wave. In the back of his car, he had four kyudo longbows. After performing the poem, he crossed across the rehearsal hall and was there as a sensei of kyudo, to teach four of the cast how to use the bows in Before the Dawn. It returned to bookshops in November 2014. It must have been hugely emotional working on Before the Dawn and Cathy being available. Now in her fifties, that link between the extraordinary modern artist creating this incredible live experience, and those photos of his young sister. How far she had come and how she remained this enormously original and impressive artist. Before a brief section where we see John shot by Kate and the perspective being shifted, there are a series of photos from pages twenty-one to forty-three. I will start the next edition on page fifty. I have skipped a lot of his text, though I hope what I have included gives you an insight into the special relationship he has with his sister and why he continued to photograph her. The photos that end the foreword are extraordinary.

My personal favourites are pages twenty-six, thirty-one, thirty-six, forty, and forty-two. Page twenty-six is Bush, as a young teen perhaps or slightly younger, in a hat and looking off camera. This thoughtful or slightly enigmatic look. Thirty-one is her covering her face with her left arm. There is a ring on her littler finger and we can see her right eye. These photos are in black-and-white, though you can feel this magnetism and warmth. The playfulness and relaxed spirit. How comfortable Kate (Catherine) Bush was with her brother. Thirty-six is another great photo, where Bush is looking straight to camera. I think this one was shot in the 1970s and she has her right knee bent up. The expression and the beauty of her eyes. You get so much soul coming through in this image! Forty is a rare – not in a bad way – example of his young sister smiling. She is beaming as she is under a bush or part of the garden. Pulling together a tweed or wool blazer, she looks radiant and completely entranced in the photo. Page forty-two again shows her with a leg bent. Her left leg being bent to her chin as she sits in a beret I think, with her hands clasped together, as she rests her chin on her hands. Almost like a fashion model, John Carder Bush managed to captured this beautiful moment. Even that young, we get this variety of shots that show different sides to a prodigious and wonderful girl and young woman. A period where Cathy would become Kate. In the next edition, as I explore another shade of red – before moving to other colours -, we get to look at the earliest stages of her professional career. From the garden and familiarity of East Wickham Farm and her childhood, this was now a young woman. This chapter comes before the one about Never for Ever. A more general look at capturing the shots and some of John Carder Bush’s memories. The foreword and those early memories a really powerful opening to the book. A major reason why you should buy Kate: Inside the Rainbow and see these photos up close. Not only do we learn more about Kate Bush and how this talent and confidence was instilled at a young age, you get to see that early bond between brother and sister. One that would endure throughout her career. A fascinating glimpse…

INSIDE he rainbow.

FEATURE: Tonight’s the Night of the Flight: Kate Bush and a Turbulent British Summer in 1981

FEATURE:

 

 

Tonight’s the Night of the Flight

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Janette Beckman

Kate Bush and a Turbulent British Summer in 1981

__________

I have looked inside…

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

Kate Bush’s 1981. Rather than discuss the entire year, I do want to focus on the summer of 1981 and events later in the year. In the spring, in May 1981 Kate Bush was fully immersed in recording The Dreaming. As we can see from this timeline, May was quite an important month: “Kate goes into Townhouse Studio with Hugh Padgham as engineer to begin the recording work of The Dreaming album. The backing tracks for three songs are put down before Nick Launay takes over as engineer. In a session that lasts until the end of June more backing tracks are laid. Kate is tempted by the offer for her to play the Wicked Witch in the Children's TV series Worzel Gummidge, but she is already too far involved in the album and has to turn down the offer”. I have brought in this snippet in for a recent feature, but I did want to stay in 1981. It is nearly forty-five years since race riots in Toxteth. Rather than look at the whole year, I will focus on the summer and where she was when recording The Dreaming. I am going to end on an interview that is worth re-exploring. In July 1981, there was civil disturbance in Toxteth, inner-city Liverpool, which arose in part from long-standing tensions between the local police and the Black community. I think that the summer of 1981 was a very rocky and turbulent one in the U.K. Social unrest and with riots happening and there being this sense of disruption and disorder in the air, it must have been a horrible time. Some artists reacted to the riots and what the realities were. The Specials’ Ghost Town was released in June 1981. Exploring themes of urban decay, deindustrialisation, unemployment and violence in inner cities, Ghost Town was a hit around the time riots were incurring in the U.K.

Thinking about Kate Bush, the summer of 1981 was one where she was tucked away in the studio. By May 1981, sessions for The Dreaming decamped to Townhouse Studios. I am looking inside Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Most of The Dreaming's backing tracks were recorded here over a period of three months. Bush played Fairlight CMI and piano on almost every song. David Gilmour added backing vocals. Del Palmer or Jimmy Bain on bass. Preston Haeyman and Stuart Elliott on drums. It weas, as Thomson notes, “an album defined by painterly overdubs”. As there was this turmoil and crisis happening in Britain, one of the country’s greatest artists was constructing an album. I had never considered whether the darkness and division that was seeping Britain in 1981 affected the tone and direction of The Dreaming. Bush saying that she was not a political artist and was holed up recording. She would have seen the news and heard about the riots. However, little of that is specifically channelled into songs. Even so, there is a thickness and smog. A haunting and heavy aspect to The Dreaming which may have come from the atmosphere around her. There was violence in London so, even if she was in studios out of the way, she was not too far from a lot of this violence. Sat in Your Lap was released on 21st June, 1981. Nick Launy came in as engineer after Hugh Padgham departed. The two had different ideas and directions. Padgham didn’t have a great experience. He tried to explain to Bush that if you have loads of layers of vocals and sounds then it hard to hear things. Perhaps feeling she was not that experienced or knowing what she was doing, he was glad to hand over the reins. Launy was twenty and Bush twenty-two. They both clicked and it was a much smoother working relationship. What is evident about the summer of 1981 in terms of Kate Bush’s career was that she was still growing as a producer. There were a lot of takes and musicians doing the same parts over and over.

It may have seemed like one big noise. More refined or at least a little more stripped for Hounds of Love in 1985, The Dreaming was an album where Kate Bush put so many ideas into the pot. Musicians like Ian Bairnson (who played on Sat on Your Lap and Leave It Open) recalled how Bush was thinking more as a producer and using all these unusual sounds. July 1981 was an especially important month. Kate goes into Abbey Road studios with Haydn Bendall as engineer to complete the backing tracks. Bush travels to Dublin to record the track Night of the Swallow with members of Planxty and The Chieftains. I did cover this in the other feature. Again, with unrest happening in the U.K., Bush was working on one of her greatest tracks. Night of the Swallow is perhaps the most extraordinary and accomplished song on The Dreaminmg. At one point recording the songs, musicians utilised all three of Abbey Road’s studios. It was a hectic and productive time. I think about the sense of this division and violence. Margaret Thartcher had only been Prime Minister for a couple of years. Kate Bush not really a political writer, she channelled her emotions and energies into songs that did have some bite and violence within. Maybe Pull Out the Pin is the closest example we get to a song that absorbs some of the U.K. riots. Though this song was set during the Vietnam War rather than the U.K. in 1981. You can see that a negativity or blackness lingering like storm clouds did impact The Dreaming. Even so, in the summer of 1981, she did record songs with so much beauty in them. Night of the Swallow is a classic example. At times, Bush struggled to keep track of what was being recorded. Becoming “lost in the in the woods of her own imagination” as Graeme Thomson writes, she was very stoic and took control. Leading up to Christmas 1981, Bush worked at home and changed lyrics, adding this and that, working on backing vocals and getting things into shape.

That summer must have been quite intense for everyone. Riots in July in Toxteth (Liverpool), Handsworth (Birmingham), Moss Side (Manchester), and Chapeltown (Leeds). Kate Bush, at the time, might have seemed a little blasé or rose above it. You know that it was affecting her or subconsciously influencing the direction of some of the tracks through The Dreaming. Night of the Swallow stands as this moment of beauty and wonder on The Dreaming. Not the only example, though it is one of Kate Bush’s greatest examples of her brilliance as a songwriter and producer. This is what she said to Melody Maker in October 1982 about Night of the Swallow:

“Unfortunately a lot of men do begin to feel very trapped in their relationships and I think, in some situations, it is because the female is so scared, perhaps of her insecurity, that she needs to hang onto him completely. In this song she wants to control him and because he wants to do something that she doesn’t want him to she feels that he is going away. It’s almost on a parallel with the mother and son relationship where there is the same female feeling of not wanting the young child to move away from the nest. Of course, from the guys point of view, because she doesn’t want him to go, the urge to go is even stronger. For him, it’s not so much a job as a challenge; a chance to do something risky and exciting. But although that woman’s very much a stereotype I think she still exists today”.

I am going to end with an interview that she gave to Record Mirror in 1981. Following my feature on 1981 and why it was this important period between Never for Ever (her third studio album was released in September 1980) and The Dreaming, it occurred that the summer of 1981 was a hostile and unsettled one in the U.K. Bush did say, in her piece for the KBC Issue 10 (Summer 1981): “I've been lucky enough to be tucked away in the studio through all the riots, and only catching the muggy weather in between sounds. I hope everything has been good for you during this summerless time. We all know that "things they are a-changing”.

Late in 1981, Bush did get a chance to relax a bit. Or at least find some sense of order and perspective. The summer of 1981 was especially busy and important. In terms of some of the songs she recorded and the stage she was at with The Dreaming. John Shearlaw spoke to Kate Bush for Record Mirror. The interview was published in September 1981. After a period of depression and drain following The Tour of Life in 1979 and recording Never for Ever, she was feeling more positive. Quite refreshing considering everything happening around her. Not only the riots that happened through the summer. Bush was also throwing herself into the album, and it must have been exhausting at times:

“My life has never been into money, more into emotional desires; like being an incredible singer or an incredible dancer; and if I can buy something that can help me, I will now. But I wouldn't buy something that I couldn't live with, like a country house which I don't need. [Actually, about two years after giving this interview, Kate bought--a country house.] I'd rather buy a huge synthesiser that I could live with all day."

She emphasises and explains, thinks out the question, returns to her theme. The easy answers have gone over the years. Take her career...

Kate maintains that there hasn't really been a gap, even though she admits that Sat In Your Lap only surfaced after her longest break to date.

"My slowness at doing things surprises me," she says, "but i have been doing things continuously. It's a battle to keep up with all the things I want to do, and obviously things like dancing are going to suffer. I couldn't spend twelve hours a day in a studio like I'm doing at the moment, and dance, as well."

Again the emphasis on her way of working--the only way. The ups and downs are of her own making, they don't follow rules. And Kate only bows to her own pressures.

"The last album was the first one that I would actually hand over to people with a smile," she says, almost seeming to imply that it was the first one she was actually pleased with, "and that was followed by a greater period of non-creativity, when I just couldn't write properly at all.

"It happened before, when the tour was over, and then I felt I'd just given so much out that I was like a drained battery, very physically and tired and also a bit depressed.

"This time it was worse; a sort of terrible introverted depression. The anti-climax after all the work really set in in a bad way, and that can be very damaging to an artist. I could sit down at the piano and want to write, and nothing would happen. It was like complete introspection time.

"I suppose I had about two months out earlier this year...and that was a break I really needed. It gave me time to see friends, do things I hadn't been able to do for three years.

"It wasn't really as if I was missing out on normality," she laughs. "I'd rather hang on to madness than normality anyway, so it was more like recharging."

But something more came out of it than just a rest?

"Oh yes!" The smile returns. "I felt as if my writing needed some kind of shock, and I think I've found one for myself. The single is the start, and I'm trying to be brave about the rest of it. It's almost as if I'm going for commercial-type "hits" for the whole album.

[I have always been struck by this statement. It seems to me to indicate that Kate really doesn't have a very sound notion of what is "commercial"--which is all to the good, of course. For if she felt that The Dreaming had a commercial sound, then some listeners's criticism that she seemed to have developed a calculatedly commercial sound for the next album, Hounds of Love, loses credence, since her mental image of "commercial" sound is so different from the sound of Hounds of Love.]

"I want it to be experimental and quite cinematic, if that doesn't sound too arrogant. Never For Ever was slightly cinematic, so I'll just have to go all the way."

The shock that Kate refers to, eyes almost ablaze as she uses the word, came months ago...after she started to work with a rhythm machine while she was writing.

"I'm sure lots of things that I'm trying to do won't work," she says, "but I found that the main problem was the rhythm section. The piano, which is what I was used to writing with, is so far removed from the drums. So I tried writing with the rhythm rather than the tune."

Sat In Your Lap, naturally, is the first fruit of the new approach--original (in that it could only be Kate Bush) marriage of pounding drum sounds and two layers of voice. There is a theme, but it's the rhythm that hits you first, blasting right through to the synthesised end--a step that she knows is likely to continue the critical division.

"I was really frightened about the single for a while," she admits. "I mixed the song and played it to people, and there was complete silence afterwards, or else people would say they liked it to me and perhaps go away and say what they really thought.

"Of course it's really worrying, because there's an assumption that if you're one of us, an artist, you don't need feedback at all, when in fact you need it as much as ever, if not more. I really appreciate feedback, and I'm lucky that the people closest to me, my friends and family, are used to me and realise that I've got my own 'bowl of feedback' to rely on."

And that's more important than the public reaction, or do you worry?

"There will always be some who are irritated by me. I seem to irritate a lot of people," she smiles, "and in a way that's quite a good thing."

Nor will the change stop there. Drums, Kate enthuses, are as wide a concept as music itself, and she's determined to go further than "a lazy acceptance of a drum kit." Add that to the news that she'll be working with other musicians on the new album--"the best around"--and it seems likely that "Kate Bush 4" will be one of the big surprises of the year.

As a preview she plays me one track that's currently being worked on: a wild soaring collusion with Irish group Planxty entitled Night of the Swallow, which also features one of the Chieftains. Again the sound is unmistakable, but this time it's Kate Bush married to the heartbeat of traditional Irish folk.

Discussing the project brings Kate Bush into larger-than-life focus once more. The burning enthusiasm returns, along with the string of "amazings", "incredibles" and "fantastics". She'd been up all night in the studio the previous night in Dublin, and her reactions are genuine, real and hard to resist.

"I'm still really up from the experience," she says. "In fact, I'm still reeling from it. I asked them if they'd be interested, and the whole thing was so relaxed, it was wonderful. I badly want to work with them again. I'm so excited about the fusion.

"And I think that there's so much of the Irish in my mother that it all suddenly came back to me--it was fate rearing its head at just the right time!"

So that's two surprises already, and although Kate has been making demo tracks since March, and Abbey Road is now her second home, the rest will have to wait until summer completion...if all goes according to plan.

What about the book you're planning to write, though? Again, she sighs (a marginal sigh) and repeats her line: "There's so many things I want to do, and it's so hard to fit them all in..."

But yes, a book is on the cards, hopefully before the end of the year, and she says: "I'd like to write it myself. Without saying anything about the other books, which I don't want to, I feel almost pressured to speak, otherwise there's this huge misrepresented area.

"In one way it's ridiculous--I feel it's much too early to write a book, I've hardly done anything yet. But I really want people to be aware of reality--subjective reality, obviously.

"It'd be about what it's like being me, my feelings, my friends, the people that I rely on. I need to be represented in a positive way, and I'll have to do it myself."

[This book, tentatively titled Leaving My Tracks, was shelved in 1984.]

Slowly Abbey Road is beginning to wake up for another Kate Bush day that is likely to last until the early hours of the next morning, and she announces candidly: "I'm beginning to feel like shit. Ireland's catching up on me. And all the things that have to be done. It's impossible to do it all in the time...perhaps if I could stop sleeping it would help."

But she doesn't really believe it, even if she does wonder if transcendental meditation does help you to relax enough to cut down on those "very wonderful" hours of sleep. No, she decides, it's work as usual.

Twenty-two years old, a Tour of Life and three albums behind her...and the rest can wait. Treading devastatingly and surely between the doubters and the devotees, Kate Bush may well continue to "amaze" us all”.

Forty-five years since riots broke out across the U.K., I did want to see where Kate Bush in terms of her career. She did feel unsettled by what she saw, though she was focusing on recording and making her fourth album. People have not commented before. I do feel that some of the mood and turmoil that was on the news and on the streets did find their way into The Dreaming. The claustrophobia and tension. If Night of the Swallow suggests otherwise, listening to tracks like Get Out of My House and a sense of regret in All the Love. I will write about her 1981 at some point in the future, though I wanted to add to my previous feature. Look back forty-five years. 1982’s The Dreaming remains this…

EXTRAORDINARY creation.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Run-D.M.C. (with Aerosmith) - Walk This Way

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Run-D.M.C. (with Aerosmith) - Walk This Way

__________

I am spending some time…

with a song that turns forty on 4th July. I did first cover this song from Groovelines in 2021, though I feel it is worth coming back to it. Walk This Way unified Hip-Hop and Rock. Originally recorded by Aerosmith for their 1975 album, Toys in the Attics, it was included in Run-D.M.C.’s 1986 masterpiece, Raising Hell. Featuring Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler on vocals and Joe Perry on guitars, it was an amazing collaborations that arguably saved Aerosmith. In terms of their reputation and how they were in a slump by 1986. The second single from Raising Hell, Walk This Way was produced by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. Run-D.M.C. did not want the song to be released as a single and were shocked when it was and it became such a huge success. Rick Rubin also was surprised it was a single. Walk This Way peaked  at number four in the U.S., becoming Run-D.M.C.'s biggest hit. It was also the first hip hop single to reach the top five on the Billboard charts,. It reached number eight in the U.K. Ahead of its fortieth anniversary, I want to explore this phenomenal crossover single. One that united a very cool and influential Hip-Hop group with a Rock band who had perhaps become a little stale by the time their 1975 song was revitalised and repurposed. I do want to come to some features around Walk This Way. I think it is a perfect blend of Aerosmith’s original inspiration with the spark and energy that Run-D.M.C. inject. Making a great song into something epic and timeless. In 2023, Classic Rock went inside Walk This Way. Rick Rubin had to talk Run-D.M.C. into recording it. The song became a hit, and the rest is history:

“The beginning of the now-classic video for Run-DMC’s version of Walk This Way begins with the Hollis, Queens rap trio (MCs Run and DMC plus DJ Jam Master Jay) trying to drown out a band rehearsing next door – Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Each faction cranks up the volume, until Tyler smashes a hole in the wall with his bandana-strewn mic stand – then, a ‘duet’ between both groups ensues. The video also serves as a metaphor for how separated rock and rap were at the time.

By the mid-80s, Aerosmith were a shadow of their former self. After 1985’s unfocused reunion album Done With Mirrors failed to recapture the group’s earlier glories – coupled with its members’ ongoing drug problems – it seemed like Aerosmith’s chart-dominating days were over. On the other hand, Run-DMC were a group on the rise – their first two albums [1984’s Run-DMC and 1985’s King Of Rock] helped put rap on the map and, as evidenced by both the title track of King Of Rock and Rock Box, the seeds for a rap-rock hybrid were sown.

It didn’t truly together until sessions began for Run-DMC’s third album, Raising Hell, in early 1986. when Jam Master Jay and DMC resuscitated a sample from their early days.

“Before rap records were made, we used to have to find beats to rap over, and Walk This Way was one of our favourites,” recalls DMC [real name Darryl McDaniels]. “There’s something about Walk This Way – when the DJ threw that on, the beat was so cool, the way those guitars came in. And then the DJ would cut it back to the start of the beat.”

“We were in the studio one day looping the beat and [producer] Rick Rubin walks in. He’s like, ‘Yo, do you know what that is?’. And me and Jay were like, ‘Yeah, that’s Toys In The Attic’. We didn’t know the group – we just went off with what was on the cover. He was like, ‘This is Aerosmith, Walk This Way’ – he was giving us the 411 on Aerosmith.”

When Rubin suggested Run-DMC re-do the song, DMC remembers resistance. “Me and Run were like, ‘You’re taking this rock-rap shit too far – you’re going to ruin us. That’s going to be fake, nobody in hip-hop is going to like it’. But he persuaded me and Jay to sit down and listen to the lyrics, so we put the needle on the record. When Steven Tyler opened his mouth, we got on the phone: ‘Y’all motherfuckers – we’re going to be ruined!’. We had this big argument.”

What Run-DMC didn’t know was Rubin had already asked Perry and Tyler to drop by Magic Ventures Studios in NYC.

“We went into the studio and laid down a weak version – because we didn’t want to do the record – and left. Eight hours later, we get a call to come back to the studio. We walk in and Joe Perry is playing his riff, Steven Tyler is in the booth doing the lyrics. Me and Run knew we had to step our game up. Jay was like, ‘Yo, don’t think of the record as “Steven Tyler and Joe Perry’s record”, think of those lyrics as Run-DMC lyrics’. So we went in the booth and that went so good that Steven said, ‘Yo, let me get in with y’all’.”

In the 1997 book Walk This Way: The Autobiography Of Aerosmith, the band’s then-manager, Tim Collins, admits not knowing what rap was when Rubin first suggested the session – but agreed when offered $8,000 for a day’s studio work.

Perry added, “I didn’t know what was gonna happen when I walked into the studio. I thought they’d show us ideas on how to rearrange the song, but all they had was a drum track.”

DMC recalls his first impressions of the Aero-duo. “Steven was very friendly and Joe Perry didn’t say one word. He’d nod at you, go over and play the guitar, finish his riff. ‘Are you ready to play?’. He’d shake his head yes. But Steve was just very friendly and inquisitive, like, ‘Wow, do the DJ thing Jay – show me how to DJ’. He was like a little kid – excited and enthused.”

In the Walk This Way… autobiography, Tyler reflected on the sessions. “Run and D and Jay were huddled in a corner, really intent on something. I go, ‘Joe, what are they doing?’. ‘Probably smoking crack’, he says. Later we went over to the corner. They’d been eating lunch from McDonald’s.”

As soon as Run-DMC began playing their version of Walk This Way, DMC knew they were on to something. “Everybody flipped out. Me and Run were so puzzled, because the reaction was overwhelming. We didn’t think it was going to be a big hit, but people were loving it.”

Soon after, the video was filmed, which MTV aired throughout the summer of 1986. Raising Hell was soon a smash, peaking at No.6 on the US album chart, while Walk This Way hit No.4 on the US singles chart. Aerosmith may have benefited more from the success – they soon kicked their addictions and enjoyed a hugely successful comeback”.

I will move to The Guardian and their 2016 feature. Making thirty years of Walk This Way, they told the story of one of the standout songs of the 1980s. Before Walk This Way, I am not sure whether Hip-Hop and Rock had been fused. Maybe a risk bringing Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. together, the interaction and blend is perfect. No wonder it was so popular when it arrived in 1986:

“Not that hip-hop had always been an easy sell. The rap records that reached radio listeners in the early years had a tendency, ever since the Sugarhill Gang’s breakthrough, Rapper’s Delight, to exude a novelty flavour, while turntablism, in real life the beating heart of the culture, tended to manifest itself only as a cheesy wikki-wikki add-on. And then there were the clothes. Oh dear God, the clothes. Seek out the extraordinary footage of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five on Channel 4’s The Tube performing The Message, its pioneering gritty street-level content undermined by their superfly sci-fi costumes, which looked like they’d been raided from George Clinton’s tour bus seven years earlier.

The reputation of the entire genre was rescued by Run-DMC who, in the words of British writer Neil Kulkarni in The Periodic Table of Hip Hop, “made everything that had happened before them sound old-fashioned, too slick and smarmy”. The trio had roots in that clunky prehistory: Run (Joseph Simmons), the teenage brother of Russell Simmons, had previously DJed for Kurtis Blow, before forming his own band, originally called Orange Crush, with DMC (Darryl McDaniels) and DJ Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell). But everything changed in 1983 when the trio, renamed Run-DMC and still in their teens, released their debut single, It’s Like That, on Profile. That track – brutally blunt by the standards of the time – and its rival-dissing flipside, Sucker MCs, blew up on rap radio and changed the game for good. “Ultimately it took Run-DMC, with their black leather, sweats, homburgs and in-your-face attitude, to crystallise the image of toughness into rap chic,” wrote SH Fernando Jr in hip-hop history The New Beats. “Their attitude, like their beats, was hard. Their dress, unlike the extravagant leather, sequin and feather outfits of most rap acts at the time, reflected a street aesthetic to which the average b-boy on the corner could relate.”

Aerosmith, meanwhile, were in a slump. Album sales had steadily declined since their 70s peak, the band’s key members were ravaged by various addictions, and they hadn’t had a Billboard top 10 single since the original Walk This Way, a decade earlier. The song had first been recorded for the band’s Toys in the Attic album, and was born on tour when singer Steven Tyler, who had been listening to the Meters and James Brown, asked drummer Joey Kramer to lay down something with a little funk to it. (Run-DMC, therefore, were not so much appropriating Aerosmith’s groove for black culture as reclaiming it.) Guitarist Joe Perry added a simple but effective hook, and Tyler came up with a lewd loss-of-innocence lyric about a schoolboy getting caught masturbating by his father, who instructs him in the ways of seduction.

When it was time to record the track at New York’s Record Plant studio, it still needed a title and a chorus. Inspiration finally came to them when they took a break to walk a few blocks to Times Square to catch a movie. The film was Mel Brooks’s comedy Young Frankenstein, in which Marty Feldman’s Igor lurches and limps down some stone steps, then instructs Gene Wilder, playing the title role, to “walk this way”. In a classic sight gag, Wilder does exactly that.

By the time the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration was mooted, Jam Master Jay had already been cutting Walk This Way back and forth between his decks for years, and Run had been rapping over it since he was 12. They weren’t the first act, though, to attempt a rap-rock hybrid. The Beastie Boys’ AC/DC-sampling Rock Hard and LL Cool J’s Rock the Bells – both Rick Rubin productions – had already walked that way, and Run-DMC themselves had released several trial runs, notably the Russell Simmons-produced Rock Box and the provocatively titled King of Rock, both featuring chunky riffing from session guitarist Eddie Martinez.

When Collins relayed Rubin’s offer to Tyler and Perry, they were initially sceptical, but went along to Magic Ventures studio in Manhattan on 9 March 1986 for the rate of $8,000 a day. And a day is all it took: Run-DMC had a rental car that was overdue for return, and needed to work fast. As Tyler recalled in Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith, “Run and D and Jay were huddled in a corner, really intent on something. I go, ‘Joe, what are they doing?’ He says, ‘Probably smoking crack.’ Later we went over to the corner. They’d been eating lunch from McDonald’s.”

What Rick Rubin created with that day’s work still stands as an immortal party anthem, as liable to spark outbreaks of air-scratching as air-guitar among drunks unable to decide whether they want to be Jay or Joe as they lurched around (an ability to dance was optional for the enjoyment of Walk This Way). Tyler’s rapid-fire vocal was too slang-packed to be completely decipherable to British ears, but the bits about “feet flying up in the air”, a “kitty in the middle” and being “down on the muffin” left little doubt that it was thinly veiled filth.

And the video was one of the most literal in a decade not short of contenders. The two bands – the sleazy old rock slags and the box-fresh rap crew – are rehearsing in adjacent rooms and engaged in a loudness war, but join forces when Tyler literally smashes down the wall between the two rooms/races/genres, and the two groups storm a theatre stage to the delight of screaming fans. The clip instantly took Run-DMC into the MTV mainstream (the channel showed it twice an hour).

But which half of the hook-up were the real winners from Walk This Way? Who was doing a favour for whom? Rick Rubin had sold Aerosmith the idea as “a great crossover opportunity for both groups”, and so it proved. The received narrative is that the song broke Run-DMC and, by extension, rap, legitimising the genre in the eyes of white listeners, just as Eddie Van Halen’s solo on Beat It had done for Michael Jackson and black pop. It’s true that the single became the first rap single on Billboard’s Top 10 (peaking at No 4), that its parent album, Raising Hell, became rap’s first platinum LP, and that Run-DMC became the first rap act on the cover of Rolling Stone”.

I am going to end with a review of the supreme Walk This Way. The Mix Review provided their take on a song that has endured through the decades. Forty years after its release, Walk This Way still sounds so exciting and fresh. You can play it multiple times and never tire of its brilliance. I remember first hearing this song in the 1990s. I was enthralled. I still get a rush when I hear it played now:

“A pioneering collaboration between Run-DMC and Aerosmith under the auspices of production guru Rick Rubin, this not only catapulted the rap-rock sub-genre into the mainstream, but also helped launch the career of one of the all-time great mix engineers, Andy Wallace. Despite the heavy gated (or sample-triggered?) snare ambience, what impresses me is how aggressive and upfront this production sounds. That might seem nothing special these days, when we’re so used to super-dry and present mixes, but in 1986 Rocky IV, Karate Kid II and Top Gun had saturated the airwaves with lushly reverb-tastic offerings like Survivor’s ‘Burning Heart’, Peter Cetera’s ‘Glory Of Love’, and Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’. In that context, ‘Walk This Way’ must have felt like a bolt from the blue!

It’s also easy to underestimate the production’s complexity. Yes, there are plenty of big, bold elements in there: the merciless sampled drums, the guitar riffs and the alternation between Run-DMC’s rapped verses and Steven Tyler’s sung choruses. But the closer you listen, the more nuances emerge. For instance, this production might appear to have no bass part (and the strong ‘C’ pitch to the kick sample potentially obviates the need much of the time), but there’s something sneakily sidling in at 0:26 to underpin the first verse. It can also be detected in the choruses, where its rhythm deviates from that of the guitar. (If you can’t hear what I’m talking about, low-pass filter the mix at 100Hz and it’ll become more clearly audible.)

The way the verse is developed throughout the production is cool. The second verse, for instance, adds live ride-cymbal overdubs, a lead-guitar fill at 1:02, and Tyler’s pitched call-and-response contributions on phrases such as “kitty in the middle” (1:00) and “ready to play” (1:06). Then, after the third verse has stripped things back to a loop from Aerosmith’s original 1975 release (a nice touch!), Tyler joins the rapper in an equal lead role all through verse four. In fact, despite strong competition from the samples, riffs and raps, Tyler totally steals the show with his hook line. Not only is it extraordinarily high (high Bb and the Eb above it), but the tone is so gloriously filthy and distorted that it merges seamlessly with the guitar timbre to create something more than the sum of its parts. So striking is this timbre, in fact, that I don’t feel in the least short-changed despite there being, unusually, only two such hook sections in the entire song”.

A simply extraordinary song that turns forty on 4th July, Run-D.M.C. thought Walk This Way would ruin them. Picking up on the Classic Rock feature, the group cannot argue against what its legacy is: “DMC can see what the song accomplished. “People tell me it’s the greatest rap record ever made and the greatest video. VH-1 did the ‘Top 50 Videos Of All-Time’ – we were No.1. It was about bringing generations of music together, which is what music is supposed to do – evolution and unity”. When you think about Walk This Way in those terms, few records have…

LEFT such a legacy.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul Simon in London, 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images

Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al

__________

ON 25th August…

we mark forty years of Paul Simon’s masterpiece, Graceland. Perhaps his greatest solo album ever, it has endured to this day. I will go into it more closer to the time. However, before that, one of its defining singles turns forty. That is You Can Call me Al. There is a bit of debate around its exact release date, through several sources say July 1986. I am going to start out with a feature from American Songwriter, who tells of the real-life interaction that inspired a song that could be seen as a mid-life crisis. It is one of the standout songs from Graceland. Musically brilliant and inventive, its iconic video, with Chevy Chase appearing alongside Paul Simon, helps cement its legacy:

“We all reach a point in our lives when the aging process becomes a lot less fun than it used to be. Turning 18? A highly anticipated moment in everyone’s life. Turning any age past 25? A little less anticipated…That’s the onus behind Paul Simon’s playful take on a mid-life crises, “You Can Call Me Al.” Though the song was inspired by a specific event, Simon used his songwriting chops to give it a much wider scope than originally intended. Uncover the meaning behind this track, below.

Videos by American Songwriter

Behind the Meaning of Paul Simon’s Mid-Life Crises, “You Can Call Me Al”

A man walks down the street
He says, “Why am I soft in the middle now?
Why am I soft in the middle?
The rest of my life is so hard

I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard”

The opening line quickly orients the listener to the subject of this song: growing up. Why am I soft in the middle, Simon asks, not doubt prompting a knowing chuckle from many of his listeners. Like many Simon songs, his language borders on figurative, but the meaning is still easily understood. Simon struggles with growing up and aging out of a time when life seems to be easy breezy.

Despite the explicit meaning of this song concerning aging, the title was inspired by a real life event in Simon’s life. As the story goes, he attended a party and was mistaken for some man called “Al.”

The Party Behind the Song

“Fun fact, the titular line for ‘You Can Call Me Al; was inspired by an amusing misunderstanding at a party,” a post on Simon’s Facebook reads. “One evening in the early 1970s, French composer Pierre Boulez, who had just been named musical director of the New York Philharmonic, attended a party hosted by Paul and his wife. At the end of the night, Paul said goodbye to Boulez at the door, who politely responded, ‘Thank you, Al, and please give my best to Betty.’”

In the end, Simon used this miscommunication to explain the apathy that can creep into our lives as we grow older. Things that once amused us, annoyed or, or angered us fail to rouse any emotion what so ever. It’s a nuanced track with many different point of relatability for the listener. Overarchingly, it seems Simon wants someone to commiserate with about the unceasing passing of time.

Revisit this track, below.

Bone digger, bone digger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away in my well-lit door
Mr. Beer belly, Beer belly
Get these mutts away from me
You know, I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore

If you’d be my bodyguard
I can be your long-lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you call me
You can call me Al

A man walks down the street
He says, “Why am I short of attention?
Got a short little span of attention
And, whoa, my nights are so long
Where’s my wife and family?
What if I die here?”.

The last time that Paul Simon performed the brilliant You Can Call Me Al was on his Homeward Bound – The Farewell Tour, which concluded on 22nd September, 2018, in Queens, New York. I will come to an NME article from 2024 that tells why Simon has retired that song. Simon has recently performed some gigs and is still touring. We hope that he performs for years to come. This article from Vintage Digital goes inside You Can Call Me Al. It is not allowing me to copy the text. I would recommend you to read it, as it provides insight into this genius song. It is Graceland’s most “most playful, intricate and technically daring track”. “What sounds effortless on record was, in reality, a masterpiece of analogue/digital construction, held together by Simon’s compositional instincts and Roy Halee’s extraordinary ability to bend tape, time and technology into something new”. Roy Halee is the mixing engineer on Graceland. “Rhythm grooves cut in Johannesburg were never intended as finished songs. They were conversations, sketches and experiments, played by musicians who stood shoulder to shoulder with no headphones, feeding off each other’s energy. Halee captured it all to analogue tape with careful mic placement and minimal baffling, isolating what needed to be isolated while preserving the live spark that allowed Simon to build a song off of communal momentum. Simon later returned these tapes to New York, treating them like raw clay. He sifted, edited, lifted moments from one performance and paired them with phrases from another, shaping the song bar by bar. In the analogue world, this would be a monumental task. Halee transferred the analogue recordings to a Sony PCM-3324 digital 24-track recorder and performed dozens of edits, chasing the groove across reels and assembling the foundations of the track with meticulous, almost architectural precision. The dense instrumentation threatened to swallow the vocal whole. Halee’s solution was ingenious: he created two different tape delays, one feeding left and one feeding right, which pulled the vocal into the music without letting it disappear. Remove that delay and the entire sonic illusion collapses. With it, the track gains a rhythmic bounce and intelligibility that feels almost impossible given how crowded the mix is”. I have cut from various paragraphs, but I couldn’t get through the whole things. It gives you a flavour of the challenges faced and how brilliant intuition and inventiveness saved the song from potential disaster. You Can Call Me Al sounds so extraordinary all these years later.

I am finishing off with NME and an article from 2024. A shame that Paul Simon has had to retire one of his most beloved and acclaimed songs. Having dealt with major health conditions, including hearing loss, he has improved. Though he is not in perfect health, I do wonder if You Can Call Me Al will return to his sets soon. It would be wonderful to hear perform this classic live:

“Paul Simon has opened up about his decision to retire hit song ‘You Can Call Me Al’.

The Simon and Garfunkel singer-songwriter has grown distant from some of his most iconic songs over the years. However, of all the hits he has taken a step back from, it is ‘You Can Call Me Al’ that he has fully retired from his live shows.

It was released back in 1986 from his groundbreaking album ‘Graceland’, and soon went on to become one of the defining tracks from his solo career. According to a new interview though, the singer said the decision to move on from the song has come from necessity rather than desire.

Talking with CBS Mornings, Simon said that his battle with hearing loss has left him unable to perform like he used to, and interfered massively with his relationship with music.

“There’s only about six per cent [hearing] in my left ear,” he told the outlet, also recalling how he has been forced to use multiple monitors in order to hear properly during recent shows. “When the balance is right, I can hear well.”

He also added that the condition has forced him to be much more selective when choosing setlists. “I’m going through my repertoire and reducing a lot of the choices I make to acoustic versions,” he explained. “It’s all much quieter. It’s not ‘You Can Call Me Al.’ That’s gone. I can’t do that one”.

Ahead of the fortieth anniversary of Graceland in August, I wanted to focus on its extraordinary lead single. One of Paul Simon’s finest works, every time I hear this song, I get transported back to childhood when I first heard the song. It is such a playful and hypnotic song that makes you want to move. That is why I wanted to focus on it…

FOR this Groovelines.