FEATURE: Mama Tells Me I Shouldn't Bother… The Cardigans’ Lovefool at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Mama Tells Me I Shouldn't Bother…

The Cardigans’ Lovefool at Thirty

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IN June….

The Cardigans played at London’s Eventim Apollo. Led by Nina Persson, there is hope that the Swedish band will play more shows in the U.K. Not only because they are an amazing band who have released so many brilliant albums. Their acclaimed third studio album, First Band on the Moon, was released on 6th September, 1996. The third album from the then-quintet, I think it would be great if they came back and did some thirtieth anniversary shows. I think the London show was a celebration of that album, but such a huge record deserves more focus. There are so many great moments on First Band on the Moon. However, its lead single, Lovefool, is the standout. One of the defining songs of the 1990s. I was at high school when Lovefool came out, and it is a song I instantly fell in love with. I still get shivers when I hear the song! Written by Peter Svensson and Nina Persson, it is a beautiful, lush and wonderfully performed song. Perhaps a little dated now, you cannot fault the majesty of this gem. Reaching number two on the U.K. chart, I wanted to celebrate thirty years of this song. It was released on 5th August, 1996 (that was its European release date). It is interesting looking at the reviews and impressions of Lovefool. The retrospective reviews about Lovefool are interesting. There was a lot of praise for Lovefool in 1996. Although some felt it was sugary and a little too kitsch, many proclaimed Lovefool as a catchy and instant classic track. I think it is among the finest songs of the 1990s:

“Justin Chadwick of Albumism said "Lovefool" is "one of the more exciting straight-ahead pop songs of the contemporary era", calling it "pure, exquisitely produced pop perfection." John Bush of AllMusic deemed it a "depressing lament of unrequited affection". Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club described it as "giddy". Dave Fawbert of ShortList wrote, "It's one of the best things in life when a song comes along, you listen to it, and you just think: "Well, that's perfect isn't it?" Every little bit of this three minutes and 14 seconds is absolutely, utterly unimprovable, from the little bllllrrrrring guitar intro, all the way through to that gorgeous ritardando and final chord at the end. Impossibly stylish, groovy and ice cool, this is, you'll be unsurprised to hear, still brilliant, fully 20 years on. The Swedes, they build things to last—Volvos and 'Lovefool', two sides of the same coin.” Sal Cinquemani of Slant called it a "tongue-in-cheek smash", writing that "Lovefool" "criminally crowned the band as one-hit wonders in the U.S." Treblezine wrote, "it's not difficult to understand the effect of this song. It's got that certain quality that digs right down into your being and glows with a precise sense of rhythm and pleasure”.

Prior to getting to some other features around Lovefool, I want to focus on American Songwriter and their 2024 feature around and indelible ‘90s classic. They say how The Cardigans “had every intention of rocking out in a way they hadn’t done on previous records. But one song required a subtler, slinkier approach. It’s a good thing they took that approach, because the song in question, “Lovefool,” turned out to the most successful of their career”:

“Fool” Me Once

The Cardigans formed in Sweden in the early ’90s, and they were distinguished early on by the dreamy vocals of lead singer Nina Persson and an eclectic musical bent. They began the process of collecting material for their third album First Band on the Moon while they were still touring the album Life, which they had released in 1995.

As a result, it was in an airport where guitarist Peter Svensson first played the song to the rest of the band. He had the first part of the chorus (Love me, love me, say that you love me) in place. Persson didn’t think the song should be quite so syrupy, so she countered with Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me. She explained to The Guardian what went into her lyrics:

“It’s a song about how it’s very human to bend over backwards when it comes to getting love. The character is very calculating, aware that what they’re going to get isn’t real but that it’s better than nothing.”

Booting the Bossa Nova

When Svensson initially wrote the music, he envisioned the song played with a bossa nova rhythm. Needless to say, that slightly antiquated style wasn’t exactly in demand on the various radio formats of the time. The band’s producer, Tore Johansson, gave the band a hard time about the song, suggesting they switch it up.

Johansson convinced The Cardigans to throw more of a disco feel behind the song, without revving up the pace so much that it would lose the prettiness of the melody. That’s when “Lovefool” came together into a version that did well right off the bat in countries all over the world.

But the song’s exposure went into overdrive when filmmaker Baz Luhrmann reached out to the band. He was looking for just the right pop songs for his modernized version of Romeo + Juliet, and “Lovefool” caught his attention. Once the song appeared in the film, The Cardigans found themselves hitting new heights of popularity.

What is the Meaning of “Lovefool”?

The portmanteau title of “Lovefool” hints at the song’s duality. The narrator is clearly in love with the person she’s addressing, but she can feel him pulling away: Dear, I fear we’re facing a problem / You love me no longer, I know, she sings to begin the song. But she explains that she can delude herself as long as he sticks around: I don’t care if you really care / As long as you don’t go.

The narrator receives advice from others she ignores: That I ought just stick to another man / A man that surely deserves me / But I think you do. She also neglects all the logic that tells her she shouldn’t subject herself to this anguish anymore: Reason will not reach a solution / I will end up lost in confusion.

I can’t care ’bout anything but you, Persson sings to close out the song, but her voice sounds far more quizzical than decisive. “Lovefool” suggests we’ll put up with all manner of indignities to be with the one we love. The Cardigans dressed that somewhat sour message in a chirpy sheen to make it accessible, and the rest is ’90s pop history”.

I will finish with a piece from The Guardian. Before that, I do want to source a 2016 interview from Billboard. Looking back on Lovefool at twenty, Nina Persson shared her thoughts. It was a massive success and one that most have grated the band to a degree. Maybe being associated heavily with a song they were weary of, in retrospect, they were pleased of its success and play it live. I do hope the band have some upcoming gigs where they play Lovefool. I am writing this ahead of their date at the Eventim Apollo (27th June), so I am not sure if that was in the set:

“Lovefool” — the uber-earworm from the band’s third studio album, First Band on the Moon — swiftly became a hit in Europe but didn’t debut internationally until Oct. 5, 1996. “We put out that song and record and embarked on a long tour, so in one way, nothing changed for us,” frontwoman Nina Persson told Billboard recently over the phone from Los Angeles, where she was preparing to play a show with Local Natives. “Then the movie came out” — that would be Baz Luhrmann‘s ’90s-defining Romeo + Juliet — “and the U.S. caught on tremendously.”

After Romeo + Juliet was released on Nov. 1, 1996, “Lovefool” debuted on the Adult Pop Songs chart dated Nov. 30 at No. 39. It then hit the Radio Songs chart the following week, peaking at No. 2 and staying there for eight nonconsecutive weeks. It spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Pop Songs airplay chart, beginning with the Feb. 22, 1997-dated tally. (The song did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, because at the time, non-commercially available songs — like “Lovefool” — were not eligible to chart on the list.)

As Persson recalls today, “Lovefool” felt like an odd fit for The Cardigans. “We definitely were aware that it was a single and a catchy song when we wrote it, but the direction it took is not something we could have predicted,” Persson says. “It wasn’t necessarily our character; it felt like a bit of a freak on the record — which, objectively, it still is.” The song’s upbeat feel wasn’t the band’s initial intention. “Before we recorded it, it was slower and more of a bossa nova,” Persson says. “It’s quite a sad love song; the meaning of it is quite pathetic, really. But then when we were recording, by chance, our drummer started to play that kind of disco beat, and there was no way to get away from it after that.”

The band had already shot a different music video for the U.K. and Europe — “much more bleak, much more our original style,” Persson says. “We had an actor playing a sort of handsome-man-love-interest of mine, and he was supposed to be a kind of gangster and the band played his gang members.” But thanks to the success of Romeo + Juliet, another video debuted and became ubiquitous on MTV, cementing Persson’s public image as a flaxen-haired pixie floating at sea, a message in a bottle in human form. Watch the MTV staple below, as well as a side-by-side comparison of the two videos:

Persson acknowledges she and her bandmates weren’t initially thrilled by the success of “Lovefool.” “It took over our whole existence, and it wasn’t something we totally identified with,” she says today. The Cardigans played it on Beverly Hills, 90210 and on the morning talk show circuit; Persson remembers being “freaked out” when she’d see the video on screens in American clothing stores. “We were kind of snobs,” she acknowledges. “We felt like these things were glitzy, and we felt like, ‘No, no, we’re a rock band!'”

But today, with the distance of two decades, she’s able to look on the song a bit more kindly. “Now, we see it from the other end, and we’re proud and thankful,” she says. The band happily plays “Lovefool” in concert. And as Persson herself wrote on her Instagram on the anniversary of the song’s U.K. release: “We love you, sweet nuisance!”.

In 2023, The Guardian spoke with The Cardigans’ Nina Persson and producer Tore Johansson about the best-known track from the Swedish band. I think there are those who heard it first in 1996 and it has stayed with them. Some have changed their views and now like a song they were a bit cold towards. Those who were spellbound by it and still are. Others who are discovering it now. I do think it is one of those tracks impossible to dislike. It has a simple heart. Rather than – as some feel – it being cloying or too sickly, it is this seductive and wonderful song that is rightly hailed as one of the standout songs from the 1990s:

“Nina Persson, singer and co-writer

In 1995 we had just released our second album, Life, and were touring a lot. We were in an airport somewhere waiting for a flight and were looking at material Peter Svensson, our guitarist and songwriter, had written for the next record. He played this song on guitar: it was a bossa nova at that point. I thought it was beautiful, but found the chorus “Love me, love me, say that you love me” too cliched, so I tried to offset its sweetness by adding: “Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me.” It’s a song about how it’s very human to bend over backwards when it comes to getting love. The character is very calculating, aware that what they’re going to get isn’t real but that it’s better than nothing.

Our producer Tore Johansson would break our balls. He couldn’t stand that it was a bossa nova and immediately had our drummer play a disco beat. Disco wasn’t being used a lot then and it helped the song stand out. The first time we released Lovefool, in 1996, it did well. We didn’t think it could be any bigger. Then, a year or so later, Baz Luhrmann asked us for a song to use in his film Romeo + Juliet. It felt really nice that he personally got in touch. We offered him a different song that was way more romantic but then he heard Lovefool and said: “No, that’s what I want.” We were invited to the premiere but were away on tour at the time. I still haven’t met Leonardo DiCaprio. I never got my chance, before I turned 25, to have my moment with him.

The culture verged on pornographic. There were shoots of me licking an ice cream, while Peter made guitar mag covers

After that second release, I was in a Nike store in New York one day and the video came on their big screen. The salespeople were all singing along. “Oh my God!” I thought. “This is big.” I had to go outside – I was freaked out. I loved music but I had no intention of being famous. I also had a problem with how women were presented. At the time, there was this horrible culture that verged on pornographic. There were photoshoots of me licking an ice-cream, gross stuff like that, while Peter got to be on the cover of guitar magazines.

Lovefool has definitely come back around, with the 90s being so hot right now. My 12-year-old son and his friends know it through things like TikTok. Young girls ask me if I’ve met Justin Bieber, because of his song Love Me, which borrows the chorus from Lovefool. We thought it was bullshit at first. Let a 15-year-old use our song? No way! But our manager said: “You guys want to think twice because people say this kid is going to be really big.” We’re happy we did.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

Tore Johansson, producer, played bass

My friends and I were hobby musicians. We built Tambourine Studios in Malmö just to have a place to record. We started recording other bands to make money. One was the Cardigans. I never really wanted to be a producer but I ended up recording all of their albums except one and having an amazing, almost full-time career with them for many years.

When they came to me with Lovefool, I thought: “Yeah, it’s really good, but we’ve made so many of these indie bossa nova songs. Couldn’t we try something a little funkier?” Latin rock and disco were the big inspiration, the organ was inspired by Oye Como Va by Santana.

We bought a restaurant. That was fun. But in a very Malmö way. Not much cocaine going on

We recorded it totally analogue. Our studio was like an authentic 1970s studio: it’s an easy way to get that kind of retro sound. We worked hard on every instrumental part to get it perfect. I think I played bass on the chorus and Peter on the verse. Nina is super good at doing vocals. She had a sound and she had a style.

The Cardigans are very down to earth, so Malmö was a great town for them to be famous in. We had this weird double life, of being pretty normal at home while all this crazy stuff was happening around the world. There was so much money coming in to the studio, we started a record label and we bought a restaurant. That was fun. But in a very Malmö way. Not much cocaine going on.

I went on to produce Franz Ferdinand’s first album, as well as lots of other bands. But Lovefool is definitely my claim to fame. If I’m at a wedding or something, meeting people who don’t know me, I can tell them: “You know that ‘love me, love me, say that you love me’ song? That was me.” I can do that and be proud”.

It is hard to believe that Lovefool turns thirty on 5th August. To me it still feels recent, as I think about the song and have good memories. Though those memories are from three decades ago, so it is also distant. Glad that The Cardigans are still together and they are not a band to dismiss a massive hit and refuse to play it. It means new generations of fans can discover a song that turned them into international superstars in 1996. Also go and listen to First Band on the Moon, as it is tremendous album. However, when you think of its standout moment, few can argue against…

THE mighty and divine Lovefool.

FEATURE: Expecting: The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Expecting

The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells at Twenty-Five

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IT seems like a lifetime away….

IN THIS PHOTO: Jack and Meg White (The White Stripes) in 2002/PHOTO CREDIT: Kelly Ryerson for FADER

when you consider Jack White today. He announced a new album, Frozen Charlotte, on 10th July. He has put out so much work since The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells came out on 10th July, 2001. I wanted to recognise twenty-five years of a fabulous album. One of the very best the dup of Jack and Meg White released, a Deluxe edition came out in 2021 for its twentieth anniversary. I will come to some reviews around The White Stripes’ third studio album. It was the biggest step forward. Their 1999 eponymous album is a raw and Blues-heavy record. With 2000’s De Stijl, there was a broader palette. Maybe not as sludgy or heavy, you can feel different colours and sounds. Even so, it was not a massive shift. Just enough to show that De Stijl was its own thing. I feel White Blood Cells is a different beats to anything they produced before. Jack White’s songwriting at its very best. Recorded at Easley McCain Recording in February 2001, it was recorded quickly. That is how the duo operated. Lo-fi but always nuanced and astonishing, White Blood Cells is my favourite album from The White Stripes. So many standout moments, people associate it with songs like Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hotel Yorba and Fell in Love with a Girl. Their most varied and accomplished album to that point, White Blood Cells was not a big commercial success. It charted quite lot but the reviews were very positive. That mix of rawness and sweetness. The bond between Jack and Meg White. I want to explore some features around White Blood Cells. I cannot find any online interviews from 2001 around the release of the album. However, there is one from 2002. FADER put The White Stripes on their cover. Speaking with them after the release of White Blood Cells as their stature and celebrity was growing, it is interesting reading what they had to say:

“But the White Stripes are big, and famous in that tired-ass latter half of the 20th century way. Famous enough to have a reported $1,000,000 dangled in their faces to appear in a massive celebrity-driven Gap ad campaign—a payday they turned down after Jack had already sang on their third album, last year’s White Blood Cells: Well you’re in your little room/ and you’re working on something good/ but if it’s really good/ you’re gonna need a bigger room/ and when you’re in the bigger room/ you might not know what to do/ you might have to think of how you got started/ sitting in your little room…

Why would they want to be successful? You can’t even ask that question in America, at least not in the new America of the New Economy and the Internet and necromantic politics and weekly record sales updates and outposts of mall culture around the world. Perhaps this is why the idea that the White Stripes might not want to blow up and go pop hasn’t really been the dominant narrative flying off the rock and roll desk over at New America Media, Marketing and Promotion, Inc. It’s probably more a function of capitalism than a simplistic matter of race, but journalists are patented suckers for white people digging into their own souls through music forms of black American origin, like the blues, jazz, rock and roll, and hip-hop. This makes for both good copy and good business sense: writers and editors love that shit, because they love to build ’em up so they can tear ‘em down—maybe because there’s nothing more dangerous to the collective than a man or woman who simply doesn’t give a fuck and takes chances. who tries to reach out and break to the other side, whatever that side may be. (“I like putting myself in other people’s shoes,” says Jack.) Here are the White Stripes, the standard brief goes, a guitar/drums duo from Detroit who say they are brother and sister and has released three noisy albums of blues-based garage rock with touches of Zeppelin and the occasional Bob Dylan or Marlene Dietrich cover. They always wear red and white. The guy is really pale and scrawls the name of obscure bluesman like Blind Willie McTell on a white T-shirt, and get this: the girl bangs the drums with a deliberate kid-like thrashing!

“There’s different things we love: we love country music, we love the blues, we love rock and roll, we pretty much love anything American, from the South. So we have all these different influences,” explains Jack. And so naturally because the White Stripes tried and actually succeeded at an honest visceral music that smells like cigarettes, tastes like old motor oil and hits like an alcoholic girlfriend, they have provoked the usual media hateration. Time’s Benjamin Nugent went all out, putting his J-school diploma on the line and dong a bit of tidy investigative work. “In 1996, John (Jack) Gillis and Megan (Meg) White, got married, and Jack took Meg’s last name,” reported Nugent diligently. “Jack says he grew up with ten older siblings in the southwest Detroit house he currently shares with roommates, and this is rumored to be true. Meg, he claims, grew up in the suburb of Grosse Pointe… Last year they divorced, but the band remained intact…” The British press has mainly ignored this. They’re pissing their pants because the White Stripes are the best new big thing since, well, the Strokes.

Of course, one country’s dampened knickers are another nation’s legacy of blacks and blues (or something like that), and that’s not a new story either. White people have always been obsessed with the blues, at least since John and Alan Lomax made their famous Southern field recordings (the ones Moby sampled for Play) a couple of decades before an adolescent Mick Jagger sent away for sides from Chess Records in Chicago. A lot of folks both black and white might write the whole thing off as a rinky-dink taboo attraction to the forbidden “other”—with the thinking being that the “other” is the entire black American nation. That’s not entirely accurate. Black as they are, the blues are also part and parcel of America’s outlaw ethos: the first bluesmen were primarily jobless, itinerant musicians whose lyrics and lifestyle were an obvious liability to black America’s emergent race-building consciousness in the late 19th and early 20th century. The bluesman was not pulling himself up by the bootstraps, and the music would not or could not be considered “a credit to the race” until decades later. Today, of course, famous bluesmen open tourist traps in Times Square.

“The blues are completely honest. It’s just perfect to me,” says Jack, matter-of-factly. “Every song can only be one man’s story against everybody’s.” One man’s story against everybody else’s! Jack White says he grew up poor and white in a neighborhood called Mexicantown and that he first started listening to the blues when he was the only white kid at his mostly black high school that didn’t wig out. But who knows if he’s telling the truth? Just what, exactly, did Jack White do to be so black and so blue?

This identity politics line of questioning is for squares and comes out of the cross-roads where the basic American obsession with authenticity meets the country’s central personality trait of near-pathological lying. It’s also patronizing racism, American-style, that the king of the Delta Blues can sell his soul to the Devil in legend but Jack White of Detroit can’t call his ex-wife his sister. The White Stripes—like the blues—are unconcerned with such a trick bag and so they exist squarely outside the matrix. Outside that system, honesty is urgency as much as it is truth-telling, and Jack White sings like there’s things about him and Meg and they peoples that they desperately want you to understand, even if he can’t or won’t make it exactly plain for you. And if you listen to their albums and can’t tell what’s a White Stripes song and what’s a cover, that’s the interstitial space in which the blues have always existed. At their best, the blues themselves are a question, a sort of black American koan that take a long time—perhaps a lifetime or just the 70-some odd years between the first recording of Son House’s “Death Letter” and the White Stripes version—to really understand just one man’s story. It looked like ten thousand people gathered ‘round the burial ground/ I didn’t know I loved her ’till they began to lay her down.

And if the White Stripes are a little self-aware, as they were when drawing parallel between the blues and Holland’s De Stijl art movement for the title of their second album, they are not self-consciously so. Detroit as a city is almost completely unself-conscious. The girls there eat red meat, drink dark liquor and chain-smoke Camels, and the guys are probably still cool with their moms, have day jobs and girlfriends and peculiar ways of handling cigarettes and the smoke they produce. No one seems to have a cell phone and when you go to the record store there’s no Latin section and there are actually street signs that point the way to Mexicantown. As late as last November the White Stripes were playing $5 shows ($1 for students) and when the band records some songs for a local PBS station and “The Big Three Killed My Baby” is cut from the program because General Motors sponsored the show, no one blinks twice.

“We never set out to say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna be a garage rock band and that’s it—we’re gonna use the same three chords over and over again. We’re gonna make six albums and then we’re gonna stop.’ We never said that,” says Jack. “We never wanted to play for the same 50 people all the time.”

“And that’s what you could say about these last few years in Detroit: a back-to-basics look at what music means.” Jack continues, “What does it actually mean? With all its faults and fakes and videos and clothing and album covers, what does it actually mean? It’s just looking towards getting back to what it really was, not looking back and reminiscing as much as getting things back to normal again.” There is no irony in Detroit. When the White Stripes can turn down a million dollars from Gap and Jack still says there’s no hope in the city, it calls to mind something Detroit techno DJ Mike Banks said or wrote somewhere: No hope No dreams no love My only escape is underground”.

I found a review of White Blood Cells from Pitchfork. If their first two albums had some high points among some less-than-spectacular songs, everything on White Blood Cells clicks and stays with you. A song as short as Little Room as memorable as a bigger one like I Can Learn. The sweetness and charm of We’re Going to Be Friends together with the snarl and punch of I Think I Smell a Rat. Such a hugely listenable album that you will revisit time and time again:

“Virtually all of these songs address a distanced lover. Sometimes he's coming home to see her; other times she's done him some permanent wrong. The lyrics are succinct and direct, and poetic like an aged bluesman. On "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," he sings: "If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall/ If I could just hear your pretty voice, I don't think I'd need to see at all." He concludes the song with, "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most/ And you know why you love at all if you're thinking of the Holy Ghost."

On the country hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the Stripes reflect the grit of early Railroad Jerk-- a glee-filled boogie with Jack's voice breaking and whooping, almost on the verge of a yodel. "Fell in Love with a Girl" is frenzied and rollicking (the album's best), complete with Yardbirds-type "ahhaa's" and a joi de vivre tempered by the admission that trouble is sure to follow: "My left brain knows that all love is fleeting."

Indeed, many of the songs admit that the love is lost. On "The Union Forever," Jack White mourns, "It can't be love/ Because there is no love." The song is a riff on Citizen Kane, including a strange breakdown with sampled dialogue from the film. Here, the White Stripes are the most experimental they get, which is to say "not very," though the song reminds me of the ragged power of Royal Trux without the pointless artiness. Certainly, it would be nice to hear the White Stripes take this music in a new direction, but this band is all about the songs, and the songs are good enough to stand alone, sans-flashy effects and tape editing.

"The Same Boy You've Always Known" is another high point. For a ballad, it rocks harder than most bands' hard-rockers, yet it wrenches in its emotional impact. Jack White repeats certain key lines, straining his voice to impart meaning and feeling. Again, the state of the relationship in question is uncertain. The song ends uncommitted and terribly sad with, "If there's anything good about me/ I'm the only one who knows." How many bands have failed with entire albums of moroseness to only express the alienation of those two lines?

The closest thing to a dud on this record is "We're Going to Be Friends," a gentle, nostalgic ditty of innocent love and childhood. It's a little too pleasant, lacking any of the fear and confusion of those pre-double-digit years, but its softness gives the record's midpoint some time to inhale before another six exhalations of fire.

Finally, at the close of the album, Jack sits alone at the piano for "This Protector." Though its message is vague, there are implications of religion and loss: "You thought you heard a sound/ There's no one else around/ 300 people out in West Virginia/ Have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within you/ But now... now... now, now, now, NOW!" Now what? It's the floating resonance of the moment, the intensity of the feeling, that gives these words meaning.

White Blood Cells doesn't veer far from the formula of past White Stripes records; all are tense, sparse and jagged. But it's here that they've finally come into their own, where Jack and Meg White finally seem not only comfortable with the path they've chosen, but practiced, precise and able to convey the deepest sentiment in a single bound. It's hard to know at this point in the game where they'll head from here, but what matters is right now. And right now, I want to listen to this album again”.

I will end things with Stereogum and their twentieth anniversary feature around White Blood Cells. I first heard it around 2003. That is when its follow-up, Elephant, was released. Although most critics and fans would say Elephant is a superior album, I have always had more love and fascination with and for White Blood Cells. Twenty-five years after its release and no other group have tried to replicate the sound of The White Stripes. Some have maybe tried, but none have been able to elicit this kind of majesty and brilliance:

“In the beginning the White Stripes had consciously entered themselves into Detroit's lineage of noise-bombed rock 'n' roll, a continuum of feral howlers stretching from the Stooges and MC5 to the Gories and Detroit Cobras. They might have been happy to remain in that world forever, but their twist on the ragged Motor City tradition was too compelling for the rest of the world to ignore. Jack and Meg built up a mythos -- adhering to a strict red-and-white dress code, pretending to be brother and sister -- and a small but potent catalog, culled from the rough 'n' tumble corners of British and American music history. Their sound was deeply familiar but utterly peculiar. And just when nostalgia and backlash against garish late '90s trends opened up a window for back-to-basics rock bands to become real-deal superstars, they put out the strongest front-to-back statement of their career. White Blood Cells catapulted the White Stripes from the dive bar circuit into superstardom. By the end of the following year, they had appeared on the cover of Spin, accepted an MTV Video Music Award from the Olsen twins, and toured arenas with the Rolling Stones.

It's easy to look back on the hype surrounding the retro rock revolution and laugh -- and the idea that these kids in Converse were here to rescue rock 'n' roll from Fred Durst's clutches is admittedly silly. But in hindsight, getting excited about the best of these bands made perfect sense. The Hives, if one-dimensional, were a total powerhouse. The Strokes, if derivative, were pop-songwriter geniuses with the kind of swagger you can't teach. And listening through White Blood Cells is a reminder that the White Stripes were so much more than gimmick and persona. The album is a staggering outpouring of creativity, a reminder of how stridently unique a mishmash of uber-authentic influences can be. The sense that you're witnessing a Mojo editor's wet dream is quickly overshadowed by all the fun you're having. These songs are catchy as hell. They rock. Sometimes they hoot and holler too.

All those dusty blues, country, and garage rock records informing the White Stripes' ethos had been filtered through Jack White's twisted imagination, yet even his wildest ideas were grounded in Meg White's less-is-more simplicity. And really, both of them were about serving the song above all else. Underneath all the idiosyncrasies, White Blood Cells is a pop record that at times rocks extremely hard. For all the volatility animating these songs, melody rules all. Even the hooks Jack stuffed away at the end of the album are stunners, from "I thought you made up your mi-i-ind!" on the scathing rocker "I Can't Wait" to "You thought you heard a sound!" on the haunting piano-led closer "This Protector." The noise Jack wrangled from his guitar tended to imprint itself on your brain, too, as if he couldn't separate his most fiery impulses from his pop pedrigree. And for two people who had fallen out of sync, romantically speaking, he and Meg sure had a telepathic ability to pivot from quiet to loud and back.

"Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" was a transcendent example of this chemistry in action, but White Blood Cells covered so much ground beyond that initial blast. The album's other singles -- the unhinged hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the rampaging punk-rocker "Fell In Love With A Girl," the precious twee fantasy "We're Going To Be Friends" -- were proof of how many ways Jack could write about being smitten. And he had much more than infatuation on his mind back then. A wordless hard-rock anthem called "Aluminum"? Yes, definitely. A discordant Citizen Kane homage about how love does not exist? Absolutely. He's the same boy you've always known, but he's finding it harder to be a gentleman every day. He thinks he smells a rat. You send him to Toledo. (Toledo? Toledo!)

These sidelong sentiments were threaded into many kinds of rock music -- tunes that, despite their throwback feel, were nearly as inventive as the Lego-animated Michel Gondry music video that got the band on TV. The same artisanal touch Jack brought to his upholstery day job played out in songs that shared a sensibility but never a mold. This had been the White Stripes' M.O. since they started, and it reached its apotheosis in the winter of 2001. In just four days of harried recording, before this batch of songs could calcify into rote muscle memory, Jack and Meg wrangled their inspiration and nervous energy into a tour de force. Clearly they had some inkling that they'd captured something intoxicating because both the cover art and the album title hinted at an influx of unwelcome attention. Still, some part of them relished the prospect of expanding their empire beyond the confines of the dingy rock 'n' roll subculture that raised them, or else they would have ended the band for good before it had a chance to make them famous. This stuff was really good; they were gonna need a bigger room”.

On 3rd July, it will be twenty-five years since the release of White Blood Cells. I hope that Jack White shares some words about the album. Meg White is no longer in music, so I don’t feel she will post anything about White Blood Cells. Even so, anyone has never heard of this album seriously needs to hear it now. It is a lo-fi, high-quality offering…

FROM The White Stripes.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Saidah

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Liam James

Saidah

__________

I am spending some time….

with the incredible Saidah. This is an amazing D.J. that everyone should know about. This Amsterdam-based queen has London roots. I want to lead off with Nowadays Magazine and their interview with Saidah. This acclaimed and hugely respected D.J. draws inspiration “from the birthplace of garage to bring high-energy four-to-the-floor beats to her sets. Blending UKG classics with underground gems across garage, house, and bassline genres, she offers a fresh sound and perspective to open up the UK scene to new audiences. A resident at Amsterdam’s Radio Radio, she hosts her monthly radio show Sweet Like Chocolate, dedicated to UK dance music soundscapes, and a quarterly club night inviting personal inspirations to join her on the program”:

“Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got hooked on music?

I grew up in a household where music was always playing. I had a heavy UKG influence from my mum, who was into that scene, and grime from my older brother, who rapped and had Channel U on the TV at all times. I also love to sing, so I was involved in bands and choirs from a very young age. As soon as I was old enough (and even when I wasn’t quite...), I couldn’t get enough of clubbing, and that opened up a whole new way of experiencing music for me.

What inspired you to become a DJ?

I’ve honestly wanted to learn how to DJ from the moment I saw someone do it. The idea that you could be in control of the music, play all of the songs you want to hear, and experience everyone in the crowd loving the music as much as you do felt like the coolest thing ever to me. But I didn’t learn until I moved to Amsterdam and one of my besties had decks and taught me how to use them, which I’m forever grateful for. I fell in love with it immediately, and spending hours on end discovering music, learning techniques, and developing my own style inspired me to share that with people on dance floors”.

What challenges did you face while breaking into the industry, and how did you overcome them?

I think the biggest challenges came from within, to be honest. You have to continuously believe in yourself and what you’re doing- if you don’t, then it’s very hard for anyone else to. I struggled with imposter syndrome a lot at the start, but I think the only way to overcome it is to continue to challenge yourself to do things outside of your comfort zone. Then, when you achieve those things, you can look back and say, "That was something I didn’t think I could do, and I did it, so I’m definitely capable of doing this next hard thing.". It’s also about letting go of perfection and not being too hard on yourself when things don’t go as expected. Learning to be comfortable with discomfort and imperfection is a huge superpower, and it allows you to enjoy every moment so much more, which is what it’s all about really.

Where do you see yourself in five years, both musically and professionally?

I’ll be releasing some of my own music later this year, and I’ve been working on tracks both as a producer and a vocalist. So I’m excited to see what new opportunities that brings and to contribute to the scene. I hope that I’ll get to travel to cool places, meet even more amazing people, and mature as an artist and performer. So much has already happened that I would never have imagined a few years ago, so I feel really hopeful about what comes next”.

There aren’t many interviews available with Saidah. Her E.P., takeme2, is out. It is phenomenal. I would urge everyone to listen to it. I think that can’t stop is the best track on the E.P. Like all of the tracks, it has such energy. It is a work that really gives you a boost and a lift. I am going to end up with DJ Mag and their interview from last month. They spent time with Saidah ahead of the release of takeme2. The “fast-rising Amsterdam-based, London-born DJ, producer and vocalist opens up about finding her feet as she surfs UKG's new wave”:

“Having studied music at school, Saidah turned her attention to production shortly after starting DJing. Initially, she shadowed peers and played around on her own, then did a course with Parisian house producer Julien Chaptal. "That was less about how to use Ableton and more about how to be experimental in what you create," she reflects.

A keen collaborator, she’s also featured on several tracks with friends in recent months. In April, there was 'NICE + SLOW', a link-up with Lamsi released on Nervous Records, which blends UKG with Afro-diasporic rhythms beneath Saidah’s sensual, stripped-back vocal. Before that, in January, came 'Tears', a festival-ready slammer that doubles as a deeply personal track for Saidah, which revealed something important about where her music could go.

It came about after an invite to the studio from producer friends Freddi and Milion, who were building tunes ahead of Lowlands and were in need of some vocals. Saidah had come straight from London after a final conversation with a partner of almost seven years. Despite that, she didn't expect to fall apart. "I just thought I'd go into the studio and be like, ‘OK, let me just do some vocals, and it's gonna be okay’. But I was very emotional."

Keen for her to tap into something real before singing, the producers asked, ‘What are you going through right now?’ It broke Saidah open. "I just burst into tears, and I was like, ‘I feel like this is what I should talk about on this track, so you guys can just leave, and I'm just gonna talk into the mic and talk about what's going on’." She poured everything out, then left before she could listen back. When she finally heard her words on the finished track, she understood. "This is it. This is what it's about. It's about putting stories and emotions into the music."

The experience clarified something that has become central to her sound: she's a singer who has spent years in choirs and bands, but what she's really interested in is speaking. "I actually much prefer my voice on tracks when I’m talking rather than singing," she says. "It adds this extra layer of storytelling."

"I try to just think about it as if it's me playing at home. Because when I'm playing at home, I'm dancing like crazy."

Saidah was born and raised in South East London. Her mum had been a garage raver and "pretty much the source of my musical upbringing,” she says. “Some of my earliest memories are just being in the car with her and listening to these UK garage compilations. We would be singing along to them. I knew all the words to every single track."

Growing up in that particular pocket of the city, with an older brother who kept Channel U on the TV at all times, and who spent his evenings rapping and making beats, meant that Saidah was plugged into the musical landscape on her doorstep. Garage and grime mixed with Erykah Badu's neo-soul and the R&B of Destiny's Child, before university years in Manchester led her to the Warehouse Project. The ingredients were all there. The opportunity to do something with them wasn't.

djmag · Recognise 106: Saidah

"It felt very inaccessible," says Saidah on the idea of DJing at that point. "There were all these dudes who ran their parties and DJ’d and booked each other. It was never a case of, like, ‘Oh, maybe you might like to try this’." So she never did. Instead, she built a serious career in advertising. Keen to experience living somewhere new, she applied for jobs in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona. It was the Dutch capital that ultimately came calling. Six years later, she's still there, but everything has changed.

Now that her debut EP is here, there is much more music to come, and the sound has already evolved. Her producer tag is the sound of her laughing, and it feels like an intentional signpost of what’s to come. "This lightness, this joyfulness through the music: I think the future stuff is leaning much more heavily into that."

The people she's previewed demos with have struggled to name what genre they belong to: garage drum patterns are layered beneath trance-inflected synths, house vocals and tempos that don't fit the mould. "I hate the idea of using a reference track," she says of a common practice for many producers, especially early on. "You're literally using a template to create music, and that's not what it's about at all. You should go into it and just figure out what sounds good to you."

Saidah quit her corporate job last year after signing with management, a characteristically impulsive move that served as a sort of “now-or-never” moment. "I can't have regrets in life. I have to just do it," she says. Though her diary is now full all summer long, the nerves haven't entirely gone just yet. Big shows still bring them, but she's learned to manage the moment.

"I try to just think about it as if it's me playing at home,” she says. “Because when I'm playing at home, I'm dancing like crazy." It’s an energy you can really feel in her mix for DJ Mag’s Recognise series – a blazing 70-minute set packed with all manner of UK club heaters, her voice and solo productions unmistakably peppered throughout the tracklist.

Connecting with the crowd, as though inviting them into her home, she says, is everything: eye contact, smiling, jumping around with people. "That makes me feel part of the experience rather than a performer with a barrier between us”.

I am going to advise everyone to follow Saidah. You can see here where she is playing. A busy summer of festivals ahead. If you do have the opportunity to hear a set from Saidah, it will be a phenomenal experience. With a debut E.P. out and this momentum behind her, there is a lot of love around Saidah. I think that everybody should check out…

THIS remarkable D.J.

____________

Follow Saidah

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/saidah.world/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@saidah.world

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/18ddrVSTx9Y6FZIiXFG7IU?si=727oA8QVSYOq02_NcKoLTA

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Frank Ocean - blond

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

Frank Ocean - blond

__________

EVEN though…

he has only released two albums, they are both masterpieces. I am focusing on Frank Ocean’s second and most recent album, blond. Released on 20th August, 2016 and recorded between Abbey Road Studios, London, Electric Lady, New York and Henson Recording Los Angeles, blond received sweeping acclaim. It is considered one of the greatest albums of the 2010s. Ahead of its tenth anniversary, I wanted to explore the album. I will end with some reviews for blond. I am starting with Vice. They spotlighted Frank Ocean’s words about the album:

“Minutes after releasing his new album, Blond, Frank Ocean shared a post on Tumblr explaining the inspiration behind the record. You can read it in full below and listen to Blond here.

Two years ago I found an image of a kid with her hands covering her face. A seatbelt reached across her torso, riding up her neck and a mop of blonde hair stayed swept, for the moment, behind her ears. Her eyes seemed clear and calm but not blank, the road behind her seemed the same. I put myself in her seat then I played it all out in my head. The claustrophobia hits as the seatbelt tightens, preventing me from even leaning forward in my seat. the pressing on internal organs. I lean back and forward to release it. Then backwards and forward again. There it is—I got free. How much of my life has happened inside of a car? I wonder if the odds are that I’ll die in one. Knock on wood-grain. Shouldn’t speak like that. We live in cars in some cities, commuting across space either for our livelihood, or devouring fossil fuels for joy. It’s close to as much time as we spend in our beds, more for some. The first time I did shrooms, my manager had to come rescue me from Caltech’s ‘Trip Day.’ As I got into her car, I swear to God the aluminum center console in her Porsche truck looked like it was breathing, like the throat of something. On the freeway, leaving Pasadena, we spoke and I looked away, outside, at the wheels and tires of cars doing that optical illusion thing they do where it looks like they’re spinning backwards, which, according to Google, happens because our brains are assuming something completely wrong and showing it to us.

Staring, I was transfixed by all the indicator lights oscillating and throbbing against the wind. We drove thru downtown LA headed west, flying on the same freeways I used to run outta gas on. Welcomed in by the perennial creatures, imperial palm trees and climbing vines living their lives out just off the shoulder. The feeling familiar enhanced, on the 10. I used to ride around in my sinewy crossover SUV, smoke and listen to rough mixes of my old shit before it came out, or whatever someone wanted to play when they hooked up their iPhone to the aux cord. A few years and few daily-drivers later I’m not driving much anymore. It’s been a year since I moved to London, at the time of writing this, and there’s no practical reason to drive in this city. I ordered a GT3 RS and it’ll keep low miles out here but I guess it’s good to have in case of emergency :) Raf Simons once told me it was cliché, my whole car obsession. Maybe it links to a deep subconscious straight boy fantasy. Consciously though, I don’t want straight—a little bent is good. I found it romantic, sometimes, editing this project. The whole time I felt as though I was in the presence of a $16m McLaren F1 armed with a disposable camera. My memories are in these pages, places closeby and long ass-numbing flights away. Cruising the suburbs of Tokyo in RWB Porches. Throwing parties around England and mobbing freeways in four project M3S that I built with some friends. Going to Mississippi and playing in the mud with amphibious quads. Street-casting models at a random kung fu dojo out in Senegal. Commissioning life-size toy boxes for the fuck of it. Shooting a music video for fun with Tyrone Lebon, the genius giant. Taking a break/reconnaissance mission to Tulum, Mexico, enjoying some star visibility for a change. Recording in Tokyo, NYC, Miami, LA, London, Paris. Stopping in Berlin to witness Berghain for myself. Trading jewels and soaking in parables with the many-headed Brandon aka BasedGod in conversation. I wrote a story in the middle—It’s called “Godspeed.” It’s basically a reimagined part of my boyhood. Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years. It’s surprisingly my favorite part of life so far. Surprising, to me, because the current phase is what I was asking the cosmos for when I was a kid. Maybe that part had its rough stretches too, but in my rearview mirror it’s getting small enough to convince myself it was all good. And really though… It’s still all good”.

A number one album in the U.S., U.K. and beyond, the California-born artist perhaps topped his incredible 2012 debut, Channel Orange. There were very few promotional interviews around Blond. I want to come to The New York Times and their conversation with Frank Ocean. There is debate whether you call Endless a studio album and place it among his discography. Endless is a visual album released on 19th August, 2016, as an exclusive streaming-only video on Apple Music, and preceded the 20th August release of Blond:

“Control is often at the forefront of Mr. Ocean’s mind. When he was on tour, his concerts would be recorded each night, and he would watch the tape, type up notes and email them to his team to prepare for a morning meeting. When “Blonde” and “Endless” were being recorded, he carried the hard drives with his music in his backpack, and the backups, too: “I’d rather the plane goes down in flames and the drives go down with me than somebody put out a weird posthumous release.” When he answers questions, he takes meaningful pauses, mulling over premises, before answering in expansive stories paired with precise bursts of logic.

After bouncing around hotels in London, he moved into a furnished apartment that he eventually stripped bare of all but the essentials: “I just wanted to be able to walk around and not run into an end table or some useless piece of furniture.” He rode electric bikes around the city, made new friends — “which is not as difficult as celebrities make it sound” — went on dates. He recorded in a handful of studios, including Abbey Road, where he asked for the studio, too, to be decluttered, removing furniture and bringing in flower arrangements.

Piece by piece, the music that would become “Blonde” and “Endless” was coming together, though up until then, it had been slow going. He’d begun recording at Electric Lady in New York, but after he took a pause away from the studio, the rhythm of writing was gone. “I had writer’s block for almost a year,” he said. During that time, he would go to the studio, “stare at the monitors and come up with nothing, or nothing that I liked.”

That dry spell broke only after he reconnected with a childhood friend from New Orleans who was going through difficult times. That conversation, he said, “made me feel as though I should talk about the way I grew up more.”

He decided that he wanted “Blonde” and “Endless” to be more autobiographical than his earlier releases. “I wrote ‘Channel Orange’ in two weeks,” he said. “The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.”

So he turned inward, and backward, telling stories about his childhood, family life, and romantic relationships — some frivolous, like on “Nikes” (“He don’t care for me/but he cares for me/and that’s good enough”); some meaningful, like on “Self Control” (“Wish we’d grown up on the same advice”): “That was written about someone who I was actually in a relationship with, who wasn’t an unrequited situation,” he said. “It was mutual, it was just we couldn’t really relate. We weren’t really on the same wavelength.”

In places, like on “Ivy,” he manipulated his voice to sound younger, to better capture the time he was evoking. Many of the new songs have two or three competing narratives — different points of view participating in the same story. “That was my version of collage or bricolage,” he said. “How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.”

On “Blonde,” especially, you used a lot of different voices.

Sometimes I felt like you weren’t hearing enough versions of me within a song, ’cause there was a lot of hyperactive thinking. Even though the pace of the album’s not frenetic, the pace of ideas being thrown out is.

Are they always multiple points of view, or are they multiple Franks interrupting each other to be heard?

It’s the same thing — to me — because my point of view from one emotional state to another is a different point of view. Sometimes I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

Were you working toward a fixed idea on these albums? Or was it mutating and evolving as you went?

When I was making the record, there was 50 versions of “White Ferrari.” I have a 15-year-old little brother, and he heard one of the versions, and he’s like, “You gotta put that one out, that’s the one.” And I was like, “Naw, that’s not the version,” because it didn’t give me peace yet.

You were reaching for something ineffable?

They’re just chords, just melodies. I don’t know what combination of those objects is gonna make me feel how I need to feel. But I know precisely the feeling that needs to happen.

Regaining Control of Business

At the same time he was chasing a perfect-feeling sound, he was trying to regain control of his business relationships. He replaced his team — new management, new lawyer, new publicist. And he began negotiations to free himself from his contract with Def Jam, the label that had signed him in 2009 and effectively shelved him until his self-released debut mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra” caused a stir online in 2011. “A seven-year chess game” is how he described the process of buying himself out of his contract and purchasing back all of his master recordings — using his own money, he said.

As a condition of the arrangement, he said, Def Jam took on distribution of his next project, “Endless,” which is available only as a streaming video album on Apple Music. Then, less than two days later, came a big surprise: “Blonde,” released independently by Mr. Ocean. (Apple Music paid to host the premiere of “Blonde,” but Mr. Ocean said there was no ongoing relationship with Apple.) This was Mr. Ocean’s checkmate, an album wholly his own that took center stage: “Blonde” debuted atop the Billboard album chart with the third-biggest opening week of the year, behind only Drake and Beyoncé.

When releasing “Endless” and “Blonde,” he took his time: “I know that once it’s out, it’s out forever, so I’m not really tripping on how long it’s taking.” He described his mood after the release of “Blonde” as “postpartum.” Rather than going on a promotional tour, playing radio festivals and making the usual rounds, he spent about a month traveling: “China, Japan, Oceania, France, just around. Casual”.

Let’s finish with a couple of reviews for blond. I am dropping the ‘e’, as the album cover says ‘blond’. I am not sure why everyone adds the ‘e’. Even so, I will move to The Line of Best Fit and their 9/10 review for Blond. In the header of their review they say how “Since disappearing from the public eye, Frank Ocean’s aroused more intrigue, generated more content and provoked more discussion among fans and critics than some of the most visible and productive artists - churning out material, hits and media appearances - could even wish for. It makes you wonder. Maybe Frank Ocean’s been with us all along - as a mirror for ourselves”:

“On the 45-minute long visual album Endless, we watch numerous Frank Oceans stalk the interior of a large industrial warehouse as they proceed to construct – in between breaks to check a smartphone – a tall wooden spiral staircase. The staircase is effectively destroyed as he ascends to its summit (around the 38-minute mark), before Frank resumes silently building from scratch all over again. It would be easy to view the whole thing as a metaphor for the creative process (the “endless” formation, evolution, destruction and/or revision of ideas) – if the warehouse is Frankie’s brain. But it might be too easy. Endless might actually be a statement on the art of patience. Which might feel somewhat incongruous in what are unequivocally urgent times; but there’s a hell of a case for slowing down - as consumers, dreamers, creators. As people. To view the piece in its entirety - to begin to understand it, and the artist who made it - requires patient and undistracted reflection. And, it would seem that since his spectacular debut-proper Channel Orange left its indelible mark on the pop landscape, Frank Ocean’s been learning the value of these lessons, too.

Blonde is at once both complicated and understated, invoking the very best of Channel Orange and rendering it even more fragmented and porous. Channel Orange was effortlessly subtle and moving in its approach to imagery and storytelling – combining a photographic eye for detail and a close attention to minutiae (the fingertips and the lips burning from the cigarettes on "Forest Gump"; the newborn baby reaching for the nipple on "Sierra Leone") with trippy surrealism and flights of sheer fantasy (the aliens watching live from the purple matter on "Pink Matter"; the condo on the cloud in "Pilot Jones"). It was a world in which the hyper-real and the pure imaginary were collapsed into one another and remolded anew – where time slowed, and where nothing and everything was true. But Channel Orange played out in scenes and sketches – albeit delicate, incomplete ones – which we were able to step into and step out of: we’re on the roof looking out across Ladera Heights with our character in "Sweet Life"; we’re right there in the taxi at rush hour on "Bad Religion". Blonde lacks these obvious entry and exit points. They’re there, for sure, they’re just not so easy to find.

Blonde is anchored in the same closed universe as Channel Orange and, to an extent, Nostalgia-Ultra: cars, drugs, pool parties, sex, love, loss, sunsets and moonlight; characters speeding through a blurred existence, unsure of where they’re heading, finding truth and meaning in only the most ephemeral and transitory highs. We’re there from the off: "Living so the last night / Feels like a past life", he sings on the opening track "Nikes". But on Blonde our proximity to these characters and their world is magnified. Frank gets right to the surface of his subjects, right up close to the flesh. This close up it’s hard to see the entire picture; we’re so close to the image it flinches, retracts, becomes something different altogether: "The markings on your surface / Your speckled face / Flawed crystals hang from your ears / I couldn’t gauge your fears / I couldn’t relate to my peers". There’s a line of argument that says one of the problems of living in late capitalism is that it’s all empty surface-level. If anything, there’s less and less real tangible surface-level experience. We’re lost in our own bodies. Like James Blake’s (and Blake’s influence is felt all over this record – as is Frankie’s all over Blake’s, The Colour In Anything), Frank Ocean’s art often reflects and tries to work through these tensions: "Where I cannot / Where I cannot / Less morose and more present / Dwell on my gifts for a second / A moment", he sings on "Seigfried".

We drift throughout the majority of Blonde, orbiting these fragile points of contact, points that feel constantly under threat; we hover precariously over moments of indeterminacy and confusion – the feeling of not knowing how to feel, where lack and desire merge, and become the same. It’s in his style of delivery, in the way he occasionally murmurs, trips off the edge, attenuates, languishes, dissolves (see "Good Guy", or "Close to You"). And it’s there in the writing, too: "Is this the slow body / Left when I forgot to speak / So I text to speech, lesser speeds / Texas speed, yes / Eventually, eventually, yes / I only eventually, eventually, yes" ("White Ferrari"). The writing isn’t always suspended precariously at this trembling threshold, though. There are times when it boasts a brilliant photomontage-like quality – whole scenes cut with sharp details, transitioning frame by frame with a flicker, and then opening up before you. Take this, for example, from "Skyline To": "Gliding on the five / The deer run across / Kill the headlights / Pretty fucking / Underneath moonlight now / Pretty fucking / Sun rising, sand, comes a morning / Haunting us with the beams". Elsewhere, the writing feels like it's buckling under the weight of its own mad potential. Take this piece of Beckettian hopscotch from "Siegfried": "Dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought / That could think of the dreamer that thought / That could think of dreaming and getting a glimmer of God / I be dreaming a dream in a thought / That could dream about a thought / That could think of dreaming a dream".

It would be wrong to suggest, however, that Blonde plays out entirely in a state of dizzy disillusionment, or in a tangle of philosophical windings. When it needs to soar proudly, when it needs to shout, it does exactly that. Blonde is a work of supreme confidence and assurance, one that bounds assertively between genres and styles. It sounds delightful. Between the vague cracklings of sad-boy electronica – a modification of an aesthetic pioneered by the likes of Radiohead and James Blake in the UK – there are big, expansive moments of defiant pop ("Ivy") and impressive flourishes of avant-gardes soul ("Pink + White"). These are enjoyable moments, but they're not without the weight of history either, which cuts into the soft flesh of the album when you least expect. Even as we’re sliding amorphously through these melting snapshots of intimacy and desire and nakedness, the full horrors of American racism still clatter terribly and immediately into the fold. The album’s sense of sadness and alienation (and terror) takes on a whole different import and resonance in the middle of "Nikes", with Frank paying tribute to the life of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African American boy murdered on the walk home from his local store by George Zimmerman, in 2012. It’s a simple, devastating one line: "R.I.P. Trayvon / That nigga looked just like me". Elsewhere, the nightmares of Hurricane Katrina flash traumatically across Blonde, like unexpected forks of lightning. And when Frank sings "this is summer / Keep alive, Stay alive", on "Skyline To", it’s not hard to read as a tragic reminder that America’s hottest months are invariably its most deadly.

For an album that is at times intentionally difficult to follow - for all its vague and indistinct meanderings between subjects, between minds and bodies, between place and time, Blonde remains a highly accessible album - and not just sonically. Frank Ocean writes and delivers in a way that makes peculiar sense to those of us inheriting a world bound by so many mad contradictions and discrepancies; one that places us – the young - at its "centre", while remaining incapable of responding to our realities and our grievances. It’s as if those who were brought up living with the Internet are often presumed to have unconditionally assimilated all the manifold perplexities of digital media, past a point of no return. Which is partly true, but it’s not that simple. We’re looking for truth and goodness just like every other generation of seekers, and we’re doing our best to cling to it whenever we recognise it, however fleeting. His music speaks to these fraught and complicated urges: "It’s hell on earth and the city’s on fire / Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven", goes the hook on "Solo". But there’s also a quiet confidence underlying the uneasy melancholia that dominates Blonde, a feeling that when real change eventually comes, it’s going to be on our terms: "We’ll let you guys prophesy / We gon’ see the future first". We might be fucked up, but compared to “them” we’re doing just fine: "You’re tired of moving, your body’s aching / We could vaca, there’s places to go / Clearly, this isn’t all that there is / Can’t take what’s been given / But we’re so okay here, we’re doing fine".

Blonde is a strangely pertinent album. But it never screams its message – if you can really call it that. It’s never didactic or instructional or overbearing; importantly, it never treats its listeners as stupid. Frank Ocean shares our doubts and our anxieties – you can sense it in his writing, in its trepidation, in its ambivilance. Blonde’s not about telling us how to live (it’s decidedly ambiguous on hedonism and materialism, for example.) Rather, Blonde allows its listeners to make their own minds up, and to take what they need from it - to live. It’s this same kind of assurance – allowing the art to speak for itself, and a faith in his audience to listen and to respond - that kept him tinkering away for so long at this project in near total secrecy, until it was properly ready for release, until it was right. After all, there’s no rush. Not really. He might even disappear again soon. It shouldn’t matter to us; because Blonde is a work of art that will stick with us all for way longer than four short years”.

DIY praised the astonishing 2016 album, blond. They note how Frank Ocean “doesn’t have all the answers, and ‘Blonde’’s brilliance comes from how content it is not knowing an absolute truth”. There is no doubt that blond is among the finest albums of this century. I have listened to it more in preparation for this feature. It never fades or loses its magic:

“When music and meaning don’t fully click together like a neat stack of Lego bricks, ambiguity steps in. If a record is billed as being “open to interpretation’, that’s often code for “there’s not a great deal to see here, guys.” That’s not the case for Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’, an album that will be poked and prodded at by deep-thinking fans for years to come, and for good reason.

Searching for ‘Blonde’’s true meaning is like fishing for treasure in the Great Barrier Reef. There’s bound to be something down there somewhere, but you’ve got to get past the infinite, beautiful distractions. In truth, the follow-up to ‘Channel Orange’ thrives in its own uncertainty. Its best moments play out like a lucid dream. And it works because it’s so content with not knowing an absolute truth.

Fluid and curious, the record explores like there’s always something else to see. Strict song structures are scarce, save for the dazzling ‘Ivy’ and ‘Pink + White’. Instead, flooring split-seconds and sudden jolts of life step in out of nowhere. Andre 3000’s show-stopping ‘Solo (Reprise)’ verse gives way to ‘Pretty Sweet’’s white noise and a fitting Outkast-nodding beat frenzy. ‘Nights’ splits into two parts - from disjointed, N64-on-steroids playfulness to a twisted, after-hours purple haze.

There are funny contradictions everywhere, like how an anti-drugs speech from Frank’s Auntie (‘Be Yourself’) is immediately followed by ‘Solo’’s opening line, “Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancing by myself / Gone off tabs of that acid.” Right up to the record’s title - it can be called ‘Blonde’ or ‘Blond’ - there’s no certainty. Each song is like a story with a dozen alternate endings. But there’s something refreshing in not having the answer. Especially in 2016, when one opinion can be gospel while everything else is void, when you’re told to be aware of everything while barely anyone knows the reality.

Big name cameos from the likes of Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are so subtle, they’re barely audible. The former can be heard in the background of ‘Ivy’, while Kendrick is reserved to a couple of accentuations. More airtime are given to a joke interview recorded by Frank’s brother when they were kids, on ‘Futura Free’. That’s less his way of hogging the spotlight, more proof of ‘Blonde’’s unpredictability and how split-seconds stay in the memory rather than specific songs. The way ‘Self Control’ clicks together - with the help of Yung Lean - from a disjointed love song into an emotional juggernaut. The way Frank employs Elliot Smith lyrics (“This is not my life, this is a fond farewell to a friend”) when he’s in the middle of pouring out his soul. The way ‘Ivy’’s vinyl-crackle notes bend out of shape.

It’s been a year of sudden-releases and snap judgements. But few records need to be unpacked as slowly as ‘Blonde’. It will take months for the dust to fully settle on 2016’s most long-awaited album. For ‘Channel Orange’ purists, the record’s more outward-thinking moments will understandably frustrate - Frank’s rich sense of storytelling is still here, it’s just fragmented. But once ‘Blonde’’s ambiguity begins to piece together, it becomes something remarkable”.

However you stylise the album title, I do feel that blond is among the greatest albums of the century. In terms of what comes next for Frank Ocean, I am not too sure. There have been single releases (such as 2017’s Provider and 2019’s DHL), but nothing in the way of a third album. As we await that – if it will ever come -, we should marvel at blond ten years after its release. We mark thar anniversary on 20th August. A decade later, and blond remains…

A heavenly release.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Your Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love)/Beelzebub (Kite)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the premiere of Hounds of Love at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Your Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love)/Beelzebub (Kite)

__________

I have….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky

talked about God and Jesus in this feature run, and I have also mentioned a historical embodiment of The Devil, Adolf Hitler. Characters in Kate Bush songs that have taken me in different directions. Bush is no stranger to incorporating religious figures and iconography into her songs. The same regarding historical figures. Joan or Arc mentioned in more than one song. I will come to a devilish mention in a song from The Kick Inside that has an interesting history. Before getting there, it is worth discussing animal characters from perhaps Kate Bush’s greatest song. I will come to the argument as to whether Hounds of Love is her finest achievement. Many consider it to be Kate Bush’s best song. I could have also mentioned the fox that is referenced in the track (“I found a fox caught by dogs/He let me take him in my hands/His little heart, it beats so fast/And I'm ashamed of running away”). I always think of that fox as a metaphor or symbol of the heart. Being torn by the hounds of love. The album title, perhaps, not referencing actual dogs. Even though Kate Bush is photographed on the cover of her 1985 with her two Weimaraners, Bonnie and Clyde, I don’t think the ‘hounds’ in Hounds of Love’s title track are canine. More spirits or a dark energy that is chasing her. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to this iconic track. I shall come to the question as to whether it is Kate Bush’s highpoint. There are some features that rate it number one. In terms of the characters, Your Hounds of Love, I see this a cross between actual hounds and a spiritual evil. We do find Bush stop to take a fox in her hands. One whose heart is beating so fast. Does that fox represent her own heart, or is it courage dying? Are they literal hounds capturing an actual fox? I think it is open to the listener. Before I explore subjects relating to the song and those hounds, Kate Bush explained the meaning behind that epic title track. The third single from Hounds of Love, it reached eight in the U.K. Even if Bush said in one or two interviews it was about love in general or relating to someone else, I think this is a song about her. One of her most personal to that point (1985). Kate Bush did explain her thoughts behind Hounds of Love:

“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985

When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought ‘Hounds Of Love’ and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna… when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of… being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love’. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992“.

If not literal dogs that are tearing apart Bush, I do feel that they are characters in the song. In the video, we do see Bush and her male compatriot running. There is this chase. I shall come to that. Even though Hounds of Love is arguably her finest song, some critics were sharp and sexist. To show how tinned-eared, misogynistic and insulting journalists (male mostly) were in 1986, here are two examples of reviews for Hounds of Love:

“All mock, muted orchestration and thumping mock-tribal drums, this is Kate simply being Kate, and whether that makes you want to roll around in sandpit is strictly up to you.

Jim Reid, Record Mirror, 22 February 1986

Bush has always strived to be different, but this quest has often led her astray – an olive stone in the ashtray of life. ‘Hounds of Love’ eschews the lentil nightmare as Bush reaches notes most groups never even dream of.

Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 22 February 1986”.

I do think that Hounds of Love is this fascination song. In it, we hear Bush actually make yelping/barking noises. Giving the impression that there are dogs chasing her. In terms of the concept and idea of the song, this was very different to what other artists were doing. They were more literal regarding fears, the terror of commitment and being chased by love. Rather than go down this route, Kate Bush gave the idea that these hounds of love, who you might feel were warm, benign or would be loving, are actually frightening! Or that she had built that into her mind. Perhaps they would catch her and be all friendly and lick her. There is darkness and horror in this track. At the start, the line “It’s in the trees!/It’s coming!” is quote from a line spoken in the film Night of the Demon by Maurice Denham. Although the plot of the film (an American psychologist who tries to combat an evil cult leader who can sentence his enemies to death through the use of a runic scroll, given to his victims without their knowledge) cannot be connected to Hounds of Love and its meaning, Kate Bush did reveal it was one of her favourite films. Another occasion of films making their way into Bush’s work. This was not new. So many examples through the years. Though there does seem to be this horror element. Bush playing with ideas of possession and the spiritual. Something she did in Wuthering Heights (1978). 1986’s Experiment IV is about a machine that is built that could kill people with sound. Hallucinations, spirits and the macabre can be found elsewhere on Hounds of Love. Mother Stands for Comfort and Waking the Witch are examples.

Even though Kate Bush often referenced Horror and films in her work (Get Out of My House from 1982’s The Dreaming was inspired by Stephen King’s, The Shining), she didn’t bring in actual audio from someone else. That Night of the Demon exert is a great way to start the song. I keep thinking about the hounds and whether they are physical bodies. Kate Bush saying it is less literal, I tend to find myself coming on the side that she may have had dogs in mind. Bonnie and Clyde were her dogs. Looking and thinking of them when writing the songs, what if they turned on their master? Dogs seem to embody love and devotion. Turning them into these possessed things chasing down a woman is very scary. Though it could be Bush’s mind manifesting this anxiety into a nightmare situation. The video for Hounds of Love was the first Bush directed solo. She assisted and collaborated on other videos. This was her first solo credit. Influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, there is a supporting artist in the video that is meant to be Alfred Hitchcock. That is a reference to the director cameoing in many of his own films. Bush was now the director. Gow Hunter is Bush co-lead in the video. He is seen dancing alongside her while the pair are handcuffed together in a dramatic, Night of the Demon-inspired sequence. Bush said that the late Gower was "a lovely man" with "the face of a great film star".  Even if you feel the hounds of love are spirits or not real, there does seem to be this idea that they can be seen and have a real form: “Among your hounds of love/And feel your arms surround me/I’ve always been a coward/And never know what’s good for me/Oh, here I go!/Don’t let me go!/Hold me down!/It’s coming for me through the trees/Help me, darling/Help me, please!/Take my shoes off/And throw them in the lake/And I’ll be/Two steps on the water”. Even though the words are quite heavy, the cello by Jonathan Williams and percussion from Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott gives Hounds of Love this lightness. The percussion acts as a heartbeat, but the cello has this sense of grace. Or is it meant to be stabbing? I feel there is something more romantic and classical mixed in with this blackness. Bush’s vocals and playfulness also balances out the sense of fright and impending attack. Her production work is also startling and brilliant. It is like this cinematic production.

As much as I have theorised about the tangibility and physicality of Your Hounds of Love that is mentioned in the lyrics, is the song actually Kate Bush’s best? For a while, there was a consensus that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – the lead single from Hounds of Love – was her best track. Wuthering Heights had that honour for a time. MOJO ranked her fifty best songs in 2024. They placed Hounds of Love at number one: “No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”. The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles in 2018 and placed Hounds of Love in fourth. They did say this: “The moment when its mood of pregnant fear finally shifts into one of gleeful surrender – “don’t let me go, hold me down” – is one of the most jubilant in Bush’s catalogue”. As foreboding as I have made the song sound, in the end, Bush/the protagonist surrenders to what is chasing her. That is when you get that literal sense of hounds actually wanting to show affection and love. Seeing them as snarling and in search of blood, it is only Bush’s doubts and fear of commitment that is creating this paranoia and fright. By stopping running and showing trust, she actually embraces what is chasing her. It might be a representation of Hounds of Love as an album and this huge project she undertook. Some of the doubts and bad sides of doing that. Taking so much on. However, she was the master and in control. Someone who could more than handle the hounds of love!

From a 1985 contender for Kate Bush’s very best song to a track from her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Kite is one that a lot of fans know, yet it is rarely talked about. Not viewed as up there with her best, though it is a wonderful song. Again, rather than perhaps a physical manifestation of a character, perhaps something more internal or non-literal. Though Kate Bush does name-check Beelzebub, so I am counting that. It is an interesting reference, in terms of how he fits into the song. There are comparisons with Hounds of Love. In the sense that there are these intense feelings inside. Both I think relate to Kate Bush, though she says in interviews how they are not personal. If Hounds of Love is about a fear that then turns into embracing this and seeing that it is good, Kite’s struggle is the need to get high. I sort of imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and The Beatles claiming it is not about LSD. Kite is very much a weed song (Kate Bush’s version of the Paul McCartney-penned Got to Get You Into My Life from Revolver, perhaps? A song very much about that desire to get high). One I feel has more of Kate Bush in it then she lets on. The Beelzebub name-check gets me wondering. Why select that particular character and figure as a starting point? If it is a casual and almost goofy reference to Beelzebub, I do think that this Devil in her stomach is this desire to be pushed upwards. “Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o/My feet are heavy and I’m rooted in my wellies”. For Music Talk in 1978, this is what Kate Bush said about Kite: “In the song, the character starts to feel that he is rooted to the ground, but there is a force pulling him up to the sky. A voice calls out, “Come up and be a kite”, and he is drawn up to the sky and takes the form and texture of a kite. Suddenly he’s flying “like a feather on the wind”, and for a while he enjoys it; but the longing for home and the security of the ground overtake these feelings”. There is something in those lyrics. I wanted to focus on Beelzebub, as that was an interesting choice. Maybe it was a stream-of-consciousness inclusion from Kate Bush.

It is another case of religious imagery coming into Bush’s songs. Jesus has made an appearance. God most memorably, in 1985’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). That was probably the most serious or grand use of a religious figure. In the case of Kite, this is basically a song about Bush getting high. She may say that it is about a man who is pulled from the ground and then needs to be rooted. Taking a leap, I am going from Beelzebub to The Beatles. To come back to them. They were no strangers to experimenting with music. And drugs. Although weed did not hinder or help their creative process, it was definitely a part of their world. Not that Bush was following them. I think, for The Beates, it might have been a sign and norm for the time (the 1960s). For Bush, there was this communal and bonding aspect. Though I think it was also to help with nerves. Take the edge of. I have said before how Bush occasionally would be told to leave the weed alone when recording. Almost like taking sweets from a child! Donald Sutherland, who worked with Bush on the Cloudbusting video, definitely had a word with her about her smoking. Bush started smoking cigarettes as a young child. Many see her as this middle-class girl who was quite spoiled. She was well off. Cigarettes and weed was not rebellion. She grew up in a very artistic and free household. Though there were rules and boundaries, the Bush household in the 1960s and 1970s was not over-strict. It is interesting that Kite does nod to smoking. Though it also has a story behind it. I think the Beelzebub reference is about The Devil creating anxiety and rumble. This need to rise above him and get rid of that feeling. Kate Bush has said how Kite was her attempt to write a Bob Marley song. Not one of her biggest idols, you can see why Bush was intrigued and struck by his music. Surely, in 1976, she would have known about Rastaman Vibration. Exodus came out in 1977. Huge albums from Bob Marley and the Wailers. Maybe a young Cathy Bush heard 1974’s Natty Dread when she was sixteen.

If there was nothing unusual about white artists in the 1970s attempting Reggae songs, I feel Kate Bush lyrics and her delivery is different to other artists. Dreams of Orgonon talked about Kite. Though it has this Reggae vibe and is quite laid back, it also has Progressive Rock elements. You could write Kite off as this light and filler song. It is far from that. If you look at the documentary I have included below, where Kate Bush and her band/crew are preparing and rehearsing for 1979’s The Tour of Life, you can see her rehearsing Kite. I can only imagine the reaction the song got from the audiences. A number I feel would be stronger and more impactful live than on record:

“Kate Bush makes her television debut in a disused railway depot in Germany. Behind her stands the KT Bush Band, the musicians she chose to play her music, in front of a backdrop of green land and a volcano, apparently the German realization of a Yorkshire moor. Bush begins her idiosyncratic mime-shaped dance and the music follows her in a jumpy, facetious rendition of “Kite.” Bush uses her full body as an instrument, using shakes and poses to fill the stage.

It’s unsurprising “Kite” should be the runway Bush launches her television career on. The track is the B-side to “Wuthering Heights,” and a chirpy enough deep cut. “Kite” responds to “Wuthering Heights,” sharing its A-side’s fascination with stepping out of ordinary human experience; visualizing this process as a skyborne anabasis.

“Kite” is a dance song in a different fashion from “Wuthering Heights”; whereas “Heights” is famous for the dance retroactively applied to it, “Kite” actually depicts a sort of radical bodily movement. “Kite” depicts an Icarus-type character: a person being drawn from the ground and towards the air. Over the course of Kite’s run time, Bush expresses ennui on the ground with quite possibly the silliest opening lyric of all time — “Beezlebub is aching in my belly-o/my feet are heavy and they’re rooted in my wellios” — swoops through the air like “a diamond kite,” and finally gets sick of her flight with “I’ve got no limbs/I’m like a feather on the wind.” Bush puts herself through a odd contrapasso (indeed, directed by a sort of god in the shape of eyeball in the sky) where a desire to ascend quickly becomes a descent into the fear of “shit, how do I get down from here.”

Which is to say that “Kite” is a psychedelic rock song. The track’s metaphor isn’t exactly subtle — indeed the song is constructed around an unspoken pun about being high. Bush has an out-of-body experience she’s been aching for and finds the force drawing her upwards won’t let her down again. A taste of the divine is inherently terrifying.

There’s a taste of prog rock to this — bands Bush enjoyed such as Genesis, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson were similarly enamored with playing surreal melodies and writing about off-beat, ethereal subject matter. “There’s a hole in the sky with a big eyeball” sounds like a missing lyric of “21st Century Schizoid Man.” The chorus inviting the listener to “come up and be a kite/and fly a diamond night” is about as blunt a nod to mid-Seventies prog as one can write. Bush wears her prog influences on her sleeve in the early days, and surprisingly “Kite” is one of the songs which heavily showcases this.

Leave this alone and you get a psychedelically tinged prog rock song about the hubris of transcendence. Nothing to write home about, but perfectly enjoyable fluff. Yet “Kite” moves into curious dissonance by playing itself as eccentric reggae (something acknowledged by Bush herself, who called it “a Bob Marley song.”) On its own merits, this isn’t a idiosyncratic move — every white rock artist in the Seventies was attempting and failing to do reggae songs in a fatigue (a trend perhaps most prominently realized by Eric Clapton’s nauseating rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff.”) But with its moderato tempo and time signature shifts, “Kite” isn’t straight reggae. It utilizes the trappings of the music for its own ends to create conflicting juxtapositions, such as the bass’ cannabis-like rumble under Bush’s acidic vocals. In the end this doesn’t save “Kite” from being silly faux-reggae, but Bush is good at enough at dazzling her listeners to keep the tracks’ seams from showing too much”.

Religion and history were present right through Kate Bush discography. I think about Bush’s name-drop of Beelzebub. Rather than him being another form of The Devil, Beelzebub is instead “known in demonology as one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell, Beelzebub representing gluttony and envy. The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebub as a being capable of flying, known as the "Lord of the Flies", "Lord of the Flyers", or the "Lord of the Flying Demons”. That element of flight and flying. Connecting to kites. Even though we know weed is very much at the heart of the song, I do feel that Kate Bush was thinking deeper. Nodding to some of her favourite Progressive Rock artists. There was always the danger, when you consider the lines and that opening line of Beelzebub being in her belly, it is one of her most parody-worthy songs. She was at the mercy of impressionists and satirists in the 1970s and 1980s. Faith Brown among those who took her off. Bush did find it funny. But for an artist trying to be unique and true to herself, seeing this reflection of occasional mockery and insult, that must have hurt too! You feel like Kite is an open goal for comedians of the times. If you look at the Nationwide documentary, Bush is taking the song seriously. Drilling her band so it sounds right. Kite is not just an album track on The Kick Inside. The cover sees Bush pinned to a kite with an eye behind her. That was a reference to Pinocchio. The scene occurs near the climax of the 1940 film. It takes place in Sequence 10: The Whale's Belly, right when Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket first go into the ocean to search for Geppetto. You can read more about it here. Kite almost an unofficial title track. The Kick Inside’s cover was shot by American photographer, Jay Myrdal. It is a striking cover, though Bush is very small in the mix!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs Kite live on The Tour of Life in 1979. The famous cordless headset microphone she wears was invented by Bush and her sound engineer, Gordon 'Gunji' Patterson

I think the cover that we see for the Japanese release of The Kick Inside, with Bush in a pink leotard, is the correct choice. It should have been on the U.K. cover, as it says so much more and is more representative of her debut album and who she was. I did write a feature about The Kick Inside’s cover shoot. Even so, you cannot knock a song like Kite. It is still in places and sort of suggests some piss-taking or parody. I love how loose Kate Bush is on the song. Letting her voice fly and zip here and there! You can feel the energy and movement of the song. Bush dropping in Beelzebub makes me think about emotions; a weight in her stomach and a deeper emotion. Though it also compels investigation and further reading. How Beelzebub featured in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), and G.I. Gurdjieff’s esoteric 1950 philosophical text, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. No doubt Bush would have read Lord of the Flies as a child. She was born four years after it was released, but it would have been in here orbit. She name-checked Gurdjieff in The Kick Inside’s Them Heavy People, so no coincidence that this connection takes us to Kite. Her brother John was a poet and introduced his sister to poetry and his writings. I feel he or Paddy (her other brother) would have had a copy of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. One of these texts stayed in her mind and she placed it in a song. In The Gospels, Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons by the power of "Beelzebub, the prince of demons" (Matthew 12:24). All intriguing to consider. This compelling figure that is essentially at the start of a silly line. Though this is the genius of Kate Bush: dropping in something heady and heavy with levity and whimsy. If critics saw these as carte blanche to attack and belittle, it was and is a strong and wonderful facet of her music. That imagination and use of language. Not always appealing and memorable, I think that Kite has many strengths. It has been a pleasure exploring Hounds of Love’s eponymous demons. Snarling and angry, perhaps less than actual canines, they are spirits that go through the trees. Though they are then embraced. This fear of love and commitment transforms into this bold embrace. A Bob Marley attempt for a song on her 1978 debut album, this historical (as opposed to religious, I guess) figure appears in the opening line. Such a joy to examine two…

TERRIFIC songs.

FEATURE: There’s Light in Love You See: Kate Bush and Her Impact on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community

FEATURE:

 

 

There’s Light in Love You See

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush and Her Impact on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community

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AS it is Pride Month…

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

I wanted to revisit a subject I have covered before. In terms of Kate Bush and her L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. When we think of major artists who have this enormous following within the community, our minds go to someone like Madonna. Maybe Kate Bush is not as vocal when it comes to backing and shouting out her L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. However, as an artist, her songs did not strictly stick to the heteronormative ideal. I think it was hard for artists to bring queerness into their music. Seen as controversial or inappropriate, thankfully things have progressed since then. Even today, there are artists who are perhaps hesitant about expressing their sexuality, in case it splits their fans or creates any sort of backlash. Things are easier today for L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists today - and yet things are not perfect. Think about Kate Bush and her music. I do love how she was not restricted or felt the need to be rigid regarding sexuality and what she discussed through her music. I am going to come to articles I have sourced before. Even some of her earliest demos featured queer/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ characters. The Gay Farewell is an example. Kashka from Baghdad. That song appeared on her second studio album, Lionheart (1978). Wow is also on that album and there is reference to homosexuality. The line “He’s too busy hitting the Vaseline”, where Kate Bush pats her bottom in the video, is pretty unequivocal! That is a song about showbusiness. It is a song that partly addresses the music industry, but its lyrics concern actors and luvvies. Last Pride Month, I ran a feature saluting Kate Bush as this ally. Someone who has always been very open regarding sexuality. A fluidity through her work, at times in music where many artists who were queer could not talk about it. Even though she is someone who very much speaks to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, there has been critique of her work. Whether, when writing about homosexuality, Bush checks her privilege and it is written about as a positive thing, and not a spectre.

I am saying that because Dreams of Orgonon spotlighted Kashka from Baghdad and wrote this: “This makes her treatment of Kashka’s gay life as a matter of secrecy distressing. The polite heterosexual audience needs its eyes shielded from the gay sex it’s teased with. Yes, remaining in the closet is a safety measure for many if not most gay people. But it takes a severe toll on one’s mental health. In “Kashka” the closet is a place where great, magical events happen (“at night they’re seen laughing”). The difficulties of closeted life don’t enter the equation. Bush reduces Kashka and his partner to an instrument of pleasure and titillation”. As I recently wrote about The Gay Farewell (also know as Queen Eddie), even Bush’s earliest songs had empathy and understanding. Where she was very open to bring in queerness. Coming to another Dreams of Orgonon article. It concerns the beautiful Queen Eddie (or The Gay Farewell as it is also know). When Bush wrote this song (around 1973), gay rights in the U.K. were being challenged. Even though it never made it to an album, a song like The Gay Farewell was very brave and bold for someone who was barely a teenager: “Bush’s music often displays a strong interest in the feminine side of men, and this is the earliest musical manifestation of her concern. Eddie is someone with no time for masculinity. Everything from the effeminate adjective of “pretty” to the fact he’s saying goodbye to “his boy” points to that (who’s his boy? Is he breaking up with a boyfriend, or is he transitioning?) Even the song’s varying titles, in all probability not penned by Bush, point to a queer reading of the song (“The Gay Farewell” is a pretty wretched pun even by my standards). There’s an element of fetishization here — Eddie is denied an identity outside of his gender and sexuality in a way that’s genuinely harmful. For all that the empathy on display is genuine, so is the singer’s privilege. Yet for this song’s flaws, it feels like something that needed to be written in 1973, even if it wasn’t heard outside 11 East Wickham. An LGBT rights movement was booming in the UK at the time — The Gay Liberation Front was new and alive, and the First British Gay Pride Rally had been held in London, not too far from the Bushes, a year previously. But these movements were responded to by things like the Nationwide Festival of Light, a puritanical attempt by notorious professional bigot Mary Whitehouse and others to suppress the existence of gay people, as well as any expression of sexuality that didn’t pertain entirely to procreation. The LGBT community needed some allies, and Kate was willing to step into the ring early on. Kate’s complex championing of the queer community has begun. Thus we get “Queen Eddie,” her first camp song”.

There is quite a lot to unpack and examine. Although her allyship and empathy is perhaps not completely without fault or some naivety, this was an artist writing these songs very young. In a British society where gay rights were often attacked, ignored and stigmatised. Although she had some L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists that she looked up to, such as Elton John, there was not a music scene promoting and spotlighting them in a way that is more familiar today. I guess David Bowie had this fluidity and androgyny that was also appealing to her. But think of music in the 1970s and how often queer love was being written about. Not as much as you’d like. That sense of stigma for artists did not end for decades. Some would say it is still a barrier. So we cannot mark Kate Bush down. I am going to end with a recent article in The Guardian, where a writer reveals how Kate Bush’s music was so powerful and resonant when it came to coming out as a trans woman. The trans community among the most pilloried and abused today. They are often vilified and marginalised, and yet it was music written many years ago by this incredible artist that broke through. I do want to get to writings where Bush is spoken about as an ally and idol. Kate Bush’s music has always been very open and free. In the way she talks about desire and sex. Which must have been liberating and inspiring for many who lived on the fringes. In 2018, forty years after her debut single, Wuthering Heights was released, Attitude wrote how “the queen of quirk left a lasting impact on the gay community“:

“Queer people identified with Kate Bush because of that otherness, because of her bravery and defiance, her fearless examination of previously ‘taboo’ themes, and her often high-camp performance style. As Rufus Wainwright told The Guardian in 2006: “She is the older sister that every gay man wants. She connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world. She is one of the only artists who makes it appear better to be on the outside than on the inside.”

The magnificent, lushly exotic ‘Kashka from Baghdad’ from 1978’s Lionheart, is one of the prime examples of Kate’s celebration of the joy of the outsider status. “Kashka from Baghdad,” she sings over sensual piano chords, “lives in sin, they say, with another man – but no one knows who.”

Kate fixes her gaze firmly on an outcast couple, the music alternately romantic, enigmatic, and menacing, as male backing vocals chant aggressively behind her as she shrieks “at night / they’re seen / laughing / loving” but, by the time the narrator observes that “they know the way to be happy,” the aggression has subsided into regal elegance.

It’s a powerful statement of approval, and Kate herself put it simply when she told Interview Magazine in 2011: “I just liked the idea of this couple. Nobody really knew much about them—and they’re obviously having a great time.”

Observational songs like ‘Kashka’ highlight Kate’s keen eye for detail and empathetic lyrical style; her warm, graceful acceptance – and endorsement – of homosexual desire marked her out as an LGBT advocate from the outset.

Her frank openness and recognition of a gamut of gender norms and of the reality of sexual fluidity became a recurrent theme in her work; ‘Wow’, a biting satire of the theatrical business, finds Kate singing “He’ll never make the scene / he’ll never make the Sweeney / be that movie queen / he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline.” If we were in any doubt as to her underlying meaning, her performance in the video removes all doubt as she taps her buttock on the payoff line.

Kate’s deep and thoughtful understanding of men in her songs is an underrated value in her arsenal; there are the men sent to war in ‘Army Dreamers’, or the kindly but increasingly distant father figure in ‘The Fog’, the misunderstood mathematician in “Pi,” and, most of all, the exquisite ‘This Woman’s Work’, where she sings about parenthood and birth from the male perspective. And no one could inhabit Peter Gabriel’s lyric as the voice of reason and comfort in ‘Don’t Give Up’ better than Kate Bush.

Perhaps most poignant of all, the father-son narrative of ‘Cloudbusting’ climaxes with the Shakespearean pun “your son’s coming out.” The rush of hearing Bush equate positivity, happiness, open-mindedness, and the promise of good things with the emergence – sexually or otherwise – into the world at large remains a profound thrill.

“Kate Bush is an LGBT icon for several reasons, not least because she built a successful career, without compromise, on her own terms, with thorough originality, ingenuity, and, crucially, trueness to herself. She did, and continues to do, things her own way, and is undaunted in her distinctiveness and navigation of the peculiarities of life.

Who else could make a song about intercourse with a snowman (‘Misty’) seem plausible? Who else would find both eroticism and melancholy in the humdrum as Kate does in ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’?

Anohni Hegarty told The Guardian in 2005 that her first glimpse of Kate, singing ‘Wuthering Heights’ now forty years ago, was a seminal experience.

“She was so magical: the world she inhabited was, especially poetically, a sort of fairyland. It was very sensuous and very pagan, and she sang so high – it was madcap,” she said.

And it is that sensuality, magic, and poeticism, that otherness and courageousness, that has carried Kate Bush, for forty years, through the choppy, murky waters of pop music and carved a firm place in our hearts.

She is, and always has been, herself, with no apologies. And for that, we salute you Kate Bush”.

At its roots and at heart, it is Kate Bush’s empathy, and approach to gender expression that means she is this icon. There was never a hesitation around avoiding queer relationships through fear of attack. Even though she is heterosexual, here is a writer who observes all humans and wants to include them. Always writing positively and with great investment and interest, that was instilled into her from a young age. You feel like, as a child, she would have been fascinated by people as a whole, regardless of sexuality and gender. More orthodox or mainstream artists are either hesitant about discussing queer love or, if they are queer themselves, feeling like they had to keep that hidden. I guess there is privilege and a lack of pressure from Kate Bush, but there is also that bravery and boldness. Something that continued. Even a song like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has been adopted by the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. A song about understanding and swapping places to better relate to someone else. Its use in Stranger Things so powerful for a number of reasons. DIVA used this as a starting point for their 2022 love letter to an eternal queer icon:

“Teenagers across the world are now discovering her magic for the first time, with the track experiencing a rapid increase in Spotify streams since it featured in cult Netflix series Stranger Things. With Season 4 premiering in May 2022, this season’s storyline features a much-darker hook as teenagers across Hawkins perish in eerily similar circumstances. The gang quickly decipher this as the work of demon of the upside-down, Vecna, finding that the only way for an infected victim to fight off this fate is to play their favourite song. This is where Kate Bush comes in.

After eternally beloved Max Mayfield finds that she has been cursed by Vecna, experiencing headaches, jarring nightmares and haunting visions, she dazes into a trance and rises six feet into the air one afternoon. Recognising this as Vecna’s murder method, the gang scramble for her Walkman. “What’s her favourite song?” they scream at Lucas, Max’s ex-boyfriend. With his hand landing upon the bluish hue of the Hounds of Love cassette, Running Up That Hill quickly comes blaring through Max’s ears. Caught in an eerily realistic, trance-like dream, Max escapes Vecna’s chokehold and sprints through the upside-down, dodging falling boulders and debris alike, moving towards the white, cloud-esque image of real like. Seeing herself floating above her best friends, she flashes back on all the happy memories she’s enjoyed with her friends and family alike. Tumbling through the vision back into real life, Kate Bush quite literally saved Max’s life. What a beautiful metaphor that is.

Kate Bush is the ultimate queer icon. Her music has always been a home for misfits, though Running Up That Hill is arguably her most mainstream, tame track. Wearing an armour-like costume for the Babooshka music video and red dress for Wuthering Heights, she has relied on costume and dance alike to express herself. With a multi-dimensional approach to creativity, her music isn’t just a collection of notes: it’s an experience. Drawing heavily on techniques employed by visionary mime artist Lindsay Kemp – who personally taught her – Kate Bush has always used her body and her dance routines to express emotion, and to tell a story. The video for Running Up That Hill is deeply symbolic of that fact, pairing with dancer Michael Hervieu to create an intricate, storyboard-like performance that was vastly aheadof its time, playing on Bush’s background in ballet.

Creative aesthetic aside, Kate Bush famously sang about anal sex in 1979 track Wow, which featured on her second album Lionheart. Singing about an actor who will never be a “movie queen” because he’s “too busy hitting the Vaseline”, in the video, she winked and patted her bum to ensure that her message of allyship was truly disseminated. What an icon. And, of course, the music video was censored by the BBC, which is always a good sign of a forward-thinking bit of art. Think Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

All in all, Kate Bush’s music has been a critical source of comfort and, by extension, an expression of identity for LGBTQI people for decades now. Ginny Lemon lovingly referenced her by dragging up as the Wuthering Heights-esque young Kate on Drag Race UK for the gay icon category. And that very sentiment is true: Kate Bush is the ultimate queer icon, and forever will we applaud her for her deeply unique, kooky ways of being. Music wouldn’t be the same without her”.

I am surprised there have not been newer articles written about her music and how it connects to L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people. Last October, Alexandra Diamond-Rivlin wrote a very personal and moving article for The Guardian, where she talked about Kate Bush’s music, and how it helped her come out as a trans woman. I want to include the whole thing, as I feel it would be a disserve to cut bits out, lest the impact and full picture by distorted, dampened or diminished. Before getting there, I would urge people to support and check out the Trans Journalists Association, and support L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ charities and organisations like the LGBT Foundation. Mind Out. Stonewall is another incredible resource. Mermaids supports trans, non-binary and gender-diverse children, young people and their families. You can find more here:

“It wasn’t safe for me to discover The Sensual World, the eponymous track on what Kate Bush described as her “most female album”. The song was intended to be a rejection of the masculine influence that had unwittingly shaped the artist’s previous work, and an ode to something taboo within the female experience. Based on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses – a stream of consciousness in which the character reflects on her experiences of nature, sex and love – Bush wanted to celebrate the experience of life inside a woman’s body, and the ways it gives her spiritual and sexual pleasure. I knew that, for someone like me, who was already being bullied, to openly love a song like this could make me an even more obvious target to those who saw femininity as a sign of weakness. More daunting than that, it might force me to confront my own repressed desires.

By the time I was around 17, I had already spent most of my teenage years in a constant state of survival. I wasn’t yet out as a transgender woman; this was a part of me I could keep secret, unlike my effeminacy. I had a naturally high voice, which I tried and failed to deepen. “You sound like a girl,” was one of the daily taunts aimed at me by pupils at my school, even as I strained my vocal cords. My camp mannerisms and the way I walked were other noticeable crimes to the boys around me, who enjoyed mocking my “sassy” stride. Growing up in an environment such as this meant I never saw my femininity as something to embrace. That I was soft and girlish was a sign of a defective self. Still, it felt safer to be a feminine boy than a boy who wanted to become a woman.

Her ode to womanhood invoked all the things I knew I could be: euphoric, audacious and free.

The school I attended in Plymouth was single sex, but high-achieving girls were allowed to enter its gates at sixth form, something I was grateful for. Some of the new students lived near me, by the forests surrounding the city. One morning, while we ambled along the grassland, one of the girls shared her headphones with me and played her favourite music. That’s when the discovery was made.

For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bush’s ethereal voice. On my solitary walk home, I listened to her song again under the shelter of leaves and the furry limbs of trees. I listened carefully, but most of her words appeared formless – lines sung breathlessly behind an orchestra of uilleann pipes and other traditional Irish instruments I remembered learning about in class. In certain moments, her words’ sharpness broke in again like splices of light along my trail: “to where the water and the earth caress … now I’ve powers of a woman’s body.” Moments such as these were laced throughout, often referencing nature, and culminating in postcoital bliss: “Mmh yes.” I pictured Bush dancing among trees in a state of synaesthetic ecstasy, her body lit by a neon green glow. My body swayed instinctively to the rhythm. It didn’t bother me that I must have looked like a girl doing it. I followed the flickers of emerald to the forest’s end.

Something shifted in me that day. Bush’s ode to womanhood felt like an invocation of all the things I knew I could be: euphoric, audacious and free. I started to view my femininity not as a flaw, but as an affirmation of life; a way of indulging in the intense pleasure of the world, nature and my body.

It still wasn’t safe to be my natural self in my final year of school. My transition came a couple of years later, when I moved away for university. But, from this point onwards, I knew there was a place in my mind to escape to whenever I wanted – the lush, fevered universe Bush had created – where I danced in recognition of my own sacred womanhood. And waiting patiently for that reverie to become my everyday reality, I was able to refuse the voices that told me it never would”.

From gay clubs and spaces playing the music of Kate Bush and providing this safe and loving space, through to major artists discussing Kate Bush, to those who have been given this new life and strength thanks to Kate Bush. I have probably not done full justice to her music and how she has affected, infused and enriched conversation around L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people! Though I felt compelled to write about Kate Bush…

THIS Pride month.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: 2026 D.J. Queens

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Belgian D.J. and producer Amelie Lens releases her debut album, AURA, on 4th September/PHOTO CREDIT: Amelie Lens

2026 D.J. Queens

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QUITE recently…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olive F/PHOTO CREDIT: Olive F

I have saluted some amazing D.J.s. All phenomenal women. These queens of the decks. Including Carly Wilford and Olive F, these incredible talents also put out their own music. I wanted to bring together music from D.J. queens of 2026 (not all the tracks will be from this year. Some are from last year; the odd track with a male collaborator). In terms of gender equality across Electronic music, there is still a way to go. Female D.J.s still under-represented. The playing field not being level yet. DJ Mag highlighted a recent report that shows there is a lot of work to be done. The industry needs to do more to ensure that there is faster and bigger steps towards equality. Something that applies right across the industry:

“Findings from a new report unveiled at the International Music Summit (IMS) suggest that female DJs account for only 15% of AlphaTheta users.

The statistics, published in the annual IMS Electronic Music Business Report, which assesses the current state of the global electronic music industry, indicate that this is an increase of 2% from 2023's 13% and 1% from 2024's 14%.

The IMS report — which did not account for non-binary or gender non-conforming DJs in its statistics – has been authored by MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan and draws on AlphaTheta’s account data to highlight the gender disparity.

Alongside the stats, Mulligan wrote: "Female DJs are accounting for an increasingly large share of headliner slots but there is still a long way to go for the wider base of DJs. AlphaTheta's registered userbase shows that females are growing their share every year, but the pace of change is still slow. Female DJs now have more role models than ever, but the industry needs to do more to unwind decades of ingrained behaviours and biases to ensure there is a truly level playing field."

Elsewhere in the 12th edition of the annual report, it was revealed that the global electronic music industry grew overall by 7% in 2025, going up from $14.2 billion in 2024 to its current value of $15.1 billion. Download a free copy of the annual IMS Electronic Music Business Report here.

AlphaTheta, the parent company of Pioneer DJ, launched its Equal Beats podcast in 2025, which aims to celebrate "the women and non-binary people driving electronic music forward". Podcast guests so far have included Sama’ Abdulhadi, Lady Shaka and more. It's part of the company's wider Equal Beats mission to "champion diversity and create a more inclusive electronic music community".

The long-standing issue of gender diversity across club and festival line-ups in the UK continues to inspire action, with UK collective NOT BAD FOR A GIRL (NBFG) publishing an open letter earlier this year. The collective's research looked at the line-ups for two major UK festivals due to take place in 2026, and found that the bookings for one festival were made up of 80% male acts.

“If you’d asked us early on to predict when there’d finally be 50/50 representation, we would have said hopefully by 2030. Here we are, and we’re further from that goal than ever,” the group wrote in the letter. “Female artists prove their worth time and time again — engaging huge fanbases, dominating awards shows and contributing to billion-pound live revenues in the UK — yet line-up diversity is getting worse.”

“Diversity is not a trend or a bonus,” the letter continued, “it is fundamental to creativity, community and fairness.”

Meanwhile, the Missing Voices of Women “mini-report”, published around the time of the 2026 GRAMMYs in February, revealed that female recipients took home less than a quarter of awards at the this year's ceremony. Significantly, between 2017 and 2026, women accounted for approximately one in five GRAMMY nominations and wins”.

I am going to end with a mixtape of incredible tracks from some of the best female D.J.s. I have said before how there should be a massive festival exclusively featuring women. Awe-inspiring D.J.s across the world combining for this wonderful festival that spans multiple genres. Whilst many play tracks from other artists, there are those D.J.s that write and produce their own music. I have included songs from some of the best D.J.s in the world. It is angering that there is still massive gender inequality and sexism. Reiterating the urgency that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Carly Wilford/PHOTO CREDIT: Carly Wilford

MORE needs to be done.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Phoebe Bridgers

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Davis Bates/The Guardian

Phoebe Bridgers

__________

THIS is an artist…

who I have been a fan of for years now. Her debut album, Stranger in the Alps, arrived in 2017. Punisher came out in 2020. Two remarkable solo albums. Phoebe Bridgers has also worked with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker in boygenius (they are on hiatus rather than split up) and they released the boygenius E.P. in 2018 and 2023’s album, the record. They also released the 2023 E.P., the rest. Bridgers joined Conor Oberst as Better Oblivion Community Center for their eponymous debut album in 2019. At the moment, Bridgers is preparing for a new tour. She has insisted people do not use their phones. This is something more and more artists are asking of their fans. Madonna doing the same. The California-born artist is one of the world’s greatest songwriters. I will come to a review of her sold-out benefit concert at Madison Square Garden earlier this month. NME provided their take:

“Phoebe Bridgers performed a communal and surprisingly intimate no-device gig at New York’s Madison Square Garden as part of her ‘Spring Pop-Up Tour’ – using the gig to call out ICE and raise funding for immigrants.

The show came after the singer-songwriter played her first live solo live show in three years last month in Roswell, New Mexico, where she debuted three new songs and strongly suggested that a new album is on its way.

Announced on Monday (June 1), tickets to the NYC arena show were made available via Tidal and randomly allocated to fans who registered to attend, with options to pay $1, $5, $10, or $20 and all proceeds from ticket sales going towards Community Justice Exchange’s Immigration Bond Freedom Fund, which provides aid and bail to those in ICE detention centres.

Before the event on Thursday night (June 5), those planning to attend were made aware of the strict no electronics, cameras, phones, Google Glass, Apple Watches policy – and journalists were told not to bring pens, pencils, or paper because lyrics had leaked online during previous shows. Upon arrival, guests were given Yondr pouches for their cellphones and devices, and black paper tickets to find their seat numbers.

A small platform, staged to look like a ‘70s basement and decorated with a small couch draped in a vintage blanket, lava lamps, blacklight posters, and a small boxy television playing video clips in between scenes of static, was set up in the large venue, with Bridgers joined by keyboardist Nick White and longtime collaborator Christian Lee Hutson on guitar for the acoustic set.

Bridgers walked onto the stage by shouting a cheerful “surprise” before performing a stripped-back and meditative rendition of her hit ‘Motion Sickness’, with the sold-out venue completely silent outside of Bridgers’ voice. She acknowledged the rarity of the evening, saying, “It’s weird not having a phone, isn’t it?” adding that she herself hadn’t been to a no-phone show.

She also told the crowd, “I appreciate you allowing this to be an internet-free zone,” before jesting, “If any of you stuck an Apple Watch up your ass to record this, please don’t post it on the internet,” opening her arms and then sharing with a grin, “I trust you.”

The trio then performed fan favourites, ‘Waiting Room’, ‘Kyoto,’ and ‘Moon Song’, before rolling into seven new tracks — many of which continued the singular sound Bridgers built on her acclaimed second album, 2020’s ‘Punisher’ — melancholy lyrics made up of astute observations of the state of the world and relationships, backed by slow strumming guitars and orchestration that oscillates from Americana to indie folk.

However, some of the songwriting harkened back to the unabashed candidness of her debut album, 2017’s ‘Stranger in the Alps’. A new nunber she announced with “This song is about the past, though I’m told all of my songs are,” came with a crushing, crescendoing chorus that saw her and Hutson strumming emphatically as she alluded to an ill-fated engagement. Elsewhere, she enlisted keys, shaping a sparkling melody around Peter Pan metaphors that seem to shine a light on men with arrested development.

There was also a twangy, upbeat, rootsy track she presented with the words “Here’s a country song,” that came complete with a pre-chorus “woo”. Before a final new song, she performed ‘Scott Street’ and ‘Graceland Too’, with fans taking part in the classic rock practice of holding up lighters during the latter, which she called “unbelievable.”

Throughout the set, Bridgers took the opportunity to thank fans for raising funds to support the release of immigrants from ICE detainment, sharing “I hate those fucking ICE idiots,” and calling them “cops squared”. At one point, she also asked the crowd how many of their parents were conservative, before thanking them for being  brave and “defecting.”

Towards the close, she gave streaming platform Tidal a shoutout for hosting the event and “paying artists more than any other platform. She also shared “we’re going on tour” pointing to her announcement of ‘The Lost Tour’. Bridgers’ first solo tour in three years kicks off in September, with dates spanning North America, Europe and the UK. Support acts will be Alex G in North America and Isaac Wood in the UK/EU. According to Bridgers’ Instagram, the upcoming dates will also be device-free. She captioned the tour announcement, “I’m going on tour no phones”.

Phoebe Bridgers is embarking on The Lost Tour later this year. You can see the dates on her website. Starting in September, she comes to Ireland and the U.K. Included in the run is a date at the 02 on 1st December. That will be a huge gig. One of the absolute finest voices and songwriters we have ever seen in my opinion. As a solo artist and as part of boygenius and  Oblivion Community Center, we have been gifted with so much beautiful music this part decade or so. There is something wonderful you get with Phoebe Bridgers that you do not get with other artists. Her morals, humour, intelligence and down to earth quality. It explains why she has such a devoted fanbase. This L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artist and idol is in my thoughts as it is Pride Month. Below are twenty songs from Phoebe Bridgers. Most are solo, though a few are from her collaborative projects. Proof that she is a rarefied talent…

WE are so lucky to have.

FEATURE: Turn Off Your Mind, Relax and Float Down Stream… The Beatles’ Revolver at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

Turn Off Your Mind, Relax and Float Down Stream…

The Beatles’ Revolver at Sixty

__________

THERE is always that debate…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in Abbey Road Studios during filming of the Paperback Writer and Rain promotional films/PHOTO CREDIT: Apple Corps

as to which album by The Beatles is the best. People switching between Abbey Road (1969), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and Revolver (1966). The latter was released on 5th August, 1966. I am casting ahead to its sixtieth anniversary. It was certainly an important album from The Beatles. By 1966, they were touring less (this fascinating article from June of this year explores their final gigs in 1966) and pushing the limits of the studio. On 30th May, over two months before releasing Revolver, The Beatles released Paperback Writer. It contained one of the all-time best B-sides, Rain. I think Revolver was their biggest leap in terms of sonics and songwriting. If you consider tracks like Tomorrow Never Knows, this was biggest and bolder than anything they had recorded before. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band found them expand their horizons and redefine Pop music once more. Though Revolver is one of their most consistent albums. Everything on it is amazing. Opening with the brilliant Taxman, there are so many Beatles classics on Revolver. Eleanor Rigby, Here, There and Everywhere, And Your Bird Can Sing, and I’m Only Sleeping. I wonder whether Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will share memories of Revolver as it turns sixty. Revolver was accompanied by the double A-side of Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine. Reaching number one in the U.K. and U.S., The Beatles’ seventh studio album has regularly been voted one of the greatest albums ever released. I am going to bring in some features about Revolver. There are a lot of features around Revolver, so I am selecting carefully in terms of what to include. Cambridge Audio marked fifty years of Revolver in 2016. Before discussing it, they laid out some facts. Three-hundred hours of studio time were devoted to this album. It was recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio 3. Spending seven weeks at the top of the U.K. album charts, early title options for Revolver were Abracadabra, After Geography, Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle and Beatles on Safari:

“Following the release of the rushed yet still fantastic Rubber Soul the year before, The Beatles were due to make their third film but shelved it as they couldn’t agree on a script. The three months down time however wasn’t wasted as it allowed the band to develop their song writing ability and try out some very different ideas for their next studio album Revolver. The term ‘studio album’ in particular holds weight, as the band were looking to put the touring part of their career on hold, giving them the chance to try out ideas where they didn’t need to worry too much about recreating the tracks in a live setting. John Lennon himself noted: “One thing’s for sure, the next LP is going to be very different…Paul and I are very keen on this electronic music.”

And he was right. Revolver was the start of a turning point of sorts for the Fab Four. Many music enthusiasts have noted that their seventh studio album is a sort of marker, separating two sides to The Beatles. The earlier half consisting of pure pop classics that kicked off Beatlemania worldwide and the second demonstrating the evolution and maturity of their song writing craft, where their psychedelic experimentation lies. It’s Revolver and onwards that has helped us perceive what we see as the 60s to this day.

Changing a Winning Formula

What’s noticeable is that the regular guitar, bass and drums Beatles line up known the world over was being invaded by a range of new instruments and influences. In fact, Eleanor Rigby was the first track none of The Beatles actually played instruments on. It used four violins, two violas, and two cellos composed by the late George Martin. It was also the lyrical content that took a huge departure from conventional upbeat love songs, as the track told the story of a lonely woman and her eventual death. Something the screaming fans weren’t used to! Love You To and Tomorrow Never Knows take an even further stride from the norm with their clear psychedelic and multi-cultural influences. In particular the closing track Tomorrow Never Knows was John Lennon’s way of transferring a three minute LSD trip into song form. Although drug experimentation had started to become a catalyst for inspiration (Doctor Robert was about a New York physician that helped rock stars obtain ‘exotic’ drugs…), the band agreed that the recording studio wasn’t the place to be under the influence.

Backmasking Pioneers

A particular encounter with marijuana led to a recording technique called Backmasking being included on the album. Backmasking is when sound or a message is recorded backwards onto a track that is intended to be played forward. Lennon under the influence accidentally played the tapes to the earlier released single Rain backwards and liked what he heard. You can hear the technique used in particular in the guitar solo of Tomorrow Never Knows. This wouldn’t be the last time backmasking would be linked to The Beatles, as during the time of the 1968s White Album there were rumours that Paul McCartney had died, with evidence hidden using backmasking in tracks on the album. The technique has gone on to be quite controversial over the years fueling plenty of musical urban myths, especially in the realm of rock music.

Even More Sonic Experiments

It wasn’t just John, but the entire band that began to take home tapes and recorders to experiment with. Playing tracks backwards, sped up, slowed down, loops and the invention of ADT (Artificial Double Tracking). This was where The Beatles really began to exploit the ever evolving recording technology. Going back to Tomorrow Never Knows, Lennon wanted a vocal effect that gave the ‘sound of a guru on a mountaintop’. George Martin ran the vocal track through a rotating speaker called a Leslie Spinning Speaker. As it span, it produced a strange sound similar to the Doppler effect (the effect on frequency and wavelength in motion, think of a passing ambulance as an example) Combine this with the ADT, tape loops and reversed instruments and a truly unique song was born. Many of these techniques can be heard across the entire album if you listen closely enough.

For its wild creativity, daring studio experimentation and use of eclectic influences, Revolver wasn’t only a career defining moment for The Beatles, but an album that helped change the industry both musically and in recording technology for good”.

Of course, there was a lot of retrospection around Revolver in 2016. There will not be as much written for its sixtieth anniversary. There is always going to be that debate whether Revolver is their peak. The BBC published an article in 2016 where Greg Kot explained why Revolver is the crowning achievement from The Beatles. It is an album that still blows the mind. It doesn’t matter how many times you have heard it. The sheer eclectic nature. The fact that Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby sit alongside Tomorrow Never Knows. And yet it all slots together perfectly. The genius of The Beatles:

“All The Beatles’ previous albums had been rush jobs – their debut was recorded in four hours. But in 1966, the quartet pulled off the road for good to devote themselves to songwriting and record-making. Lennon and McCartney were still closely collaborating and pushing each other to new levels of innovation, and Harrison was emerging as a formidable third songwriter and voice in the band. Now, with the luxury of time to tinker, edit, re-edit and experiment, The Beatles were poised to record a masterpiece.

Tomorrow Never Knows set a high standard for an album that moves from one peak to the next: Harrison’s corrosive guitar lick and McCartney’s commanding counterpoint bassline in Taxman made for one of The Beatles’ toughest-sounding tracks, the brisk strings on Eleanor Rigby presaged the chamber-pop feel and emotional tenor of She’s Leaving Home on Sgt Pepper, and Harrison’s plunge into Eastern mysticism and modalities on Love You To set the stage for the similarly inclined Within You Without You on the later album.

The melancholy beauty of Here, There and Everywhere answered the challenge of Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys masterpiece Pet Sounds, Doctor Robert and And Your Bird Can Sing achieved jingle-jangle guitar-pop perfection, and the horn-fueled Got to Get You Into My Life channeled Motown and Stax soul. Even a relatively lightweight track such as Yellow Submarine presaged the sometimes fanciful, almost child-like wonder of Sgt Pepper tracks such as Lovely Rita.

Sgt Pepper proved to be a prettier package, with its elaborate Peter Blake cover art of the satin-suited, newly bearded Beatles among images of cultural icons ranging from Karl Marx to Mae West. The Beatles spent 700 hours in the studio crafting it, but despite its unassailable high points – the staggering A Day in the Life, the acid-rock fantasia Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – it’s also riddled with the cute and lightweight (When I’m 64, Lovely Rita) and the drab (Within You Without You).

Revolver was preceded by Rubber Soul, recorded in 1965, in which the band had achieved a new level of sophistication in its songwriting. The evocative wordplay in Norwegian Wood and In My Life aspired to the pop poetry of Dylan and Smokey Robinson. Song for song, it matches up well with Revolver, but it’s not nearly as sonically ambitious.

By the time of the 1968 White album, The Beatles were splintering and essentially turned the sessions into a series of solo recordings with the rest of the band members acting as session musicians.  It contains some brilliant music – including Lennon’s caustic Happiness is a Warm Gun and McCartney’s civil-rights hymn Blackbird – and at least a side’s worth of filler (sonic collage Revolution 9; juvenile Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?; blues parody Yer Blues; and the music hall pastiche of Honey Pie).

Abbey Road marks The Beatles’ final recording session, and it planted the seeds for progressive rock by stitching together 11 half-finished songs into a sublimely sequenced suite. Its closing line – “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make" – is a career capstone worthy of The Beatles’ legacy. The first side of the album contains Harrison’s finest Beatles moment, Something, and Lennon’s metal precursor She’s So Heavy. It’s the album in The Beatles discography that comes closest to the majesty of Revolver.

Revolver wasn't always so highly regarded. A few months after it was released, The Beatles began recording Sgt Pepper, an event that was chronicled with great fanfare as the band sequestered themselves in Abbey Road studios. Its magnificence seemed a fait accompli. In contrast, the release of Revolver was overshadowed by Lennon’s infamous and widely misinterpreted ‘more popular than Jesus’ comments. But time has affirmed the enduring worth of Revolver. It now stands as The Beatles’ greatest album”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews for Revolver. In 2022, when discussing the Super Deluxe edition of Revolver (which was hugely adored), Giles Martin discussed the wonders of Revolver. In this article, the son of The Beatles’ producer George Martin gave some insight into an album of insights and discoveries. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary inspired albums there has ever been. It is clear that more time in the studio was the right call. If the band continued to tour endlessly, would we ever have Revolver? It is interesting to consider:

“Martin started listening to the sonic potential to bring the original Revolver to a new audience, with the addition of extensive previously unreleased material. That augments a listening experience as arresting in 2022 as it was 56 years ago. “I found the outtakes really entertaining, especially as I’d been working on Get Back,” he notes. “The analogy is, I’m listening to a band unwrapping their presents, as opposed to a band that have all their presents around the floor, and they’re just basically ignoring them.

“Revolver is an album of inspiration and discovery, [whereas] Let It Be was a period of time where they were being retrospective and wanted to back to how they were before they had all these gifts they got given.”

Even committed Beatles devotees have been surprised at the depth of unissued recordings served up in the new editions, which run to 28 early takes from the sessions and three home demos. But Martin says he only ever finds out what is available to each project from the expert archivists on the reissue team. “I didn’t know anything honestly, not until I start[ed] doing it,” he confides.

“People ask me about outtakes on Rubber Soul. I don’t really know until we start looking into it. I’m not the curator of The Beatles. I’m the person that, I suppose, makes decisions and does these things. But there’s really clever people that know everything, and I have to tap into them, Mike Heatley and Kevin Howlett, and there’s Matthew Cocker at Abbey Road, who’s the archivist. They’re brilliant.

“A package like this has to work on many different levels,” he goes on. “You have the fans that obviously want everything. There’s the people that love Revolver, they want a deeper dig, and then there’s people who’ve never heard Revolver before, like my kids, for instance, that will listen to on a streaming service. It’s multi-layered.

“As far as outtakes go, and that world, it’s a bit like going to a gallery and looking at paintings and discovering the pencil drawings and sketches they did in the early versions of the works they did, before the masterpiece comes. That sounds pretentious, but that’s the ethos of it. So I try and tell a story with the outtakes that shows the roots behind the album, and more so, the humanity behind the record.

“People look for the secret of The Beatles, how did they do this? Was it my Dad? Was there a magic button that was pressed at Abbey Road? It was the combination of humans together, and that’s what you begin to hear. You can’t replicate it, because it’s like replicating a relationship. It’s different between the different people involved. Everything is unique, and the relationship of the four of them, and the relationship they had with my Dad, was completely unique.”

Often, the fascination in the new extras comes in the ingredients yet to be added: the early takes of “Got To Get You Into My Life” before the augmentation of the magnificent horns that transformed the track, for instance, and, in one version, with guitars where those horns would be. There’s George Harrison’s “Love You To” pre-sitar, and the elegantly forlorn “For No One” without French horn.

“It shows you how they made the right decisions,” agrees Martin. “You hear these developments of songs, and you go, ‘OK, I can see where you’re going with this.’ We kind of know that there’s going to be horns ending up on it, but it’s interesting hearing the pathway to that decision.”

As always, Martin was acutely aware of the younger audiences who will consume the new Revolver from a very contemporary perspective. “For me, it’s like time travel. The band are 25, and they will always be 25 on this. It shouldn’t be an album from 1966, because kids don’t listen to music like that any more. We did, because we were sifting through records in our parents’ or our friends’ record collection or our own record collection, which had time and date and images attached. Kids don’t. They just listen to songs now.

“Like my kids will say, ‘Listen to this, it’s great. This should be used for a TV theme.’ And it’s ‘The Chain’ by Fleetwood Mac. [I’ll say] ‘Well, it was used for the Grand Prix.’ ‘Oh, right, OK, that’s a good idea.’ It’s that sort of conversation. I remember I was with one of my 15-year-old’s friends in the car and I said ‘What are your favorite bands?’ and she goes ‘Fleetwood Mac and Bob Marley and the Wailers.’ Fair enough. If I asked her when did they happen, she would have no idea. It would be like a ridiculous question. It’s just a song. So to turn Revolver into ‘Songs that I like for kids,’ great.”

Working versions of later household sounds from Revolver reveal new layers, as on an initial take of “Tomorrow Never Knows” which comes across like prototype grunge, decades ahead of its time; or the version of “Rain” with John Lennon’s vocal at the correct speed – not slowed down as it was on the B-side of “Paperback Writer” – that has shades of the Byrds. “Yeah, obviously, the Byrds had suddenly become an influence like lots of other things,” says Giles. “George was really into other guitar players, as you know, as all of them were.”

An often under-discussed element of The Beatles’ genius, which is very much to the fore on Revolver, was their harmonies. “When they could do, they were singing together. On “Taxman,” for instance, that is George lead vocal, and Paul and John singing at the same time as George. One take.”

Of his own favorite moments and discoveries from the album, Martin particularly enjoys “some of the quieter songs, like ‘For No One’ and ‘Here, There And Everywhere.’ I didn’t realise Ringo was playing drums on ‘For No One,’ but you can suddenly hear a kick and snare drum, to tie it down, if you like. It’s mainly being able to move the drums into the center, that made a big difference to the whole mix. What’s enjoyable is the ability to do things that they couldn’t do, and hopefully doing things that they would have done if they’d had the technology.”

Martin also eulogizes about the extraordinary track that closed the album while opening doors of musical experimentation previously unknown. “‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was the first track recorded for Revolver,” he says. “They’d all been on holiday, they’d also discovered pot, they came back in and John had this song which was just a single chord of C. He played it to my Dad and was like, ‘I want to sound like I’m singing from a Himalayan mountaintop.’ This is someone from Liverpool.

“To the band and my Dad’s credit, they were like, ‘OK.’ And the early versions you hear on the outtakes are very loopy, trancy. The whole idea was very progressive. There’s very few songs on albums like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ still. Someone said to me ‘It must be fun to mix, there’s so much going on.’ There isn’t. There’s bass and drums, there’s a bit of tambora which is an Indian drone instrument, and there’s tape loops. But it creates this world, and they did create this spiritual mantra from a mountaintop. At Abbey Road.”

Among the greatest revelations in the package, especially as few fans even knew of their existence, are the “songwriting work tapes” of “Yellow Submarine,” in which the sing-song jollity of Ringo’s familiar lead is replaced by John’s maudlin, acoustic introspection.

“I always thought it was a Paul song,” says Martin, “and we found this demo. I think Sean Lennon sent us this demo of John singing it at home. It’s ‘In the town where I was born, no one cared, no one cared…’ John’s version is like a Woody Guthrie version of the song. It’s that classic Lennon and McCartney thing where they they come from two different worlds, and those two worlds are colliding to almost to produce the perfect planet”.

In 2009, Pitchfork reviewed Revolver. As they spent more time in the studio and experimented, we did get this 1966 album where The Beatles’ “individual voices and confidence continued to grow, resulting in the sonic landmark Revolver”. I wonder how people will look back on the album for new features. Sixty years later, and have we seen anything like it at all? It is a monumental statement from the greatest band of all time:

“Like any band, the Beatles' recording career was often altered, even pushed forward, as much by external factors as their own creative impulses. The group's competitive drive had them, at times, working to match or best Bob Dylan or Brian Wilson; their drug use greatly colored the musical outlook of John Lennon and George Harrison in particular; and the death of former manager Brian Epstein ushered in a period of distracting and poor business choices and opened the door for individuals such as the celebrity guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Yoko Ono, and businessman Allen Klein to penetrate, alter, and, some would say, disintegrate their inner circle.

The most important of these external shifts in the Beatles narrative, however, was a series of changes that allowed them to morph into a studio band. The chain of events that ushered in the band's changing approach to studio music began before Rubber Soul, but the results didn't come into full fruition until Revolver, a 35-minute LP that took 300 hours of studio time to create-- roughly three times the amount allotted to Rubber Soul, and an astronomical amount for a record in 1966.

Bottom of Form

Longtime Beatles producer George Martin, justifiably upset that EMI refused to give him a raise on the back of his extraordinarily profitable work with the Beatles, quit his post with the label in August 1965. Martin used his clout to create his own company, and the group and producer used theirs to effectively camp out at Abbey Road Studios for whatever length of time suited them rather than being forced to comply to the rigid and economically sound schedules demanded by labels at the time. The Beatles could now work both in and out of the studio, taking full advantage of new advancements in sound recording that allowed them to reflect upon and tinker with their work, explore new instruments and studio trickery, and refine their music by solving problems when they arose.

This new approach not only greatly altered their work environment, but drove the Beatles to value the flexibility of emerging technology. They also cashed in some of their commercial capital to abandon the mentally and physically sapping practice of touring-- and the glad-handing and public relations requirements that went with it. Exceptionalism became the watchword for the band, and it responded by using its freedom to push forward its art and, by extension, the whole of pop music. Musically, then, the Beatles began to craft dense, experimental works; lyrically, they matched that ambition, maturing pop from the stuff of teen dreams to a more serious pursuit that actively reflected and shaped the times in which its creators lived.

Revolver was also the first record in which the impression of the Beatles as a holistic gang was disrupted. The group had taken three months off prior to Revolver-- easily its longest break since the start of its recording career-- and each band member went his own separate way after years of moving around the world as a unit. Even without the break, it's possible that the group would continue to explore individual concerns: After starting to do just that on Rubber Soul, it was only natural that the Beatles wished to continue to highlight their individual strengths on its follow-up, and they did by listing each song's lead singer on the record sleeve.

The first, surprisingly, was George Harrison, who kicks off the record with another stab at politics on "Taxman", and then later offers philosophical musings on "I Want to Tell You" and the Indian-flavored "Love You To". Over the next year or two, Harrison's guitar played a more background role in the group's recordings-- fortuitously, then, that time also corresponded with the years in which the Beatles were pleased to bunker down in the studio and most explore the dynamic tension between their individual interests and their final stretch of camaraderie and mutual respect.

Lennon's primary interest throughout much of this time was himself, something that continued throughout his career-- he was always suspicious, even dismissive, of Paul McCartney's character songs, but once he and Yoko Ono joined forces, her Fluxus-rooted belief in art-as-subjectivity became orthodoxy in his mind. Lennon's early explorations of self and mind that began on Rubber Soul continued on Revolver, as the suburbanite spent much of his time at home indulging his zest for the exploratory powers of LSD. He contributes five songs to Revolver, and, indeed, each is concerned with drugs, the creative mind, a suspicion of the outside world, or all three.

Each is also uniformly wonderful, and together they provide a tapestry of Lennon's burgeoning art-pop, which, along with Martin's inventive arrangements and playful effects, would peak the next year with the triumphs of "I Am the Walrus", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "A Day in the Life". The gauzy "I'm Only Sleeping" and rollicking 1-2 of "She Said She Said" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" aren't nearly as demonstrative as the songs he'd write in their wake-- as a result each remains oddly underrated-- but they function as some of Lennon's most purely satisfying pop songs.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is another thing entirely. While "Doctor Robert" or "She Said She Said" touched on drug culture playfully or privately, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was a full-on attempt to recreate the immersive experience of LSD-- complete with lyrics borrowed from Timothy Leary's *Tibetan Book of the Dead-*inspired writings. Remarkably, though, much of it due to Martin's experimental production, tape loops, and musique concrète-inspired backdrop, the song is lively and giddy instead of self-serious or preachy. Even Martin's primitive psychedelia could have been thudding and ponderous, and yet more than four decades later the entire thing seems less a clear product of its time than not only most art or experimental rock, but most Beatles records as well.

Despite that triumph, however, Revolver was McCartney's maturation record as much as Rubber Soul was for Lennon. While Harrison was learning at the feet of sitar master Ravi Shankar and Lennon was navigating heavy use of psychotropic drugs, McCartney was refining his compositional chops by exploring classical music, training an eye for detail and subtlety in his lyrics, and embracing the orchestral work of Brian Wilson.

McCartney's optimism and populism resulted in the most demonstrative songs he created for Revolver-- the brassy "Good Day Sunshine" (which delightfully toes the line between schmaltz and heartwarming) and "Got to Get You Into My Life", and the children's music staple "Yellow Submarine", an inventive and charming track too often derided as camp. (It's also an early indication that it would be McCartney who would hold tightest to the impression of the group as a unit-- the image of the band all living together here was, for the first time in years, untrue.)

The understated qualities of McCartney's lyrics began to be misconstrued as simplistic in his ballads, but he provides three of his best here: "For No One", all the more affecting because it's slight and difficult to grasp, "Here, There and Everywhere", a model of sepia-toned sentimentality, and "Eleanor Rigby", which in its own way was as groundbreaking and revolutionary as "Tomorrow Never Knows". Virtually a short story set to music, "Rigby" and its interwoven descriptions of lonely people was and is a desolate and altogether mature setting for a pop song.

Revolver in the end is the sound of a band growing into supreme confidence. The Beatles had been transformed into a group not beholden to the expectations of their label or bosses, but fully calling the shots-- recording at their own pace, releasing records at a less-demanding clip, abandoning the showmanship of live performance. Lesser talents or a less-motivated group of people may have shrunk from the challenge, but here the Beatles took upon the task of redefining what was expected from popular music. Lest we forget it, the original flashpoint of Beatlemania remains the most influential and revolutionary period in the Beatles career, but the creative high points of 1966-67 aren't far behind. It's worth remembering as well that what had been demanded or expected from them as entertainers and popular musicians was something they'd challenged from their first cheeky, flippant interview, but just a few years later they were no longer mere anomalies within the world of pop, no longer potential fads; they were avatars for a transformative cultural movement”.

I will end by going back to 1966. On 15th August, Edward Greenfield reviewed The Beatles’ Revolver. The Guardian published the original review in 2016. It must have been mad getting an album like Revolver in 1966. It was a real explosion in terms of what a Pop band could achieve. Those who felt The Beatles were this simple band who wrote love songs and had this particular style were in for a shock in 1966. There were still elements of their earlier work, though Revolver was this new exploration and peak. Things had different changed:

“Turn off your mind; relax and float downstream; it is not dying. Lay down all thought; surrender to the voice: it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within: it is being.”

A curious sort of poetry, and the Beatles devotee might detect the hand of John Lennon. These are the words of the most remarkable item on a compulsive new record, the Beatles’ latest LP (Parlophone stereo PCS 7009; mono PMC 7009), called in typical punning way “Revolver.” The song quote, “Tomorrow never knows,” is musically most original, starting with jungle noises and Eastern-inspired music which merge by montage effect into the sort of electronic noises we associate with beat music. Then Lennon moaning out the words above, which in their sinister way define the real point of the song: pop-music as a substitute both for jungle emotions and for the consolations of religion. After all, teenagers are not the only ones who through the ages have “turned off their minds” and “surrendered to the voice,” whether to the tribal leader, the priest, or now the pop-singer. Thank goodness Lennon is being satirical: at least one hopes so.

In studying Beatles philosophy one does of course have to distinguish between the natural acquisitiveness of George Harrison in “Taxman” and Lennon and McCartney and their rather lefter-wing views. But all three creative Beatles habitually (as serious artists always must) in specific feelings and specific experiences. “Dr Robert,” for example, is a brilliant send-up of an expensive doctor-psychiatrist (which Beatle went to him one wonders?). “Well, well, well, you’re feeling fine,” the doctor is made to say, and the link with what the Beatles think of as prepackaged religion is underlined by the Victorian hymn-tune accompaniment below.

Even the already ubiquitous “Yellow submarine” is specific in its simplicity, and a number like “I’m only sleeping” brings a vivid picture of the pop-world: the late-sleeping Beatle being jolted into consciousness – nicely illustrated in the repeated jolting back to life of the music. “Eleanor Rigby” (with “square” string octet accompaniment) is a ballad about a lonely spinster who “wears the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” and about Father McKenzie “writing the words of sermon that no one will hear,” the verses punctuated by wailing cries of “Look at all the lonely people: where do they all come from?”

There you have a quality rare in pop music, compassion, born of an artist’s ability to project himself into other situations. Specific understanding of emotion comes out even in the love songs – at least the two new ones with the best tunes, both incidentally sung by Paul McCartney, the Beatle with the strongest musical staying power. “For no one” uses Purcellian tricks to hold the attention, gently-moving, seamless melody with characteristic descending bass motif, over which half way through there emerges a haunting descant, beautiful by any standards, Alan Civil, no less, playing the French horn.

It is not just a question of the Beatles and Paul McCartney in particular paying lip service to classical values. “Here, there and everywhere” brings yet another Beatles tune that like “Yesterday” or the best of Ellington, Cole Porter or Sandy Wilson (taking highly contrasted examples) can be demonstrated by the most hide-bound analysis to be a good melody. After the unexpected success of “Yesterday,” I shall be interested to see whether this new “sweet” number with its rising fifths and sevenths (forbidden interval in “pop”) again vindicate the perception of popular taste. The Beatles’ whole success, based demonstrably on musical talent, is fair vindication in itself”.

On 5th August, Revolver turns sixty. I really love the album. Whilst Rubber Soul (1965) is my favourite from the band, I cannot deny the genius of Revolver. You can see the legacy of Revolver here. There was this time when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was seen as the defining Beatles album. The conversation changed. In terms of books about Revolver, I would recommend this one from Robert Rodriguez. I shall leave things there. Revolver brought the underground to the mainstream. It changed popular music and culture and, with it, confirmed The Beatles’ God-like status. Sixty years later and Revolver…

CONTINUES to stun.

FEATURE: Feel the Beat from the Tambourine: ABBA's Dancing Queen at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Feel the Beat from the Tambourine

ABBA's Dancing Queen at Fifty

__________

ABBA themselves could claim…

IN THIS PHOTO: ABBA’s Benny Andersson, Frida Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

to have written a few contenders for the best Pop song ever. Among them would be Super Troupers and Mama Mia. However, Dancing Queen is at the top of that list. Released as a single in Sweden on 16th August, 1976, I wanted to celebrate fifty years of this classic. The lead single from their fourth studio album, Arrival, Dancing Queen got a wider release and soon was hailed as ABBA’s signature song. The legacy of this track is immense! I am going to come to some reviews and features. Written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, and Stig Anderson, it has been covered multiple times. Though nothing matches the ABBA original. In 2021, Produce Like a Pro provided some lead-up and background to Dancing Queen. How the Swedish group hit Pop perfection with this 1976 anthem:

“Dancing Queen” was written by Benny and Björn, and manager Stig Anderson. They credit George McCrae’s 1974 disco hit, “Rock Your Baby” as a major inspiration. Under the working title of “Boogaloo”, Benny played the instrumental track for his wife Frida who was brought to tears by the sound. She recalled: “Benny came home with a tape of the backing track and played it for me. I thought it was so enormously beautiful that I started to cry.”

From the shimmery keyboard slide at the song’s start, listeners are transported into an joyous, almost magical sonic space. The track is pop perfection, brilliantly opening with a half chorus. Vocally, the chorus is exuberant and full of energy. The vocals on the verse pull back, although the infectious groove remains strong. This vocal phrasing mirrors the storytelling of the lyrics, setting the scene of a night club:

Friday night and the lights are low

Looking out for a place to go

Where they get play the right music

Getting in the swing

You come to look for a king

The low range of the melody on ending phrases like “you come to look for a king” creates a tone of anticipation. Further preparing for the glorious excitement which comes at the return of the chorus. The first verse is a double verse, whereas the second is shorter and quickly returns the listener to the highly anticipated chorus. The song is perfectly unbalanced; it is chorus heavy, and centered around the satisfaction of hitting the chorus’ final phrase.

Like many pop songs that describe dancing, there is a parallel between the joy and addiction of the song’s hook, and the physical motion of dancing to the music. “Dancing Queen” epitomizes that experience, bringing in a sonic color and energy that mirrors the experience of a night dancing the night away under the mesmerizing and brilliant lights of a night club.

“Dancing Queen” was recorded at Glen Studios, located in a suburb of Stockholm. On August 4, 1974, Björn and Benny entered the studio, along with some session players, including Rutger Gunnarsson on bass guitar and Roger Palm on drums. Gunnarsson had known and been working with Björn since the sixties with the Hootenanny Singers.  Palm was a local session musician who had been working with ABBA since 1971. It was in these sessions on August 4 and 5th, that they laid down the instrumental backing tracks and melody which had so moved Frida.  The rest of the track took several months to record. Even as late as December of 1975, Benny and Björn were still refining the recording. The track was produced by Benny and Björn, with Michael B. Tretow as the engineer.

“Dancing Queen” was completed around the same time as another one of their major hits, “Fernando”.  The group wanted to release a single in March of 1976, but there was disagreement about which one to release. Anderson insisted that the group go with “Fernando,” a ballad which would contrast the group’s previous release, “Mamma Mia.”  His choice was a strong one, and “Fernando” became one of ABBA’s best selling tracks. It remains one of the best selling singles of all time. Still, the group was confident that “Dancing Queen” was destined for success. Agnetha recalled: “It’s often difficult to know what will be a hit. The exception was ‘Dancing Queen.’ We all knew it was going to be massive.”

While the song had to wait another five months after “Fernando” to be released as a single, it got an early start in performance, including a January 1976 TV special in Germany and another television performance in Australia in March. And then in Sweden, the song was introduced at the televised wedding gala for King Carl XVI and Silvia Sommerlath on June 19, 1976. On August 16, 1976 “Dance Queen” was released as a single in Sweden.  The response was massive, as it took the number one spot on charts all over the world – including in the US, when in April of 1977, it became the group’s first and only US number one hit.

And it remains their most popular and iconic hit. It is the quintessential ABBA recording, showcasing the band’s pop perfection.  In 2015, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. ABBA, as a group, remains one of the world’s best selling artists, and in 2010, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”.

In April 1977, Dancing Queen reached number one in the U.S. It provided Stereogum the opportunity to write about Dancing Queen for their The Number Ones feature. They awarded this perfect Pop song a perfect ten. How could it score anything less?! Fifty years later and it remains this flawless thing:

“You're John McCain. When you were 21 years old, you were flying a bombing mission over Hanoi, and a missile shot your plane down. You ejected from your plane, broke two arms and a leg, then landed in a lake and almost drowned. The soldiers who took you prisoner crushed your shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted you in the groin.

You were interrogated, beaten, denied medical care. You spent two years in solitary confinement. When your father was named commander of all the American forces in the Vietnam war, your captors tried to send you home. But adhering to the military code of conduct, you refused release, since other soldiers had been kept prisoner longer than you. So instead, you were tortured for years, beaten at regular intervals. And after five and a half years, when the war finally ended, you returned home to a country that had fundamentally changed.

You missed the cultural upheavals of the '60s. While they were happening, you were being tortured. You're unmoored, not sure how to return to American life. You remain in the Navy, go through physical therapy, take command of a training squadron. You cheat on your wife, who you married before your capture.

You don't pay a lot of attention to music. Music has changed, and you weren't around while that was happening. But one day, you hear a song. Two Swedish women are singing, in imperfect but somehow also perfect English, about a 17-year-old girl on a dancefloor. The music is bright and effervescent, and the voices are almost rapturous with joy. But there's an undercurrent to them, too, a sort of bone-deep melancholy. Those voices celebrate youth even as they mourn its loss. They stack melodies on top of melodies, rising on the music like currents of air. You love this song.

More than three decades later, you are running for president, and somebody from Blender magazine asks you to name your favorite songs. You oblige, and you name that song, ABBA's "Dancing Queen," as your favorite song of all time.

A few weeks later, the historian Walter Isaacson tries to snark-attack you about your pick. He asks you, "What were you thinking?" You're John McCain, and you're not going to take any of this shit from Walter Isaacson. You allow that your cultural experience is pretty particular: "If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life. I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again."

But you also know that ABBA rules, and you're happy to tell Walter Isaacson this: "Now look, everybody says, ‘I hate ABBA. Oh ABBA, how terrible! Blah blah blah.' How come everybody goes to Mamma Mia? Huh? I mean really, seriously, huh? ‘I hate ABBA, they’re no good, you know.’ Well, everybody goes. They’ve been selling out for years."

You're John McCain, and you are catastrophically wrong about so many things. But you are goddamn motherfucking right about ABBA.

"Dancing Queen" is a puzzle. It's about dancing, but it's not really a dance song. It's about loving rock music, but it's not a rock song. It's a party song and an elegy. And it's perfect. It's not the only perfect ABBA song. But perhaps thanks to that same sense of snobbery that John McCain encountered, it's the only ABBA song that ever hit #1 in the US. If we had to pick one ABBA song, we picked the right one.

To be fair, nothing about ABBA's genesis suggests that the group ever had a shot at conquering America. The four members of ABBA were all songwriters, and they'd all had Swedish hits, either solo or with their old bands, before they started the group. But they came from distinctly European musical traditions. They'd absorbed English glam and the '60s pop of Phil Spector. But as this Guardian piece points out, they'd also absorbed Italian balladry, Swedish folk music, and the sentimental German music-hall genre known as schlager. They sang in English, but English was very clearly not their first language.

Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA's two chief songwriters and producers, had been making hits in Sweden since they were teenagers in the '60s -- Andersson with his imitation-Beatles rock group the Hep Stars, Ulvaeus with his skiffle group the Hootenanny Singers. One singer, Agnetha Fältskog, had hit #1 in Sweden at age 18 with a schlager song that she'd written. The other, Frida Lyngstad, was also releasing schlager singles from a young age, but she didn't have a big hit until she started working with Andersson and Ulvaeus, who'd started writing songs together.

Eventually, Fältskog married Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad married Andersson. They all got together and formed a group, naming it ABBA -- the first letters of all their first names mashed together. (Abba was also a brand of pickled herring in Sweden; the group had to license the name from the company.) In 1972, ABBA entered a song called "Ring Ring" into a Swedish song competition, hoping that the song would go on to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest. The judges shot it down, but the track still went to #1 in Sweden.

The next year, ABBA entered another song, the glam-influenced "Waterloo," into the contest, and they made it in. ABBA won the Eurovision contest, and it became a European sensation, hitting #1 in three different countries, including the Eurovision host nation of the UK. Even in America, where nobody pays attention to Eurovision, "Waterloo" was a hit, peaking at #6. (It's a 9.) And by some grand cosmic coincidence, the same day that ABBA debuted "Waterloo" at Eurovision, their countrymen Blue Swede hit #1 in America with a cover of BJ Thomas' "Hooked On A Feeling." Blue Swede were the first Swedes ever to hit #1 in the US. ABBA would eventually be the second.

After "Waterloo," ABBA became global sensations. They were huge all over Europe, of course, but they were huge elsewhere, too -- Australia, South Africa, Japan. But after "Waterloo," America was largely immune. The ABBA songs that dominated the rest of the world charted in the US, but they didn't make the top 10. "Mamma Mia" peaked at #32. "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "SOS" both peaked at #15. "Fernando" peaked at #13. But "Dancing Queen" went all the way. "Dancing Queen" was undeniable.

"Dancing Queen" isn't a disco song, but it has disco somewhere in its DNA. Andersson and Ulvaeus, who wrote and produced the song, were inspired by the beat of George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby." But where "Rock Your Baby" is thin and propulsive, "Dancing Queen" is slow and lush and dramatic. Andersson and Ulvaeus, notorious studio perfectionists, piled sound on sound, melody on melody. The first thing we hear, a finger running down a piano keyboard, is a total Elton John flourish. When the song kicks in, it's absolutely piled with instruments -- keyboards, strings, something that sounds like a choir of backing vocals even though I think it's just a synth.

Ulvaeus and Andersson listened to that backing track again and again until they started to see the image of a girl losing herself on a dancefloor. The lyrics that they wrote are clumsy and strange. They're words that no native English speaker would ever even think to combine: "Getting in the swing / You came to look for a king." "With a bit of rock music, everything is fine." "The music's high." "You can dance. You can jive." But those words do their job. They conjure an image. When you close your eyes, you can see that girl, too. Maybe you can be that girl.

When Andersson played that backing track for Lyngstad, she broke down in tears. She hadn't heard how she'd sound on the song yet. She just knew. Years later, Lyngstad told The Guardian that she cried "out of pure happiness that I would get to sing that song, which is the absolutely the best song ABBA have ever done."

You can hear that. "Dancing Queen" only works if Lyngstad and Fältskog put everything into the song. You can't be neutral with "Dancing Queen." You have to belt it, and you have to put feeling into it. "Dancing Queen" isn't a song about apocalypse, or even about romantic desolation. It's just a night out in a nightclub. But if you're 17, if a nightclub is the only place where you really feel at home, then the importance of that night is massive and all-consuming. It obliterates everything else.

Something similar happens on 50 Cent's "In Da Club," a song that will eventually appear in this column, though the dynamic is different. On "In Da Club," there's no urgency in the vocals. 50 is calm and casual, babbling in singsong, telling you to come give him a hug. But the beat sounds like what's playing on a James Bond soundtrack when the train with the nuclear bomb is about to crash into the station and Bond has five seconds to defuse it. Clubbing can be epic, and the best songs about clubbing treat it as such.

Early on in "Dancing Queen," Lyngstad and Fältskog are ebullient, dramatic, incandescent with happiness: "Friday night, and the lights are low / Looking out for a place to... gooo." But when they hit the chorus, there's a sort of desperate longing in their voices. They remember being that girl, and they miss being that girl. They love that girl. They want nothing but the best for her. They're happy that the girl exists, that the nightclub exists, that the girl gets to feel like she does. But there's a devastating sense of loss somewhere in there, too. It's unstated, but it's there in the way those voices soar and crash together. They need you to feel the beat from the tambourine. It it absolutely vital that you feel that beat.

"Dancing Queen" is pop music operating on its highest possible level -- when everything is working in concert with everything else, when the meaning is so bold and bright and powerful that it doesn't even have to state itself. ABBA never made another song quite like it, but a lot of people tried. This Guardian piece notes some of its echoes. Elvis Costello, who once said that "Dancing Queen" is "manna from heaven," took the piano part and used it on his 1979 single "Oliver's Army." Chris Stein of Blondie, a band who will soon appear in this column, acknowledges that Blondie were trying to come up with their own "Dancing Queen" when they recorded their 1979 "Dreaming." MGMT took the languid, dreamy "Dancing Queen" tempo and intentionally replicated it on 2008's "Time To Pretend," the best song they've ever written”.

I will come to another feature soon. However, I found this one from 2016 that argues why Dancing Queen is the saddest record ever made. A song that sound joyous, if you dig deeper, you notice something a little darker. A song that could almost be turned into a short film, such is the richness of its lyrics. How it provides dissection and discussion:

“The basic point, the important point, here is this: you have spent your entire life believing “Dancing Queen” is a song about a 17 year old girl, dancing. And to a point, it is. Yet, have you ever thought about the song’s vantage point?

You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen

Make no mistake. This song is about the dancing queen, but it is most definitely not sung by her. Herein lies the tragedy. Our narrator has realized that she is no longer the Dancing Queen. She is no longer young, no longer sweet, no longer 17. Now, instead, she watches from the bar; the dancefloor a maelstrom of lost faith, memories, and missed opportunities. She was once 17, and as such was totally oblivious that the moment would ever end.

“Dancing Queen” is a song about this end. Or at least, edging ever closer towards it. It is a song that respects the truth that the passing of time only moves in one direction. That the second after the greatest moment of your life, it is as far behind you as it will be forever. Fuck your inner child, fuck ‘you’re only as young as the woman you feel’. You are young once, it happens, and then the rest is a slow slide towards something both inevitable and unknown. Of course, that’s not to say that the slide into adulthood can’t be a rich and bountiful experience. For many youth is an uncomfortable project, full of Muse albums and matted pubes, and as such something they are glad to watch it turn to ash over their shoulder. That’s fine, I get that. There are, however, a large percentage of people who only make sense when they are young. People who find a home away from home in the shimmering reaches of nightclubs. A lot of cynics would have you believe that nightclubs are only good for trying to pull women, or that those who purport to love them are merely extending some juvenile urge to deny ‘the real world’. Sadly, for all their wisdom, the truth is they don’t understand the confidence, the place, many people find when they go out—and just how out of place they can feel once those halcyon days are over. As soon as that moment passes—that moment when they were walking on air through the thick, black promise of the night—as soon as the sun starts to come up on the rest of their lives, they are destined to spend forever stewing on what has ended, or simply pretending it hasn’t.

To every wrong-side of thirty year-old still stubbing cigarettes out on coffee tables at 6 the next morning, everyone who has ever spent entire evenings listening to their terrible teenage CD collection, every aching back on a premature night-bus home: this one’s for you. This is what it’s all about. Watching the Dancing Queen flood the floor with light, a floor you used to own but now creaks under other feet. It’s a beautiful scene, sure, but also an inescapably sad one. Yes, it sounds happy, but that’s the point. The thick melancholy in every piano chord, the unmistakable, immediately singable nature of the chorus are all part of its power. Sometimes when I listen to “Dancing Queen”, around the 2:57 mark, I’m sure I can even hear someone scream. This isn’t joy. This is agony.

ABBA have been fucking depressing on many other occasions. They basically live-blogged their respective divorces via disco ballads. “Slipping Through My Fingers” captures, with devastating effect, the slow trickle of child ageing away from their parent. “The Day Before You Came” details the oblivious mundane existence that precedes a life-changing encounter. And “S.O.S.”—your Aunty Mary’s favourite—horrifically masters the point of total disembodiment from somebody you thought you’d spend forever with. Pretty much everything they have ever recorded is imbued with a wistfulness. A constant interplay between pop sensibility and twisted mentality.

Yet for my money, none of their hits come anywhere close to “Dancing Queen” in the longing stakes. It is a song that says the best has been. The best now belongs to somebody else. The best you can now do is watch the best and remember when you were the best. It’s a song for the moment when the value of your memories outweigh the value of your ambitions. “Dancing Queen”, a song now most commonly preceded by a function DJ slurring the words “get yer dancing shoes on” into a low quality microphone or belted at West End audiences, is in fact a song about watching the party from the other side of the glass, knowing you’ll never be on the list again”.

In 2016, The Guardian named Dancing Queen the best Pop song ever. They wrote how this classic “has won over everyone from punks to royalty and almost caused a riot in New York. So how has the song’s low-lit Friday night managed to last for ever?”. It is an interesting question:

“What is it that elevates Dancing Queen above so many other beautifully produced, catchy, euphoric songs? Pete Waterman, who knows a thing or two about writing a hit, believes it exemplifies how the best Swedish artists are able to soak up popular trends and regurgitate them as something fresh: “Listen to Dancing Queen and you can hear Elton John straight away, you can hear the Beatles, disco is coming along with the Bee Gees, and you can hear that,” he says. “It’s also got what all great pop songs have – a great first line. ‘Friday night and the lights are low’ … boosh! You’re away. All great records start with a bang.”

Indeed, the record starts with such a bang that, after that initial piano roll, it catapults you straight into the middle of the chorus: an explosive opening before the song has even officially started.

It could have all been quite different. An early version opened with the less immediate line: “Baby, baby you’re out of sight/Hey, you’re lookin’ alright tonight.” Back then, the song was called Boogaloo, too, before the band’s manager Stig Anderson earned his fee by suggesting an alternative title.

The music – which updated the laidback disco groove of George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby with Abba’s sparkling pop panache – was finished before the lyrics were considered, which was how most of Abba’s songs were developed: “I would play the songs over and over again,” Ulvaeus told me in 2014, “and I would literally see images of things coming up.”

In Dancing Queen’s case, these images told the story of a 17-year-old girl on a nightclub dancefloor – lost in the music and the moment. The sonic euphoria mirrors the freedom that the dancefloor can bring, although, as with all Abba songs, there’s a hint of what Ulvaeus called “that Nordic melancholic feeling” to it. The teenage girl isn’t the narrator, after all, so is the listener really just an observer, looking back on their lost youth? Ultimately, the song seems less concerned with making you gaze forlornly back than it does with bringing the abandonment of your teenage years into the present, at least for four glorious minutes.

IN THIS PHOTO: Agnetha Fältskog arrives in The Hague, Netherlands to record the T.V. programme. Eén van de Acht, in 1976/PHOTO CREDIT: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns

No wonder, then, that it’s such a wedding disco staple (there are only two kinds of wedding discos: ones that open with Dancing Queen, and terrible ones). No wonder that other artists have tried to channel its evergreen properties: the band may have been the definition of uncool at their peak – perma-smiling europop stars in sequinned jumpsuits – but that didn’t stop their more critically adored peers from borrowing from them. Chris Stein admitted to trying to replicate the song for Blondie’s hit Dreaming, while Elvis Costello – who once admitted he viewed Dancing Queen as “manna from heaven” – famously was inspired by the descending octave piano chords for his hit Oliver’s Army. More recently, MGMT told the podcast Song Exploder how they purposefully stuck to Dancing Queen’s relaxed 101 BPM tempo for their breakthrough hit Time to Pretend.

Australian/Swedish twin sister duo Say Lou Lou have a particular affection for the 70s pop/disco sound (their latest release is a cover of Saturday Night Fever) but believe much of Dancing Queen’s magic rests in the lyrics: “Dedicating a whole song to a girl wanting to dance without it necessarily having to be about romance made us feel excited and thrilled,” says Elektra June Kilbey-Jansson. “Crowning a 17-year old girl in a nightclub a queen feels so dramatic and attention-grabbing. They would find great song titles and work it through the song with memorable keywords – in this case swing, jive, rock, king and queen.” (Let’s be thankful once more that the band didn’t stick with Boogaloo).

While these artists have all helped Dancing Queen live on, there’s another, stronger force that’s kept it at the forefront of public consciousness: the musical Mamma Mia!. Judy Craymer, who conceived the monster hit stage show and film, believes its success has helped pass the music of Abba on from generation to generation. “An 89-year-old would say ‘that’s our song’, but children can learn it, too, almost like a nursery rhyme, and it’s very attractive to them,” she says, pointing out how countless parents have told her that the soundtrack’s version of Dancing Queen is one of their school-run staples.

Craymer credits the way the song “explodes from the stage or screen” for its prominent role in the musical and film. She also recalls the runup to opening Mamma Mia! in New York back in 2001, when the cast were due to perform Dancing Queen as part of a free concert in Times Square. “But the police had heard that it could cause a euphoric frenzy in the crowd!” she says, laughing. “They had heard about the reactions the song had got in San Francisco, with people getting up out of their seats, and in the end I don’t think we were allowed to perform it”.

Spending fourteen weeks at number one on the Swedish charts, Dancing Queen dominated in 1976. Fifty years after its release, and it still sounds utterly perfect. Here is a brief snapshot of its legacy, and how this astonishing song is regarded: “In 2000, "Dancing Queen" came fourth in a Channel 4 television poll of "The 100 Greatest Number One Singles”. It was chosen as No. 148 on the Recording Industry Association of America's Songs of the Century list. It was ranked No. 171 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", the only ABBA song on the list. That same year, it made VH1's "100 Greatest Dance Songs in Rock & Roll" at No. 97. Also in 2000, editors of Rolling Stone with MTV compiled a list of the best 100 pop songs; "Dancing Queen" placed 12th among songs of the 1970s. Billboard and Rolling Stone both ranked the song number one on their lists of the greatest ABBA songs. In 2023, it was ranked No. 2 on Billboard's list of "The 500 Best Pop Songs". On 9 November 2002, the results of a poll, "Top 50 Favourite UK #1's", was broadcast on Radio 2, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Official UK Charts Company. 188,357 listeners voted and "Dancing Queen" came out at No. 8”. This article also talks about the legacy of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. I am going to come back to The Guardian for the final piece. In 2020, when deciding the U.K.’s best number one singles, Dancing Queen came in ninth. It is amazing to think eight other song were deemed better number one! In any case, it is clear this dazzling Pop song remains untouched:

“It takes 18 seconds for Dancing Queen to drop into one of the greatest moments in pop. It speaks volumes that the 18 seconds preceding it are pretty wonderful too: that song bursting into life on that impossibly joyous piano glissando, before eight bars of sparkling, effortless mid-tempo pop.

Then Agnetha Fältskog and Frida Lyngstad start to sing, effectively bringing us into the middle of a chorus. Their lyrics should scan as simple, bouncy instructions (“You can dance / You can jive / Having the time of your life”) but the women’s longing harmonies transform them. Stretched over two yearning notes, the word “you” is delivered to the listener as if Agnetha and Frida are trying desperately to fill them with confidence. As they sing “having the time of your life”, the melody takes a downward, melancholic turn, and the bassline follows. A moment of enjoyment turns into something sadder, more reflective, perhaps one of nostalgia.

We’re then told to switch our perspective – “to see that girl, watch that scene” – to imagine ourselves as the Dancing Queen, only 17, feeling the beat of the tambourine. Maybe we once were. Maybe we still can be, even if only in our wedding disco-lit memories, or our glittering imaginations.

Dancing Queen was the lead single from Abba’s fourth album, Arrival. Released in the summer of 1976, it got to No 1 in 15 countries including the UK (where it stayed at the top for five weeks) and the US. It first came to life a year earlier, when Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson were in their tiny songwriting cabin on the Swedish island of Viggsö, trying to craft their own take on early disco. They loved the loose, languid drumbeat of George McCrae’s 1974 hit Rock Your Baby, and used it as an inspiration (it was even played in the studio before Dancing Queen’s final recording for them to capture its atmosphere).

They initially called the song Boogaloo, but Abba manager and co-writer Stig Anderson suggested a different title. When Benny Andersson played Lyngstad (then his partner) the instrumental demo, she burst into tears.

The dense arrangements in Dancing Queen’s final mix make it especially magical. Their Phil Spector-obsessed audio mixer, Michael B Tretow, talked through the layering of the song in a 2001 BBC pop music series, Walk on By. Multiple tracks of percussion, stuttering guitars, synthesised strings, clavinet and vocals filled every second of the song with nagging pop hooks. In the same documentary, Nile Rodgers said he was hugely inspired by this approach to songcraft (in 1976, he was in the early stages of putting together Chic).

Dancing Queen was premiered in June 1976 in a suitably regal setting: a gala to celebrate the wedding of Sweden’s King Carl XVI. By the autumn, it was an international smash, with even smirking music press critics recognising its brilliance. “Any band that can make even disco sound like the Ronettes can’t be all bad!” crowed Robot A Hull in Creem. “It’s fodder for the masses in its least derogatory sense,” wrote Tim Lott in Sounds. New wavers loved Dancing Queen too. Elvis Costello cribbed its piano line for Oliver’s Army and Chris Stein admitted that Blondie’s Dreaming was “pretty much a copy of Dancing Queen”.

Although some of its lyrics have dated (“You’re a teaser, you turn ’em on” might not pass muster today), the bulk of them capture a sense of boundless possibility. Our dancing queen is looking for someone to dance with, but “anybody could be that guy” – the thrilling mystery of the future from the perspective of youth gleams in those words. A verse later, we’re told “anyone will do / You’re in the mood for a dance”. Even in the less progressive mid-1970s, having someone to dance with was far less important than the dancing itself.

“And when you get the chance,” we’re told, we become the dancing queen – that small word “and” positing this transformation as an inevitability. Today, the song’s legacy still delivers this message. Its way of bringing people together was underlined in the Abba film, Mamma Mia, as an ever-growing crowd gathered to sing it while roaming the streets of the fictional Greek island of Kalokairi. (This montage was revisited, with even bigger crowds, in its 2018 sequel.) Theresa May’s arrival to the song on stage at the 2018 Conservative party conference also showed us its transformative power: the right-wing press briefly turned in her favour in the midst of Brexit negotiations because of it (the Daily Mail said she’d “danced her way back to authority”).

Covers of the song also kept coming in lockdown. US alt-pop artist Elliot Lee released a fragile ukulele version. Lewis Capaldi covered it for an American coronavirus fundraising campaign. It made regular appearances in online social-distancing singalongs too, telling us all that we can dance, we can jive, even when we’re not allowed to look “out for a place to go”. Dancing Queen reminds us that having the time of our lives is something that’s always there, and that’s always possible”

On 16th August, it will be fifty years since Dancing Queen was released. Initially released in their native Sweden, ABBA’s masterpiece then spread to the world. One of the greatest songs ever written, it is impossible to not feel uplifted and inspired by this song. In 2018, CRACK asked six artists to name their favourite ABBA song. Quiet Luke picked Dancing Queen and explained why it is so enduring and powerful: “I think the music has lasted because it’s so wholesome. People sometimes just want something that feels good, is fun for the whole family without context and decade-tested. I think they’re definitely misunderstood, being Scandinavian and all. It adds another layer to their interpretation of the wall of sound, of the disco trend happening, of pop music in general. I think most people probably assume they’re just American or something. If you look at the pop music coming out of Scandinavian countries today, I think you’ll see Abba’s influence from Max Martin to all the celestial, atmospheric rock that comes out of there. Abba runs deep”. I hope there is proper celebration of this flawless masterpiece on its anniversary. Even though it has inspired so many people, no other song has reached quite the same heights in terms of endurance and brilliance. The supreme Dancing Queen will continue to reign…

FOR all of time.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sofia Camara

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Sofia Camara

__________

AT the moment…

Sofia Camara is touring Europe. She is an artist that I really love and have not yet spotlighted. Hard to Love was her E.P. from last year. Her latest single, The Last Encounter, came out recently. This is someone who needs to be on your radar. I am going to come to some interviews with this wonder. Born in Portugal but raised in Toronto, Canada, I do hope that she plays in the U.K. at some point, as there are a lot of her fans over here that would love to see her perform. I am going back to last year for the interviews. Though Sofia Camara is definitely among artists from this year that are coming through - and are seen as ‘rising’ - and helping to shape and define its sound. I think she will have a very busy summer. I am going to start with The Lunar Collective and their chat. Speaking with Sofia Camara around the release of her single, Girls Like You, it was one of those big summer songs that helped push her music and name wider than ever. One of the most consistently brilliant young artists in the world. I do think that she has a very long future in music:

“LUNA: You teased “Girls Like You” online and during live shows. Did that initial response have any influence on how you approached the release?

CAMARA: My idea was to bring it to the live show and see how people react. When you’re in person, it’s a whole different vibe. You see the crowds chanting and dancing and having fun—that’s the exact type of reaction you want for a song like this. I think the key to posting online and teasing songs is being genuine and honest. So if that means propping up your phone and dancing and singing out your car window, then that’s exactly the type of energy I wanted to have.

LUNA: The videos have that exact energy. In the lyric video and visualizer, it’s super laid back.

CAMARA: When you think about summertime, hanging out with your friends, and enjoying time with your girls, it’s always laid back. In the summer, I remember sitting in the car with all of my friends with the windows down, the wind blowing in your hair, and there isn’t a care in the world. There’s no destination. You’re just driving to drive around, and listening to music. When we were writing the song, we wanted to capture that emotion.

LUNA: What are you listening to this summer?

CAMARA: “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter. I also feel like there’s still so much time [for summer releases.] I’ve been listening to my songs (laughs). I’m wrapping them up so I’ve been locked into the world of finishing songs!

LUNA: Speaking of summer, you’re going to be playing Lollapalooza. How are you feeling about that?

CAMARA: It is so overwhelming. I try not to think about it so ahead of time because it’ll really make me anxious leading up to the show day. It’s so crazy to even be able to be there. It’s something that I feel like every artist dreams of doing. It’s really exciting.

LUNA: Are you hoping to catch anyone’s performance while you’re there?

CAMARA: I know that Sabrina Carpenter is going to be there. I’m on the same day as Gracie Abrams for Osheaga in Montréal. She is someone I really look up to right now. I’m excited to watch both those artists live.

LUNA: Are you much of a festival goer yourself?

CAMARA: I get really anxious in crowds! Even performing, I just worry. It makes me nervous as an artist because I’m like, “Wait, everyone, space out!” I always worry about safety issues. It’s so cool to bring such a big community of people together to listen to  music, which is really beautiful in so many ways, but it makes me a little anxious!”.

Sofia Camara’s E.P., Hard to Love, came out late last year. She were interviewed around this incredible released. Principle Magazine spent some time with this amazing artist. It is revealed during the interview that she is working towards an album. Last year was a particularly productive year for Camara. Someone who has this deep and intense passion for music. What she is producing at the moment is her very best work. With every release, she grows stronger and more astonishing:

“The Portuguese-Canadian pop star began writing songs at the tender age of 13 and later created buzz after she shared performances of herself covering familiar songs online. Now, as a more mature 23 year old, Camara is officially on the rise – and there’s no stopping her. She’s selling out headline tours, racking up millions of streams, and has already played huge shows with Dean Lewis and Stevie Nicks.
On Friday 10th October, Camara dropped her second EP of the year, Hard To Love, a six-track release which further proved that she isn’t afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve and bare her emotions. The era was led by the single “Girls Like You,” which marked a bright, energetic turn to her ballad-heavy discography. Meanwhile, its follow-up, “Parking Lot,” showcased her raw vocals and positioned her alongside contemporaries like Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae.

You are back in Europe right now. How does it feel to be back? I know it holds a special place for you.

Yeah, I love it here. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve been here, but it always feels like a second home. It’s where I did my first headline show, which has always been an unforgettable experience. So it’s really nice to come back to somewhere that feels familiar.

You just released your second EP, Hard To Love, this year. How are you feeling about this one? You’ve been very vocal about the emotional process.

Not to take away from the first EP I did, but with this one, the vision was more clear. We wanted to be honest and vulnerable. The story we wanted to tell was about wearing our hearts on our sleeves. I feel really connected to each of these songs—they’re all very special to me. It all happened quickly, which makes it even more special because it felt natural. We didn’t have to go into too much detail about things. It all just flowed out of us one by one. 

It’s been a busy year of shows for you. That said, you’re about to embark on your first headline tour across Europe. How are you feeling?

It’s insane. I’m so excited and happy. There are so many things I didn’t think you had to plan, and now that we’re here, it feels so real. I feel like I didn’t have enough time to process that we were going on tour, and I won’t until the first show. It doesn’t feel real until I’m on stage and see the fans. I haven’t really experienced what it’s like to be in front of people who came just for me. I’ve always been the opener, hyping up the crowd for someone else. So I’m excited to see what that’s like, and I feel like everyone else is on the same wave.

How do you deal with songs not performing as well as you hoped?

It’s hard. There’s pressure from your team because you want to impress them, make them feel like you’ve got this. They do their best to remind me not every song has to be “it,” but after “Who Do I Call Now?”, I definitely felt like, “This next one is it, I swear.” But each song has been successful in its own way. “Girls Like You” had a totally different kind of success than “Who Do I Call Now?” They’re all different, but each has its own win.

How have you felt about your rise in the industry so far?

In the beginning, I thought it would happen a lot quicker. But I’ve learned you have to be patient. There’s still so much I’m learning—as an artist, a songwriter, even just being in the room. I have to trust myself, trust my gut. Patience is key.

Have you started to think about an album yet?

I’m really excited to start a new body of work and work on the album. But to write music that feels like me, I have to experience life. I don’t want to write about something I feel disconnected from. I need time to do the tour and not think about writing. That’s how I wrote this EP—I took a break from writing for four months. Then I did a week in LA and we wrote “That’s Just How You Feel.” I didn’t do anything for two months after that. Then we wrote the rest. Giving myself time helped me figure out what story I wanted to tell, what visuals we wanted. I know it’s different for everyone, but I just haven’t put too much thought into the next album yet because this tour is the biggest dream of mine. Right now, that’s the most important thing”.

There is actually a new interview I found from Rolling Stone Canada. That move from Sofia Camara performing covers to telling her own story. That truly changed everything. This is a really exciting point of her career. If you do not follow her already, then do go and seek out Camara. I think that she has one of the most astonishing voices in music right now. Her songs are so powerful and distinct:

“There’s a clarity to Sofia Camara’s rise. Not the kind built on display, but one that’s come from steadily showing up, first through covers, then through songs that feel far more personal.

She first gained traction online with covers, building an audience before breaking through with her original single “Who Do I Call Now? (Hellbent)”, which went viral across platforms and charted on Spotify’s Viral 50 in multiple countries.

Since then, the Toronto-based artist has steadily built momentum. Her single “Girls Like You” reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Canadian CHR/Top 40 chart and crossed onto the Canadian Hot 100, marking her first major radio breakthrough. Her 2025 EPs Was I(t) Worth It? and Hard to Love further established her as one of Canada’s emerging pop voices.

Her growth has extended onto larger stages too. She has performed at major festivals including Osheaga and Lollapalooza, delivered the Canadian national anthem at the CFL Grey Cup, and was nominated for Breakthrough Artist or Group of the Year at the 2026 Juno Awards, where she also performed.

Now, as part of a new generation of Canadian artists finding global audiences early, Camara is still figuring out what to hold close and what to share. It’s a process that sits at the centre of her music, and one she’s not rushing.

You’ve grown in the public eye, in real time. What’s been the hardest part of that kind of visibility?

There’s definitely pressure, but I don’t think it’s from the public. You create that pressure within yourself because you want to be enough. I feel like I’m constantly searching for validation, whether it’s from the audience or somewhere else. Especially with my own music, because it’s so vulnerable and real, you just want people to like it. So there’s definitely that pressure of just being enough.

What do you think artists in your position today have to navigate that didn’t exist even a few years ago?

Artists today navigate a lot of marketing on their own. Working with a label is incredibly helpful, but now a lot of artists are responsible for much of that themselves, posting online and constantly showing up. It adds another layer, and it can sometimes feel a bit uninspiring when your main focus should be the art and your craft. Social media being such a big part of how music is shared definitely adds another level.

When everything is moving this fast, how do you know what’s actually you versus what’s just working?

It depends on who you surround yourself with. When things feel overwhelming, I try to lean on people I trust and care about to keep me grounded and remind me who I am and where I came from. Having that helps guide my decisions.

Is there something you’ve consciously pulled back on sharing, even though the internet rewards openness?

Yeah, for sure. The most heartbreaking things are the scariest to talk about because they come with a whole other level of pain and heartache. There are definitely layers I haven’t shown the world yet, but that’s something I’ll get more comfortable with as the years go by.

What are your thoughts about the Future of Music in Canada?

There’s so much talent here. There are so many artists with the inspiration and motivation to work really hard. It’s all here, I just think more people need to be aware of it”.

I am really looking forward to a Sofia Camara album. At the moment, she does have those tour dates. Promoting her latest work. I guess there will be some additional dates later in the year The U.K. would love to welcome her. Connect with Sofia Camara on social media, as this is an artist that you cannot miss out on! A simply phenomenal songwriter, we are going to be hearing about her for a long time to come. She is impossible to forget. This Portuguese-born treasure is…

TRULY astonishing.

___________

Follow Sofia Camara

Official:

https://www.sofiacamara.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/_sofiacamara_/

TikTok:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/sofiacamaramusic/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5bdLfpk3TpFVwrlHWmPL55?si=lzwdXi6jSmGkFD95jaB6tA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpmIxiLuLy3JNVm_uEpTr7g

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Paganini (Violin)/Old Lady (Jig of Life)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Glasgow in October 1980 signing copies of her album, Never for Ever/PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix

Paganini (Violin)/Old Lady (Jig of Life)

__________

BOTH of these Kate Bush songs…

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

connect her to family and her early life. The first track offers a few characters up, but I am discarding Nero and Old Nicky. The second provides me an anonymous character, but it does provoke some discussion points. I am not going to be interrogating Your Little Girl and Your Little Boy. I will focus on a character that is mentioned right at the start of the song, and it is one that refers to Kate Bush herself. I think. I have always been fascinated. The second song I am featuring takes me to Ireland and Bush’s connection to the country. It is Jig of Life. A song infused with Irish instruments and players. Appearing at a pivotal point of Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave, there are subjects and angles to explore. I want to take things back five years earlier. On 1980’s Never for Ever, there is an underrated jewel called Violin. Paganini is the first character. I am not sure who the ‘Old Nicky’ is on the song. Nero could provoke some intriguing paths. However, Paganini is the character I am spotlighting. I know he is a real person, but he is depicted as a character in Violin. For a fan newsletter in September 1980, Bush did say this about the song: “‘Violin’ is for all the mad fiddlers from ‘Paganini’ to ‘Old Nick’ himself”. I am fascinated by the lyrics in the song. The verse where Paganini is mentioned: “Paganini up on the chimney/Lord of the dance/With Nero and old Nicky

Whack that devil/Into my fiddlestick!/Give me the Banshees for B.V.s/Give me the Banshees for B.V.s”. Although Kevin Burke played violin on the studio version of Violin, I wonder whether Kate Bush ever considered it. This is an instrument that she was supposed to learn at school. Never really enjoying the experience. I took music at high school, but we never got taught how to play instruments. A lot of it was about theory and writing our own songs. I can’t remember ever being expected to play an instrument.

What strikes me is the way Kate Bush bonded with the piano but not the violin. I guess the sound of the latter was jarring compared to the beauty and grace of the piano. The violin is more extreme and less poetic in a way. It might be easier to play, though I wonder how far Kate Bush got with her practice. I think the violin was something she was instantly proficient at, yet it never provided satisfaction. That screech and sense of anguish. There is some psychological insight from this song. A slight terror instilled in her: “Filling me up with the shivers/Filling me up with the shivers and quivers”. Then this: “Get the bow going!/Let it scream to me:/Violin! Violin! Violin!/Get the bow going!/Let it scream to me:/Violin! Violin! Violin!”. Are those words about an unappealing sound the instrument makes, or is there a raw power and energy that appeals to her? One cannot say Bush was averse to the violin. She was a Horror fan, and she admired the work of Alfred Hitchock. She also would have bonded to some of the best scores. How crucial the violin was in eliciting suspense and terror. The violin would make its way into her albums. Paddy Bush played violins on Hounds of Love’s closing track, The Morning Fog. Although Kate Bush played multiple instruments through her career, she was happier to include the violin as part of the palette, rather than play it herself. Nigel Kennedy played violin on The Sensual World’s The Fog. He appeared on The Red Shoes and played on Top of the City and Big Stripey Lie. I wonder why those particular albums required violin and not others. I can appreciate why it did not appear on her first two, 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart, and why it was not used more on Never for Ever. It would have been great for it to come into Aerial. Though there are strings on that album, so the violin would have been included. What we get from Violin is a kinship. Not one of love and ease. The anxieties and difficulties associated with learning the violin. How unforgiving it can be. I will come to Paganini and some facts about him. It is obviously Bush knew the instrument was an important and effective conveyer of tones and emotions required. It was not something she wanted to use too much.

I am coming to Dreams of Orgonon, as they are so useful and informative when it comes to insights about Kate Bush’s songs. In terms of her relationship with the violin at school: “Bush’s chief enemy at St. Joseph’s was the violin. Unlike the piano, she didn’t discover it at home and learn to enjoy playing it for its own sake. She encountered it in (horrors) lessons. Everyone knows that the sound of a violin in the hands of an inexperienced player isn’t quite the same as the sound a piano or guitar makes with a new student. It’s not hard imagine this infuriating eternal perfectionist Bush”. In paying tribute to a mad old fiddler – that sounds wrong written down, but you know what I mean! -, she takes her voice to new places. In terms of how she was perceived by the press in 1980, Bush was still seen as this immature or child-like singer. Stereotyped as squeaky and high-pitched. Not Punk or New Wave. Violin arguably sees her pioneer Folk-Punk. A meeting of the anger and urgency of Punk, but married to lyrics that are more indebted to Folk. Few people talk about Bush’s voice as an instrument. She almost imitates the violin at stages. Violin provided that Bush could match the most revered Punk singer when it came to using her voice as this powerful weapon:

“Bush sounds positively deranged in the song, taking the human voice as an instrument to its zenith as she zips between the highs and lows of her vocal range (she hits her highest note on record here, an astonishing F6, with characteristic literalness as she whoops the note on “filling me up with,” which she immediately follows with an extremely low G#3 at “the shivers”). Her vocal is a roller coaster, slightly holding back over the “four strings,” becoming slightly giddier over “the quavers, drunk at the BARS” (deliciously emphasizing the violin pun and metaphor of the violin as intoxicating) and moving “out of the realm of the orchestra.” In the chorus Bush completely lets herself go, gutturally howling “get the bow going/let it SCREAM to me” in her most punk moment ever, a massive departure from her previous singing. Is it any wonder John Lydon is a Kate Bush fan when she does songs like “Violin,” with vocals closer to Never Mind the Bollocks than Pink Floyd’s Animals?”.

Kate Bush is playing a character herself. A version of herself. There is that reluctance to embrace An instrument hard to play. Yet there is a playfulness and eccentricity that is so exciting to inspect and interrogate. I will end this section by looking at the language and lyrics. Though this section fo the Dreams of Orgonon article is worth spotlighting:

“Some listeners might interpret the song as being enthusiastic about the violin—I wouldn’t read it that way. I think it’s about a person who’s had the violin imposed on them for far too long going over the edge. There’s an tinge of unreality to the song—it makes the violin a mystical object. Given the events leading up to the song’s creation, it’s unlikely Bush was feeling terribly positive about the violin while writing “Violin”. She isn’t one to push autobiography into her songwriting, but it’s hard not to read “Violin” as an expression of personal anxieties.

That’s not to say “Violin” is lacking in Bush’s trademark love of artifice and character acting. She clearly relishes singing these words, particularly as she namechecks violin players (“Paganini up the chimney/lord of the dance/with Nero and old Nicky/WHACK THAT DEVIL”). Her playful approach to language and music is as prevalent as ever. She’s anxious about the violin, but her character is far deeper into a violin obsession than she could ever have been. It’s a folk song about a hedonist in a chaotic spiral, which is always more interesting than the didactic ending of a folk tale where the hedonist is punished for their joy. Think “The Red Shoes” minus the unhappy ending.

So we have a song about a quasi-mystical addiction with undercurrents of school-resentment accompanied by howling vocals and a wailing electric guitar. Yes, this all feels a bit like The Wall but more creative and less misanthropic, but that’s not what we’re going to signify here. The aesthetic surprise is that “Violin” is that it’s Kate Bush inventing folk punk”.

IN THIS IMAGE: Niccolò Paganini/IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

Niccolò Paganini lived between 1782 and 1849. Part of The Golden Age, he sat alongside Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, David Oistrakh, and Yehudi Menuhin. The final two born in the previous century. Paganini is often considered one of the greatest violinist ever. I think Bush identified with him because of his playing. More frantic and frenetic. We often think of the violin as mournful or romantic. It is a versatile and dexterous instrument that, in the right hands, can elicit dervishes and devilish colours. This article called Niccolò Paganini ‘The Devil’s Violinist’. That is a vivid image. I would love to see that as a painting! Bush was no stranger to bringing something darker into her music. Even by 1980. You can feel why Violin name-checked Paganini. His life and career arc would have fascinated her. Beyond the stuffier and more upper-class image of a trained violinist. Maybe an elitist or limited view. If Robert Johnson selling his soul to The Devil at a Mississippi crossroads is a myth, you do feel that  Niccolò Paganini might actually have made a deal with The Devil:

“Niccolò Paganini earned the moniker "The Devil's Violinist" due to the astonishing prowess of his violin playing, which was often attributed to an otherworldly source, the devil himself. He was particularly known for performing recitals without sheet music, memorising everything instead, and could play up to 12 notes per second. People believed he had made a pact with the devil... how else could he play the violin like no one before?

The Devil's Violinist's fortunate beginnings

Born on October 27, 1782, in Genoa, Italy, Paganini was always destined to a gifted musical life. Taking up the violin at a really young age under his father’s influence, Paganini quickly became a child prodigy. His musical talents were recognized and praised, earning him scholarships and violin lessons with famous violinists such as Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa. Following such prominent training, he made his first public appearance at 11. Aged 15, Paganini embarked on a tour of Italy, making a reputation for himself.

However, this premature independence took a turn for the worse as he suffered from a mental breakdown and started drinking and gambling excessively. Quickly overburdened with debts, his name became associated with his reputation as a gambler and a womanizer. Once, the struggling musician is even believed to have pawned his violin in order to settle his debts. To play a concert, he was then lent a Guarneri violin by a wealthy merchant, who eventually gave it to him after hearing him play”.

Violin was one of the last songs that started life as an early demo. Bush was recording more ‘new’ songs by Never for Ever. Though Violin was one that was adapted from a demo. After this album, there would be no looking into the archives. How Bush had this song written long before going into the studio. I do love so many of the lyrics on Violin. I forgot to mention that Paddy Bush plays the Banshee on Violin. “Four strings across the bridge/Ready to carry me over/Over the quavers, drunk in the bars/Out of the realm of the orchestra/Out of the realm of the orchestra”. These are words that open Violin. A song she performed live on her 1979 Christmas special to hugely memorable effect, it was also included in 1979’s The Tour of Life. People hearing this song on stage and T.V. before it was included on Never for Ever. The language and lyrics of this song make it one of her best earlier works. I have not heard many people talk about the song. I know Catherine Anne Davies is a fan of the song and loves how unhinged Bush’s voice sounds on it. It is hard writing a song about violin greats and how she sits alongside them. Bush is imposed into the song. The first reading – Bush hating the instrument and this being her striking out against out – might be wrong. Dreams of Orgonon had another theory. One that poses how “the singer has been driven mad by their violin playing. They’re an inverted Pied Piper or Erich Zann, leading themselves astray with their own music”. Such a wonderful angle for a song. I am not sure anyone in music before or since has written about the violin in this way. A song demoed in 1976 at 44 Wickham Road is an underrated highlight of Never for Ever. One critics never really loved. Alongside Egypt, it is seen as one of the lesser cuts on Never for Ever. I feel Violin is important, as we get to hear Kate Bush unleashed and this raw for the first time. She would exceed herself for The Dreaming’s Get Out of My House. Violin is this early glimpse into how wild she could be. Anyone who misogynistically attacked her and saw her as this squeaky--voiced singer was not excepting what Violin had to offer! In 2011, the film, Paganini’s Daemon: A Most Enduring Legend, was released. Although Kate Bush was keen to pay tribute to the virtuosic Niccolò Paganini, his darker side perhaps, ironically, meant he was connected to The Devil in another way. This article considered the real story behind Paganini’s genius: “The violinist’s fame slowly turned him into a heavy gambler, drinker and a serial womaniser. A rumour even spread that Paganini had murdered a woman, used her intestines as violin strings and imprisoned her soul within the instrument. Women’s screams were said to be heard from his violin when he performed on stage. One thing was for sure: Paganini’s skill on the violin was unparalleled. He was one of the first solo violinists to perform publicly without sheet music, choosing instead to memorise everything”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for The Ninth Wave, which forms the second half of her 1985 album, Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I am going to move to the second song. From Jig of Life, there is this character of the Old Lady. The lyrics at the start of the song are these: “Hello, old lady/I know your face well/I know it well”. The Ninth Wave is a protagonist swept into the sea from a ship. It is about her experiences on the water as she awaits rescue. By the time we get to Jig of Life, the woman has dreamt of sheep and how she yearns for home and her bed. She has wrestled with almost dying and being trapped under ice. Hallucinating and tussling with waves. The antepenultimate song on The Ninth Wave, Jig of Life then leads to Hello Earth. That is when we get a view from above at the water and storms coming in. The Morning Fog is the rescue of the woman. I think the whole suite is this great psychological drama. The terror of the ocean and what is underneath. Whether the woman dies in the water or is actually rescued. How there is this moment, around Under Ice, where she could have lost her life and everything after is a dying dream. I like to think that the woman is rescued. Jig of Life is the moment when she is roused back to life. I will talk about the Irish elements of the song. I forgot to say how the violinist on Violin, Kevin Burke, is an accomplished Irish musicians. He was at the forefront of Irish traditional and Celtic music, performing and recording with the groups The Bothy Band, Patrick Street, and the Celtic Fiddle Festival. Violin replaced with fiddles for this song. If the violin put fear into Bush and it is something she struggled to bond with, you cannot say she felt the same about fiddles and Irish instruments. Something that connected her with her mother’s lineage and home. John Sheahan plays fiddles on Jig of Life. Is Old Lady autobiographical? If this is Kate Bush in The Ninth Wave, fighting to stay float and alive, then this older version of herself compels some questions. It seems, then, that she was alive by this time. The vision of herself in the future willing her present self to keep going.

I will talk about why Jig of Life was such an important part of The Ninth Wave, why the Old Lady is this important and spiritual guide, and how her family plays a role in the song. I will, of course, discuss Ireland. When speaking with Richard Skinner in 1992, this is what Kate Bush says about Jig of Life:

“At this point in the story, it’s the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it’s about time they have a bit of help. So it’s their future self saying, “look, don’t give up, you’ve got to stay alive, ’cause if you don’t stay alive, that means I don’t.” You know, “and I’m alive, I’ve had kids [laughs]. I’ve been through years and years of life, so you have to survive, you mustn’t give up.”
This was written in Ireland. At one point I did quite a lot of writing, you know, I mean lyrically, particularly. And again it was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside. And this was one of the tracks that the Irish musicians that we worked with was featured on.
There was a tune that my brother Paddy found which… he said “you’ve got to hear this, you’ll love it.” And he was right [laughs], he played it to me and I just thought, you know, “this would be fantastic somehow to incorporate here.”
Was just sort of, pull this person up out of despair”.

If the Old Lady is not a different character, more an older version of the heroine from The Ninth Wave, she appears at a crucial moment. Jig of Life is about staying alive. The sense of this spirit or ghost almost. On Watching You Without Me, which precedes Jig of Life, friends/family of the heroine are waiting for her to arrive. The sense that her spirit if in the room but her physical being isn’t. The following song brings in this almost ghostly visage of the woman’s future self. On Hello Earth, perhaps a spirit floating above the water and looking down. There is that blend of future life and possible death. The spirit of the woman now combined with her as an older woman.

What strikes me the hardest about Jig of Life is its energy. On a suite of songs that provides a mix of chills, terror and potential death, here is a song of survival and life. I think the fiddles give Jig of Life this rush of wind and weather. If the violin from the song of the same name elects this feverish and chaotic feel, there is this romance and vision of the Irish countryside from the fiddles. The instruments are the same thing, though they are played differently. They evoke separate colours and dynamics. I feel the violin is like a voice and character on that astonishing Never for Ever song. I get the sense the fiddles on Jig of Life evokes the spirit of Kate Bush’s mother, Hannah. Her blood and spirit coming through the instrument. The strings on the violin and fiddle give separate sounds. This interesting article explains some key differences: “That being said, classical violins will most often have synthetic strings, while Irish fiddles tend to opt for steel strings. There are several reasons for this. In order to compensate for the gentler volume of low action playing, you are likely to find steel core violin strings fitted in an Irish fiddle. Steel-core strings produce a bright and sharply focused tone, one that can cut through the mix when playing in an ensemble (or an overly loud music session). Classical violins with a higher action tend to use synthetic core violin strings which produce a rich, warm sound. Steel-core strings typically stay in tune for longer and can better endure the sometimes exuberant and energetic playing that fiddle playing requires”. I love how the instruments whip up this mood and magic. It is not only the instruments that rouse energy and summon this sense of clinging to life. I feel Kate Bush’s vocals on this song are superb. It is one of her greatest performances.

Her family is key on this song. Her brother John Carder Bush reads a poem in the song. He adopts an Irish accent. There are some truly evocative and incredibly memorable lines: “Can’t you see where memories are kept bright?/Tripping on the water like a laughing girl/Time in her eyes is spawning past life/One with the ocean and the woman unfurled/Holding all the love that waits for you here/Catch us now for I am your future/A kiss on the wind and we’ll make the land”. Paddy Bush plays didgeridoo. I think that her mother’s influence is heaviest. How Bush wrote Jig of Life in Ireland. Her mother was Irish. We speak about Kate Bush as being an English artist. She is half-Irish, and there was this Irish influence running through a few of her albums. Night of the Swallow from The Dreaming features Irish players and instruments. So too does The Sensual World from the 1989 album of the same name. Liam O’Flynn, Dónal Lunny and John Sheahan working beautifully together. Is Jig of Life her most ‘Irish’ song? There are those musicians. John Carder Bush and that Irish accent. Hannah Bush seems to be in there. The older woman looking at her younger self. I think Bush was thinking of her mother and channelling her. The hallucination on Jig of Life is the third occasion on The Ninth Wave. Each hallucination is something different. If previous ones were more devilish and scarier, this one is sanctuary. Less dark than those that came before, the woman’s older self appears. There are a couple of thought-provoking sections from Leah Kardos’s Hounds of Love book for the 33 1/3 series that comes to mind. When she says this: The starting point for ‘Jig of Life’ took inspiration from the ceremonial music of Anastenaria, a centuries-old ecstatic dance and fire-walking ritual performed during religious feasts in Greece and Bulgaria. The music, inspired by a rare recording that Paddy Bush had found and shared with his sister, is characterized by repetitious, deep rolling rhythms and whirling figures performed on violin and tsabouna (Greek bagpipes). I think of Jig of Life as a purely Irish song. There is this mixture of cultures and countries. Greece and Bulgaria. Such a rich and incredible combination.

There is another section of the book that sticks in my mind. Where Kardos write how “the mention of ‘the place where the crossroads meet’ evokes once again the image of Hecate, the goddess in Greek mythology who is often depicted flanked by two dogs and sometimes shown with a triple-formed face that sees the past, present and future simultaneously”. On the Hounds of Love cover, Kate Bush is joined by her two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. A coincidence, but I do like this idea of Bush being like Hecate. That idea of the face seeing the past, present and future. We get that in Jig of Life. The Old Lady represents the future and past. How she was this child who now has children of her own. Speaking to the woman in the sea. The present. I am going to finish off soon. One of the highlights from Hounds of Love, Jig of Life is this stunning song. Many consider it to be quite dark and haunting. I see it as full of light and hope. Kate Bush brought Jig of Life to the stage in 2014 for Before the Dawn. I was not at those shows, so I am not sure how it was visualised. There was pure creativity when recording Hounds of Love. As Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, those who worked on the album felt there was this magic. Mystical, Bardic and Druidic, there was something truly special coming together. “Bush wanted to add another layer of rhythm to ‘Jig Of Life’, and handed Charlie Morgan an array of Irish percussive instruments – the lambeg, the bodhran – and asked him to fill all 24-tracks with the clacking, beating and booming. “Each verse a bit more of me came in, until we ended up with 24-tracks of me playing different drums”, says Morgan. “I came back from that thinking ‘What have I done today?.’ Just on cloud nine from being thrown the gauntlet and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to do something completely different here.’ I think Stuart (Elliott) and I did some of our best stuff we ever did with Kate, because there were no rules or barriers. It was pure creativity”. I will finish up here. From Niccolò Paganini among legendary violinists mentioned in a Never for Ever standout, to this Old Lady – an older version of Kate Bush/the heroine – on The Ninth Wave’s Jig of Life, it again shows the sheer breadth and wealth of Kate Bush’s imagination and brilliance. That is why I love this series…

SO much.

FEATURE: A Funny Old Business: Why Is There Not a Resurgence in Phenomenal Comedy Films?

FEATURE:

 

 

A Funny Old Business

PHOTO CREDIT: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

Why Is There Not a Resurgence in Phenomenal Comedy Films?

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AT the moment…

there are genres in cinema that are experiencing real peaks and golden periods. At the moment, I feel the Horror genre is producing some of the most innovative and acclaimed films. In the past few years, Sinners, Weapons, Backrooms and Obsession. The final two in that list were released very recently. Incredible directors taking Horror to new places. Whilst there are wonderful reasons to celebrate cinema and highlight the brilliance of genres like Horror and what is happening there, there are some real issues. Only a few major studios. Female directors not being recognised. Gender inequality and sexism. Pay gaps still in place. Since the pandemic, there has been so many glorious films released. What is noticeable is that comedy is struggling. On U.K. T.V., there are very few sitcoms in general. Although humour is subjective, I do not think there have been many great ones this decade. The same with films. We do heartwarming and charming well but, when it comes to comedies that are up there with the best ever made, there have been few challengers. America too. I have always loved American comedies more. Particularly when it comes to sitcoms. Most of my top ten would be American. Though there has been an absence of great sitcoms in general the past few years. Revived sitcoms like Malcom in the Middle and Scrubs, yet very few new examples of brilliant U.S. comedies. This country struggling to produce too many greats I love This Country and Derry Girls, though both of those ended a while ago. Not too many British comedy films that I feel are up there with the best of the U.S. I loved 2023’s Rye Lane and last year’s The Ballad of Wallis Island. I think they have their moments, but it might be the way we do comedy and what people look for. Differences between the U.S. and U.K. Maybe the U.S. are better at fast-paced and jam-packed comedies, whereas we tend to have a different style.

Again, comedy is subjective. Though objectively most of the greatest comedy films have been American-made. Last year provided a few interesting comedies. Is This Thing On?, Pizza Movie, and Adulthood among them. There were underwhelming remakes and sequels. Happy Gilmore, The Naked Gun and Anaconda. Even Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Perhaps there is a lack of budget for comedies. If there is an absence of comedies and other genes are more prevalent and popular, it is harder for people pitching ideas. I am thinking back to the last time a comedy film was released that rivalled the best I have ever seen. What has come out this year? A new J-Lo film, Office Romance, raises a few smiles. Scary Movie is dreadful. Outcome is patchy. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come I would say is more Horror than Comedy. Ladies First is absolutely rancid. I am being a bit harsh on U.K. comedy I feel. It is just my particular taste is geared more towards American comedy and that style. Saturday Night Live UK is brilliant. A few great U.S. comedies and comedy-dramas that are not too far in the past. One that I feel should have stayed on T.V. longer is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Starring Rachel Brosnahan as the titular lead, I would have loved one more series. It is a series that originally was set in the late-1950s and ended in around 1961, I think. It is a shame, as it could have taken us to 1963. Set in New York, we could have seen the J.F.K assassination and how that affected and impacted the series. Stretch to 1964 and The Beatles arriving in America. Though the series went out on a high. It has been a little quiet on the comedy front. All the very films of the past five or ten years have been in other genres. If you search ‘the best comedy films ever’ very few lists will include anything from this decade. That is worrying. Does it suggest a lack of amazing comedy writers and directors? I don’t think so. I do think that there is less faith in the Comedy genre. The butt of its own joke. Comedy is also really hard to write and appeal to a broad audience, as everyone has their own taste when it comes to comedy. Pitching to everyone is almost an impossible task.

It doesn’t help that there have been some tired and underwhelming remakes. A few Netflix comedies that are vastly unoriginal and lack any real spark and punch. You can say that changing sensibilities and boundaries of acceptability mean that films in the past that were highly revered would not be accepted now. Most comedy films going straight to streaming platforms and seen as background. Straight-up comedy films rarer; many are fusing with others genres. A few factors come into play. I do think that studios generally do not want to invest in the genre. Platforms like Disney+ and Netflix will commission comedy films, though what is often produced is pretty unremarkable. I want to bring in this article from The Times from last year. It does ask why pure comedises have almost disappeared from the screen. It highlights a few remakes that did make it onto the big screen. I think all of them are pretty average. And it is a shame when remakes and sequels are highlighted, rather than original ideas. Are straight-up comedies no longer a cinematic possibility? This year’s offerings do not suggest a rosy future:

“Box office analysts and culture watchers alike suggest that it’s been more than a decade since comedies effectively disappeared from cinema screens, or at least since comedy impresarios such as Judd Apatow could turn everything from The 40-Year-Old Virgin to Knocked Up to Bridesmaids into box office gold. “What we witnessed is a migration of audiences to the small screen to get their comedy,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for the data firm Comscore. “In order to spend their money, and take the time and effort to go out to the theatre, audiences wanted the larger-than-life experience of superhero movies, action movies and sci-fi movies.”

In short, thanks to Iron Man and the rise of the streamers, a grand cinematic tradition that included the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Monty Python, Airplane!, Austin Powers and Wedding Crashers had effectively been replaced by a faceless Netflix algorithm that was regularly pumping out joyless “laugh fests” such as Mother of the Bride and Love & Gelato.

The few comedies that did remain in cinemas, according to the Naked Gun producer (and Family Guy creator) Seth MacFarlane, weren’t always recognisable as such. “We’ve been giving people broccoli and telling them it’s a candy bar for the last ten years, as a lot of things called comedies now are most definitely not comedies,” he said recently. “We’ve been offered comedies that are a little up their own asses, maybe a little inflated with a sense of their own importance.”

MacFarlane, at the time, declined to name the “offenders” in question, but any search for key movie comedies of the past decade will throw up titles such as the social satire Triangle of Sadness, the love letter to creativity The Banshees of Inisherin and the environmental sermon Don’t Look Up. All great movies, yes, but not exactly Neeson doing a diarrhoea gag.

And that’s another thing. This new wave of comedies is being described as “pure comedy”, the films focused only on giggles and laughter, and notable for their delicate dance through the culture wars. There is not a single scene in either The Naked Gun or Freakier Friday that could aggravate either side of the foam-flecked clickerati. This is something that could not be said of the previous comedy wave: plenty of Apatow movies, even the best ones, involved whiny guys sitting around telling sexist jokes.

“Without getting into politics and stuff, we’re all living in a culture, a society, where we’re scared to speak and scared if we don’t,” Neeson said recently, noting that movies such as The Naked Gun, like “gargoyles in cathedrals”, are here to remind us, “Come on, don’t take yourself too seriously. The film is a giggle and we need that.”

Neeson’s point is underscored by the Freakier Friday director Nisha Ganatra, who sees this big-screen comedy resurgence as a reflection of wider collective yearnings. “It’s my hope that people are craving a communal experience again and that laughing together with a group of people at a theatre is what makes people feel good,” she tells me. “Especially in this time of uncertainty, comedies can provide relief. Laughing out loud is an energising experience with your friends or with total strangers. Everyone ends up feeling better.”

The crucial question, however, is whether enough cinemagoing audiences will turn up for comedy in a time of uncertainty. The box office figures are in and The Naked Gun made $28.3 million on its opening weekend. It has not, according to Dergarabedian, “blown the doors off”, but it is a solid beginning that, combined with positive scores and exit polls, suggests word-of-mouth may sustain a healthy commercial run.

What it really means, Dergarabedian says, is that all attention now falls on Freakier Friday, which opens this weekend. If that’s a hit, then the new multiplex comedy wave continues apace. If not, expect to be watching Murphy’s Pink Panther on Netflix next year.

“If there’s a crisis of confidence that’s happening with movie comedy it’s simply because putting a comedy into a movie theatre is more expensive than going to streaming,” Dergarabedian says. “There’s a worldwide marketing push involved with a theatrical release that’s a whole different animal to just going into streaming.” Latest figures suggest that marketing a Hollywood film globally costs as “little” as $35 million and as much as $200 million.

It explains why Adam Sandler famously signed his first four-movie Netflix deal in 2014 and why his new film, Happy Gilmore 2, a sequel to the big-screen golf comedy from 1996, has been released on Netflix only. It also explains why Sandler’s most recent four-movie deal with the streamer, signed last year, is alleged to have earned him $275 million — it’s clearly cheaper than pushing his films into the multiplex.

“And so, yes, it’s a fragile market place but, thankfully, The Naked Gun did not bomb,” Dergarabedian continues. “And if Freakier Friday makes $40 million-plus domestically [in the US], that could be one that emboldens studios to get on board and hopefully open the door to more comedies”.

It does seem that expense means that most comedies go to streaming rather than cinema. You can understand studio reluctance if a comedy costs a lot and does not break much of a profit. Even so, there are still cinematic comedy releases. I don’t think you need a huge budget to make a genuinely brilliant comedy. The odd gem on streaming, though I don’t think we will ever again see a golden age of cinema comedy. If you were to revise lists of the greatest comedy films ever like this, this and this, in a couple of decades, would there be any new inclusions in the top twenties?! I think that a really great comedy film is as powerful and important as any other type of film. It uplifts people. Jokes and scenes lingering long in the mind. Yet, with the very few comedy films we get each year, none really have the same wow factor as one from years ago. It extends a bit to the sitcom world, though it isa a different reality to get a series made compared to a film. There are bound to be so many great concepts waiting to get made. Films that genuinely could challenge the heavyweights. Is the reality that comedy films are mostly going to be made for streaming platforms, and a particular type demanded? I don’t think a more woke society means comedy writers are limited, as most of the all-time best comedy films could exist today and are not noted for being offensive or outdated – though there are events and aspects of each that could not exist today. This year has really not given too many screen and cinema comedy gold, though things could change. To see the death of cinema could would be…

A truly sad thing.

FEATURE: The Greatest Cloudbuster: The Goddess That Is Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

The Greatest Cloudbuster

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

The Goddess That Is Kate Bush

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AS 30th July…

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

is Kate Bush’s birthday, I wanted to write a general feature. Just expressing the ongoing love and fascination I have for her. This is an artist I have tirelessly written about, simply because she is a goddess. Continuing to influence artists and bring comfort, strength and joy to so many people, rather than talk about her legacy and modern impact – which is among my go-to Kate Bush bits -, I just wanted to show my affection for her. Actually, I do want to drop in an article from The Line of Best Fit. Nerina Pallot spoke with them for Nine Songs and picked a Kate Bush track. Another example among an ongoing wave of artists mentioning Bush and how her music has transformed their lives. As this genius producer, songwriter and artist turns sixty-eight, I do think that there should be something universal. There was, on 26th June, a Global Beatles Day. It is quite right that the most significant band in music history have their own day. I guess Kate Bush has The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in July. 26th July. Though this is something specific. In terms of recognising her music and cultural impact, there is nothing on the scale of Global Beatles Day. As I have written before, people might balk at the suggestion there are comparables. In terms of their influence and importance, how can Kate Bush compete?! I do feel like she remains hugely underrated. She might actually feel uncomfortable with such a celebration. Could we not start a 30th July International Kate Bush Day?! I think we should. I am going to end with a Kate Bush playlist containing songs from each of her studio albums, plus some selections from Best of the Other Sides. For me, she remains so crucial and life-affirming. Recently struggling from work stress, depression and anxiety, her music has been a pillar of strength. Writing about her has allowed me to channel some of my stress and unhappiness into something genuinely restorative.

Not that Kate Bush or any other artist has the power to cure or even reduce depression significantly. However, there is a link between music and mood. How it can be this incredible tool. What we have seen and heard from Kate Bush over the last decade or so has been incredible. No new music, really, unless you count Little Shrew (Snowflake) from 2024. Not a whiff of a collaboration or any glimmer of a studio album. What we have heard is a woman discussing the reaction to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) being used On Stranger Things and catapulting her into the consciousness of a new generation of fans. She updates her official website with news, and there has been the odd audio interview. A couple with Emma Barnett. One in 2022 around Stranger Things. In 2024, it was about Little Shrew (Snowflake) and, amazingly, Bush revealed she was eager to start with on a new album! The video for Little Shrew (Snowflake) was directed by Bush. It has received awards. Bush posting messages of gratitude and humbleness. She is always there and connecting, despite the fact she has not released a new album in almost fifteen years. How this little light keeps burning and touching people. Of course, when a new album is announced, people will go completely nuts! Though we must allow her time to work and bring us that heavenly news when she is good and ready! As we celebrate Kate Bush’s sixty-eighth birthday, I wanted to offer my sincerest thanks and congratulations. I know social media will be awash with messages and posts about her. Queen. Mother. Kate Bush as this vessel of communal unity and global affection. Her music has reached parts of the world she could not conceive of. From the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community to major artists through to those struggling with illness and mental health issues, and far far beyond, we all have in common this love for Kate Bush. Her music has this global reach, yet every one of her fans has different reasons for loving it. Why certain songs and albums mean so much to them.

I do feel that Kate Bush is one of the greatest artists who has ever lived. In terms of talent, consistency, endurance and influence, there are few that can match her. When I see some other modern greats producing these extraordinary live sets, releasing brilliant albums and generally being awesome, I cannot help but think of Kate Bush. You can feel and see elements of her impact across music today. And yet, there is very little said about this iconic artist. Articles here and there, but not nearly as much as you would like. I hope that occasions like her birthday, and all the words of love she will receive, does something to ignite greater conversation and consideration. I am going to wrap up soon. As I could not make this alone into a whole feature, I will drop in that part of Nerina Pallot’s interview with The Line of Best Fit. She selected The Man with the Child in His Eyes as a Kate Bush song that means a lot. She has beautifully covered Kate Bush’s Moments of Pleasure (from 1993’s The Red Shoes). I would love to hear Pallot provide a take on The Man with the Child in His Eyes now. Recorded when Kate Bush was a teenager, having a more mature voice sing these incredibly evocative words would provide new depth and insight. I always say how there should be a tribute album. So many modern artists new and established acknowledge and cite Kate Bush as an influence. Go into the studio, cover a track of hers, release that album to vinyl, and have a percentage of the profits go to War Child. That would be something truly phenomenal!

IN THIS PHOTO: Nerina Pallot

The amazing interview from The Line of Best Fit saw Nerina Pallot chose songs from Elton John, Jill Scott, Tori Amos, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, ABBA and Elaine Stritch and Stephen Sondheim. There are connections to Kate Bush. She was a fan of The Beatles and Steely Dan. She covered songs by both bands. There were those comparisons to Joni Mitchell. Similar artists in some ways. Elton John was an idol of hers and the two worked together on 50 Words for Snow’s Snowed in at Wheeler Street. Tori Amos someone clearly inspired by Kate Bush. The Man with the Child in His Eyes is the Kate Bush song that speaks to Nerina Pallot hardest:

“NERINA PALLOT: My mum used to get these Reader's Digest's or some kind of record club she signed up to, and every month or two there'd be a ‘best of’, or what was in the charts. There was a ‘70s compendium, and this song was nestled between Captain Hook, whatever that terrible pop song was, and some other horrible pop song, probably Gary Glitter.

It's such an odd song, and I think it was long after Kate had had a hit with it, because I’d seen her on the telly doing “Wuthering Heights”, and had been a bit scared of her at this point. I was probably about 9 or 10 when this song came on, and I thought it was like no other song I'd heard in pop music.

I loved the oxymoron of the title, even though I didn't really know what an oxymoron was at that point. I just loved the world she created, because she's the original world builder, right? No one builds these magical lands of song like she does.

Then I connected the dots, and I asked my mum to get me another record of hers. I then learned to play this song, I picked it up by ear, and I loved the idea that it's very much about somebody not being able to tell anybody about it's a secret, isn't it? The idea that this love is secret, there's something very furtive about it, and it really played on my childhood imagination, of feeling a bit different from people I was around, and I thought it was a magical secret song. It was a dialogue between Kate and me, she was telling me all her secrets, and I loved it.

BEST FIT: So it was the lyrical level that entranced you?

Well, the music's really interesting. It's very English pastoral, probably Irish folk influenced, but that makes sense to what I was listening to as a kid, because I was classically trained, and I don't think I'd understood how I could take playing classical music to pop yet. I needed a bridge right at that point. There's something in the orchestration that is very classical with this pop song over it, but it's not really a pop song – it's just Kate Bush. She's doing Kate Bush.

I can see how someone like Kate Bush would be the perfect gateway for you. I love that. You can't write that connection. It's just going to happen.

He may not thank me for saying this, but my husband is left cold by Kate Bush. When I got tickets to see her, it was literally like winning the fucking EuroMillions. The other day I was talking about it to my lighting designer, because he's also a Kate Bush fan, and we're constantly obsessed with that show, and my husband said, 'I was so bored halfway through that show', so I said, 'I can't believe I married you' [laughs]”.

I will wrap things up now. Unofficially, I feel 30th July is International Kate Bush Day. If The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever is people coming together to recreate the red dress version of the Wuthering Heights video from 1978, we need to globally and non-specifically recognise Kate Bush. I feel she deserves that! A way for her fans around the world to celebrate…

THIS wonderful human being.

INTERVIEW: Maisy Kay

INTERVIEW:

Maisy Kay

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YESTERDAY was a big day…

for the extraordinary Maisy Kay. She played London’s OVO Arena Wembley. One of her biggest dates so far, I asked her about this gig and how she was feeling in the lead-up. Having released the new single, Bitter, I was keen to know more about that and her future plans. Born in Shropshire but located in L.A., I ask the tremendous Maisy Kay about her experiences in Los Angeles and whether she has settled in. She suggests some new artists we should check out, what music she was introduced to as a child, what it is like having this adoring fanbase behind her, whether there are any tour dates coming up, and, if she hosted a dinner party and could only invite three musical guests, who they would be. It has been a real pleasure interviewing…

THE wonderful Maisy Kay.

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Hi Maisy. You play Wembley Arena on 6th June. How are you feeling about the gig? What is it like performing such a huge show in the U.K.?

I am absolutely ecstatic!! It’s going to be my first ever arena, and I can’t honestly comprehend what it’s going to be like. It’s extra special it’s in the U.K., and I have thirteen of my friends and family coming to support me. I will probably cry!

I am interested in how your childhood musical discoveries shaped your ambitions. Did bands like Queen and The Beatles, who were played in your household, speak to something in you? What other sounds were you raised on?

Absolutely. I am so grateful my parents raised me on such legendary artists. Freddie Mercury has always been my idol. I even named my cat after him! My mom would play Barbra Streisand, Céline Dion, and ABBA, so I also got to listen to so many wonderful women vocalists. We were also a big musical theatre household, so there was a LOT of Phantom of the Opera!

Of course, there are also modern artists like Lana Del Rey and Gracie Abrams who you surely connect with. Though your music is hugely original. Has it been difficult blending influences whilst retaining a personal and unique voice?

I think it’s definitely challenging to find a unique sound, because there’s so many artists now and so much has been done before. I think what works best for me is when I don’t focus on trying to sound or be like anyone, and I just write from the heart. I think my fans really value that authenticity, so I tend to lead from there, and then the sound of the record will follow.

“I’m honestly so impressed with younger me fully uprooting her life like that though. I think I’d struggle to do it now”

You were born in Shropshire, though you moved to L.A. aged fourteen. What was it about the city that called to you, and was it quite a difficult transition period?

I moved to L.A. because I got a record deal offer over there! I was over the moon, because being a singer has always been my dream, so it was a no-brainer. I think the most difficult part was missing out on those key social skills that come from being around kids your own age, and it could be quite lonely at times. I’m honestly so impressed with younger me fully uprooting her life like that though. I think I’d struggle to do it now.

Since moving to L.A., you have worked with some incredible collaborators and garnered huge following and streaming figures. What have been your standout moments so far?

One of my proudest moments was definitely when Technicolor Honeymoon reached #1 on the iTunes Pop charts. That was my first-ever time charting anywhere, and I couldn’t believe it! I’m also so proud of the song I did with TheFatRat, The Storm, as I sing in Na’vi on it. I learnt Na’vi as a kid, and was very bullied in school for doing so, so to see millions of people loving that song, and even loving it BECAUSE it was in Na’vi, that was incredibly healing for me.

Your music pairs honest and confessional lyrics with something warmer and cinematic. You have said “the production sounds like summer, but if you listen to the lyrics, it’s something entirely different”. What was the thinking behind that juxtaposition? Do you feel it adds new depths and emotional reactions and makes the lyrics more potent and striking?

I think emotionally I’ve always been a somewhat melancholy person, but we don’t always want to listen to sad music. That’s something I learnt in my personal life too: people don’t always have the capacity for heavier stuff. So rather than writing about things that weren’t true to me, and trying to force myself into a version of myself I don’t relate to, I found this really fun way of making happy and fun-sounding songs that people want to listen to - and it’s only when you look into the lyrical content that you realize there’s a certain heaviness to it. I love the ability to dance and have fun to an ultimately sad song.

After some big tour dates, what does the summer ahead hold? Will you be playing shows in the U.S., or are there some U.K. summer dates planned?

I am really hoping for more U.S shows, as I’ve gained so many incredible fans this year from playing the States, and I want to see them again!! For now, my summer will be spent prepping for an exciting announcement in the autumn. Stay tuned!!

I love your new single, Bitter. It has whetted an appetite and curiosity. Might there be an album or E.P. arriving down the line?

I would say definitely. I’ve had a project in mind for almost two years now, and there’s so much I want to say and explore. We’ve really been taking time to sit with the music and figure out how to make it the best we can, but I am so proud of this new music and I’m itching to put it out!

This does seem like a genuinely big moment. One where you are on the verge of being an international sensation! Do you get a sense of that tremor, or do you try not to think of that? If you do, how does it genuinely feel?

I try not to get my hopes up too much, as I never want to disappoint myself. I try to take each moment as it comes and just enjoy the present. That being said, this year specifically I’ve been so lucky to meet and connect with so many incredible new fans, and I feel a level of support I’ve never had before. That is an amazing and honestly very emotional feeling for me. I truly feel so grateful to be where I’m at now, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes me.

Your fans have been a dedicated and loyal core. How is your relationship with them? Do you get messages from people who have heard your music and it has affected or spoken to them in a healing way?

I will never understand artists who say they don’t love their fans. I love mine so much. They’ve changed my life, and it’s because of them I get to be here. I read all my messages and respond as much as I can, and the fact that they connect with my music is what motivates me to keep going and try even harder. I feel this year especially we’ve really built such a wonderful supportive community, and I’m honoured to be a part of it and to get to connect through music with them.

“I love what Taylor does with her world building and how involved she makes her fans feel. I’d love to ask how she comes up with her creative concepts”

You are an artist everyone should know about, but are there any fellow artists you feel we should also seek out?

I have to shout-out my guy, Jamie Miller. I think he’s incredible and deserves all the flowers. In the Night by Fly by Midnight is one of my favorite songs, especially for summer nights. I also love what Bella Kay is doing right now, and I don’t say that because she also has Kay in her name, haha!

Penultimately, if you hosted your own dinner party and could only invite three musicians, who would they be, and what would be your first questions to each?

Taylor Swift, Céline Dion, and Lewis Capaldi.

I love what Taylor does with her world building and how involved she makes her fans feel. I’d love to ask how she comes up with her creative concepts. For Céline, I’d want to ask what gave her the strength to push through her vocal challenges and how she kept her spirits up through an incredibly difficult period of her life. And a similar question for Lewis, who has been vocal about his mental health struggles. How do you juggle that without letting it overtake your life and the career you love.

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?

Let’s do Vantablack. It’s a fan favorite, and it’s the song I finish with on tour. I think it puts everyone in a good mood live, so hopefully it’ll do that here too! Thank you so much!

_____________

Follow Maisy Kay

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FEATURE: Recognising a Queen and Global Icon: Will There Be Greater Recognition of Beyoncé This Year?

FEATURE:

 

 

Recognising a Queen and Global Icon

PHOTO CREDIT: Bryce Anderson for GQ

Will There Be Greater Recognition of Beyoncé This Year?

__________

I am writing this…

PHOTO CREDIT: Edward Berthelot/Getty Images

on 6th June. There has been rumour that a Beyoncé is coming. Following 2024’s Cowboy Carter, it will be interesting to see what comes next for her. On 4th September, Beyoncé turns forty-five. It will be a huge celebration. It also makes me think it is a milestone in some ways. A chance to recognise her incredible legacy and brilliance. In terms of the literature about her, there have not really been comprehensive books that look inside her albums. A detailed and updated biography. No career-spanning documentaries or anything like that. I do think that Beyoncé has been a little under-represented or underserved. As someone who is this extraordinary businesswoman and idol. One of the most successful and greatest artists ever, there does seem to be this gap. Perhaps she wouldn’t want this huge amount of fuss. Though it is not really about that. A way of not only acknowledging her incredible contribution to music and beyond. I will come to her legacy. Before that, this interview from GQ Beyoncé talked about family, art, business and legacy:

“What has your experience been like, as a Black woman, in business spaces that some might have assumed you wouldn’t thrive in?

There’s a huge contrast between the business journeys of men and women. Men often have the luxury of being perceived as the strategists, the brains behind their ventures. They’re given the space to focus on the product, the team, the business plan. Women, on the other hand, especially those in the limelight, are frequently pigeonholed into being the face of the brand or the marketing tool. It’s important to me to continue to take the same approach I have taken with my music and apply my learnings to my businesses.

I am here to change that old narrative. I’m here to focus on the quality. We took our time, and we did our research, and we have earned respect for our brand. I try to choose integrity over shortcuts. I’ve learned that true success isn’t about leaning on a name; it’s about crafting something genuine, something that can hold its own. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being revolutionary.

Cowboy Carter was the second album in a planned trilogy that you started two years ago with Renaissance. What sparked this grand idea to do a trilogy of records, each exploring different genres?

I started Cowboy Carter almost five years ago. Pay close attention to my age in the lyrics of “16 Carriages.”

From the start of my career and on every album, I have always mixed genres. Whether it is R&B, dance, country, rap, zydeco, blues, opera, gospel, they have all influenced me in some way. I have favourite artists from every genre you could think about. I believe genres are traps that box us in and separate us. I’ve experienced this for 25 years in the music industry. Black artists, and other artists of colour, have been creating and mastering multiple genres, since forever.

This is why it was so important for me to sample the composer Joseph Bologne, known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, in the song “Daughter” on Cowboy Carter. Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 3, No. 1: II. Adagio was created in the 1700s. This is a testament to Chevalier’s vision. I hope it inspires artists, as well as fans, to dig deeper and learn more about the Black musical innovators who came before us. Some of the most talented artists never achieve the mainstream praise they deserve, especially when they defy the norm.

I was so hyped to see a song like “Texas Hold ’Em” gain worldwide acceptance. Even more exciting was how it helped reinvigorate the country genre across music, fashion, art, and culture, and introduced the world to so much great talent like Shaboozey, Tanner Adell, Willie Jones, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts.

Earlier this year, you also launched a haircare line, Cécred. In ramping up these business interests, do you find that entrepreneurialism scratches a different kind of itch than your other creative pursuits?

I am a musician first. It has always been my priority. I didn’t get into anything that could take away from my artistry until I felt I was solidified as a master at my first love, music.

When I started my hair care brand, Cécred, I wanted it to be recognised for what it does for real people and their hair. When it launched, I made a conscious decision not to appear in the ads. The brand’s first impression needed to stand on its own merit, not be swayed by my influence. I’ve been using these products for years, so I know firsthand how magical they are.

Your reputation as a perfectionist precedes you – we see and hear it in the finished version of everything you release, and you lean into this narrative in documentaries like Homecoming and Renaissance. But is there a point where that reputation is a burden, or even a prison? Do you ever feel personally overwhelmed by the weight of expectations set by the highs of your previous work?

I create at my own pace, on things that I hope will touch other people. I hope my work encourages people to look within themselves and come to terms with their own creativity, strength, and resilience. I focus on storytelling, growth, and quality. I’m not focused on perfectionism. I focus on evolution, innovation, and shifting perception. Working on the music for Cowboy Carter and launching this exciting new project feel nothing like prison, nor a burden. In fact, I only work on what liberates me. It is fame that can at times feel like prison. So, when you don’t see me on red carpets, and when I disappear until I have art to share, that’s why.

Increasingly, your work seems a little bit like a family business. For instance, recently your 12-year-old daughter, Blue, has evolved from a curious onlooker of your creative process to fully being a part of it, with her own dance routine in your last tour beside you. Were you ever hesitant to include her in your public life and work, with all the scrutiny and, sometimes, criticism that that entails? How has it felt to watch her blossom as a creative force in her own right?

I build my work schedule around my family. I try to only tour when my kids are out of school. I always dreamt of a life where I could see the world with my family and expose them to different languages, architecture, and lifestyles.

Raising three kids isn’t easy. The older they get, the more they become their own individuals with unique needs, hobbies, and social lives. My twins are God-sent. Parenting constantly teaches you about yourself. It takes a lot of prayer and patience. I love it. It’s grounding and fulfilling.

My kids come with me everywhere I go. They come to my office after school, and they are in the studio with me. They are in dance rehearsals. It’s natural that they would learn my choreography.

Having just released your eighth album, when you step back and look at the breadth of your discography, what do you see? What do you hope to see when it’s all said and done?

I am proud of what I have been able to do, but I also recognise the sacrifices – mine and my family’s. There was a time when I was pushing myself to meet unrealistic deadlines, while not taking the time to enjoy the benefits of why I was working so hard. There aren’t many of us from the late ’90s who were taught to focus on mental health. Back then, I had little boundaries, and said yes to everything. But I’ve paid my dues a hundred times over. I have worked harder than anyone I know. And now I work smarter. In the end, the biggest reward is personal joy. Has what I created pushed others to think freely and believe in the impossible? If the answer to that question is yes, then that is the gift”.

There is so much to explore and recognise. In 2011, GRAMMY included Beyoncé in a new series. “Black Sounds Beautiful series, learn about the many ways in which Beyoncé's words, music and initiatives have celebrated and elevated the Black community”. This is a living global colossus who I feel does deserve something major made about her:

“Beyoncé doesn't only loom large in American culture just because of her hits. Although her musical accomplishments are staggering—at 28 GRAMMY wins, she holds the record for most GRAMMYs won by a woman—Beyoncé's ongoing commitment to uplifting and celebrating the Black community has become a key part of her legacy.

This goes beyond her empowering songs—it's in her public statements and art, too.

In the debut episode of GRAMMY.com's Black Sounds Beautiful series, a special series honoring Black music and culture in all its forms, learn about the many ways in which Beyoncé's words, music and initiatives have celebrated and elevated the Black community and how she remains a steadfast fighter for the accomplishments of Black people everywhere.

"It's important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty, so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror—first through their own families as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House, and the GRAMMYs—and see themselves and have no doubt that they're beautiful, intelligent and capable," Beyoncé said in an acceptance speech at the 59th GRAMMY Awards in 2017.

She doubled-down on the sentiment at the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show when she won the GRAMMY for Best R&B Performance for "BLACK PARADE," which she originally released on Juneteenth last year.

"As an artist, I believe it's my job, and all of our jobs, to reflect the times," she said in her GRAMMY acceptance speech this past March. "... So, I wanted to uplift, encourage and celebrate all of the beautiful Black queens and kings that continue to inspire me and inspire the whole world."

She's continued to do exactly that throughout her entire career.

In 2018, Beyoncé headlined Coachella, becoming the first-ever Black woman artist to headline the festival. She used the history-making moment as a platform to celebrate Black culture, inviting performers from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to the Coachella stage and mixing in vocal snippets of Black icons like Malcolm X and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her 2020 GRAMMY-nominated music film, Black Is King, is a "love letter" to Black men. The film is the visual counterpart to The Lion King: The Gift, a 2019 soundtrack album curated by Beyoncé that spotlights African and Afrobeats artists like Wizkid, Burna Boy, Mr Eazi and many others.

Check out the strengthening clip above and watch out for more episodes of Black Sounds Beautiful as GRAMMY.com's Black Music Month celebrations proceed throughout June”.

I am going to leave it there. Beyoncé turns forty-five on 4th September. I do think it is a moment to consider her immense legacy and importance. From her earliest days as a member of Destiny’s Child to where she is now, she is one of the most culturally significant figures who has ever lived. I will finish with this from Wikipedia and the cultural impact of Beyoncé:

“Beyoncé has revolutionized the music industry, transforming the production, distribution, promotion, and consumption of music. She has been credited with reviving both the album and the music video as art forms, popularizing surprise albums and visual albums, and changing the Global Release Day to Friday. Her artistic innovations, such as staccato rap-singing and vocal manipulation techniques, including chopping and re-pitching, have become defining features of popular music within the 21st century. With her work frequently transcending traditional genre boundaries, Beyoncé has created new artistic standards that have shaped contemporary music, helped to renew subgenres of R&B, hip-hop, country, dance, and house, and brought Afrobeats to a global audience. Beyoncé has been recognized as setting the playbook for music artists in the modern era, with musicians from across genres, generations and countries citing her as a major influence on their career. Beyond entertainment, Beyoncé has had a significant impact on socio-political matters. Her work celebrates women's empowerment and Black culture, while highlighting systemic inequalities and advocating for social justice. Through her music, public statements, and philanthropy, she has become a prominent voice in political conversations, with cultural critics crediting her with influencing political elections and mainstreaming sociocultural movements such as fourth-wave feminism and Black Lives Matter. Beyoncé's work and career is the subject of numerous university courses, cultural analyses and museum exhibitions around the world. Through the "Beyoncé Effect", she has ignited market trends and boosted the economies of various countries”.

I do genuinely believe that more needs to happen regarding Beyoncé and her legacy. All that she has done and how her music continues to change lives. The success she has earned and the ways she has transformed and revolutionise culture. Talking about that through books, documentaries and beyond, we need to properly salute…

QUEEN Bey.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Jazzy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

Jazzy

__________

THIS is an artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Fiona Garden for NME

who has done quite a fair bit since I originally included her in my Spotlight feature. That is Jazzy. Dublin-born Yasmine Byrne has released some incredible singles and E.P.s but, to this date, no debut album. That is something a lot of her fans are waiting for. This Dance/Synth-Pop wonder has a growing number of admirers. She has a lot of fans behind her. No wonder when you consider the brilliance of her music. I cannot find interviews many interviews from this year, so I am going back to last year for the most part. I will start with PRINCIPLE and their conversation with Jazzy last year. Someone who became the most-streamed Irish female artist in the world on Spotify and is award-nominated, she is definitely hitting a new peak. I

“Breaking out in 2022 with “Make Me Feel Good,” a collaboration with Belters Only that shot to number one in the Irish charts, Jazzy landed her second Irish number one with “Giving Me” just a year later, making history as the first Irish woman to top the charts in over 14 years. The track didn’t just resonate at home – it soared to number three in the UK and was crowned The Official Charts’ biggest debut release that year. Now certified platinum in the UK and diamond in Ireland, Jazzy has cemented her place as a dance music powerhouse.

With a clear knack for crafting addictive, feel-good bangers, Jazzy’s momentum has been unstoppable. She’s earned Ivor Novello and BRIT Award nominations, secured a coveted spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30, and surpassed legends like Enya and Sinéad O’Connor to become the most-streamed Irish female artist in the world on Spotify.

Last year, Jazzy kept the hits coming with “Somedays,” a link-up with dance music heavyweights Sonny Fodera and D.O.D. The night before Principle sat down with Jazzy for this interview, it was revealed that the track had just been nominated for a BRIT Award – yet another milestone in Jazzy’s meteoric rise…

Congratulations on your BRITs Song of the Year nomination! How are you feeling?

I’m absolutely buzzing. I can’t believe I’m going back so soon.

This is your second BRITs Song of the Year nomination, after “Giving Me” was nominated two years ago.

Absolutely. I mean, it’s only things I could dream of, you know, just to go once. I thought it would at least be another couple of years till I get to go again.

The nominated single, “Somedays,” is particularly special to you. What significance does it hold?

I think the message in the track is really important for everyone, in life, in general, especially in this world we’re living in right now. And when we put the track out, I loved it, obviously, and it really resonated with me, but when we put it out, so many people were getting the lyrics tattooed on them, and so many lovely messages of how it helps certain people. And I won’t get into stories, but really, really hard times, you know. So it’s just really lovely to hear.

You’ve been described as “the new face of dance music” and a “key figure in the Irish dance scene.” How do you feel about carrying these titles?

It feels lovely. I mean, obviously, some people would feel pressure, but kind of from the start, when I put on out my debut single, that went to number one in Ireland, and people always have high expectations when things like that happen. I said to myself, just keep doing your thing as you’re doing it. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Don’t try too hard, and that’s really helped me along the way.

Has your approach to writing and production changed as your career has grown and your music continues to be heard by and resonate with more and more people? Or have you stayed pretty aligned with how you’ve always done things?

I think I have. The only thing I would say is that I’ve grown a lot, and I listen back to some of the stuff I’ve done before, I can definitely hear a baby Jazzy in there. I feel like I’ve grown a lot over the last few years, and I’m much more confident in myself”.

NME included Jazzy in their list of one-hundred artists to watch. Jazzy enjoying this incredible year in 2025. It is amazing how far she came in such a short time. This is definitely someone that you should know about. A lot of Jazzy’s songs have been collaborations. It would be nice to see her out front for many songs. A singular talent who is great working with others, but she has this incredible talent that does not need support from other artists:

“Jazzy may be remarkably grounded for someone with 10.7million monthly Spotify listeners – more than any other Irish female solo artist, including Enya and Sinéad O’Connor – but her drive is formidable. In primary school, she committed so fully to her free violin lessons, provided by a scheme called The Music Project, that her Crumlin neighbours dubbed her “the girl with the violin”.

She completed her grades and could have become a violin teacher. “When I finished secondary school, I actually went back to the [primary] school where I learned and did a whole year as the assistant violin teacher,” she says. As a teenager, Jazzy also loved singing in the school choir, where her first solo was a serious vocal test: ‘Killing Me Softly’, as covered by the Fugees. “I loved Lauryn Hill – I used to sing that song for the four walls at home, so I probably asked for it,” she says.

While teaching the violin, Jazzy reached a musical fork in the road that she hadn’t been anticipating. “I was actually a very well-behaved child, so I never went out [to clubs] before I was supposed to,” she says with a laugh. “But for my 18th birthday, my friend took me to my first DJ gig, which was Amine Edge & Dance at [Dublin club] Sin.” She notes approvingly that the French duo were “really big in G-house”, a bass-heavy blend of dance and hip-hop.

“I remember absolutely loving it and thinking, ‘What is this scene?’” she recalls, still sounding rapt. “And after that, I just dived in and started finding all the records that I loved [from the club].” On subsequent nights out, Jazzy found herself focusing on the DJs. “I would think to myself, I really want to learn how to do that.”

Still, she admits, “it took a while to take that leap and actually ask for lessons”. When she finally plucked up the courage, her choice of tutor proved fortuitous. “He was a local DJ who was a friend of a friend, but I only met him when I asked him to teach me,” she remembers. “He started giving me lessons about seven years ago, and then he became my partner. We’re engaged now.”

At first, Jazzy didn’t devote herself solely to dance music. For several years, she was a member of Dublin hip-hop collective Powerful Creative Minds, who released their debut EP ‘#39’ in 2020. Because of her distinctive singing style, her bandmates gave her the stage name “Jazzy Yaz”, which she later shortened to Jazzy. “We did pretty well. Anytime we’d do a small concert or competition, we’d get local support. And the boys taught me a lot about writing songs,” she notes.

In 2021, Jazzy branched out by booking studio time with Belters Only, a local dance duo consisting of DJ-producers Conor Bissett and Robbie Griffiths. They’d known each other for a while, but Bisset has admitted he “never really knew [Jazzy] had a great voice” until they worked together. Their very first session yielded ‘Makes Me Feel Good’, a reworked version of Timmy Regisford and Lynn Lockamy’s house deep cut ‘At The Club’, which Belters Only initially put out themselves.

After the song popped off on TikTok, it was picked up by British record label Polydor [Sam Fender, Ellie Goulding] and given a major push. At the time, Jazzy was still working in her local branch of Tesco. “We made a music video pretty sharpish, so people would come in and say: ‘You’re the girl from that song,’” she recalls. When a label exec called her to say that ‘Make Me Feel Good’ had hit Number One in Ireland, Jazzy was busy making croissants in the Tesco bakery.

At this point, Polydor offered her a solo deal, an opportunity she seized in a characteristically level-headed way. “I remember talking it through with my mum,” she says. “And she was like, ‘The opportunity is there, you can’t let it pass. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.’”

Although Jazzy was raised by her Irish mother and her father wasn’t present when she was growing up, she believes his Jamaican heritage is firmly infused in her music. “You can hear it when I sing, I sound quite soulful, and I think that comes quite naturally from that side of me,” she says. Her Irish side, she says, is represented by the warm organ house sound that underpins ‘Giving Me’. “All the local producers here love the organ. I think that song sounds very Dublin.”

After ‘Giving Me’ exploded, climbing to Number One in Ireland and Number Three in the UK, Jazzy’s life changed forever. Dublin is still home, but she now spends more time in London, where most of her recording sessions take place. Initially, navigating the sprawling British capital was a culture shock. “I remember walking into the tube and not knowing what to do,” she says with a slight cringe. “I was trying to ask for help, but everyone was too busy to stop. It just felt like a far cry from home.”

Though Jazzy was “quite shy” in the studio to begin with, she now feels more confident and often arrives with song ideas. She’s already been prolific, releasing three EPs, including February’s ‘High In The Moment’, a three-song reunion with Belters Only. Then in May, she scored her ninth UK chart hit with ‘Closer To The Floor’, a sultry team-up with French electronic musician Ankhoï.

Her new single ‘High On Me’ is the first taster from an upcoming DJ mix project due later this summer. After that, she’ll focus on making a debut album that she hopes will tell “a bigger story”. She’s also manifesting a collab with fellow female house maven Peggy Gou – “I just think we’re on the same page” – and learning to be a producer. “When you’re in the DJ world playing great house music, you’ve got to make it as well, don’t you?” she says with a glint of ambition”.

Before ending with a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, Music Week highlighted an incredible achievement. Jazzy I would urge anyone new to Jazzy to follow her on social media and check out her music. One of the world’s best artists and producers, I feel the rest of this year is going to be very busy for her:

“SoundCloud has revealed that Jazzy is 2025's most listened to female electronic artist worldwide on the platform.

The announcement from the global streaming platform coincides with the release of the DJ and vocalist’s Gewah Selects project via Polydor’s Chaos imprint. Gewah has become known as Jazzy’s brand as a DJ, with mixes broadcast across her SoundCloud and YouTube channel from London, New York, Toronto and Dublin

The 12-track DJ mix features two original Jazzy tracks: Hypnotic and lead single Moth To A Flame with Luuk Van Dijk, as well as her recent Top 20 UK single High On Me with Rossi. Other artists and producers featured include Dart, Kolter, MK, Kayleigh Glynn, Paige Tomlinson, Confidence Man and more.

Denys Wilcox, SoundCloud’s senior label relations UK, said: “Since being named one of our Ascending artists in 2023, the consistency of her hit releases and fan engagement has only amplified that growth. Including collaborative tracks, Jazzy is now the most listened to female electronic artist worldwide on SoundCloud in 2025. It's a perfect example of how prioritising community-building can lead to sustained global success."

Jazzy said: “Hand on heart, these last three years have been the wildest ride. I try not to dwell on it all too much because I think I’d spiral, but achievements like this make my head spin for sure. I feel so loved and so lucky - thank you SoundCloud for the support, and to my team of course. What an honour!”.

We do get tease that a Jazzy debut album is coming. Rolling Sone UK catching up with a global Dance queen. They name her “UK dance’s future star” but, as an Irish artist, I would say she is a European star. Though she may be perfectly fine to be thought of as a U.K. talent. However you define Jazzy, she is a worldwide sensation. It will be great hearing what a debut album offers:

“It’s safe to say that Jazzy – real name Yasmine Byrne – has come a very long way since working in her local Tesco’s bakery. She’s now the most streamed female DJ/vocalist globally, her infectious house groover ‘Giving Me’ was nominated for a BRIT Award, and she was also tipped for an Ivor Novello. 

Not only did ‘Giving Me’ peak at number three on the UK Official Singles Chart and earn a place in the Top 40 biggest songs of 2023, but it also topped the Official Irish Singles Chart, making Jazzy the first Irish female solo artist to achieve that feat in over a decade.

She’s not slowed down since: 2025 saw her playing at Glastonbury, touring America and DJing at Pacha Ibiza each Monday for seven weeks during the summer, as well as releasing ‘High on Me’, a collab with Rossi. Before that, 2024 saw dancefloor-dominating collaborations with KILIMANJARO (‘No Bad Vibes’) and Sonny Fodera (‘Somedays’).

Her biggest team-up to date, though, is undoubtedly ‘Satisfy’, this year’s summer anthem she made in the studio with Calvin Harris. “It still feels crazy that we’ve released a song together,” she says, adding that he had previously topped her bucket list of collaborators.

Up next is a debut album, which Jazzy teases is almost finished. “There are a lot of stories about my experiences and things I’ve gone through, good and bad, from when I started doing this to now,” she says of its themes. Alongside club-ready hits, she hints at “some darker vibes”, adding: “I always like to have a message in my songs, and I feel like people know me for that, so there’ll be plenty on there, but all still under my umbrella.” 

At its heart, the collection with Harris is both an ode to home as well as her friends and family. “They are so supportive and I’d be lost without them,” she says. The local outpouring of love whenever she’s able to return – rarely, due to her busy touring schedule – is equally influential for Jazzy, who recently learned she’s a young Irish girl’s favourite artist. 

“I was having a bit of a rough day, and it really cheered me up,” she says of receiving the “really sweet” fanmail. “She had some questions to ask me, and I sent her a letter back, along with a vinyl.” 

In an industry that can often feel non-stop, such moments of personal connection mean a lot to Jazzy. “It warms my heart,” she says. “The kids keep me going.” To this end, her main hope for the record is that people love it as much as she does. “I have very high hopes, and I’m being really picky with it,” she continues. “I want it to be perfect, before anyone gets to hear the finished version.” 

Perhaps expectedly, then, she’s not going to start rushing things anytime soon. “Getting to do this as a job is a dream come true,” she enthuses. “I’m having a great time on the journey”.

I waned to revisit Jazzy, as she has accomplished so much in the past few years. One of the greatest voices in modern Dance, this artist, D.J. and producer is set for an incredible future. I really love her music. Although a lot of them are collaborations, you feel a debut album will see more Jazzy solo cuts. This is a woman who receives so much love from…

AROUND the world.

__________

Follow Jazzy

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Alexander for PRINCIPLE

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jazzy/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7zAAwgV5Wqmvpb4GzvlRkP?si=lSq1c_qSRvyu-pTL3fC-Zw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCagcrKRy2laLZ6u3MD9z4Zw

FEATURE: For We All Live Underground: Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

For We All Live Underground

Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity at Thirty

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I am keen to come…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jay Kay of Jamiroquai in 1996

to some features about one of the standout tracks of the 1990s. The second single from Jamiroquai’s Travelling Without Moving album, it was released on 19th August, 1996. I am looking to the thirtieth anniversary of a song that is a dystopian critique of society's over-reliance on technology, environmental destruction, and mass consumerism. It sounds fresh and prescient in 1996. Thirty years later, things have become more extreme in many respects. Virtual Insanity spreading into social media and other areas. A timely song in 1996, we can learn a lot from this successful single. One that went to number three in the U.K. and a top forty in the U.S., the single did reach number one on a few charts – including UK Hip Hop/R&B (OCC). A lot of the acclaim ad conversation is around the Jonathan Glazer-directed video where the band’s lead, Jay Kay, is dancing on a floor that is moving. Like a huge travelator, it is not a one-take video, though it does look like one. It is captivating and very cool. One that perfectly blends with the song. A great performance and an extraordinary concept. In terms of its success, Virtual Insanity has been remixed, used on shows and soundtracks, parodied and copied time and time again. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Award, Virtual Insanity won four awards, including Video of the Year. Here is the first article that I want to feature. Giving you some insight into the video and the song’s lyrics. A great read from Retropunk:

“Virtual Insanity released on August 19, 1996 about a week before Traveling without Moving — the third studio album by the English funk/acid jazz band Jamiroquai.

The video utilized a series of conveyor belts to create some really cool visuals that were very unique at the time.

It’s music video was released the following month and a year later would be nominated for 10 awards at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. It went on to win four of them:

1. Video of the Year

2. Breakthrough Video

3. Best Visual Effects

4. Best Cinematography

What Makes it so Great?

When you think back to the 90’s as a whole, or 1996 in particular, I’m sure you can find more notable singles. It was a decade of hits and the advent of a new generation where we saw the rise of icons like Dave Matthews, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and the like. Jamiroquai, while a fairly prolific band in their own right, are often thought of as a one-hit-wonder here in the US — that is until people realize the dance song at the end of Napoleon Dynamite is Canned Heat from them as well. So why do I think Virtual Insanity is the best song of the 90’s? A few reasons.

A Unique Sound

First and foremost, it sounds really good. A lot of songs from decades past have the sound of that time period. I mean, when you hear something like I Ran by A Flock of Seagulls, or Sunglasses at Night by Corey Hart it sounds like the 1980’s. When you hear You Get What You Give by the New Radicals or Bye, Bye, Bye by Nsync, it sounds like the late 90’s. Because of the band’s unique blend of sounds, it doesn’t come off feeling old. Sure it’s a different sound than the hip-hop heavy beats our culture is steeped in today, but it’s not that out of place.

A Unique Message with Increasing Relevance

The lyrics of this song almost seem prophetic looking back. In a world transitioning from the grit of grunge to the manufactured sounds of bubblegum pop, Virtual Insanity painted a landscape of a world more akin to a sci-fi thriller. A world with — as Charlie Chaplin would have described as — machine men, with machine minds, and machine hearts. A world of selfishness where “we can always take, but never give”. A world of virtual insanities in which we find ourselves consumed with “these useless, twisting, of our new technology.” Where “there is no sound, for we all live underground.”

With the recent circulation a video explaining the yet-to-be-instituted concept of facilities where we would utilize artificial intelligence and other new technologies to grow babies in facilities with 30,000 growth pods — or artificial wombs — the lyric “and now every mother can choose the color of her child, that’s not nature’s way” seems more timely than ever.

Final Thoughts

Is it a perfect song? Well I’m not sure there is a “perfect” song, but it’s a darn good one. It holds up even 26 years later, and it’s lyrics paint a portrait of a world that is looking and feeling more and more like our own by the day. Off all the classics from that era of music, few stand the test of time (in my humble opinion) the way Virtual Insanity does”.

I was already aware of Jamiroquai in 1996. I loved their 1993 debut album, Emergency on Planet Earth and 1994’s Return of the Space Cowboy. I still think I have the original C.D. I bought of 1999’s Synkronized. This was a band who released their debut a year before I started high school. Synkronized arrived the year I left. There was something about Virtual Insanity that really hit me. Instantly catchy. Perhaps I was not aware of its relevance and deeper message. I was won by its funkiness and how singalong-worthy it was. In terms of technology, I was noy really immersed in it aged thirteen. Adults around me perhaps more so. Listening to the song now, and are the lyrics more relevant than ever, or are they are a little dated? In that things are so much bigger and worse. A song that goes to greater extremes in getting these points across. Rock Cellar Magazine wrote about Virtual Insanity on its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2021:

“The track, a delectably danceable tune with pointed lyrics from front man/figurehead Jay Kay that cast a critical eye on our communal reliance on technology, was topical at the time it was released, the internet still building its stranglehold on everything, a few years away from becoming an all-encompassing aspect of daily life.

Future’s made of virtual insanity
Now always seem to, be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound
For we all live underground

(It’s worth noting the coincidence of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook choosing today — the anniversary of this particular song — to launch a virtual reality remote work app called Horizon Workrooms, featuring digital work meetings).

The track’s music video, premiered a month after the song’s debut, was a phenomenon on MTV, which at the time was still a significant force in the music world, and in this case it helped make Jamiroquai a global sensation.

The visually impressive video featured Kay dancing alone in a room in which the floor appears to move, while the rest of the room remains stationary. To this day, it’s an iconic snapshot of the time, and one of the ’90s most memorable music videos:

Director Jonathan Glazer broke down the behind-the-scenes magic of the “Virtual Insanity” video:

“Virtual Insanity” was the second single featured on Travelling Without Moving, Jamiroquai’s third studio album. Led by the track, the record was a hit around the world, selling eight million copies and helping Jamiroquai clean up at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1997 (again, a huge deal at the time), where it was named Video of the Year.

The song also earned the group Best Performance by a Duo or Group Grammy Award, one of two nominations it picked up (Travelling Without Moving was up for Best Pop Album).

Synkronized, the 1999 follow-up record to Travelling Without Moving, was unable to capitalize on the previous record’s breakthrough success on a commercial level, though the inclusion of lead single “Canned Heat” a few years later in the 2001 comedy Napoleon Dynamite further helped Jamiroquai remain a relevant force in pop culture:

Though the mid ’90s breakthrough marked the commercial peak of Jamiroquai in the United States, at least, the band rode the momentum of “Virtual Insanity” to five more albums, the most recent coming in 2017 (Automaton), Jay Kay and his colleagues remaining a force around the world — and one whose most well-known mission statement remains relevant today”.

I want to come to an article from Dercoded Magazine from 2022. Transcribing an interview between Jay Kay and Zane Lowe on “Apple Music 1 for a deep dive into the UK acid-jazz collective. They discuss the early days of his career and the massive breakout success of “Virtual Insanity”:

“Jamiroquai Tells Apple Music About The Iconic Video For “Virtual Insanity”…

It was a funny day doing that video. Not only, as you well know, Zane, videos were vastly expensive in those days. This is an example of when you really are working with somebody and you are clicking on the same level. Anyway, and there a couple of sofas in the room and I’m like, right. And it was straight into action, whatever it was, seven in the morning, eight in the morning, a bit of makeup, off you go. I remember standing in the middle of the room and the song played back and I got into a regular slink about, like I do. Cat in the hat it. Anyway, I’d said, “Let me look behind the camera and see what on earth you’re talking about.” As soon as I look behind the camera, I went, “Oh, I get it. I see what’s going on here.” And from then on, the magic happened. Apart from, I might add, it was only four shots that video. I never quite understood the crow. What the f**k is the crow doing here? Anyway, nevermind”.

I wonder if there will be anything special done for the thirtieth anniversary of Virtual Insanity on 19th August or for Travelling Without Moving on 28th August? It is not only one of the defining tracks of the 1990s. I feel it is up here with the best songs ever. That pairing of the incredible track (written by Jay Kay and Toby Smith) and that video from the masterful Jonathan Glazer. This feature was published in 2018. Just over twenty years from the release of Virtual Insanity, it still held some modern relevance and power:

“Who among us wouldn’t settle for some 1990s-strength insanity when faced with daily bouts of extreme insanity from some of the world’s most important political leaders 20 years later?

Back in the mid-1990s, the biggest driver of your insanity was the seemingly interminable delay every time your dial-up connection tried to download a tiny text file from something we’d only recently started calling “the internet”.

Nowadays you can go straight from a state of serene calm to “steam coming out the ears” rage just by catching the headlines on the 10 o’clock news…

Maybe it’s because we didn’t listen closely enough 20 years ago…

And nothing’s going to change the way we live
‘Cos we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse
See it’s a crazy world we’re living in
And I just can’t see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give

Winston Churchill said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Mark Twain said that, while history doesn’t often repeat itself, it does rhyme.

Maybe back in 1996 Jamiroquai was giving us a warning for the future which, whilst it may not have happened exactly as they thought it would, has certainly rhymed with their warnings against living a virtual life instead of a real one. Perhaps we should have paid “Virtual Insanity” more attention.

I mentioned earlier the truly amazing video for “Virtual Insanity”. When you consider this was actually made as a low-tech video without green screens and camera trickery, it’s even more brilliant than you might think it is.

I remember seeing an interview with JK where he explained that off-screen there were basically a group of hefty blokes moving stuff around on rollers to create the room’s ever-changing shape. It’s a really clever video, though, made by people who really knew what they were doing when it came to realising an idea in the days you couldn’t just “paint it in later” on a green screen.

But there’s one other element that makes “Virtual Insanity” such a great song. That’s the staccato jazzy chords on the keyboard that carry the theme of the song right through.

A long time ago I played the piano…not brilliantly, but well enough to know that playing a chord like that is much harder than you might think. There’s a real skill in “attacking” the keys to make the sound nice and crisp, but then lifting your fingers off again quickly to end the note as abruptly as it began.

I can’t find a definitive reference online to who played the keyboard on this track, but whoever it was showed some real musical skill… another aspect of the 1990s that was arguably better than today.

However if you want to go back to the 1990s…

Back to when records were made with real instruments, rather than laptops…

Back to when we had to struggle with dial-up internet but at least we didn’t have our iPhones pinging every few minutes with another vacuous social media update…

Back to when insanity amongst the global ruling classes looked like merely a bit of harmless eccentricity compared to today’s nonsense…

Then there’s no better company for your journey back in time than Jamiroquai, with their excellent song, “Virtual Insanity”…”.

In terms of those songs from a decade that really take me back and have real significance, I feel Virtual Insanity is right in there. At that age when I was really digesting all this different music, Jamiroquai really were among my favourite groups. Familiar with their work before Virtual Insanity, this single totally blew my mind. I still does in a way. Turning thirty on 19th August, I feel that we have not really listened heard enough to the lyrics and their relevance. Virtual Insanity’s final words are these: “Virtual insanity is what we're livin' in, yeah, yeah/Well, it's alright”. Is that Jay Kay giving in or just going with the tide? An important question…

THIRTY years on.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Far from the Madding Crowd: Inside a New UNCUT Feature

FEATURE:

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for the cover for The Sensual World single in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Far from the Madding Crowd: Inside a New UNCUT Feature

__________

FOR this Kate Bush feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993 whilst filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

I am looking at the recent UNCUT edition and their spread. They talk about her career and life post-Hounds of Love (1985) as she recorded The Sensual World and then The Red Shoes (1993). I wanted to include some sections and observations from that. It is interesting how the article starts. Written by  Nick Hasted, there are some new interviews collated. The articles starts out by saying how Bush was gardening in 1989. Many might be surprised by that. However, Kate Bush was gardening even before that. Before recording Hounds of Love, she did take some time to be with friends, family, her boyfriend; go to films and drive around. I think gardening was in the mix. As recently as 2022, Bush spoke with Emma Barnett for Woman’s Hour and revealed that she is quite into gardening. By 1989, Kate Bush was one of the most successful and acclaimed Pop artists in the world. Even though she was not on the same level as Madonna, say, she was definitely considered to be a genius and innovator. Gardening was a form of decompression. Rather than being immersed in the dizzy rush of recording an album and that demand, gardening perhaps provided some form of relief and focus. It would not be long until the studio called. Bush released Hounds of Love in 1985 and the greatest hits album, The Whole Story, came out in 1986. Singles from Hounds of Love still resonating in 1986. Some of the heat had died away by 1987, though the fact Bush had these massive-selling albums out and there was this sense of adoration, a lot of expectation on the next album. It would be four years between Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. I wonder what would have appeared if she had released an album right after Hounds of Love. Could she have had a necessary revolution and evolution?

Think of an artist like Charli xcx. I think of her as a modern embodiment of Kate Bush. She wrote music for the “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack, and that came out earlier this year. Now, Music, Fashion, Film is out next month. Someone who is always moving and innovating, perhaps Kate Bush could have done something similar in the mid-1980s. In the article, it is mentioned how Madonna’s celebrity in 1986 was greater than Bush’s because of Like a Prayer. I think they mean 1989, as that is when the single and album came out. Though it is interesting to compare the two. In 1985, Kate Bush took Madonna’s Like a Virgin off the top of the album chart in the U.K. In 1989, they were in very different places. Madonna continuing to push the envelope and growing to new heights of brilliance and celebrity. There were offers from America to tour and do a lot of promotion there, but this was never seriously considered. “I suppose I always thought I’d tour again one day someday and it just didn’t happen. I just went off along the path which led me much more into the studio environment, where I became involved in the production” That is what she told UNCUT’s Andy Gill. Expectations differed when it came to major queens of the U.S. and U.K.. Bush was never going to follow the same path as Madonna. The release of The Sensual World not only saw Bush enter her thirties. There was personal losses and relationships ending. Her mother died in 1992. She lost friends and her relationship with Del Palmer broke down. She quietly married Dan McIntosh in 1992 and they relocated to Berkshire. Bertie, her son, was born in July 1998. I think about The Red Shoes and what Bush was dealing with. Still recovering after the death of her mother, it would have been an impossible time for her. Friend and collaborator Roy Harper said this: “It’s Kate doing what she does, which is running away from the really maddening crowd. She has to protect herself from that. Being in the public eye is like having a grand party going on for 40 years. But how long can that carry on for,  how long can you by giddy in other people’s presence?”. Bush had learned, in the words of a standout track from 2005’s Aerial, how to be invisible.

I do like how Bush threw herself into work after the success of Hounds of Love. Even though it was not an instant reveal and it would take until 1989, there was a lot of working happening behind the scenes. Moving to East Wickham Farm and upgrading the studio that was built in 1983. Upgrading the specifications. Not that Hounds of Love was an album completely made up of Western music. Hello Earth from Hounds of Love an example of Kate Bush influenced by music from Eastern Europe. Part of the song was inspired by a beautiful Georgian folk song called Tsintskaro. I do love how the influence of her brothers was still there. The Trio Bulgarka came via Paddy. Kate Bush first heard them in 1985. They were to provide key to The Sensual World and adding a new magic. In October 1988, Bush made her move and called Joe Boyd. He signed the trio to Hannibal Records. In her mind, the trio would travel to London and do a normal session. It didn’t work that way. She would need to go to them. The Trio Bulgarka did not speak English, and it was so remote where they were. Bush was not a great fan of flying, so there were nerves about travelling out there. I think Del Palmer was more nervous and flight-adverse. The Balkans Airlines plane rattled and it as a very tense flight! The image of Kate Bush arriving in Sofia (Bulgaria’s capital) and at one point having to get out and help push the Bulgarians’ car. Quite basic, eventful and rustic. It would have suited a perhaps-reluctant Kate Bush. She brought a ghetto-blaster into an intense two-day preparation. They were in a suburban schoolroom. Joe Boyd recalled how everyone was say at key-shaped desks that they slid into. “Kate’s favourite moment in the whole weekend was when they needed a drone note in this very ancient tradition, and they took it from the telephone dialtone. Kate loved it!”. Bush flew the trio to Angel Studios in London for overdubs. I did not know about the atmosphere when they were recording. Bush and the Trio Bulgarka exchanged gifts. They brought “clothing, dolls and potteries”. Boyd goes on to say that “in the studio, as sweet as she was, she was fierce. It was hot, and the ladies had headdresses and costumes on because they were being filmed”. This was for Rhythms of the World for the BBC. Bush went over and over this one passage. Boyd said “’I don’t think you’re going to get better’. Kate is always smiling. But there was a look: ‘Don’t fuck with me. I’m the producer. Get the fuck out!’.”

There were doubts about the melding of ancient Balkan tradition and 1980s British technology. Bush bringing in synthesisers and the Fairlight CMI. Joe Boyd struggled to get on with her electronic style. He did not see it as a warm or particularly connective. More distant than she hoped, it may have been a reason she revisited The Sensual World for Director’s Cut in 2011. Joe Boyd highlights Rocket’s Tail as an exception. An occasion of the vocals bending magnificently and this power and intensity coming from the song. The way she worked with her musicians changed between albums. A combination of this live sound and overdubs for the first three albums – The Kick Inside (1978), Lionheart (1978) and Never for Ever (1980) -; The Dreaming (1982) found Bush laying down her parts to click or sync tracks before the drummers got there. Bush would then go into the studio and the drummers and players go in one by one. That lack of communication between the musicians. For Rocket’s Tail, as long-time collaborators Stuart Elliott recalls: “On ‘Rocket’s Tail’, though, she came into the studio and played the keyboard while I pretended I was Phil Collins for the day”. Bush had this open house policy. The Sensual World saw a variety of eclectic musicians work together. Her studio was top-of-the-range and world-class. However, there were a lot of trial-and-error situations. Some musicians did not make a mark. She worked from early morning to late at night. That routine and regime. Though musicians were not booted out. Alan Stivell was invited to play on The Sensual World. His Renaissance of the Celtic Harp album of 1971 has revived the instrument. He travelled from Brittany to East Wickham Farm. Bush offered to collaborate with Stivell, as she really loved Stivell playing Kimiad with his band on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Bush sings and plays keyboard on the track which she produced. That was a 1993 new version. In 2005, for The Independent, she picked her ten favourite World music tracks. She said this of Kimiad: “I first heard this song through my brother correct John, who is a big fan of Alan Stivell. I love the anthemic quality of this piece and I also love the delicacy of his harp playing with his stirring voice”. The Trio Bulgarka came back for The Red Shoes. Bush held a party at her home and they did a concert in her living room! Even if some musicians did not play a major part in some of her albums, they became part of a wider family. Rather than it being calculated, it was musicians being part of this club. There are tremors and worries about age. The Fog “faced ageing and departure heads on”. Bush told Andy Gill that “I have a theory that in a lot of ways there are still parts of our mental worlds that are based around the age of between five and eight and we just kind of pretend to be grown up. I think our essence is there in a much more powerful way when we’re children, and if we’re lucky enough to be treated reasonably well, and can hang on to who we are, you have that at your core for the rest of your life”. Quite powerful, profound and revealing words from an artist barely in her thirties. The Fog mentions “This love of yours is big enough to be frightened of, it’s deep and dark like the water”. Her father Robert (Dr. Bush) is on that track. On Reaching Out: “See how the child reaches out”. There was doubt, heartbreak, change and growing up. Doomed love and broken relationships on Love and Anger and Never Be Mine. This Woman’s Work about a pregnancy where the baby could die and the father having to step up. All, as UNCUT write, foreshadowing the tale of loss and remembrance, Moments of Pleasure, on The Red Shoes.

I think the period between The Sensual World coming out and her working on The Red Shoes dealt her blows and tragedy. Gary Hurst and Alan Murphy dying. Her mother too. All within a few years of one another. It was the end of an era. A more innocent and protected one. A hole had been blown into her world. However, Bush was not going to be taken down. Her cover of Rocket Man for the 1991 tribute to Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Two Rooms, was released in late-1991 and reached twelve in the U.K. This Reggae-cum-sea-shanty reworking of the song gave it this buoyance and merriment. Not taking away from the emotional impact of the lyrics, there was levity, experimentation and some playfulness. All these people working on the track and it being a success. All racing to Pinewood Studios to record the video which Bush directed. Bush balancing the palette. Northumbrian Folk musician Alistair Anderson added to the repertoire. The concertina and pipes came from her love of Bert Lloyd and East European Folk music. Bush saw a parallel between someone going to Mars and this lonely planet being talked about in the 1972 Elton John original. Instead, how about someone going off to Australia 130 years earlier and it being a sea song? That is what Anderson notes. A lightness of the recording, in spite of the fact this person is leaving so many people behind. Anderson was another musician retained in her thoughts and circle. He attended a significant birthday of Kate Bush’s, and he got send Christmas cards for ages. On The Red Shoes, Bush was still throwing herself into everything. Colin Lloyd-Tucker provided backing vocals for The Red Shoes and Constellation of the Heart. He met her first when the KT Bush Band demoed in a Soho studio in 1976. Lloyd-Tucker was working there.

Kate Bush used to live next door to Paddy, and he and Lloyd-Tucker were demoing tracks. She then popped her head in and commented on how their voices melded well. That is how Colin Lloyd-Tucker came to work on The Red Shoes! Sessions at East Wickham Farm would start at 11:30 in the morning and run late into the night. “She already pictured the whole thing in her head”, Lloyd-Tucker remembers. “There’s nothing worse than someone that’s fishing. With Kate, she knew what she was trying to get, and then everybody was working for the same thing. She was very good at expressing….She was a good organiser of people, which is unusual for a musician, and a good motivator”. I will end with recollections from Colin Lloyd-Tucker about some of the anxieties for the sessions on The Red Shoes. “There’s a definite welling of anxiety”. He keenly noted hwo they would be more impactful and powerful of the songs were stripped down. Again, something Bush did for some tracks from that album for 2011’s Director’s Cut. How Lloyd-Tucker met her at Abbey Road Studios, and she was not happy with one of the brass arrangements for a song and that had not gone how she wanted. The struggles and personal strains and troubles affecting her music and mindset. Even though there was a lot of trouble around The Red Shoes, it is a brilliant album with some great moment. The UNCUT feature optimistically looks to 2005’s Aerial and how The Red Shoes was the last Pop album from Bush. Her son was born in 1998, and there was this new happiness and purpose. If things needed to change after Hounds of Love for The Sensual World, it was apparent and more urgent after The Red Shoes. Aerial, perhaps he greatest masterpiece. Full of space, light and air, compared to a more compressed and unnatural The Red Shoes. How Bush released some of her best and most enduring work when she made Aerial, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow (both 2011). Roy Harper gets the final words: “It’s an object lesson in how to live. I always think of Kate in a good situation. I can’t ever think of her with too much sadness around”. A beautiful way to end a wonderful UNCUT feature. Go and buy a copy if you can so that you can read…

THE whole story.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Two Old Flames (Snowed in at Wheeler Street)/Eddie (The Gay Farewell)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow in 2011/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Two Old Flames (Snowed in at Wheeler Street)/Eddie (The Gay Farewell)

__________

ANOTHER occasion…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

where I am pairing Kate Bush’s most recent work with her very earliest. Characters from each. This series is where I highlight characters in her songs and talk around them. Themes that are connected. I will come to Eddie from The Gay Farewell. This is an early Kate Bush song that had more than one title. I am fascinated to examine the track and who Eddie might be. I am starting out with two characters from Snowed in at Wheeler Street. From 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, it was Kate Bush duetting with Elton John. Perhaps the only time that Bush has duetted with another artist for her album. She duetted with Peter Gabriel for his extraordinary song, Don’t Give Up (from 1986’s So). I can’t recall another Kate Bush song where the vocals are divided almost evenly. The characters in the song are actually meant to be lovers. Two old flames. This line reveals that: “Snowed in at Wheeler street/just two old flames keeping the fire going/We look so good together”. This idea that they are two lovers that get separated through time. In Ancient Rome, in the U.S. on 9/11. Switching through periods. The sense that they maybe were lovers and have been in love forever, though they get separated and there is this sense of mystery, what-if, missed connection and memories that stretch through time. I will discuss Elton John and the significance of Bush’s music, and how she considers him to be an idol. I also want to come on to talk about Bush’s voice in 2011 and why the longer and more expansive and explorative tracks on 50 Words for Snow are among her most compelling and underrated.

I want to look inside the song and the inspiration behind it. The lyrics are really interesting. Perhaps in situations of destruction and chaos, they died and then got reincarnated. Taking that photo in New York on 9/11. So close. Was that just before they got caught in the terrorist attack? These lines suggest warfare divided them: “I just let you walk away. I've never forgiven myself/I saw you on the steps in Paris, you were with someone else/Couldn't you see that should've been me? I just walked on by/Then we met in '42 but we were on different sides/I hid you under my bed but they took you away/I lost you in a London smog as you crossed the lane/I never know where you're gonna be next but I know that you'll surprise me/Come with me, I'll find some rope and I'll tie us together”. There is romance, history and mystery all in these lines. Bush writing cinematically and novelistically in a sense. Painting a picture and creating something that is almost a short film. This is what Kate Bush said of a song where she got to share the microphone with a musical hero: “The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart. (…) It’s like two old souls that keep on meeting up. (John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011)”. The two old flames divided lovers through time. Although 50 Words for Snow is a wintery album, Snowed in at Wheeler Street seems to be the least wintery. Its title suggests this barricade of snow trapping people. However, it is only a small part of the story. Fire is more present and important. Bush wanted a unifying wintery theme for her moist recent album. You do get that, but it is not a concept album or something with a single narrative arc. As Graeme Thomson notes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, he observes how there was an intent to “write long, involved pieces, unhurried and full of room”. Bush wanted “the listener to “go on a journey” Bush pushing away from conventional Pop songs. The first album where there was nothing in the way of a clear and short single.

Aside from Among Angels (the final track on 50 Words for Snow), everything was written after the release of Director’s Cut. That was released in May 2011. In a relatively short period of time, Bush composed six long songs for this amazing album. She was elated to work from scratch again after spending so long rearranging and re-recording older songs for Director’s Cut. In a way, this was Bush returning to her earliest days. Writing on the piano and working through the music and finding the right notes and melodies. “The organic, old school ethos was caried through the recording process. The journey between the song as written and the song as recorded was shorter and less torturous than at any time since the late Seventies. She put the piano pieces to tape in long, live single perforemncnes, tracking the instrumental part then adding her vocals”. I feel this was in part a way of going back to basics and getting a more organic sound. Connecting to Elton John, she loved his live album, 17-11-70. That incredible live album that she fell in love with. Closing her eyes and imagining she was there. Released in 1971, the recording was taken from a live WABC-FM radio broadcast on 17th November, 1970. Kate Bush specifically wrote the track with Elton John in mind, so she would been a bit lost if he turned her down. He plays one of the two old flames. She loved his vocal on the song. It is very powerful. John did not want to hear the track before he arrived, and he just went straight into Kate Bush’s home studio and nailed it. A song with so much space and atmosphere, it was Kate Bush truly severing herself from conventional Pop. Snowed in at Wheeler Street was also Bush looking against reincarnation and déjà vu. Subjects she tackled on earlier songs like Strange Phenomena (from 1978’s The Kick Inside) and Symphony in Blue (from 1978’s Lionheart). Graeme Thomson feels Snowed in at Wheeler Street is less graceful and accomplished as other songs on the album. Taking a bit too long to get where its going. Elton John and Kate Bush’s vocals not as well-suited and compatible as you’d think. I would disagree. The song, clocking in at 8:05, is quite epic. I feel that it is a suitable length. I always see this as a short film or piece that should have been animated. How we get to see these two old flames in these historical settings. We get to pan over Wheeler Street (wherever that may be) and an image of this frame or heart-shaped locket with the two lovers in it. I do think there is a natural and instant bond and chemistry between Bush and John. How it is great that the two are cast as lovers. Something that would have seemed so far-fetched to a very young Kate Bush (then Cathy/Catherine) when she first heard his music.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow in 2011

Kate Bush first heard Elton John in 1972 when she was thirteen. She became a massive fan after hearing his hit single, Rocket Man, which she played on repeat and credits with inspiring her own piano-driven style. Bush would later cover the song for a 1991 tribute album to Elton John and Bernie Taupin. I imagine this teenager listening to Rocket Man and being hooked on this artist. Throughout her career, Elton John plated a big role. The two became friends long before he turned up on Snowed in at Wheel Street. Bush was invited to his wedding to David Furnish in 2014. The significance of Bush’s music on John is interesting. He appeared on the 2014 BBC documentary, Kate Bush: Running Up That Hill, and said hearing her on Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up saved his life. How he was in the grip of addiction and something in her performance spoke to him. The power of that song and its importance. The mutual love between them. Bush idolising John in a way. How he was this piano player in the 1970s who was popular and was not your conventional Rock musician. Few artists of the time synonymous with that instrument. Unusual and also very relatable to someone who herself bonded with the piano very young. I do especially love Kate Bush’s voice in 2011. That deeper sound. There is that real sense of depth, both sonically and emotionally. I like how we get these longer and more expansive songs together with this richer and deeper voice. Whilst there is a weariness and sense of loss on Snowed in at Wheeler Street, there is also passion and desire. You do envisage these two old flames across time. Bush jokes in an interview how she did not want the whole thing to be about Ancient Rome! It is a good setting. I have written before how a short film should be made around 50 Words for Snow. Animated versions of the songs. I would love to see Kate Bush bring the visuals to life. As 50 Words for Snow turns fifteen in November, it would be amazing to see videos made for some of the songs. Snowed in at Wheeler Street is one of those underrated songs from an underrated album. Two of my favourite characters from the album, there is sadness that they are so close and have these memories. From Ancient Rome to 2001, they get pulled apart. It shows how Bush, in her fifties, as imaginative and original as ever. How many other artists were writing songs like Snowed in at Wheeler Street in 2011? I think their vocals are wonderful. There is a sense of ageism with some of the criticism.

I will now move on and flip back to the 1970s, and a very early Kate Bush demo. A remarkably interesting song from a young prodigy. I want to bring in more of the 2011 interview from The Quietus and what Kate Bush says about Snowed in at Wheeler Street and Elton John:

“Now, ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ features the vocal talents of Sir Elton John and I was wondering, was the track written with him in mind?

KB: Yes. Absolutely.

How long have you known him?

KB: Oooh. I’ve known him for a long time. He used to be one of my greatest musical heroes. He was such an inspiration to me when I was starting to write songs. I just adored him. I suppose at that time a lot of the well-known performers and writers were quite guitar based but he could play really hot piano. And I’ve always loved his stuff. I’ve always been a fan so I kind of wrote the song with him in mind. And I’m just blown away by his performance on it. Don’t you think it’s great?

Yeah, he really gives it his all.

KB: He sings with pure emotion.

It’s good to hear him belting it out. Back when you were 13 years old and practicing playing the organ in your parents’ house and just starting to write your own songs and lyrics, what was the Elton John album that inspired you?

KB: Well, I love them all and I worked my way through them but my absolute favourite was Madman Across The Water. I just loved that record. I loved the songs on it and the production. It’s a really beautiful album.

Now please correct me if I’m wrong but this song, in my mind at least, seems to hark back to ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ because it’s about a fantasy – almost idealised – lover.

KB: No it isn’t. It’s nothing to do with that at all. The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart”.

In a sense, Kate Bush’s experience of hearing his music when she was a young teen and being blown away by him inspired her decades later. Even though her piano is less hot than what we hear on Madman Across the Water, I do feel that Elton John was in her mind when she approached her 2011 album. Writing a song with him in mind. The one and only time these friends performed on record together. She loved Elton John as a child, and continued to follow his work. He was captivated by her and one particular song helped save his life and keep him going. These two old flames and separated souls beautifully duetting on an underrated jewel from 50 Words for Snow.

IN THIS PHOTO: Elton John sat at his piano in an outtake from his Greatest Hits cover-shoot, 1974/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill

Let’s flip to a song called The Gay Farewell. A character called Eddie. These lines from the song: “I've never seen/Such a sad queen/As Eddie./I've seen him raving/Maybe even in pain/But never/Weeping like a baby”. There is a lot to unpack there. Last month was Pride Month. It gets me thinking about Kate Bush’s association with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. How she explores sexuality through her music. Whilst a lot of her peers were heteronormative and it was unusual for straight artists to discuss gay relationships through their music, Kate Bush did. Kashka from Baghdad (Lionheart, 1978) an early example. I love her wordplay here. Who is the person that influenced this song? I think it was also called Eddie/Queen Eddie. There are demos older than The Gay Farewell. Most likely recorded in 1976 (originally recorded in 1973; it was re-recorded in '76), this demo appears on the bootleg 7″ single, Cathy Demos Volume Three. I first wanted to discuss the breadth of those demos. With a fair few song written in 1973, that would put Bush at thirteen. Maybe even twelve. Rather than these being lyrically simplistic and similar, she traverses quite a lot of ground. Quite poetic in nature, I think that The Gay Farewell is one of the standouts. In terms of her engaging with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. In 1973, tying back to Elton John, he was one of a few L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. artists who were in the mainstream. Others included Patrick Haggerty (Lavender Country), and Jobriath. It was quite rare or unusual to find a huge artist that was trailblazing. So it makes it more impressive that Kate Bush was identifying with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community (though it might have been LGBTQ+ in 1973). Was that as a result of the poetry that she was exposed to through her brother, John? Some of the culture that was in the Bush household? The Gay Farewell is a remarkably bold and advanced song from someone so young. Dreams of Orgonon not only highlighted that aspect and how Bush was pioneering in a way. Or at least she was channelling some of her record collection and stuff her brothers were digging:

“Queen Eddie” is a surprisingly sharp and melancholy song. It’s multifaceted in its thematic concerns and has a grasp of rhythm and melody that “Something Like a Song” doesn’t quite. In “Something,” we had a singer who admired someone from a distance, who they didn’t quite understand. “Queen Eddie” is more mature: it’s about the singer finding out that someone they already know is more complex than they previously realized. In short, it’s a song about learning to empathize.

And Eddie in dire need of empathy. “I’ve never seen/such a sad queen as Eddie,” ponders the singer. “I’ve seen him raving/maybe even in pain/but never weeping like a baby.” Eddie isn’t some macho hero to sweep the damsel off her feet (indeed, he may not even swing that way). He’s a frightened young person whose life is falling apart for reasons not specified in the song. He’s a person who’s noticeably pretty, and on Saturday evening transforms into a drag queen. Bush’s music often displays a strong interest in the feminine side of men, and this is the earliest musical manifestation of her concern. Eddie is someone with no time for masculinity. Everything from the effeminate adjective of “pretty” to the fact he’s saying goodbye to “his boy” points to that (who’s his boy? Is he breaking up with a boyfriend, or is he transitioning?) Even the song’s varying titles, in all probability not penned by Bush, point to a queer reading of the song (“The Gay Farewell” is a pretty wretched pun even by my standards). There’s an element of fetishization here — Eddie is denied an identity outside of his gender and sexuality in a way that’s genuinely harmful. For all that the empathy on display is genuine, so is the singer’s privilege.

Yet for this song’s flaws, it feels like something that needed to be written in 1973, even if it wasn’t heard outside 11 East Wickham. An LGBT rights movement was booming in the UK at the time — The Gay Liberation Front was new and alive, and the First British Gay Pride Rally had been held in London, not too far from the Bushes, a year previously. But these movements were responded to by things like the Nationwide Festival of Light, a puritanical attempt by notorious professional bigot Mary Whitehouse and others to suppress the existence of gay people, as well as any expression of sexuality that didn’t pertain entirely to procreation. The LGBT community needed some allies, and Kate was willing to step into the ring early on. Kate’s complex championing of the queer community has begun. Thus we get “Queen Eddie,” her first camp song.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Ah yes, camp. We may as well define it now, as this won’t be the last instance of discussing camp on this blog. Turning to Susan Sontag’s classic but controversial essay “Notes on Camp,” we discover that camp is the ultimate reification of style over substance. It’s not so much a coherent style as a sensibility; one that revels in the debasement of established tradition. Sontag rightfully comes under fire for her backwards idea that describes camp as something gay people were drawn to, rather than something they shaped from the beginning and used as an engine for sociopolitical change. Still, for flaws, the essay is a good starting point for discussing the camp aesthetic.

So how did Cathy, an ostensibly well-behaved young person bred by a respectable middle-class family and educated at a nun-administrated Catholic school, discover camp? She was unlikely to be hitting London’s gay clubs where camp culture flourished. It’s possible there was some gay literature sprinkled around the house (she was always an Oscar Wilde fan), but it’s far more likely Cathy got in tune with the gay world via her brothers’ record collections. Jay and Paddy were Cathy’s first dealers, bringing home a variety of records — everything from prog rock like King Crimson to contemporary folk music by A. L. Lloyd. Cathy was always by captivated the music, and eventually started independently developing her own taste (the first album she ever bought was Bridge Over Troubled Water).  But what really seemed to stick with her was the glam rock she heard, particularly the more baroque artists — David Bowie, Roxy Music, Elton John (some of you might dispute how glam John is, but come on, “Philadelphia Freedom” is unquestionably draped in glam trappings). Their often melancholy but always glamorous sound clearly caught her ear, and made their way into her songwriting.

So “Queen Eddie” ends up as a mellow glam rock song, closer to “In Every Home a Heartache” than “Get It On.” It’s a song about a glamorous man whose life is falling apart (arguably a Goth rock song in that sense), and thus is mid-tempo and quiet, as such collapses often are (the vocal livens it up though —young Cathy’s vocal model is Elton John. That swinging pop voice is reminiscent of “Tiny Dancer,” which this song is arguably a spiritual successor to). The 1976 re-recording is a bit livelier and more urgent; it sounds like a halfway point between the Cathy demos and The Kick Inside. Cathy can’t be entirely sad — if Eddie is sad, she must dance with him. Thankfully, the song does little to explain just what’s happening to Eddie. The singer is quick to listen to his story but not to speak for him. Instead, they’re Eddie’s friend and ally. In the intervening years, Kate has become a guiding light for queer people. There are plenty of reasons for this. There’s a Guardian article in which singer Rufus Wainwright calls Kate “the older sister that every gay man wants,” and points out that she “connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world.” Being removed from material reality in this sense is a product of privilege. The song doesn’t refrain from tokenizing Eddie. Its approach to the reality of queer people is flawed, but the fact that a 15-year-old is already attempting to empathize with minorities and being at least partially successful is impressive. Already, this is an impressive body of work. Let’s keep exploring it”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander Grey/Pexels

There are a couple of things to pick up on. How there was this anti-gay movement. In the early-1970s, this attempt to supress gay people. Bigotry that Kate Bush would have heard about and been affected by. Even though she was not directly affected and it is unlikely any school friends were openly gay or were being bullied because of their sexuality – though I cannot say for sure -, that is not to say that she was detached from the real world. Even if Bush does not explore homophobia and some of her camp songs have flaws and there is some tokenism, she at least was making attempts to counteract or protest what was happening. A show of love and understanding against this strain and stain of hatred. Bush often got accused of being apolitical and not a serious artist. These critics clearly did not hear her demos and songs like The Gay Farewell. It is interesting looking at The Gay Farewell in 1973. This article look at “lesbian, gay, bi and trans history in terms of social, political and legislative change, representation and visibility”. Let’s look two years either side of the recording of The Gay Farewell:

“1971

The Committee for Homosexual Equality, keeping the same initials, becomes the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE).

The Nullity of Marriage Act was passed, explicitly banning same-sex marriages between same-sex couples in England and Wales.

1972

The first Pride is held in London, attracting approximately 2,000 participants.

Gay News, Britain’s first gay newspaper is founded.

1973

The Campaign for Homosexual Equality holds the first British gay rights conference in Morecambe, Lancashire.

Brighton's first Pride takes place, organised by the Sussex Gay Liberation Front.

1974

London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, a London-based information and support helpline, is established.

Jan Morris, Welsh historian, author and travel writer, releases Conundrum, a personal account of her transition.

Maureen Colquhoun came out as the first lesbian Labour MP.

Stephen Whittle, trans man and prominent activist, co-founds a Manchester based "TV/TS" group; a group for trans people.

The First National TV/TS (Transvestite/Transsexual Conference) is held in Leeds.

1975

British journal, Gay Left, begins publication.

The Liberal Party (now the Liberal Democrats) became the first UK political party to support LGBT rights, passing a motion at conference to support ‘full equality for homosexuals’, including equalising the age of consent”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Maureen Colquhoun in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

A young Kate Bush would no doubt have been influenced by the first Pride march that happened in London in 1972. Seeing scenes on the news. It is all well and good seeing this and wanting to do something. For an aspiring artist, how to turn this desire and passion into a song? Quite a hard task for someone so young. I love the lyrics of the song. Quite playful, characterful and funny/sad, there is this standout verse: “On Saturday afternoon/He was really fine to him/But on Saturday evening/Oh, well Eddie was so pretty/But now his boy is leaving/But now his boy is leaving/But now his boy is leaving him”. Also, Dreams of Orgonon writing how Bush is seen as a big sister to many in the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. It is difficult to say who exactly Bush had in mind with the song. Eddie Buczynski (1947–1989) was an  American gay rights activist and a pioneer in the queer neo-pagan/Wiccan movement. In 1972, Buczynski and his partner Herman Slater opened The Warlock Shop in Greenwich Village, which became a vital underground hub for the local gay community. He later founded the Minoan Brotherhood in 1977 specifically for gay and bisexual men. That is an A.I.-generated search, but is is truth. Perhaps not the ‘Eddie’ in The Gay Farewell, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think Bush had him in mind. I am going to end by talking about the early demos and why they deserve to be as heralded and discussed as Kate Bush’s albums. Kate Bush being a queer ally and icon was something that was ingrained in her. Not something that she built up to become. In 2018, Attitude celebrated Kate Bush as a queer icon, forty years after the release of her debut single, Wuthering Heights:

“Kate’s deep and thoughtful understanding of men in her songs is an underrated value in her arsenal; there are the men sent to war in ‘Army Dreamers’, or the kindly but increasingly distant father figure in ‘The Fog’, the misunderstood mathematician in “Pi,” and, most of all, the exquisite ‘This Woman’s Work’, where she sings about parenthood and birth from the male perspective. And no one could inhabit Peter Gabriel’s lyric as the voice of reason and comfort in ‘Don’t Give Up’ better than Kate Bush.

Perhaps most poignant of all, the father-son narrative of ‘Cloudbusting’ climaxes with the Shakespearean pun “your son’s coming out.” The rush of hearing Bush equate positivity, happiness, open-mindedness, and the promise of good things with the emergence – sexually or otherwise – into the world at large remains a profound thrill.

Kate made hits of these songs, and they remain enduring in the public consciousness. She brought the joys and sorrows of hidden human life to the forefront through normalising phrases and ideas, and streamlined all elements of her craft into a unique musical and visual style.

She studied movement with the choreographer and mime artist Lindsay Kemp at his dance studios in Covent Garden; Kemp had worked with Bowie and had a small but memorable role in 1973’s The Wicker Man as a sinister pub landlord. Bush had seen Kemp’s production of Flowers and was rapt.

Her theatricality didn’t just extend to her music, be it the cabaret Weimar camp of ‘Coffee Homeground’ or the flamboyant ‘Hammer Horror’: Her wide-eyed facial expressions, interpolation of mime, and her swooping, balletic movements made not just ‘Wuthering Heights’ but all of her early performance films iconic.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Today, the Kate Bush of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a continuing beacon of pop culture. Take ‘The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience’ in Brighton in 2013, where hundreds of Kate Bush lookalikes donned wigs and red dresses to stage a warm-hearted recreation of the ‘Wuthering Heights’ video; further such events took place in London’s Brockwell Park and at Dublin’s St. Anne’s Park in the ensuing years.

And who could forget Noel Fielding’s good-natured parody on Let’s Dance for Comic Relief in 2011, a performance that garnered the attention of the lady herself, who sent a good luck message.

The fact that the Kate of ‘Wuthering Heights’ – a figure of incredible talent but, at the time (and to a lesser degree to this day), somewhat roundly mocked – blossomed into the art-pop auteur of 1982’s The Dreaming and 1985’s Hounds of Love, a woman of universally-acknowledged originality, creative excellence, and innovation, indeed an artist who changed the landscape of pop music forever, chimes with the gay audience too.

What at first the public may mistake for novelty, or frivolity, reveals itself over time to be intelligent, compassionate, and wise.

Kate Bush is an LGBT icon for several reasons, not least because she built a successful career, without compromise, on her own terms, with thorough originality, ingenuity, and, crucially, trueness to herself. She did, and continues to do, things her own way, and is undaunted in her distinctiveness and navigation of the peculiarities of life.

Who else could make a song about intercourse with a snowman (‘Misty’) seem plausible? Who else would find both eroticism and melancholy in the humdrum as Kate does in ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’?

Anohni Hegarty told The Guardian in 2005 that her first glimpse of Kate, singing ‘Wuthering Heights’ now forty years ago, was a seminal experience.

“She was so magical: the world she inhabited was, especially poetically, a sort of fairyland. It was very sensuous and very pagan, and she sang so high – it was madcap,” she said.

And it is that sensuality, magic, and poeticism, that otherness and courageousness, that has carried Kate Bush, for forty years, through the choppy, murky waters of pop music and carved a firm place in our hearts.

She is, and always has been, herself, with no apologies. And for that, we salute you Kate Bush”.

I am going to wrap up soon. There have been various release, bootlegs and such that have collated the demos. Nothing in the way of an extensive official release, Kate Bush now would not perhaps want these songs remastered and widely heard. Just because it was such a long time ago. Even so, these recordings are available on YouTube. Despite some basicness in terms of the piano playing – compared to the leaps she would take by the time The Kick Inside arrived in 1977 -, and the vocals not being that different, songs like The Gay Farewell are classics. Incredible words and a fantastic performance. I cast my mind to East Wickham Farm in 1973. This girl growing up at a time when there was this divide between gay rights pioneers and legislation. Those trying to tear them down. Divide and homophobia alongside this desire for equality, representation and acceptance. Tense and strange for someone so young. Rather than write in an angry way or get ‘political’, Eddie is a character that seems so real. You can picture him. The way Bush paints him. I am going to finish here. Three very different characters. Two divided lovers (old flames) in a 2011 song that evokes so many different settings and times in history. Another is a simpler song dating back to 1973. This character called Eddie. I still have ammunition for this feature series, so you will have to wait to see which characters…

COME next.