FEATURE: Spotlight: Kenshi Yonez

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Yohji Uchida

 

Kenshi Yonezu

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THIS artist might not be…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jiro Konami

on your radar, but Kenshi Yonezu is one of the biggest Japanese artists in the world. His music combines J-Pop, Rock and Electronic. He is also noted for composing the theme songs to the Academy Award-winning animated feature, The Boy and the Heron. I must admit that I am somewhat new to him but I can identify that Yonezu is going to make headway in 2026 and will definitely get his music played further and wider. His most recent album is last year’s LOST CORNER. I am starting out with an interview from Forbes from April:

“Though he may be one of the biggest Japanese artist in the world, he doesn’t want to talk about it, but rather use his music to speak for him. It may be one of the many reasons why he’s reached domestic and international success, creating experimental Vocaloid songs as Hachi in 2009 and, later, his own music, which includes the theme songs to the Academy Award-winning animated feature film The Boy and The Heron and the popular anime series Chainsaw Man.

Known for his eclectic blending of J-pop, rock, and electronic sounds, Yonezu’s music has been said to pull “listeners into a unique and dynamic musical journey" with his captivating melodies, masterful visual concepts, and deep, thoughtful lyrics. His music has been his gateway of expression, as the 34-year-old “shy” artist admits he finds it difficult to have a conversation, often leading him to second-guess his responses. But, when he’s on stage and in the studio, he becomes a different person – one where he feels the most “open and free.”

“When I’m performing music, that’s music I’ve created and been playing for a long time,” Yonezu says through an interpreter over Zoom. “I had this time to work out my feelings as I’m [making] music. [My music is] very honest in terms of how I feel because I know that it comforts me.”

Sirikul: Your music sound has changed throughout each project – from pop to R&B to rock to a bit of jazz. How do you define your sound and music taste?

Yonezu: I’m not really interested in pursuing my own style per se or one fixed style. Since the beginning, I’ve always been more of the type to pursue what I’m interested in. What I feel is fun for me at the moment [is] the type of music I’ve always loved: alternative rock. That was what I loved initially. There was a time when I was in a band, but unfortunately, being in a band wasn’t really for me. When I started working on my own was when I really released myself from thinking about one particular style. When working on your own, there are no restrictions about what you have to do. I was free to do anything. If I had to define myself, I do believe I am pursuing J-pop.

We have seen a wave of Japanese influence come in and out of American culture—the popularity of Japanese anime and films and the increase of Japanese musicians and artists. Being involved with both music and [your music in] popular animations, how have you seen this shift in appreciation in Japanese culture and content from the West?

I do sense the change and shift [in the West] very strongly. The COVID pandemic was the catalyst for Japanese anime to expand even more in the global scene. That helped a lot. When I started, it was the Vocaloid scene. So the internet was huge in that respect, serving as a way for cultural exchange between my music and people from other countries. That was part of it. The internet isn’t always good, but it can be used for good purposes, [despite] some negative aspects to it. However, the fact that people overseas listen to my music makes me very happy.

Sirikul: You’ve been involved with many beautiful anime series and films, including Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning film The Boy and the Heron. You’ve also beautifully illustrated your album and single covers. Recently, there has been a rise of artificial intelligence copying artwork, including Studio Ghibli’s work. What is your take on this growing trend of using A.I. to create art?

Yonezu: In terms of A.I., it’s a huge problem or theme for people working in music. I've heard songs on the internet where people have used A.I. to imitate me. They're really well crafted. When I listen to these songs, they're supposedly my voice- sometimes I really think that was me. Did I actually sing that? Perhaps there might not be a need for myself because A.I. can take over. Of course, when most people come across something beneficial or easy to access, they'll use it because it's there. So, why wouldn't you use it? But my generation of people [has] an aversion towards things created by A.I.. Eventually, there will be generations to come who will accept it wholeheartedly. You might not feel the same way we do at the moment. Of course, when I started in the Vocaloid scene, [many] people used to say,' these aren't songs [and] you're demeaning songs' [in a trivial way.] It [was] silly. Nowadays, for young people at the time in my generation, it was fascinating. You can't equate A.I. with Vocaloid. They're totally different things, and you can't speak of them in the same terms, but it's not exactly the right way to go. But in culture, what we accept as natural now or [what they're used to] becomes a form of habit- it depends on the age you're living in”.

I want to finish with a couple of interviews. Billboard spoke with Kenshi Yonezu on the ‘unconscious’ links between IRIS OUT/JANE DOE, reconnecting with ChainsawMan, and the influence of Kiraru Utada. Yonezu also talked about his day-to-day life following an important and busy world tour. As I am new to this artist and a little unfamiliar with his sound and world, I have been learning a lot reading these new interviews. I am going to follow Kenshi Yonezu as we head into next year:

“First off, tell us about how you’ve been doing. Since wrapping up the Kenshi Yonezu 2025 TOUR / JUNK in April, you’ve likely spent much of the past few months focused on creating. After completing such a large-scale tour, including overseas performances, has there been any changes in your mindset?

Experiencing concerts in countries I’d never been to before on the world tour, in Korea, the U.S., and various cities in Europe, was huge for me. I don’t want to sound disrespectful to those who’d already been listening to my music outside Japan, but since I hadn’t really thought about it much before, I was surprised by the realization that, “So many people have been waiting for me.” I was welcomed so warmly, and even heard voices calling out “Hachi,” a name I haven’t been addressed by in years, which made me genuinely happy. It left me with a very strong feeling of refreshing clarity.

After going through that, I feel like I’ve started aiming for a more productive way of living this year — something I’d always struggled with before. Looking back on my life, if I hadn’t been accepted through music, I think it would have been terrifying. I wasn’t someone who could function socially, just spending all my time making music or drawing at home, neglecting everything else. But now I feel like I’m gradually moving away from that kind of life. It’s very ordinary stuff, but I’ve started doing simple things like keeping a daily routine and paying attention to my health. For most people it might sound like, “Really? Only now?” But for me, it feels like my way of living has shifted a lot. I can’t say for sure whether the concerts were the direct reason, but I do feel they’ve had a big influence.

Having written “KICK BACK” for CHAINSAW MAN before, were you mindful of any links between that song and the new ones?

From the start, I felt strongly that I didn’t want it to turn into something like “KICK BACK Part 2.” I never really felt that risk with “JANE DOE,” but with “IRIS OUT,” I sensed that if I let my guard down, it could easily end up becoming “KICK BACK Part 2.” So I placed a lot of importance on how to differentiate it from “KICK BACK.” It’s a song with a complex and eccentric structure, full of dynamism, so if that’s like a rollercoaster, then I wanted “IRIS OUT” to be more like a free-fall ride — starting with a jolt, racing straight ahead, and ending abruptly. I was very conscious of giving it that kind of decisiveness.

Hikaru Utada is an extremely multi-faceted artist, and throughout their career they’ve given form to many different expressions. With “JANE DOE,” it feels like the sense of loss that often appears in their work is being drawn out. What are your thoughts on that?

Two of my personal Hikaru Utada favorites are “FINAL DISTANCE” and “Dareka no Negai ga Kanau Koro.” I first heard those songs in junior high, and they were the starting points for Utada-san’s presence becoming a big part of my life. I went to one of their concerts recently, where they performed the original “DISTANCE” in a remixed version. It was presented with a happiness and overflowing sense of euphoria that stood in contrast to “FINAL DISTANCE.” They were singing “hitotsu niwa narenai” (though we can’t be one) while dancing joyfully, and I thought it was wonderful. This is just my personal impression, but I feel that kind of duality, ambiguity, and kind of helplessness is something that lives strongly in their music. I felt there was something in common with what Reze embodies. Of course, I’m not saying Utada-san is like Reze”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Yohji Uchida

In an NME interview from last month, we get to hear from an artist who has a distinctly Japanese quirk to it. Something he is very proud of. Kenshi Yonezu discusses his “contributions to ‘Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc’: the “free-fall ride” of ‘Iris Out’ and his massive, melancholic collaboration with Hikaru Utada”. I am not sourcing the entirety of the interview. However, there are sections that caught my eye that I wanted to include here:

“‘Iris Out’ captures Yonezu’s ability to plunge into a work and create something apt for it while retaining his musical flair, here capturing the topsy-turvy electronic sound found in many Vocaloid songs. On the other end is the plaintive ‘Jane Doe’, Reze Arc’s closing number and a passing-of-the-torch moment of sorts. On it, Yonezu – one of the biggest names in Japan’s current Reiwa Era – collaborates with Hikaru Utada, who is arguably the biggest J-pop performer of the preceding Heisei Era (1989 to 2019).

“I reflected on the times I spent alone in my bedroom making music and tried to recapture that pure, childlike enthusiasm I had back then”

“At first, I thought it probably shouldn’t be me singing. My male voice didn’t feel at all appropriate for the ending of the movie. I had a strong sense from the start that the song needed to be led by a female voice to work properly,” Yonezu says of ‘Jane Doe’. “I really like the duet ‘I’ve Seen It All’ by Björk and Thom Yorke from Dancer in the Dark. I felt that kind of nuance would fit perfectly, and started creating the song with that in mind.”
Yonezu knows something about duality, having changed the fabric of J-pop in the last decade as the first prominent Vocaloid creator to go from an internet space to the mainstream. He brought the unpredictability and sonic curiosity of that online world to a greater audience, and helped pave the way for the likes of Ado and former NME Cover act YOASOBI – among others who got their start in Vocaloid or grew up with Yonezu. Those acts, too, have broken through to become central names in 2020s Japanese music, an era that has also seen them head out further into the world thanks to tie-ups with popular media franchises and stand-alone global jaunts. Earlier in 2025, Yonezu completed his first world tour, performing sold-out shows across Asia, Europe and North America.

Yonezu is beloved internationally as an eclectic maestro able to veer from rip-roaring rock built for hyper-violent franchises to contemplative ballads such as ‘Spinning Globe’, used in the end credits for director Hayao Miyazaki’s purported swansong, The Boy And The Heron. Reflecting that range of collaboration, he is the rare artist in fragmented times to connect with his country’s full demographic range, to the point he’s also the writer of one of this century’s biggest Japanese kids’ songs”.

I am excited to learn more about Keshi Yonezu. Maybe different to other artists I have featured on my site, I have been struck by his work. IRIS OUT is this amazing song and piece of work that I was instantly stunned by. Compelled me to dig deeper and find out about Yonezu. I look forward to a potential album or further work next year from this incredible Japanese composer and artist. I would compel everyone to allow yourself to fall…

INTO his incredible sonic world.

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Follow Kenshi Yonezu

FEATURE: And So Is Love: How Kate Bush Can Affect and Influence Relationships and Human Understanding

FEATURE:

 

 

And So Is Love

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

How Kate Bush Can Affect and Influence Relationships and Human Understanding

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MAYBE it is obvious…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

but I sort of feel like there is this natural attraction when you discover that someone loves the same artist as you. Not to say there should be a Kate Bush dating club but, as she is a big part of my life and someone very important to me, I do gravitate towards people who have a similar affection for her. Not that it is a deal-breaker at all, though I do sort of getting miffed when someone says they have never heard of Kate Bush or they sort of muddle and think where they have heard her from. Not that I would ever distance myself from someone who does not know who Kate Bush is or does not like her. However, those who know Kate Bush and dig her music understand why she is so important and why her complete and incredible catalogue should be heard. People have definitely fallen in love over their mutual respect for Kate Bush. I don’t think there is any website or club specific enough that would bring Kate Bush fans together. However, as someone who is single and music and Kate Bush are major parts of my life, I do think that someone I end up will at least understand Kate Bush. Not that they would be as obsessive necessarily. It is interesting considering people who get together based on their love of particular artists. Or just form friendships. I live in London and do not know many people who know that much about Kate Bush. Where I work, most of my colleagues have a tiny bit of knowledge. Wider afield, it can be a bit hit-and-miss. There is that mixed blessing of being able to talk about her and maybe introduce her but also that thing that people do not know about Bush. Even with Stranger Things giving Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), there is a feint moment of recognition but not much beyond that. No memories of her wider work.

This is not a feature about a quest to date someone who loves Kate Bush. More broadly, I am fascinated by Kate Bush’s music and how it approaches love. How she writes about it. I do think her songs about relationships and love can affect people and their relationships. I am writing another feature about how her music is largely positive. How there are very few of her songs that are negative or attack people. In a 1989 interview with NME, Kate Bush suggested that pretty much everything she wrote was a love song:

“To Kate Bush, sensuality is obviously a positive, receptive, natural experience, far removed from Happy Mondays-style chemistry-set hedonism. Check that video, "walking through these woods, with the weather changing, the elemental energies of the earth, wind, pollen, sunset, bite of hail, continually walking through the same environment with that sense of the changing world".

To the believer this is real sensuality, communion with nature, oneness with the earth. To the cynic it’s a load of hippie shit in any language. And predictably, at the centre of the whole philosophy, there’s the doctrine of, yes, love. So choose your path carefully, children…

"Love is a wonderful powerful thing," trills Kate, without a hint of Fotherington-Thomas. "In many ways nearly every song I’ve ever written is a love song. It’s very important to try and learn to love people as much as you can. But we all get so scared. It’s only when people are at points in their lives when they get such shocks that they take it as it really should be. The rest of us just seem to piss about”.

I think her songs of love and desire go beyond the commercial and traditional. I do think that nearly everything Kate Bush has written is about love and relationships,. However, unlike most artists, Bush adds something deeper and more interesting. Cinema, literary and fantasy run through songs that are also very human and emotional.

The lyrics and vocals in these songs can affect relationships. I think they make us think about love and connections in different ways. The way in which she writes about people and the observations she makes. You can say this applies to so many artists but, when I think of Kate Bush, her hugely expressive voice conveys a wide range of emotions; creating a sound that is both unique and personally resonant for listeners. I have changed the way I form friendships and view people after listening to Kate Bush’s music. I would like to think I feel more deeply about the world and appreciate the complexities of people. Even though Kate Bush’s songs are largely positive, it is not like she sugar-coats or glosses over things. She does spotlight darker realities and elements. In terms of personal relationships, even though I am single, I think I am less depressed and down about it. Kate Bush was in a long-term relationship with Del Palmer and had some shorter relationships, She had these close friendships too. Where she would write about these now and then, for the most part, I feel Bush was keener to turn the focus to other people. I don’t think any other artists writes as arrestingly and interestingly about love as Kate Bush. I am someone who struggles a bit with social cues and can find it intimidating being in social situations. Maybe it is her voice or how she delivers her songs, though I think I have become braver and less timid because of her. Also, where I used to stress and blame myself for being single, Bush has made me realise a number of things. Complexities of relationships and people. Their good nature too. I think I have discovered more about the human condition and the nuances of human beings through Kate Bush’s music. Her songs of love and desire have given me so much. Maybe made me a kinder and more patient person. One might ask how that is possible. I think it is her use of language and the way she sings these songs that I carry around with me.

In terms of the way I approach people in terms of temperament and tolerance, I often draw from Kate Bush’s music. Maybe not her love songs. However, it is the imagination and intelligence in her lyrics that has released something deep inside of me. In terms of specific examples, I often refer to Hounds of Love’s title track. I am writing about that soon as it turns forty in February. How there is this self-confession of timidity and cowardice. Such a brave thing to reveal in a song. I am more honest with myself and less ashamed to reveal things like flaws and cowardice. I think I am more world-conscious because of Kate Bush. Thinking more deeply about other people and those less fortunate. Perhaps more affectingly, putting myself in someone else’s shoes. Not only nodding to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), there are many examples of where Kate Bush sings about patience, understanding and tolerance. Psychologically and emotionally fascinating, there are entire articles you could write about her lyrics and human relationships. When Kate Bush is being personal about love and loss, there is not this aggression or blaming. Tender but heartfelt, this has definitely affected me. Maybe her music does not have the ability for me to find a relationship and overcome psychological issues that affect me. When Pete Paphides wrote about his experience of seeing Kate Bush live for Before the Dawn, a couple of his thoughts struck me: “Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush”; “Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it”.

There is a lot in that. I feel I am less pessimistic and catastrophising because of Kate Bush and her positive nature. It is not only her music. Listening to interviews, she is always so warm, kind and accessible. That sense of making us feeling something good is going to happen undoubtably has impacted my relationships with other people. From the potential of being in a relationship one day to being kinder and more patient with others, I have Kate Bush to thank to a degree. We all fall in love with Kate Bush for different reasons. In 2022, The Guardian spoke with various artists about their experiences. Something Rae Morris said is very true: “Her music is all about combining small details with spiritual, otherworldly, wider cinemascape stuff: a really grand, imaginative to-the-moon-and-back scale, but also the sound of the blood running through your veins”. I also think I understand that love and a true relationship cannot be rushed. That maybe it is not the most important thing. By learning to think about people more positively or patiently, maybe it makes me less desperate to be in a relationship so I have that ally and can sort of escape. However, there is escapism in Kate Bush’s music that means, when the worst of humanity and people drags me down, I can cope and immerse myself in her unique and welcoming universe. Her music is so enriching and inspiring. Maybe circling back to my first thoughts. It would be cool if I met a woman who was a fan of Kate Bush and there was this club or website where you could meet people like-minded. I am not going to stress about it. When thinking about who I am as a person, how I interact with people and how I view independence and love concurrently, Kate Bush’s music has affected and changed me so much. In positive ways. This incredible artist, in so many ways, has given me…

SO much.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Jessie J

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Osborn

 

Jessie J

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I am eager…

to get to an exceptional interview from The Guardian in a second. With her new album, Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time, Jessie J has been speaking about her career. She also talks about “Endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, suicide and gaslighting”. Subjects that make their way onto her new album. I have selected parts of the interview to highlight, but it is a long and fascinating read. Born Jessica Cornish, many might know her best for her earliest singles like Price Tag, and Domino (2011). This year has seen some incredible women in music release these hugely open and brave albums. Bold, fearless, funny, frank and ambitious, I have already commended albums by Lily Allen, Florence + The Machine and Hayley Williams. However, Jessie J has released possibly the most powerful album of 2025. I will come to a review for Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time. It is an album that has plenty of joy and positivity, though it does have its challenging and personal moments that take you aback. I want to get to that interview with The Guardian. Starting with a moment that changes Jessie J’s life:

“Cornish was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy.’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.

“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry, but your test results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it? That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Felicity McCabe

She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but this time I just strolled down with a gown on and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”

Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Felicity McCabe

Last year, she moved back to Britain with her partner, the Danish-Israeli basketball player Chanan Colman, and Sky. “I just felt the new chapter was going to be here. It was the day that Trump got elected that I left. It was the day we planned to leave, so it felt aligned.” Did she want to be far away from him? “As far away as possible, please. I feel awful for the people who are still there. So many of my friends are struggling mentally with America right now. It actually scares me that I can’t even get into that mindset to try to understand what he does. It’s the polar opposite of what I believe in, which is equality and love and everybody having the freedom to enjoy the life they want to.” Does she think Trump is stopping them from living that life? “Of course he is, yeah. So many of my friends in America are scared because they’re not what he wants them to look like and be like and feel like.” And what is that? “Him!”

Two of the songs on the album are about the death of loved ones. Comes in Waves addresses the baby she lost, with Cornish singing: “I hate how much I miss the future we never made.” In 2021, when she didn’t have a partner, she got pregnant by IVF, and miscarried after 10 weeks. Was it a tough decision to become a single mother? “No, I wanted to be a mum, and I wasn’t in a relationship. I had endometriosis and I’d done all these tests, and they said, ‘Your egg count is low and if you don’t get pregnant in the next year it’s highly unlikely that you will be able to conceive naturally.’

Obviously, that wasn’t true, because I did in the end.” The lyrics to Comes in Waves are so raw, Cornish wearing her vulnerability like gossamer armour. But it’s also a song of defiance that anticipates the birth of Sky, promising “Next time you come to me I’ll make a place for you to stay”. Again, she sings the line for me. “And I did. I fucking did it. I’m so proud of myself. I went full term. I had a C-section, which I didn’t want, but it didn’t matter.” Does she feel the baby she lost is still with her? “Always. Always. They say the DNA of a baby stays within you, so the bit of that DNA will be in Sky and in me for ever. But I do feel it didn’t happen because I wasn’t meant to do it on my own.”

The song I’ll Never Know Why is equally painful. Here she berates herself for not seeing that an unnamed friend was “lost and hopeless”, and she asks him: “How could you say goodbye without saying goodbye?” In 2018, soon after she won Singer, her bodyguard and close friend Dave Last died unexpectedly. I ask her if this song is about him. She nods. Silence. Did he take his own life? Again, she nods, struggling for words. “I miss him so much, man. He was my guy for seven years. He was like my big brother. It makes me so sad that there was a loneliness there that meant it got to that before he would call me. I hope it’s a song that can help people who are left behind. And I also hope it helps people who are thinking of doing it to see a different perspective of what they would leave behind and how much they’re loved and wanted.”

Cornish kept herself together while talking about her miscarriage and cancer, but now the tears come. “He was one of my favourite people in the world,” she says. When they were on tour, he was the first and last person she saw every day. “After every show we’d go for a walk and he’d always ask, ‘Have you got your hoodie?’ I’m performing the song at the Royal Variety Show and I’ll be wearing a hoodie.”

She calls the album her journey through grief. Although it concludes on a positive note (with songs Living My Best Life and H.A.P.P.Y), it ends before the giddy high of having a baby with Colman. Cornish can’t wait to write about this on her next album. She says she’s never loved in the way she loves Colman. “Birthing someone’s child is so unique. It’s for ever engraved in our relationship because I’m looking at my son and it’s literally his and my face mashed together. That’s a different kind of love.”

And doubtless she’ll be reflecting about the cancer on her next album. She’s been given the all-clear, but she knows there’s a chance of it returning. Life’s too short to worry about that, though, she says. There’s so much to be getting on with – motherhood, touring, writing, recording, standup comedy. “I’ve just got to hope it doesn’t come back,” she says. “And if it does, then we’ll fucking deal with that when we get to it”.

Not to be downbeat or morbid, but Jessie J’s cancer diagnosis is a big part of her life now and obviously impacts her music too. I want to bring in The Times and their interview from August. Jessie J discussed how devastating the diagnosis was. Now, she is in a place where she needs to heal. I did not know that Jessie J was diagnosed with ADHD after the birth of her son. There has been turbulence and challenges along the way. However, you hope that next year is going to bring nothing but success and happiness:

“But, as anyone who’s been through cancer treatment knows, emotions can veer wildly between being able to cope one minute and crying uncontrollably the next. “The other night,” she says, “Mum was massaging my boob for me, because I can’t touch the scars. And I started sobbing, ‘I can’t believe this has happened.’ She was like, ‘I wish it was me,’ and then I’m crying, she’s crying …” She pauses, pulling herself together, then adds, “I’m so glad it’s not her.”

Shortly after Sky was born Cornish was diagnosed with ADHD. “No one was surprised,” she says, smiling. “I’ve got no filter. I was asked to do Big Brother and my whole family said, ‘No way!’ I would just tell everybody everything.”

She talks fast, pivoting in random directions. Her mum is staying with her, and they’ve been having a clear-out. Tidying calms her brain. “Some people run, some people draw, I shed,” she says with a laugh, before suddenly announcing: “Every time there’s a full moon I want to shave my head so bad! Mum has to stop me.”

In 2018 Cornish took part in the sixth season of Singer, a Chinese TV singing competition. When the offer came she was feeling low. “I was about to turn 30 and didn’t know what to do with my life,” she remembers. “I love China, so I said yes, and my manager said, ‘Do you want to know what this actually involves?’ I was like, ‘Nope! I’ll do it.’”

She turned up in Changsha, Hunan, not realising that she was a contestant. “I thought I was going on as a guest,” she admits. “It was a plot twist — but it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my career.” Impulsively agreeing to such a thing feels very ADHD — and arguably quite brat. In any case, Cornish went on to become the first non-Chinese contestant to win the series, with about a billion viewers watching the live final.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Osborn

It’s a long way from hunkering down to recover from breast cancer surgery, which has delayed the release of her sixth album to later this year. The pathology report after her mastectomy showed that the surgeons had got all of the cancer, so she’s feeling cautiously confident. “People think, once you’ve got the all-clear, now it’s done,” she says. “But I’ve got another surgery [to improve the symmetry of her implant with her other breast] and I need to heal, so I have to figure out the rest of this year.” As for worrying about the cancer returning, she’s pragmatic. “There’s a one in two chance,” she says, quoting the statistic that is true for all of us in the UK.

Part of her thinks that the cancer came along to remind her to look after herself as she emerges back into the high-pressure world of pop. “Maybe this has happened to go: slow your roll, girl, let’s have a little reassessment,” she says. Serendipitously her new music seems to speak to what she’s going through. “It’s weird,” she says, nodding. “The next song is called Believe in Magic and I wrote it in 2022 when I was pregnant. But the lyrics resonate so much with now: ‘If I die today/ wanna know that I made it/ such a waste being jaded/ see all the little things that fix a broken heart.’”

Cornish is enjoying being Jessie J again. Performing for 80,000 people at Capital’s Summertime Ball in London — a week before her mastectomy — was a highlight, and she’s looking forward to a big show in September, performing at Radio 2 in the Park in Chelmsford.

But she also loves the smaller gigs where she can really see and speak directly with her audience. “Ever since I was a child I’ve loved connecting with people,” she says. “Everything I’ve been through, whether it’s a miscarriage or breast cancer, is deepening my experience, to connect with more people.” As we wrap up she tells me with characteristic frankness that she’s off post-mastectomy bra shopping. When she says that more career success doesn’t matter, I’d usually be inclined to be cynical, but I believe her.

“It’s obviously great to achieve stuff,” she says, shrugging. “But if I die tomorrow, it won’t matter where my songs have charted. What matters is how I’ve made people feel”.

Apologies if the order is a bit scattered, but the final interview I want to source is from Elle from April. Jessie J released NO SECRETS. A song that references a brutal period where she suffered a miscarriage, “‘I lost my baby, but the show must go on’ - the opening line from No Secrets cuts straight to the heart of it all. Jessie is not here to pretend – not about fame, not about motherhood and certainly not about pain”. I do love this interview. Jessie J is so honest and open. Having to recall some traumatic moments, she is such a strong and inspiring person:

“’This doesn’t feel like a comeback,’ she muses. ‘It feels like a celebration of everything I’ve done up to this point. I don’t feel like I’ve had a hiatus from success. I’ve just had a hiatus from putting out an album in the UK and worldwide. People kept saying to me today, “You know you’re legendary?” And I’m like… I don’t feel that way.’

She doesn’t say it with false modesty – more like someone still learning how to live inside their own legacy.

If you were around in the early 2010s, you didn’t hear Jessie J, real name Jessica Cornish, so much as feel her – usually through the soles of your feet or the back of your skull, depending on how loudly Domino was playing at your local Topshop.

Do It Like a Dude was her swaggering, bisexual, take-no-prisoners debut. Price Tag made her an overnight international star - and bought her her first house. And by the time Bang Bang dropped with Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj, she was pop’s resident power belter, known for making every note sound like it had something to prove.

PHOTO CREDIT: India Fleming

‘Bang Bang still haunts me because I always have to sing it, and it’s so high,’ she interludes. ‘As much as it’s wonderful to have that success, it’s also complicated. I don’t want it to be misconstrued that I dislike the song or the experience – it’s been one of the most joyful times of my career - but with big hits, you always feel like you’re fighting them.’

‘I think it’s my best work,’ she says. ‘It’s been a long journey with lots of people in and out, but me being the main thread. I wrote all of it. It really represents the layered human. We’re all happy, sad, grieving, joyful. We all want a dance. We all want to cry. I feel so lucky to hold people’s hands through moments they’re struggling in.’

‘I lost my baby, but the show must go on’ - the opening line from No Secrets cuts straight to the heart of it all. Jessie is not here to pretend – not about fame, not about motherhood and certainly not about pain.

“A product of the BRIT School - the South London comprehensive/pop breeding ground of Adele, FKA Twigs, Amy Winehouse and RAYE (who quit after two years due to feeling ‘confined’) - she was one of the few who blew up worldwide overnight. Watching RAYE dominate the BRITs last year - seven nominations, six wins, and a long-overdue industry embrace - she felt something snap into focus.

‘I saw it happening to her and it reminded me of 2010,” says Jessie. ‘Honestly, it’s even bigger for her. But that same feeling, that whirlwind, I recognised it.’

So she did something quietly lovely: she messaged RAYE offering her support. ‘I said, if you ever want advice or just a chat, I’m here. I get so protective, really protective of artists, because I know what that feels like – to be young and swept up in something massive. It’s amazing, but it’s a lot.

There’s a connection you have with other people who do this job that just get it.

‘I think there’s an understanding and a respect when you communicate with other artists – whether it’s on text, in person, or DMs – there’s a connection you have with other people who do this job that just get it. That’s really lovely, especially with women. And I have a lot of those kinds of connections that I wouldn’t say are friendships, but they’re respectful and very open. Like, they know they can come into my world and talk to me, and I can talk to them. But obviously, a lot of the time, we’re all just travelling so much.’

It’s this sense of understanding that makes her recent shift away from the structure of major labels even more significant. Her 2023 split from Republic Records was a conscious decision to pursue something more authentic.

‘It was amicable,' she says. 'I think I’ve realised I like things to be personable. I’m not a chain restaurant. I’m home-cooked! Do you know what I’m saying?’ I had major success, but I also got into a lot of debt. I just think, for who I am – I wake up at 5am, I cook, I do housework, I do my own socials - I’m very micromanaging and I’m quite controlling. I’m like a Duracell Bunny.’

Now, after years of living in Los Angeles, Jessie has returned to the UK, where she’s raising her son and embracing a different kind of rhythm. ‘The first year of my son’s life, I was super hands-on,’ she says. ‘Now it’s just us – me and my boyfriend – with help from my mum and his, who lives in Denmark.’

And her homecoming has been grounding. ‘I missed the honesty, the sarcasm,’ she grins. ‘It’s so different here. I’m still adjusting but I'm ready – personally, mentally, energetically – to come back and face the music. Literally”.

I am going to wrap with a review for Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time. Shatter the Standards gave a four-star review to an album from an artist no longer chasing the charts. Balancing themes around loss, illness, motherhood and independence, I have seen some criticising women like Jessie J and Lily Allen for, what they refer to as, ‘airing their dirty laundry’. Whether talking about break-ups and not holding back when it comes to their former partners or being very open about their struggles, it is wonderful that we have these artists in our midst. Music that will give so much strength and solace to countless people:

“In the past few years, Jessie J has lived publicly through events that would flatten most people. She told fans on her Instagram page she had suffered a miscarriage in November 2021 and wrote bluntly about how the grief still overwhelmed her nine months later. She details lying on the floor after the scan and feeling lonelier than ever, then choosing to perform anyway because she needed the distraction. Not long after, she was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, and at the end of 2020, she was temporarily deaf and unable to walk in a straight line, had to stay silent, and admitted she had to put her voice on hold. The year after, she developed nodules and acid reflux that made singing painful, as doctors told her the nodules would return if she kept performing. She went public about her diagnosis of obsessive‑compulsive disorder and ADHD last year, saying motherhood exposed the conditions and that talking about them helped her feel less alone. Fast forward to the present, she publicly announced her breast cancer diagnosis, cancelled tour dates, and underwent surgery; she later told fans that the cancer was all gone, but she was still healing.

During all of this, she left Republic Records after seventeen years, explaining that being signed no longer felt right and that she wanted to release music on her own terms. Against that backdrop, a new Jessie J record is not just a “return.” It’s an artist refusing to be defined by catastrophes or by the industry’s narrative about her. That refusal shapes Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time. Instead of front‑loading big guest features or showy vocal runs, the album is built from blunt writing and personal confession. The central song, “No Secrets,” shows Jessie J’s decision to share her miscarriage and other traumas rather than let tabloids package them. She starts by recounting losing her baby and immediately having to perform: “I lost my baby/But the show must go on, right?/No if, ands or maybe/Can I cry for just one night?/I’m standing here naked, but I chose the spotlight.” The rhetorical question “Am I addicted to the honey?” hits as a genuine self‑interrogation: does she stay online because she wants to, because she wants to be seen, or because she’s been conditioned to perform transparency?

The first song, “Feel It on Me,” doesn’t bother with a commercial hook. It opens with the lines “Falling from my eyes/Have to heal this in the darkness, so turn off all the lights.” The chorus flips the common pop motif of someone carrying your love by complaining about how a partner’s unresolved mess spills back onto her: “It was okay when I could feel it on me/But it ain’t okay if you can feel it on me.” The dynamic is less about production than behavior: verses linger over shame and co‑dependency, then the rhythm snaps into a stiff bounce when she recognizes that she won’t be someone’s emotional sponge. “I Don’t Care” continues the theme of separation. She delivers a speech to anyone who’s been manipulated by gaslighters or abusers, toasting those who leave and warning any future aggressors not to “tease me with a good time.” It’s a bracing moment that refuses to sugarcoat pain. There is no attempt to make her story universal because she addresses them directly and raises a glass with survivors.

When she turns outward, the results range from striking to forgettable. “If I Save You” is an effective look at rescuing people at the cost of your own life. “Boundaries have come and gone/My empathy was strong, I was in the wrong, by doing too much,” she admits over a minimal groove, then asks, “Are you gon’ learn how to swim?/If I save you, I save you,” as if bargaining with herself. The chorus is wordy but purposeful, with scattered questions (“Do you, can you, will you, come through?”) that mimic the frantic inner voice of someone who can’t stop worrying about another person’s growth. The repeated line “We’re both keeping us down” is an elegant summary of codependent cycles. By contrast, “Believe in Magic / Joy,” an interlude, operates in airy platitudes about listening to Sade, being “tired of the detox, tired of the talking,” and seeing “all the little things that fix a broken heart.” It’s sweet but feels like a reprieve rather than essential writing. The “Joy” segment, a brief lullaby telling someone they are joy, doesn’t develop the idea beyond the line “I didn’t write this song for me.” As an emotional breather, it works, but its lyrics don’t carry the weight of the surrounding songs.

With the help of Jessie Boykins III (who seems never to get credit for his sleeper contributions), he helped co-write most of Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, the album’s grief songs are its strongest. “Comes in Waves” is startlingly direct about a pregnancy loss: “It comes in waves, like I’m drowning in a love I crave that you gave to me, and I hate/How much I miss the future that we never made.” Jessie J apologises to a child she never met and vows not to forget them. When she sings, “Next time you come to me I’ll make a place for you to stay,” it’s an arresting moment of hope and superstition. “I’ll Never Know Why” shifts from her own grief to that of losing someone else to mental illness or suicide. She confesses she never walked in their shoes and won’t pretend to understand, but still wonders, “How could you say goodbye without saying goodbye?” She casts herself as a flawed witness rather than a martyr. The song ends without resolution, reflecting the reality that some losses remain mysteries.

Produced by Ryan Tedder, “Complicated” is the album’s autobiographical linchpin. It takes the form of a timeline: she talks about singing loudly and insecurely in 2010, breaking up with a girlfriend in 2012 while the press dismissed it as “a phase,” being told she couldn’t have children in 2015, taking 2016 off to grieve, and meeting a Magic Mike (oops, Channing Tatum) in 2018. She also mentions a particularly cutting comment from a colleague: “Katy told me that they all hate me, that I do too much.” The songwriting here isn’t subtle, but it’s vivid. She names the years like chapter headings and collapses a decade of public embarrassment and private heartbreak into a couple of verses. The chorus (“Ooh, that’s life for you/A rollercoaster not everyone rides with you”) lands as a shrug rather than a big chorus, and it doesn’t have to be. The purpose isn’t catharsis so much as refusal to apologize for being “too much.”

Motherhood and love lighten the narrative. “Sonflower” is a cute corny pun on sunflower and son, but the writing is earnest: “I’m me when I’m with you/It’s everything you do/You keep me in my truth/I’m winning when I lose.” The track’s behaviour is unhurried, radiating contentment without the usual big‑note theatrics. “California,” a mid‑album pivot, is a hustler’s anthem about surviving the state’s ups and downs. She wants to be somebody, not the person who merely knows somebody; she sings about swaying palm trees, bills that won’t get paid by showbiz glamor, and dreams that “burn hotter than the fireplace.” It’s not profound, but it’s specific enough to feel lived‑in. “Living My Best Life” could have been trite, yet the writing is anchored by the acknowledgement that turning pain into “deeper love” is work: “You taught me how to turn it around and kiss away the fear/No looking down as long as I’m here.” The declaration, “No more tears, I’m not wasting time being sad tonight,” is a choice to take joy where she can. “H.A.P.P.Y” is essentially a children’s chant (“Laugh till I cry, dance, I know why, ‘cause I’m H‑A‑P‑P‑Y”), but she precedes it with the line “I can’t take it, tired of faking my smile,” hinting at the work behind the cheer. Still, the spelling‑out hook is simplistic and diminishes the track’s emotional potential.

Some records feel disposable. “Colourful” lists moods and slang like a mood board: “Happy, sad, sassy, mad/Bougie, angry /Shady, fast, stackin’ up this cash/Hangry, class, put your hands on my (ass).” The track leans on the “you are my sunshine / so I’ll be your rain” cliché, and repeating color names (“Blue, red, orange, yellow”) doesn’t add meaning. A similar thinness hampers “Threw It Away,” whose entire premise is summarized by its title. Jessie J recounts being welcomed to Los Angeles, being called “honey,” giving her heart, and having her love tossed aside; she makes a Beauty and the Beast joke and warns that karma will come for her. The lack of detail means the song could be about anyone. “For This Love” is at least vivid in its lust. “Drop to my knees for this love” and “Prove to my body you know what to do” make no attempt at coyness. The second verse tries to conjure a larger story—“Playing pretend in this lost happy home/Breaking all curses, how you haunt my soul”—but doesn’t develop beyond a string of romantic clichés. When she demands not to be teased with foreplay and wants the guilt and glory, the directness is refreshing, but the writing lacks the specificity that powers the album’s best songs.

The record ends with “The Award Goes To,” a song that flips the award‑show trope into a personal send‑off. Over an exiguous accompaniment, she sings, “I’ve been fighting my wars/But I’m weighing my words/I’m good to lose, the award goes to you.” The repeated “You, you, you” is delivered with a mix of exhaustion and sarcasm. The second verse clarifies that she’s giving the award to someone who felt her pain and then got in her way. It’s a formal declaration that she’s done performing for them. The song’s chorus is simply the word “You” repeated over and over, emphasizing her need to point a finger without embellishment. There’s humor too: after telling someone with a bruised ego that they’re through, she says she dares to breathe “not for you but for me.” Ending on this anticlimactic note is deliberate. She refuses to provide a rousing finale or moral. She’s handing the trophy off and walking away.

What materializes over the album’s sixteen tracks is a writer who has stopped trying to prove she can sing, where she knows she can and chooses to use that instrument to say things she once shied away from. The emotional core sits in the intersection of grief and resilience, giving voice to experiences many people carry quietly, while the rest charts the years of public scrutiny that led to this moment. Outside of so-so writing in certain tracks, when the writing is specific, the songs land with force. There’s snark too—naming the album after a warning to abusers is equal parts humor and threat. Jessie J may still crave applause, but she’s less interested in playing along with the narratives others have written about her. She’s releasing music on her own terms and talking plainly about the fallout of fame, illness, and loss”.

I will leave it there. If not the most structured feature ever, I did want to include some recent interviews with Jessie J. An artist I have been following for many years and have boundless respect for, Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time is an album that easily sits with the best of this year. It is another one of these albums that will hit you the first time you hear it! A shame that more people have not reviewed it, as it truly stunning. One of the finest singers, songwriters and performers in the world, I wanted to show love for the amazing Jessie J. As I said earlier, I hope that next year delivers her…

NOTHING but success, happiness and peace.

____________

Follow Jessie J

FEATURE: Groovelines: Dolly Parton - Jolene

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

 

Dolly Parton - Jolene

__________

ONE major reason…

why I am featuring Dolly Parton’s Jolene in Groovelines is because the icon turns eighty on 19th January. One of our most beloved artists, I hope there will be a lot of celebration around that birthday. Reinvestigation of her work; articles and features about her enduring popularity and influence. Her philanthropic and charitable side. How she is this decades-enduring artist who continues to shine bright and put out incredible music. As she enters her ninth decade, let’s hope there is more work to come from Parton. Rather than put out a mixtape, I wanted to use the opportunity spotlight one of Dolly Parton’s best-known and popular songs, Jolene. Released on 15th October, 1973, it was not a major chart success upon its release. However, it is one of the most popular and greatest songs ever written. Penned by Dolly Parton and produced by Bob Ferguson, Jolene is seen as one of the most representative songs of the Country genre. It was ranked 217 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004; that was elevated to 63 in their revised list of 2021. I want to dive inside this heartbreaking song that has been covered by, among others, The White Stripes and Beyoncé. I am going to drop both of those versions in, as it shows what each artist did with them and how this song has endured and inspired through the years. However, we must celebrate and highlight the 1973 original. Dolly Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, died earlier this year. He was the inspiration behind Jolene, after a bank teller caught the eye of Dean. Its messages and sentiment is something universal and hard-hitting. The New York Times published a feature about Jolene in March:

“In the early years of her nearly six-decade marriage, Dolly Parton noticed that her husband was spending a lot of time at the bank, where he had developed a crush on a teller. She told him to knock it off.

She later channeled her feelings into “Jolene,” a hit 1973 song. Her fans have been singing its haunting chorus ever since.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don’t take him just because you can.

The song is one of several that Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, an asphalt paver who died on Monday at 82, inspired in the decades after they met outside a Nashville laundromat in 1964. It never reached No. 1 on Billboard’s main singles chart, but it topped the Billboard country chart, earned a Grammy nod and became the most-recorded song of any Parton has written.

In interviews over the years, Parton attributed the song’s staying power to a variety of factors, including the simplicity of its chorus and its “kind of mysterious” minor key.

She said many women had told her that they found its story — a woman acknowledging Jolene’s beauty while pleading with her to not steal her husband “just because you can” — relatable.

When the song appeared, “Nobody had been writing about affairs from that side of it — to go to the person who was trying to steal your man,” she told the entertainment news site Vulture in 2023.

“There’s a certain amount of fear that you hope to be able to hang on to them and you don’t want to take anything for granted,” she said. “All of that is summed up within that one song, and it’s a singable song on top of that.

She came up with the title after meeting a girl named Jolene while signing autographs, she recalled in a 2020 interview with the music site Pitchfork. But she said the woman the song describes is the “beautiful redheaded, long-legged” bank teller who caught her husband’s eye.

“I knew we didn’t have the kind of money for him to be spending that kind of time at the bank,” she told Pitchfork with a laugh.

Over the years, she told Vulture, fans told her that they doubted anyone would actually take her man.

“Look, there’s always somebody more beautiful than you,” she said she would reply. “There’s always somebody more special than you, and you’re going to always feel a bit threatened and insecure when it comes to someone you love”.

The song has been covered by a long list of artists, including Keith Urban, the White Stripes, Laura Marling and Miley Cyrus, Parton’s goddaughter. Parton herself used the melody for a ditty about receiving a coronavirus shot, changing “Jolene” to “vaccine.”

“Jolene” has also directly inspired other songs. In “You Can Have Him Jolene,” a 2021 tune by the country band Chapel Hart, a narrator washes her hands of her husband.

A country singer, Cam, had a 2018 hit called “Diane,” in which the narrator confesses an affair to an unsuspecting wife:

Diane, I promise I didn’t know he was your man
I would’ve noticed a gold wedding band, Diane
I’d rather you hate me than not understand
Oh, Diane

“It’s the apology so many spouses deserve, but never get,” Cam told Rolling Stone magazine.

In Beyoncé’s 2024 take on “Jolene,” the narrator adopts a more assertive position by warning, rather than pleading with, the would-be mistress to leave her man alone:

I can easily understand why you’re attracted to my man
But you don’t want this smoke
So shoot your shot with someone else

Parton told Vulture that some people assume she hates some covers of the song. Her answer is always no.

“I’ll say back, ‘No, I love to hear all the ways that people choose to interpret them,’” she said. “It never changes it for me because I know what I was saying and writing about”.

Heading back to 2008 and an article from NPR. Jolene is a song that still haunts singers. Since then, RAYE wrote a song based on Jolene called Natalie Don't. I will move to a BBC article from 2020 where we learn how Dolly Parton’s most-covered song compelled and influence one of Britain’s finest modern Pop artists:

“When Parton released "Jolene" in 1973, it became one of her first hit singles. The song has only 200 words — and a lot of those are repeated. But Parton says that that very simplicity, along with the song's haunting melody, is what makes the character of "Jolene" memorable.

"It's a great chord progression — people love that 'Jolene' lick," Parton says. "It's as much a part of the song almost as the song. And because it's just the same word over and over, even a first-grader or a baby can sing, 'Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.' It's like, how hard can that be?"

"Jolene" has been covered by more than 30 singers over the years, and in several languages around the world.

Jack White's emotional rendition of "Jolene" has been a staple of The White Stripes' concerts for years.

"I thought to take the character and change the context and make this red-headed woman my girlfriend, and that she's cheating on me with one of my friends," White says. "Then, that would be what I could really get emotionally attached to."

White says that the character of Jolene has fascinated him for a long time.

"I love the name, first off," he says. "I thought that was an interesting name when I started hearing that song as a teenager. And I guess later on, as a songwriter, I started to think about names starting with 'J,' like that could be used almost accusatory, like Jezebel... Jolene."

"Jolene" launched country singer Mindy Smith's career five years ago, when Parton said that it was her favorite version of the song.

Smith says she could relate to the vulnerability of the woman pleading with Jolene.

"I think the main character is really the person singing about Jolene," Smith says. "Jolene's a mess. She just steals things."

A Universal Character

Parton says that Jolene is so popular because everyone can relate to her feelings of inadequacy-- competing with that tall redhead in the bank who was after her husband.

"She had everything I didn't, like legs — you know, she was about 6 feet tall. And had all that stuff that some little short, sawed-off honky like me don't have," Parton says. "So no matter how beautiful a woman might be, you're always threatened by certain... You're always threatened by other women, period”.

Jolene is much covered and has been approached from different angles by a variety of artists. I think that the 2024 version from Beyoncé is the best. However, I want to introduce a BBC. Mark Savage spoke with RAYE about her music. However, the fact that Jolene inspired a song that helped RAYE find her voice stands out. I know that artists today in the mainstream have written songs that have Jolene at their heart. You feel that major stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan have affection and respect for Dolly Parton:

“Whether it results in the bruised desperation of Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2U, or the righteous fury of Adele's Rolling In The Deep, nothing lights the spark of creativity faster than the flames of love flickering out.

At this point, there aren't many fresh approaches to the topic - but Dolly Parton's Jolene takes a more unusual approach. Instead of shedding tears or vowing revenge, Parton's song is about two women: The mistress who holds the power, and the wife who is begging her to relinquish it.

The song's been covered more than 30 times, including a fantastically messy version by The White Stripes, but the storyline has rarely been imitated... until now.

Last year, pop singer Raye found herself in the same situation as Parton and the red-headed bank clerk who flirted with her husband in the 1960s. There was just one difference: The Queen of Country got her man back. Raye wasn't so lucky.

"Somebody came along and whisked him away from my grasp," she tells the BBC. "My heart was broken for a hot little second."

Heading into the studio, she tried to capture "that feeling of panic you have when you know you're losing someone" in a song.

The result is Natalie Don't - a funky, modern successor to Parton's classic. Jolene even gets a namecheck in the bridge, while the music makes subtle nods to I Will Survive and Unbreak My Heart.

Despite the subject matter, Raye is buzzing about the single.

"This is the reason I love music - because every negative thing becomes something beautiful," she says. "Making the song I just remember jumping around the studio like a kangaroo on Red Bull.

"It's really light and fluffy. A sad concept over a really funky bassline. I feel I've stumbled on a sound."

That last statement is surprising, because Raye isn't exactly short on hits.

The singer, born Rachel Keen in 1997, scored her first top five single in 2016 with You Don't Know Me, and has gone on to work with everyone from Stormzy and David Guetta to Beyoncé.

Last year, she won a prestigious songwriting honour at the BMI Awards; and she's currently in the top 10 with the Regard collaboration Secrets.

But the 22-year-old has been on a steep learning curve since her first EP came out six years ago.

In an early interview, she told BBC 1Xtra that she "had to evolve and compromise in order to find an audience" - but that meant straying from the Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott albums that inspired her towards a more club-orientated sound.

As a "young, vulnerable, inexperienced woman" in the music industry, she says, "you are guided by everyone around you, maybe unintentionally, to look at everything that is successful and be like it".

"People are scared behind the scenes to do something different. Because it's a business, risk is negative. And I was swayed left and right trying to keep those people happy.

"I went through a lot of different hairstyles, a lot of different clothes, a lot of different stylists going, 'I don't know what I am. Where do I fit in?'

"My label said I needed to have a look, I needed to have something consistent. And then I found it. It's just me."

You can not only hear the transformation in her music - which now combines her love of dance music with those classic soul influences - but you see it in her appearance. Over the last year, Raye has ditched the hoodies and bleached curls that characterised her early press shots, in favour of vintage dresses and short brown hair that's swept back into Hollywood waves.

"I feel like I'm ready and the music's ready," she smiles. "It's been a long time coming”.

I am finishing with a feature from American Songwriter from 2023. It reacts to an interview from Vulture, where Dolly Parton discussed the enduring popularity of Jolene. How it is singable and humble. How she revealed there is always someone more beautiful for you and perhaps that is a threat when it comes to relationships. However, you feel like Jolene is a character who would not steal a man. Maybe paranoia or unjustified fears by the heroine/Dolly Parton. However, this feeling of insecurity is one that resonates. A big reason why Jolene has been covered so often. The title track from her 1974 album, Jolene is a masterpiece that will endure for generations:

“Recently, Parton sat down with Vulture to look back at her long and iconic career. During the conversation, she talked about what makes “Jolene” a special song.

“With ‘Jolene,’ I remember hearing so many people say, ‘That’s such a humble song. It’s a true song,’” Parton said. “For a woman to say, ‘I can’t compete with you. I’m not as beautiful as you, I’m never going to be that beautiful. Your beauty is beyond compare, but I don’t have all that going for me.’ It was unusual at the time in songwriting,” she added. Parton went on to say that many women have told her how much they relate to the song.

More than being relatable, “Jolene” takes a unique approach to the classic cheating song format. Instead of being angry and fighting with or leaving her man, the song’s narrator pleads with his mistress. It’s really about “loving him enough to understand how he would fall in love with someone else because they’re that beautiful,” Parton said.

“People thought it was a very honest, open, and humble kind of song about the subject. Nobody had been writing about affairs from that side of it—to go to the person who was trying to steal your man,” Parton added.

Over the years, many people have wondered what Jolene could possibly offer that Parton couldn’t. After all, the Tennessee native has been a bombshell since she stepped onto the stage on The Porter Wagoner Show. She addressed that in the interview as well. “Look, there’s always somebody more beautiful than you. There’s always somebody more special than you, and you’re going to always feel a bit threatened and insecure when it comes to someone you love,” she said. “There’s a certain amount of fear that you hope to be able to hang on to them and you don’t want to take anything for granted.”

Parton added that she summed up those complicated feelings with “Jolene.” She added, “It’s a singable song on top of that”.

Because Dolly Parton turns eighty on 19th January, I wanted to shine a light on Jolene. This incredible track that is one of the most expressive and emotionally raw Country songs ever. It has frequently featured on lists of the best songs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Zealand government put the country in lockdown. A newspaper summary listing essential things to know states that washing one's hands with soap should take "as long as it takes to sing the 'Happy Birthday' song twice or the chorus of Dolly Parton's hit song 'Jolene”. Even though it was a modest chart success upon its release, this is a classic song of a song being taken to heart and showing just how enduring and brilliant it is. Celebrating its songwriter and wishing her a happy eightieth birthday for 19th January, I wanted to show my affection…

FOR the immense Jolene.

FEATURE: The Best Albums of 2025: Geese - Getting Killed

FEATURE:

 

 

The Best Albums of 2025

 

Geese - Getting Killed

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I want to start out…

IN THIS PHOTO: Max Bassin, Emily Green, Cameron Winter and Dominic DiGesu/PHOTO CREDIT: Lewis Evans

with an interview from DIY concerning Geese and their album, Getting Killed. One of the best of this year, I want to take you inside of this album. The Brooklyn band is made up of Cameron Winter, Dominic DiGesu, Emily Green, and Max Bassin. A band that are proving they are worthy of all the hype around them right now, it is fascinating learning how they first emerged “in lockdown with their brand of restless, chaotic rock and roll, through to playing frenzied secret shows and shutting down streets in Brooklyn just a few years on, New York’s Geese are very much the band of the hour right now”:

“Winter is characteristically understated when talking about the show, and the album release as a whole. “Yeah… pretty good,” he says, in a tone almost entirely devoid of enthusiasm. It’s probably worth noting at this point that Cameron isn’t known for being the most straightforward of interviewees. He treats press as an extension of his bizarre lyrics, sometimes outwardly lying (he has claimed that a five-year-old played bass on ‘Heavy Metal’) and pausing for minutes on end whilst working out what he wants to say. Speaking over Zoom today, sat outside a café, he explains that his perception of his solo album having failed (“because it took a little while for it to get off the ground”) informed ‘Getting Killed’ in that it made him think, “‘Alright, I’m gonna do [it] better, I’m gonna do a fixed version with the band that’s louder and less… sleepy’.”

Regardless, he’s totally bemused by not only his solo success, but also his band’s. “I don’t know how or why, but people started liking it more, and I think that let people give me the benefit of the doubt more than ever before, you know?” he says, looking into the middle distance. “Before, when we were to do certain things, people would [say], ‘these guys don’t know what they’re doing!’, but now they’re willing to jump on the bandwagon more easily, maybe.” It seems that Geese are fairly immune to external views of their work, and are their own critics first and foremost. “I guess we get bored, we’re just overly self-conscious about some things. We don’t want to make the same stuff, because it’s embarrassing for us.”

So what exactly were the band chasing on ‘Getting Killed’? “A lot of what we were trying to do was focus on groove,” notes Bassin, perhaps not unsurprisingly for a drummer. “We all got really into free jazz, and some funk. Everything went a little full-circle; we were listening to a lot of proto-punk stuff, which is really influenced by a lot of funk stuff, which is influenced by a lot of jazz stuff. It all kind of went backwards in that direction.” It’s true that much of the album - such as the insistent pulse of ‘Islands of Men’ - has an almost circular feel, more indebted to jazz structures than a traditional verse-chorus-bridge. Max describes it as “playing around some sort of groove that feels almost like it doesn’t end.”

Both Cameron and Max separately use the word ‘fix’ to describe their approach to writing, perhaps belying their relentless push to reinvent themselves. “We hold ourselves to a very high standard, but then also, sometimes it’s tough to see when it’s just too much,” explains Max. “But then, to fix it is just to find the place where it clicks for all of us, where all of us get really excited about it. Because [when] we’ve let songs sit, and re-recorded them in a totally different way, it’s been like, ‘oh, that’s how it’s supposed to sound, perfect’.”

This restlessness also seems to mean that they take nobody else’s opinion on their music seriously. “When stuff comes out, I don’t believe anybody,” says Cameron. “[Regarding] the people who are speaking negatively about it, I just think ‘well, you just don’t get it, you stupid idiot!’” He grins: “‘just give it a minute - you should listen to it seven more times at least before you take a stupid opinion like that!’ And then, with the people who love it to death, I’m just like, ‘oh, these bandwagon-jumpers, they don’t even know why they like it, they’re just lying to themselves, they’re trying to spin a narrative’. I just don’t believe anybody. I don’t know what would make me… I don’t know what would satisfy me in that regard.”

‘Getting Killed’ concludes with ‘Long Island City Here I Come’, an extraordinary closing moment featuring a relentless piano line and Winter’s fraught crooning, which reaches fever pitch as he incants “here I come, here I come” over and over. “It was pretty obvious once we recorded it that none of the other songs would make as much sense as the last one,” he says. “It was a solo song first, and then just on a lark we tried it as a full band, and I thought ‘wow, this is way better’. So there it was.”

Winter’s voice feels, at times, like a character itself on the record - truly one of those strange, virtuosic singing voices that feels entirely unlike anyone else. When asked how it came about, Winter seems puzzled by the question. “I don’t know. I’m just not very self-conscious about it, and that can lead to some weird places, and that’s kind of just how I sing. I’m really not trying an effect or anything.” This, really, gets to the heart of his appeal as a songwriter – he seems totally disconnected from how his work might be perceived, and is just making something completely off the wall. “It’s a weird mix of being totally unself-conscious, and also being pretty disciplined, too. A lack of self-consciousness doesn’t mean you should be lazy or anything. [You shouldn’t be] so unself-conscious that you put out something terrible, that sort of just flops over and dies.”

At this point, it doesn’t seem like that’s a concern for Geese. It also appears that, at least according to other interviews, ‘Getting Killed’’s follow-up could already be recorded. Cameron groans at the mention of this. “That’s overblown. I want to put that to rest, because I feel so bad, everyone’s getting so excited about it. That’s not really what’s happening - we’re just kind of dicking around,” he says, shaking his head. So, no new Geese album come Monday? “No, no, no… Tuesday at least. I’m breaking the news in DIY, that that’s basically a rumour that GQ has propagated.”

As ever with Geese, it’s hard to know where exactly we are in the grey area between the truth as Cameron sees it and the truth as the rest of the band see it, given their frontman’s penchant for fibbing for sport. Max smirks when asked if a new album exists: “Maybe.” After a pause, he leans in, smiling. “I don’t know, actually. To be entirely honest, I want to say maybe, but also then I’ll talk to Cameron and he’ll say ‘it’s not done. It’s not even anywhere done, we’ve got to cut half of these songs’. So we’ll see.”

If this ambiguous follow-up is anything like ‘Getting Killed’, then we’re in for a treat. But for the moment - much like everyone else - we’re at the whim of Cameron Winter”.

Prior to getting to a couple of reviews for Geese’s Getting Killed, there is another interview I am highlighting. I spotlighted the band earlier in the year, so I am trying not to repeat anything I included back then. THE FACE spoke with Brooklynite Alex Winter. Hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, you can’t argue with that claim when you listen to Getting Killed. If you have not heard of Geese, then go and seek out this amazing band:

“Winter is cautious of how transient the noise around a work of art is, how it’s inversely proportional to its potential staying power. ​“It really ruins it when you talk about anything,” he says. ​“I cringe whenever I say anything about my music, it feels gratuitous.” If you spend enough time with Winter’s music, you might understand where he’s coming from. The heart-in-throat folk and lonely soul of Heavy Metal and the omnivorous experimental rock of Getting Killed have been distilled from recording sessions so stuffed with ideas the songs sound as though they’re constantly on the verge of bursting.

Winter’s writing is dense with allusion, from Hellenic odes like Heavy Metal​’s Nausicäa (Love Will Be Revealed) and Getting Killed​’s Sisyphean Husbands, to the cocksure pantomime of American imperialism on 100 Horses and Au Pays du Cocaine. One of his trademarks is the deftness of his rock references. On Heavy Metal​’s The Rolling Stones, he nods to the keening Midwest emo of Tigers Jaw, folding a fragment of their soul-bearing refrain, ​“But my emotions ran unopposed /​I felt just like Brian Jones,” into his tumbling folk dedication to trying and failing to write the perfect song. At times it’s both sillier and more subtle. Try singing, ​“I came up here to sleep in your infamous kitchen,” from Cancer of the Skull in your best Bob Dylan voice. Now, think of Dylan as you hear Winter sing the line, ​“Songs are meant for bad singers.”

Winter closes Getting Killed by calling out to Buddy Holly, Don McLean and folk legend Pete Seger on the epic Long Island City Here I Come, while the rest of Geese furiously careen through a crumbling wall of sound. ​“It’s a human thing to copy other people,” he says. ​“It’s how you learn to speak, it’s how you learn to walk, you copy, so when people don’t copy at all it feels like a rejection of the fact that they’re just flesh and blood.” Winter is no exception. ​“A lot of stuff I make starts too derivative and then I just cringe at it listening back, so I have to find a different way until I stop cringing,” he levels. ​“The question is always: how much allusion can I tolerate?’

Winter is aware of the pitfalls of wanting to sound like the greats. Though it’s hard not to hear Van Morrison’s 1968 classic Astral Weeks in Heavy Metal, he deflects the comparison. ​“In about 40 years I’ll have my anti-vax magnum opus, a triple album about government overreach will be hitting the shelves,” he quips, referencing Morrison’s spate of lockdown protest songs in 2020. ​“It would be funny if I really sped through my recording career like that, being the grumpy old man on stage right now,” he adds, grinning.

To make a great song, he says, ​“it has to grab ya, without you grabbing it. It has to be mutual and most of the time it’s not.” When it’s not, Winter is quick to rebuke his more perfectionist tendencies, confessing, ​“I tweak more than I record” on a Reddit AMA the day of Heavy Metal​’s release. ​“Being perfectionist is dishonest, in a way,” he says. ​“Your ass ain’t perfect! I like music that doesn’t have its guard up all the time.” On that subject, Winter praises New York rap experimentalist Xaviersobased (“there’s very few people who are really just saying fuck the rules as much as he is”) and London’s fakemink (“he can really run with it”), citing their perfectly fried production and prolific release schedules as something to strive for. ​“They’ve got the right idea,” he smiles. ​“I want that to be Geese and me eventually, to break free of the freaking album cycles and just put it out the moment it’s done. To pick a thing off your camera roll and kick it out there”.

The Line of Best Fit opened with lines about how Geese were debuting songs off their third album over the summer, and there was a projection behind them that read “Geese: A real band”. It makes you wonder why they did that and whether they were being seen as a novelty or insubstantial:

“When Geese toured their last album, 3D Country, the projection read "An American Band" because that’s what they were then, a group of incredibly forward-thinking classic rock revivalists. If there’d been a projection for their first album, Projector, it would’ve said "A New York Band" due to their debut's mix of CBGB’s post-punk with the math rock it inspired. But Getting Killed is the work of "a real band" or at the very least a band not hiding behind pastiche. It’s Geese at their most honest and sincere, and as a result, their most brilliant, creative, and manic.

While the release of his much-acclaimed solo debut Heavy Metal has clearly left lead singer Cameron Winter even stronger in both vocals and lyrics than before that record's success, it hasn’t caused Geese to play backup to him. Rather, the rest of the band has grown with him. Producer Kenny Beats has brought the rhythm section to the forefront, revealing them to be Geese’s strongest element. Dominic DiGesu’s basslines are more prominent than ever, combining a delirious boogie funk with a raw and enticing tone. While drummer Max Bassin has always appeared to be of a higher class than most, Beats really lets him shine. On “Trinidad”, he makes the kit sound like an imploding submarine as it rattles against Winter’s explosive vocals. Yet to view the players separately is to reduce their impact. Getting Killed is an album built around a band; their unity creates its best moments.

The band is operating tighter than ever, their core style now a sort of motorik-funk, with Winter’s gospel vocals combining with rhythms that lie somewhere between Can and Funkadelic. On tracks like “Bow Down” and “100 Horses”, they unite into a marching stomp that recalls the grizzled trample of the Bad Seeds and the junkyard blues of Tom Waits. Yet the band really reaches its peak when it extends these jams past the four-minute limit. Title track “Getting Killed” is close to their finest work ever, with its initial crunch giving way to guitar interplay and a heartbreaking coda of chanted vocals as Winter howls the track and album’s title.

Yet the two other big jams come close to dethroning its excellence. “Islands of Men" starts as a piece of swaying boogie rock before reforming into something ethereal, a slice of dream rock grounded by a flurry of horns and percussion that gives way into chaos. But the real pinnacle is the album's closer “Long Island City Here I Come”. It’s initial ripple of drums and keys combine with Winter’s ramblings about "God having many friends" and "Microphones hidden under your bed" to seem like a surreal reimagining of Patti Smith’s "Piss Factory". Yet rather than switching tactics like the others the groove simply continues. A thrush of additional instruments compliments Winters vocals as they reach new apexes. His lyrics contort a series of absurdist tales into a bizarrely inspirational message of desperate youth and hope as he cries out "Long Island City, here I come."

But these moments of magnitude aren’t what make Getting Killed a masterpiece. Rather, it’s the way they fit together. The way a line as tender as "Baby let me dance away forever" can feel appropriate after the neo-no-wave car wreck of “Trinidad”. The way that “Au Pays du Cocaine” sways on such a tender breeze. It’s how all those Winter’s lyrics, their delightful mix of tender love calls, historical anachronism, and biblical imagery, all come together to turn the joyous heartland ballad "Taxes" crushingly tragic when he says, "I will break my own heart from now on." Like the band that made it, Getting Killed is an album of insane synchronicity, its individual elements rocketing one another into new stratospheres. If Geese are a real band, then Getting Killed is a real album. One that cements them as no longer excellent imitators of the bands they once tipped their hats to, but worthy equals”.

In another 9/10 review, CLASH shared their opinions about an album that will rank alongside the best of the year. Getting Killed is definitely going to be a hard act to follow through, with Geese, you feel like they will top it with something even more extraordinary:

“It’s usually pointless to predict when a band might ascend to stardom, but if you placed your bets on Geese this year, the odds are certainly in your favour. The New York indie-rock band have made a dizzying ascension, buoyed by the critical acclaim that followed the release of frontman and lead vocalist Cameron Winter’s debut solo record ‘Heavy Metal’ last year. So uncertain were its commercial odds that it got slated with a December release date, which slowed initial pickup but has had the intriguing effect of creating consistently growing streams for the best part of 2025, creating a halo of interest that’s reflected back onto Geese’s new offering ‘Getting Killed’. 

Even before ‘Heavy Metal’, Geese were already a growing force to be reckoned with, as their 2023 concept-record-that’s-not-a-concept-record ‘3D Country’ proved. In ‘Getting Killed’, the band only benefits from Winters’ solo turn. It’s not just his voice that feels stronger, but the work of his bandmates too: Dominic DiGesu, Emily Green, and Max Bassin. They’ve also benefited from the production support of Kenneth Blume (Kenny Beats), with whom they recorded the album in a month-long stretch. It’s a collaboration that’s led to a sound that’s cleaner, still heavily layered but a more clearly defined sum of its parts.

In ‘Getting Killed’, there’s points of lyricism that are wildly obscure, like when Winters sings “All the horses must go dancing” in ‘100 Horses’, or the defining refrain “There’s a bomb in my car” of opening single Trinidad. But there’s also a return to the teenage earnestness of their first album ‘Projector’, newly refracted through ‘Heavy Metal’, a record that’s defined by catharsis and longing. In ‘Half Real’, Winters’ trembling voice soars through lyrics spanning heartbreak and uncertainty, while ‘Husbands’ gestures to the feeling of being weighed down by the city that you love.

It’s certainly not an easy-listening album, and sometimes it can sound downright unpleasant, like in opening stomper ‘Trinidad’, which teeters on the verge of a disconcerting chaos. Like ‘3D Country’, it’s music that rewards re-listening: each play reveals something new. Whether it’s the complexity with which Bassin commands the drums in ‘100 Horses’, a choice use of backing vocals in titular single ‘Getting Killed’, a perfectly steady bassline in ‘Islands Of Men’, Winters’ receding voice in ‘Long Island City Here I Come’, there’s a constant attention to detail throughout the course of the record.

This isn’t to say that there’s not standout singles as well: ‘Taxes’ is a catchy and cathartic rock hit, and ‘Cobra’s nostalgic guitar melodies are deeply compelling. But ‘Getting Killed’ is an album designed for the dedicated listener over the passerby, better experienced in its whole than in individual parts. It’s a bold proposition and one that places the band firmly within the future of the rock canon. That’s what makes Geese’s work so exciting: uncompromising, they look steadily forwards, pushing at the seams of what their sound can do”.

One of my picks for album of the year, Getting Killed is a masterpiece from Geese. I am interested to see what steps they make next year. From January, they are on tour, and they have some amazing dates in the diary. They start a run of U.K. dates from 20th March and play the Eventim Apollo on 25th. Make sure you catch them if you can. Getting Killed proves that this quartet are…

THE real deal.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

 

Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club

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MANY people might not…

IN THIS PHOTO: Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club band, (L-R, top) Guajiro Miraval, Israel 'Cachao' Lopez, Barbarito Torrez, Juan de Marcos, Ibrahim Ferrer, (L-R, bottom) Compay Segundo and Omara Portuondo in Mexico City, Mexico on 26th February, 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Jorge Uzon/AFP/Getty

know about this album, but it is one that I really love. For this Beneath the Sleeve, I am going to spend some time with 1997’s Buena Vista Social Club. Buena Vista Social Club are an ensemble of Cuban musicians directed by Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder. Produced by Cooder, Buena Vista Social Club was recorded at Havana's EGREM studios in March 1996 and released on 23rd June, 1997. Even though the album did not chart high when it was released, it was acclaimed by critics and has this incredible legacy. Before getting to features about its legacy, I want to start out with a review from Record Collector about the twenty-fifth anniversary reissue of this amazing album:

“Every once in a while, an album comes along that confounds expectations and skyrockets out of its supposed niche market to become a global phenomenon. It happened in 2000 with the archaic Americana soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? (few could have predicted its worldwide sales of 10 million or haul of five Grammy awards), but the fruits of a group of veteran Cuban musicians just a few years earlier was perhaps an even more surprising success.

Buena Vista Social Club was a loose collective brought together by Havana-born bandleader Juan de Marcos Gonzalez and American guitarist-producer Ry Cooder to celebrate the island nation’s indigenous rhythms. The aim of its paymasters, the British-based World Circuit record label, was to promote the sounds of Cuba on a global stage, and it ended up doing that at an extraordinary level; aided by an award-winning documentary by filmmaker Wim Wenders, the album went on to sell eight million copies.

The Latin American ensemble’s own intentions were perhaps more humble, many of the players just happy to have a paying gig during lean times for the country’s music industry. Much of the album’s contents, however, hark back to more salubrious days, of a pre-revolution, pre-Castro-era Cuba when dozens of clubs and ballrooms across Havana echoed to the persuasive joy of mambo and jazz.

Numbers such as De Camino a la Verada, written and sung by the then 77-year-old Ibrahim Ferrer, and the traditional “danzon” dance of Pueblo Nuevo had been staples of the Cuban music scene since the early 50s, but given a fresh lick of paint and renewed sonic vitality by Cooder’s atmospheric production. Having said that, the track chosen as a curtain-raising single, Chan Chan, was a near enough contemporary song, written and first recorded by “trova” guitarist Compay Segundo in 1984, the tale of a couple thrilled by the simplicity of dancing to rhythms made by shaking makeshift instruments containing beach sand.

One of the keys that unlocks the thrills of the album is its blend of frivolity and more sober reflections on a nation often weighed down by the upheavals of its past. If Buena Vista is a postcard, it’s one of bright, dazzling colours but with frayed edges and corners – a party where the rum is served with a splash of paradox.

It all proved irresistible to a certain stripe of record buyer, but far beyond the frequently sneered-at musical tourists accused of embracing distant cultures as a kind of hipster boy scout badge. The album’s impact was felt everywhere, not just on the expected shelves of “world” music aficionados; its place in the context of a wider conscious is evident by its mention in Fury, Salman Rushdie’s 2001 novel about globalisation.

This reissue, to mark the upcoming 25th anniversary, contains an additional 12 tracks left off the original album, most of which meet the same exacting high standards. It’s as fresh as it was during the seven short days it was committed to tape, inviting us to take our places on the dancefloor one more time.

Q+A:

Buena Vista bandleader Juan de Marcos Gonzalez recounts how the record changed his life.

Buena Vista Social Club was originally planned as a much different album to how it ended up, wasn’t it?

The intention of Nick Gold of the World Circuit label was to make a record combining Cuban and African musicians, so I enlisted many local players to go into the Egrem studios in Havana to perform with musicians from Mali. There is a shared heritage between the two countries, you can draw parallels between the musical roots of both, so the idea was for a hybrid of that. But there were difficulties in obtaining visas for the Africans and they never made it over. We Cubans went ahead anyway, seeing as the studio time had already been booked.

Were you familiar with Ry Cooder prior to the making of the album?

Yes, I had known of Ry and his music for a long time, going back to him appearing on records by Paul Revere & The Raiders in the 1960s. For a long time it was hard to hear American music in Cuba, but there were two AM radio stations I was able to pick up; one from Little Rock, Arkansas, that played serious rock music, and another from Key West in Florida that was much more of a pop station. I have always admired Ry as a musician and for the many varied influences in his music. His soundtrack to the film Crossroads has always been a favourite of mine, and it was an honour to be working with him. I’d like to think we learned a lot from each other during Buena Vista.

Your fellow musicians were well-known in Cuba, but is it fair to say they were struggling at the time the album was made?

That’s right, because of the state of the country’s economy the music industry was suffering and there were not many opportunities. Ruben Gonzalez [pianist, who died in 2003] was in his 70s when we recorded the album, but he didn’t have many possessions. He would walk four
miles every day from where he lived to a friend’s house just so that he had a piano to play. Ibrahim Ferrer [singer, died in 2005] was doing menial work to get by; he was shining shoes when we made the record.

The album’s success must have been life-changing.

Certainly. When I was in London promoting it early on, because it was doing so well outside of Cuba, one of the first things myself and Nick Gold did was go to the instrument shops in Denmark Street and buy Ruben an electric piano of his own! There was a great history between his family and mine, he had played in a band with my father in the 40s. When he next made a record of his own, he used a photograph of my 13-year-old daughter on the sleeve. She’s a grown woman of 38 now, and whenever I look at that picture it reminds me just how special Buena Vista Social Club was to all of us”".

In a music year (1997) when nothing like Buena Vista Social Club was in the mainstream and being discussed widely, perhaps it is not a surprise that this album was not a huge seller. However, it is this incredible work that we need to revisit. Let’s actually go back a bit and discover the story. Even though many of its ageing singers are no longer with us, the legacy and influence of this album remains. A huge wave of Pop that came through in the late-1990s and 2000s can be traced back to Buena Vista Social Club:

“As Cuban revolutions go, it was an entirely peaceable uprising – but its impact could not have been more profound. On the release of the Buena Vista Social Club™ album in 1997, few outside the specialist world music audience initially took much notice of the record’s elegantly sculpted tunes and warm, acoustic rhythms. Then something extraordinary occurred. The album was spectacularly reviewed by a few discerning critics, but although their words of praise did Buena Vista’s cause no harm, they cannot explain what subsequently happened. Good reviews create an early surge in sales, but unless it’s a big pop release sustained by an expensive TV advertising campaign, the established pattern is that interest then slowly tails off. Instead, Buena Vista’s sales figures kept steadily rising week by week, building almost entirely by word-of-mouth until it achieved critical mass: all who heard the record not only fell in love with Buena Vista’s irresistible magic, but were then inspired to play or recommend the album to everyone they knew. It was one of those rare records that transcended the vagaries of fad and fashion to sound timeless but utterly fresh. Once you heard it, you had to have a heart of stone not to be swept away by the music’s romantic impulses and uninhibited exuberance.

That its impact had made waves, far beyond the specialist world music audience was soon self-evident. Buena Vista went on to win a Grammy and its crossover success persuaded the acclaimed director Wim Wenders to make an award-winning feature film about the phenomenon. Nick Gold, whose World Circuit label released the record, put it:

“Buena Vista was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We knew we’d made a special record but nobody could have imagined how it would take off.” The record’s success launched what can only be described as Cuba-mania, helping to inspire a thousand salsa dance classes and Cuban-themed bars on every high street. At its peak, it seemed that you couldn’t move without hearing Buena Vista’s potent, captivating soundtrack.

Today the album’s global sales stand at over eight million, making it the biggest-selling Cuban album in history. As one critic put it, Buena Vista has become “world music’s equivalent of The Dark Side of the Moon.”

The veteran pianist Rubén González, who didn’t own a piano at the time had been persuaded out of retirement by Juan de Marcos for the All Stars album. Not that it took much coaxing: despite his years of inactivity, his playing was on fire and so eager was he to get to the piano that every morning when the janitor turned up to unlock the studio doors, he was already waiting outside. The singer Ibrahim Ferrer, who was scraping a living shining shoes and selling lottery tickets, was also rescued from obscurity – and proceeded to sing his heart out. Eliades Ochoa the great guitarist and singer provided the rural roots from Santiago. Omara Portuondo was recruited as the company’s leading lady and the rich, resonant voice of the 89 year-old Compay Segundo provided a link with Cuba’s deepest musical past. “He knew the best songs and how to do them because he’d been doing it since World War One,” as Ry Cooder noted.

Yet this stellar line-up of singers was only part of the story. Behind them were some of the finest musicians Cuba had to offer, including the bassist Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López, who provided the heartbeart, trumpet player Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, who added the flair, and Barbarito Torres the virtuoso laoúd player. In the space of two weeks World Circuit’s Havana recording blitz produced not only the Afro Cuban All Stars and the Buena Vista Social Club™ albums but also the debut solo album by Rubén González.

When they had finished recording, Ry Cooder knew that he had been privileged to be part of a unique musical experience. “This is the best thing I was ever involved in,” he said prior to Buena Vista’s release in June 1997. “It’s the peak, a music that takes care of you and nurtures you. I felt that I had trained all my life for this experience and it was a blessed thing.”

In Cuba, Ry noted, he had found the kind of deeply rooted musical context that he had been searching for all his life. “These are the greatest musicians alive on the planet today,” he enthused. “In my experience Cuban musicians are unique. The organisation of the musical group is perfectly understood. There is no ego, no jockeying for position so they have evolved the perfect ensemble concept”.

I want to bring is some segments from a conversation between critics of The New York Times from 2021, where they discussed the impact and legacy of the extraordinary Buena Vista Social Club, twenty-five years after it was released. I would urge anyone who has never heard the album to play it today. I am going to end with a review that puts into words why it is such a remarkable album:

“JON PARELES Indulge me with an anecdote. In 2000, I visited Cuba for an utterly amazing festival of rumba. It was three years after the release of “Buena Vista Social Club,” well into the album’s commercial explosion. A typical Havana tourist, I wandered through the old city center, where it seemed like there was a bar with live music on every corner. What I remember vividly was a host outside one club, who knew an American when he saw one. “We have old guys!” he announced.

ISABELIA HERRERA I like your anecdote, Jon, because it captures how the concept of nostalgia is key to understanding the legacy of “Buena Vista Social Club.” The aura around the project (as well as the images in the reissue’s packaging) evokes these “old guys” smoking cigars in black-and-white photos, or playing instruments on the street near colorful vintage cars — a particular, antiquated image of pre-revolutionary Cuba in the American public consciousness.

It’s a notion that almost fetishizes the idea of isolation: one that suggests that Cuban musicians and listeners are totally separated from contemporary popular culture, frozen in time during the so-called “golden era” of the 1940s and ’50s. Notably, the liner notes of this anniversary edition open with a quote from Cooder: “The players and singers of the ‘son de Cuba’ have nurtured this very refined and deeply funky music in an atmosphere sealed off from the fall out of a hyper-organised and noisy world.”

Framing “Buena Vista” within the context of isolation diminishes its achievements and those of Cuban music before and after it. As the scholar Alexandra Vazquez has written, the uptick in compilations of and guides to Cuban music that followed “Buena Vista” helped generate plenty of myths about the island. They contributed to the fantasy that Cuban musicians ceased to innovate after the 1940s and ’50s, and proliferated the idea that you have to visit the island and immerse yourself in its vintage culture “before it changes forever” — as though Cuba is some kind of hidden paradise to be discovered, rather than a place that people call home.

I say this as someone who grew up in a household that adored “Buena Vista Social Club.” I have fond memories of my father singing “Dos Gardenias” in the evenings after dinner and a glass of wine, and returning to the album brings me back to a special part of my childhood. But I do think it’s worth pushing against that nostalgia, because the mythology of Buena Vista Social Club has tended to eclipse the actual music and its history. This is especially true in the way that it presents its musicians as being “rediscovered” or “saved” from erasure, when singers like Omara Portuondo enjoyed plenty of international success before this project (for one, she toured the United States with the group Cuarteto D’Aida and performed with Nat King Cole in the 1950s).

HERRERA Jon, you asked earlier if “Buena Vista Social Club” pointed a way forward. It is hard to avoid the reality that the project follows in a long line of musical projects that ended up “reintroducing” or “summarizing” musical cultures for foreign ears — even if the recording initially emerged as a happy accident. Ultimately, I am so glad these musicians achieved the success they did, and that new markets were opened to them, because they were well-deserving of compensation.

Today, there is such a vibrant community of Cuban hip-hop, and dozens of other Cuban musicians that I hope get a similar level of recognition on an international scale. At the very least, “Buena Vista Social Club” offered more curious, thoughtful listeners an entire new musical world. But a more ideal way forward would undo the colonial logic that underpins the legacy of “Buena Vista Social Club” — the requirement for Western support in order for “foreign” music to be valued — so these artists could be appreciated on their own terms”.

I will end with a review from AllMusic. It is a shame that there was not another album from the ensemble. One of those rare moments in music where you get this single album that just takes on a life of its own. You look around the music landscape today and can see which artists and genres can be traced back to Buena Vista Social Club:

“This album is named after a members-only club that was opened in Havana in pre-Castro times, a period of unbelievable musical activity in Cuba. While bandleader Desi Arnaz became a huge hit in the States, several equally talented musicians never saw success outside their native country, and have had nothing but their music to sustain them during the Castro reign. Ry Cooder went to Cuba to record a musical documentary of these performers. Many of the musicians on this album have been playing for more than a half century, and they sing and play with an obvious love for the material. Cooder could have recorded these songs without paying the musicians a cent; one can imagine them jumping up and grabbing for their instruments at the slightest opportunity, just to play. Most of the songs are a real treasure, traversing a lot of ground in Cuba's musical history. There's the opening tune, "Chan Chan," a composition by 89-year-old Compay Segundo, who was a bandleader in the '50s; the cover of the early-'50s tune "De Camino a la Verada," sung by the 72-year-old composer Ibrahim Ferrer, who interrupted his daily walk through Havana just long enough to record; or the amazing piano playing on "Pablo Nuevo" by 77-year-old Rubén González, who has a unique style that blends jazz, mambo, and a certain amount of playfulness. All of these songs were recorded live -- some of them in the musicians' small apartments -- and the sound is incredibly deep and rich, something that would have been lost in digital recording and overdubbing. Cooder brought just the right amount of reverence to this material, and it shows in his production, playing, and detailed liner notes. If you get one album of Cuban music, this should be the one”.

The 25th Anniversary Edition is available, and this is an album I would encourage everyone to get. Such a wonderful and enriching listen, you will come back to it time and time again. I am a big fan of it and wanted to explore it more here. I hope it gives you the background and details that encourage you to investigate further. It is almost thirty years since it came out, yet Buena Vista Social Club has lost none of its brilliance and passion. I am going toff to listen to this brilliant album…

RIGHT now.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Lana Del Rey

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Steven Meisel for W Magazine

 

Lana Del Rey

__________

I have featured…

Lana Del Rey a fair few times through the years. As she has a new album, Stove, out in January, it is a good time to feature her in this series. The New York-born artist is one of the greatest of her generation. With such a distinct sound and having released some of the best albums of the past decade or so, I am focusing on her now for this The Great American Songbook. A twenty-song distillation might seem a bit tough, but I hope it compels others to dig deep. I have never seen Del Rey perform live, but she is an artist that I definitely want to see at some point. She has released so many incredible albums. They are quite cinematic and sweeping. Until I discovered Lana Del Rey about a decade or so ago, I don’t think that I had heard anyone like her. She is someone who I have so much respect for. In terms of her consistency and brilliant songwriting. Her incredible and acclaimed live performances. I am ending this feature with a mixtape of her best twenty songs. Or the ones that I connect to most. Though it scratches the surface of her talent. It is a salute and admiring nod to…

A modern icon.

FEATURE: Over the Lights, Under the Moon… Looking Ahead to the Fiftieth Anniversary of Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside

FEATURE:

 

 

Over the Lights, Under the Moon…

 

Looking Ahead to the Fiftieth Anniversary of Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside

__________

EVEN though…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

we are talking about 2028, I think that this celebration needs preparation and some planning. In terms of celebrating big Kate Bush album anniversaries, next year is a fallow year. 2027 is when The Dreaming turns forty-five. 2028 is a big one. Kate Bush turns seventy on 30th July. The Red Shoes turns thirty-five. However, the biggest two anniversaries happen at the start of the year. On 20th January, Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights, is fifty. I know there will be a lot of celebration. Magazine articles and maybe some repeats. Kate Bush on the BBC or Top of the Pops. I am sure the song will get a streaming boost and there will also be something new. It would be great if there were podcast episodes or even  something more in-depth, such as a book. However, on 17th February, The Kick Inside celebrates fifty years. It is the first fiftieth anniversary for any of her albums, so it is this big event. When Hounds of Love turned forty back in September, there were a few events but nothing huge. However, when an album turns fifty, it means more and I feel there will be more fuss. It is unlikely we will get any reissue of the album where Kate Bush reveals unheard songs or takes. Any rarities or anything incomplete. Even though I am excited to mark forty-eight years of The Kick Inside. However, I feel the fiftieth is too huge to ignore! There is a book from Laura Shenton that only costs a few quid. It takes us inside this album and provides a lot of depth and detail. As yet, there are no other books about the album. No entry in the 33 1/3 series. It is tempting to pitch it myself, because I am not sure anyone else will write it.

The Kick Inside is my favourite album ever. I am going to end with a couple of pieces about the album. Alongside side magazine features and some celebratory podcasts and the like, we do need an event and listening party. Wuthering Heights will get a lot of buzz on 20th January, 2028, and a few weeks later, there will be renewed fascination. I love events in small venues but, for an album like The Kick Inside, you need something bigger where loads of fans can get together. Inspired by a fiftieth anniversary panel of The Beatles’ eponymous album in 2018, I feel like there should be an event where there is a panel. I would not be at the centre but, with people in mind – such as journalist Laura Snapes (who I will quote soon enough), Kate Bush News and some mega fans of her work – and an opportunity to combine this with a listening party and musicians performing songs from The Kick Inside and providing their own stamp, it would be a wonderful evening. I think that somewhere as big as Alexandra Palace would be too expensive. This was a venue I think Kate Bush was scouting for potential live work. I can’t remember if it was for The Tour of Life in 1979 or 2014 for Before the Dawn, but she did consider this for performance. Even if the venue does not connect with The Kick Inside, it would be a great location. However, it may be too pricey. Union Chapel or The Roundhouse are alternative London venues. In terms of demand, you know that the fiftieth of Hounds of Love will get people flocking in. However, for a less popular album, is there going to be that demand? I feel, if there was a packed night where artists performed, there was a playback, discussion and some special guests, then it would make it worthwhile. In terms of those who I would love to involve, they include Gered Mankowitz (who photograpohed Bush between 1978 and 1979), Andrew Powell (who produced The Kick Inside), Duncan Mackay and David Paton (who played on the album) and family. Paddy Bush played on the album and John Carder Bush would be amazing to talk to!

think we will see something huge for Hounds of Love’s fiftieth, but that is a whole decade away now! The Kick Inside turns fifty in just over two years, but there is a lot to plan. It is going to be expensive getting a venue and people together. Also, it is asking a lot for people to brave a cold February night to go to an event, so it has to be something worth the trip! We can’t let such a huge anniversary go by with some articles and podcasts – as great as that would be. There are a couple of features/reviews that I want to source. To show why the album is so special and it deserves celebration on its fiftieth anniversary. Stereogum dived into The Kick Inside on its fortieth anniversary in February 2018. An album that helped change music forever:

“Released when Bush was 19 in 1978, it included songs she had written as early as age 13 and introduced the world into Bush’s wild imagination. Arriving in a year otherwise dominated by disco and punk (“Wuthering Heights” replaced Abba’s “Take A Chance On Me” as the UK’s #1 single) this imagination felt “strangely out of time” and singular. The album’s focus on female sexuality, its use of voice as an instrument, and Bush’s unique storytelling techniques -- particularly her exciting use of fluid narrative identity, in which she changes identities and narrative point of view with every song -- created a new, unprecedented model for women in music. The Kick Inside (referred to as TKI from now on) made the world a safer place not just for women musicians but also for freaks and outcasts everywhere, and its anniversary is well worth celebrating.

Beginning with its title, which describes the sensation a pregnant woman feels as her fetus kicks, TKI is an album about bodies: the way they move (“Moving,” “Kite”), the desires they express (“The Man With the Child in His Eyes, ”“Feel It,” “L’Amour Looks Something Like You”), the way they both die and generate new life (“Room for the Life,” “The Kick Inside,”), and the way they sometimes return to haunt their lovers (“Wuthering Heights”). The album opener, “Moving,” invites listeners to move in order to free their minds: “As long as you're not afraid to feel… Don't think it over, it always takes you over/And sets your spirit dancing.” The importance of movement and the body is crucial to TKI, especially because Bush herself trained in dance prior to its release and performed elaborate, endearingly earnest dance routines in her performances and videos. Bodies and movement are an unusual focus for any album, much more so from one by a teenage British girl in 1978.

TKI is also revolutionary because it establishes Bush’s narrative style as fluid and multiple; her songs are short stories each written from a different narrator’s perspective rather than from her own point of view. This writing style stands in stark contrast to the traditionally personal style of music focusing on love and heartbreak that continues to dominate the charts. “I often find myself inspired by unusual, distorted, weird subjects, as opposed to things that are straightforward. It's a reflection of me, my liking for weirdness,” she said in 1980. Unlike the majority of pop/rock artists, The “I” in Bush’s music is rarely Bush. Her songs are not confessional, but are rather short stories told from the points of views of a diverse range of narrators. From Bush’s songs, we can know about themes that interest her, but Kate Bush herself rarely speaks in her work; her narrators, who occupy multiple genders, races, and historical times, do instead. This is a deeply radical break from traditional “confessional “ songwriting, especially for women up to that point. Consider that the most acclaimed female musician of the time, and probably of all time, Joni Mitchell, is most-lauded for her confessional album, Blue.

“That's what all art's about -- a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life,” Bush said, explaining her writing technique. “Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really -- to do something that's just not possible.” As a result, Bush’s ever-changing but always unusual topics on this and all her albums enraptured many outcasts, weirdos, and freaks, and created space to, as she sang on her later album The Dreaming’s “Leave it Open,” “let the weirdness in” to popular music. Rufus Wainwright summed up her appeal for outsiders when he said, “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 song that perhaps best captures what makes TKI revolutionary is its title track, which merges all the aforementioned topics: use of voice as instrument, feminine agency, and Bush’s fluid, narrative-story writing technique on unusual topics. “The Kick Inside” is based on the English folktale “The Ballad of Lucy Wan,” in which a brother impregnates and then decapitates his sister. Bush’s take on the story is sneakily radical, especially from a feminist perspective. In the folktale, the sister only speaks briefly before her brother kills her, but Bush rewrites the story from the sister’s point of view, literally giving voice to a history of women silenced by male violence, and changes the story so that the sister actively chooses her own death instead of being her brother’s victim. Bush said in 1978, “The sister becomes pregnant by her brother. And because it is so taboo and unheard of, she kills herself...The actual song is in fact the suicide note.” While the death is still tragic, the fact that Bush re-envisions a violent narrative passed down through centuries of patriarchal generations from a woman’s point-of-view and places the story’s narrative action in the woman’s hands is a subversive act.

One might say that this act of feminist re-visioning parallels the narrative of Bush’s own career. Instead of drawing from normalized, “feminine” confessional-based musical forms, she created odd, polarizing sounds with her voice to tell stories of “Strange Phenomena”, and later took complete sonic control over her work as a producer and multi-instrumentalist in a still-predominantly male-dominated industry where women are often denied agency or forced to compete with one another (Britney vs. Christina, anyone?). Bush co-produced 1980’s Never For Ever, which was the UK’s first #1 album by a British female solo artist, and started producing her work completely on her own for the rest of her career starting with her 1982 masterpiece The Dreaming. Over the course of her career she has continued to break records: in 2014, she became the only artist besides the Beatles and Elvis Presley to have had eight albums simultaneously on the UK’s top 40 chart, and her 2014 Before the Dawn live shows -- her first live performances since 1979 -- sold out in minutes.

Perhaps most importantly, beginning with The Kick Inside she has inspired a wide array of artists to “let the weirdness in.” Lady Gaga covered Bush’s duet with Peter Gabriel, “Don’t Give Up,” because she wanted to “make something that young people would hear and learn something about Kate Bush”, and her theatricality has its roots in Bush’s so-bizarre-they’re-brilliant live performances. Björk frequently cites Bush as a pivotal influence on her musical “form”, saying "I remember being underneath my duvet at the age of 12, fantasising about Kate Bush," and even sent Bush of a demo of herself covering Bush’s “Moving” in 1989. Lorde played “Running Up That Hill” before the shows on her Melodrama tour, and Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan said of Bush, “As an artist myself, [she’s] helped me to not be frightened to put my vulnerability as a woman [in my work] and in that, be powerful.” Bush’s influence is also felt in hip-hop, especially due to her early use of sampling, best seen in her sampling of the Gregorian chanting from Werner Herzog’s film Nosfertu The Vampyre in Hounds Of Love’s “Hello Earth.” One of her biggest champions is OutKast’s Big Boi, who has repeatedly called her “my favorite artist of all time,” and Tricky from Massive Attack said of Bush’s song “Breathing,” which features the line “breathing my mother in,”: “I’m a kid from a council flat, I’m a mixed-raced guy...totally different life to Kate Bush, but that lyric, ‘breathing my mother in,’ my whole career’s based on that.” Even Chris Martin “admitted” that Coldplay’s “Speed Of Sound” “was developed after the band had listened to Kate Bush”.

Before getting to a conclusion, I want to bring in parts of Laura Snapes’s 2019 review/retrospective for Pitchfork. Perhaps one of the most female albums ever released, you can read other features that take us inside the making of The Kick Inside. It always lows me away that Kate Bush, aged nineteen when the album was released, was writing in such a mature way. Much more fascinating, insightful and fearless than so many of her peers. We do not discuss the influence of this album enough, in terms of how it empowered and ignited generations of artists that followed:

“That Kate Bush named her debut album The Kick Inside might make it seem like her music is the product of a maternal wellspring. Women artists likening their work to their children is one culturally accepted way for them to discuss creativity; it implies a reassuring process of nurture. Another is as a bolt from the blue, a divine phenomenon which they just happened to catch and transmit to a deserving audience; no need for fear of a female genius here. But Bush’s debut, released when she was 19, says “Up yours” to all that.

Yes, the song “The Kick Inside” is about childbearing, but the young woman is pregnant by her brother and on the cusp of suicide to spare their family from shame. Subverting the folk song “Lucy Wan” (the brother kills his sister in the original), it shows the depths of Bush’s studies and her everlasting curiosity for how far desire can drive a person. She was signed at 16 but her debut took four years to make, during which she engaged multiple teachers in a process of spiritual and physical transformation. She pays tribute to their lessons alongside rhapsodies on unexplained phenomena, delirious expressions of lust, and declarations of earthbound defiance. Rather than feminine function or freak accident, these are the cornerstones of creativity, she suggested: mentorship and openness, but also the self-assurance to withstand those forces. Her purpose was as strong as any of them.

Besides, Bush had always felt that she had male musical urges, drawing distinctions between herself and the female songwriters of the 1960s. “That sort of stuff is sweet and lyrical,” Bush said of Carole King and co. in 1978, “but it doesn’t push it on you, and most male music—not all of it, but the good stuff—really lays it on you. It’s like an interrogation. It really puts you against the wall and that’s what I’d like my music to do. I’d like my music to intrude.” (Evidently, she had not been listening to enough Laura Nyro.) That reasoning underpinned Bush’s first battle with EMI, who wanted to release the romp “James and the Cold Gun” as her first single. Bush knew it had to be the randy metaphysical torch song “Wuthering Heights,” and she was right: It knocked ABBA off the UK No. 1 spot. She soon intruded on British life to the degree that she was subject to unkind TV parodies. 

What made Bush’s writing truly radical was the angles she could take on female desire without ever resorting to submissiveness. “Wuthering Heights” is menacing melodrama and ectoplasmic empowerment; “The Saxophone Song”—one of two recordings made when she was 15—finds her fantasizing about sitting in a Berlin bar, enjoying a saxophonist’s playing and the effect it has on her. But she is hardly there to praise him: “Of all the stars I’ve seen that shine so brightly/I’ve never known or felt in myself so rightly,” she sings of her reverie, with deep seriousness. We hear his playing, and it isn’t conventionally romantic but stuttering, coarse, telling us something about the unconventional spirits that stir her.

And if there is trepidation in the arrangement of “The Man With the Child in His Eyes,” it reflects other people’s anxieties about its depicted relationship with an older man: Will he take advantage, let her down? This is the other teenage recording, her voice a little higher, less powerfully exuberant, but disarmingly confident. Her serene, steady note in the chorus—“Oooooh, he’s here again”—lays waste to the faithless. And whether he is real, and whether he loves her, is immaterial: “I just took a trip on my love for him,” she sings, empowered, again, by her desire. There’s not a fearful note on The Kick Inside, and yet there is still room for childish wonder: Just because Bush appeared emotionally and musically sophisticated beyond her years didn’t mean denying them.

“Kite” unravels like a children’s story: First she wants to fly up high, away from cruel period pains (“Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o”) and teenage self-consciousness (“all these mirror windows”) but no sooner is she up than she wants to return to real life. It is a wacky hormone bomb of a song, prancing along on toybox cod reggae and the enervating rat-a-tat-tat energy that sustained parodies of Bush’s uninhibited style; still, more fool anyone who sneers instead of reveling in the pure, piercing sensation of her crowing “dia-ia-ia-ia-ia-ia-ia-mond!” as if giving every facet its own gleaming syllable.

The Kick Inside was Bush’s first, the sound of a young woman getting what she wants. Despite her links to the 1970s’ ancien régime, she recognized the potential to pounce on synapses shocked into action by punk, and eschewed its nihilism to begin building something longer lasting. It is ornate music made in austere times, but unlike the pop sybarites to follow in the next decade, flaunting their wealth while Britain crumbled, Bush spun hers not from material trappings but the infinitely renewable resources of intellect and instinct: Her joyous debut measures the fullness of a woman’s life by what’s in her head”.

There is so much to discuss and dissect. I think the biggest pull will be finding artists who are inspired by the album. Maybe few directly as influenced compared to albums like The Dreaming, Hounds of Love or The Sensual World (I know Charli xcx is a fan of this album), that will be a challenge, as The Kick Inside is not as referenced as other albums from Kate Bush. However, there is a hunger from fans. There has not been a massive gathering of any significant size since 2014’s Before the Dawn. There might never be another Kate Bush concert and fan conventions are not really a thing in music anymore. I do think it is a perfect opportunity to go beyond The Kick Inside and talk about Kate Bush’s influence now. What’s to say massive artists like Charli xcx or Björk would object? Having them as part of the night would be amazing. Starting out with a discussion about Wuthering Heights, its video and the Top of the Pops appearance. Then listening to the album in full. A panel where there would be a couple of breaks for watching videos and live performances, before a couple of special guests (pre-recorded words from Kate Bush would be incredible!), before a final live performance would end a wonderful celebration. It will cost thousands of pounds to book a venue and bring it all together, so I am thinking a crowd-funding campaign would be needed. Fans could get reward for donating. Kate Bush’s influence is as strong today as it has ever been. We can trace it all back to her debut album, released on 17th February, 1978. No artist who cites Kate Bush as an inspiration can overlook The Kick Inside. To me, it is one of the most influential albums…

EVER released.

FEATURE: The Best Albums of 2025: Loyle Carner – hopefully !

FEATURE:

 

 

The Best Albums of 2025

 

Loyle Carner – hopefully !

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TWO more albums to cover off…

in this series, where I explore the best and my favourite of the year. The penultimate choice is from one of my fave artists, Loyle Carner. I have been a fan of his for many years, and I think that hopefully ! is a phenomenal album. I will come to a review for that album. One of the best-received of this year. I am getting to some interviews with Loyle Carner before that. I want to start off with an interview from CLASH. On an album where Loyle Carner was trying to take himself less seriously and just embrace the moment, he also spoke about Glastonbury, the power of collaborations and his heartfelt and personal new album:

“Much has changed for Loyle in the last decade of his career. Making his debut with 2014 EP ‘A Little Late’, a then-nineteen-year-old Loyle came through with a distinctly British take on rap, inflected with the indie acoustics that soundtracked his childhood home. A Soulquarian influence, too, would shape his early material, layering his candid flows over easy-going, boom-bap beats. At the crux of that self-released project is loss, namely that of his stepfather Nik. And what was evident then was a knack for storytelling influenced by his musical heroes: Mos Def, Jehst and Common.

“I never really thought of myself as an out-and-out rapper,” he tells CLASH, describing his work as a more fluid routine of expression. To the masses, his verses felt familiar, despite being personal. Rapping was an opportunity to memorialise life’s challenges; an outlet and an outpouring of suppressed emotions. “I wasn’t around a lot of men growing up really, so I was in a space where communication of emotion was commonplace,” he explains, when asked about his inherent ability to articulate feelings beyond the surface. “I think I was privy to a lot of scenarios with my mum, my grandmother, and their friends being around the house. I was learning how to operate by being around them.” Whilst he acknowledges the virtues of his upbringing, he cautions against the use of an oversimplified response. “It’s not so cut and dry,” he reminds himself.

‘hopefully !’ finds comfort in new dynamics, in an ensemble of musicians who operate as the record’s North Star. Brought together during his last sold-out tour, Aviram Barath, Richard Spaven, Finn Carter, Mark Mollison, Yves Fernandez and Marla Kether, form the backbone of Loyle’s most collaborative work to date. “I’ve always felt that it’s a very lonely job, to be a musician on your own,” he explains. “I prefer dissolving into a group, as opposed to having to be the figurehead of it. It’s a kind of anonymity, in a way.” On ‘hopefully !’, Loyle had to unlearn his prior process and think of not just the story he wanted to tell but the sonic world he wanted it located in. “Sometimes I would get my lyrics down quite quickly, and then move into the other space with the rest of the guys and think about how musically it should be finished,” he says. “I had to learn how to make music again for the first time. It was quite profound.”

Loyle’s words are situated within spacious production, his purpose revealed in a kind of recital. Take the album’s prelude single ‘in my mind’, an ambling rumination painted in light, poetic brushstrokes that takes on a lulling quality. At first a placeholder for his collaborators, it soon transpired that the record’s snug hooks were destined to be his own. “It speaks to the band’s input and having the right people around me, who were just like, yo, this really sounds like you,” he says. For Loyle, collaborative output is secondary to trust and rapport. “I travel a lot for shows but I’m not really out there like that. I don’t meet many other musicians and I don’t go to events, so I don’t end up meeting people from further afield,” he explains. “I want it [the collaboration] to be organic, and I haven’t known that many people out there for it to be like that.”

Loyle has built a community of hand-picked musicians that speak to his approach. He has a musician’s ear; Madlib, Olivia Dean, John Agard and Sampha have all fallen within his orbit. Amongst them, too, is the late Benjamin Zephaniah. On the title track, a weighted excerpt addresses a fractured Britain. The dub poet draws from his observations of the Brixton riots over wailing police sirens and sax breaks – a confronting listen that comments on the past but deeply resonates with the present. “I think he gave me a continued spice for life,” Loyle says, reflecting on time spent with Zephaniah, a childhood-example-turned-mentor. “His eyes were so open. He was able to have his opinion changed if he felt he was wrong, and he was also happy to stand by his opinion if he felt it was right. I think it takes such humility but also such bravery to do those two things at once. I think a lot of people can do one of them, but not both.”

Mere weeks after our conversation Loyle returns to Glastonbury’s Other Stage. The headline performance is heralded as a defining moment in the post-Glasto reviews and recaps – a warmer, intimate counterpoint to The 1975 on the Pyramid Stage. Visibly emotional, Loyle soaks up the feedback from the captive audience, “the biggest we’ve ever played,” he says awestruck.

“It’s a performance built with one thing in mind: honesty. It’s so easy to put so much money in the wrong places with a show like this. I want to celebrate the band, and I want people to see the stuff that we’re playing. It’s happening in front of their eyes. To me, that’s the magic of it all”.

This might be his most personal album. I think hopefully ! features some of his best lines. One of our greatest voices and lyricists, there are so many standout verses and examples of his brilliance. Even if he does not consider himself as a technical singer or a great one, I think there is much honesty, authenticity and power in his voice. Gravitas and emotion coming through in everything he sings. JUNKEE interviewed an artist who was present and profound on his latest album. It is clear that hopefully ! is the work of a hugely special artist. One who I hope will produce many more albums:

“What’re you hoping listeners take away from the new album?

I have two kids now, and that makes me not focus so much on the past, more on the present, and a little bit on the future. Kids are so present, you can't really explain to them that they're going to get something tomorrow, it has to be right now. My son was in the studio with me a lot when we were making this music so it just became a thing of ‘everything was so immediate’. He was just living in the right now and it’s an infectious thing.

I want people to be able to listen alongside their day, for it to be a companion of the day. Not for it to be something that you have to stop what you're doing and listen to it, but actually more so it can just be by your side through the pieces of your life that you need a friend for. Before hugo, it felt like a disrespect but now I see it as a real privilege that people are comfortable enough to put my shit on and then live their life, because that's the most intimate thing you can do.

This album welcomes your biggest departure from rap, and you’ve talked about Fontaines D.C. being a big influence on hopefully ! How did that inspiration come about?

I was just listening to them a lot. Actually, I was friendly with Grian over DM or whatever, and then I asked — I'm still cool with him — I asked him to be on one of the songs because I wasn't singing at this point. I was nervous about it. He didn't get back to me, and it actually was really useful because him not singing on it meant that I started doing it and then that spiraled into feeling quite comfortable with it. So in a way, I have to thank him or people have to not thank him for how bad my voice sounds, depending on how you see it.

I listened to a lot of Elliott Smith, The Smiths, The Cure, a band called Pinegrove, loads of stuff. That's music I've always listened to and always tried to celebrate. Sometimes you slip into a stereotype, or you do what people expect of you because you think that's how you're going to get through. It's been nice on this album to make music that's a little bit more true to who I am”.

I get hopefully ! is all about change – personally and musically – and a shift. More indebted to Indie and other genres, it is great to see Loyle Carner keep moving and exploring. Billboard spoke with Loyle Carner about his “upcoming fourth album, masculinity in the wake of Netflix's Adolescence and his huge Glastonbury slot”. An icon for British youth, it is fascinating reading interviews with him. So compelling to know about, this is an artist who is a definite role model to so many people:

“hopefully ! is something of a departure for Carner. More in tune with his love for alternative and indie music, his hip-hop stylings make way for inspiration by Irish rockers Fontaines D.C., cult star Mk.gee, Big Thief, Idles and more. The band he assembled for hugo’s live shows followed him into the studio to bring new textures to his compositions.

“It’s a lot of pressure to step out singularly as a rapper. And I’m not even, like, a ‘rapper.’ I just make music, and people like to put me in that box,” he says. “I loved the anonymity of being in a band. I wanted to be around when the magic is happening and to not just be sent a beat after all the fun parts had already happened. I wanted to move away from the words being all that I can contribute.”

Carner’s pen is still mighty, but in a different way. Since his earliest releases, his words have been what has carried him forward and provided renewed inspiration. On 2019’s “Still,” which he described as his “favourite-ever song” during its performance at the Royal Albert Hall, he speaks about his insecurities with a disarming honesty. The rhyming couplets on hugo’s “Nobody Knows (Ladas Road)” and “Homerton” show remarkable dexterity. He knows when to build tension, but also when to let the words breathe. It’s a skill he learned from his poet heroes like Agard and the late, great Benjamin Zephaniah, the man Carner was named after.

As his family has grown, Carner’s techniques and influences have changed. He describes his son as his muse, and his presence is felt throughout the album. hopefully !’s artwork features a snap of Carner and his son, with colorful scrawls and additions only a child can make with such purpose. His voice babbles away throughout the record and his mischievous personality shines. Words could not contain the emotions Carner feels toward him, so the songs became looser, less literal but still emotionally resonant, and with a greater focus on capturing his son’s “melodic” personality in his songwriting structures.

On one album highlight, Carner speaks of the transition of becoming a father and notes that he’s “falling asleep in a chair I used to write in.” Later, he speaks directly to his son, saying, “You give me hope in humankind.” He has learned to embrace sonic imperfections and to capture a feeling, letting broad brushstrokes stand proudly. There’s a childlike wonder to the rawness of these songs; from snatches of phrases to choruses that linger in your head long after music has ended.

PHOTO CREDIT: Oliver Webb

“If you try and color around something or touch it up… you always f–k it up,” Carner says. “That’s what I love about my son’s paintings. It might even be just one line across the page, but the simplicity of how he works and moves on. That’s how I feel now.”

Making the record has given Carner a greater perspective about his role and place in the world and in the family dynamic. “I’m not the main character in the movie any more. It’s my son and daughter’s film, and I’m just some extra in that.”

Carner has long been an advocate for a more healthy relationship with masculinity, having worked with suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably). He gave a passionate speech at Reading & Leeds Festival in August 2023 decrying the “toxic masculine bulls–t” that plagued his childhood. His records and shows have helped unlock certain conversations, but the issue remains prescient. Netflix’s streaming hit Adolescence, which examines the fallout from a misogynistic murder by a 13-year-old boy, has sparked new discussions around the manosphere and its pervasive influence.

Carner saw the intensity of the show — which uses one-shot takes — up close on-set; he’s close friends with actor-creator Stephen Graham and director Philip Barantini. The topics at hand need urgent attention, Carner says. “We’re at an essential need for conversation for young boys to let go of this fear, frustration and anxiety and be able to pass it to someone.

“I’m very glad that my son has my daughter to live with,” he adds. “That’s a huge thing for me, and also for me to be in the presence of someone who is growing up to be a woman. For my son, it’s even crazier, as it’s so natural and safe and understood and demystified.”

He’s most excited for hopefully ! to come out and for his children to hear the snapshot of this moment, about this family, and about the man their dad was when they were little. But what about the fans’ reaction to the new sound and what they might take from it? “Honestly, I don’t care. It’s totally up to them. They could take nothing and not find it for 10 or 20 years or even hate it, but…”

Carner throws his arms up and laughs. “I haven’t even thought about it, actually. I hope that people that do find it and that it can be a good friend to them”.

am going to end things with The Guardian and their positive review for hopefully ! There will be people who have not heard the album, so I would recommend that you check it out. Noting how Carner has a new singing style and has changed since his first three albums, many think that hopefully ! is his greatest work to date:

“Vulnerability has always been Carner’s lyrical stock in trade. It tends to manifest in two ways, first in open-hearted sincerity that has generated songs about grief and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and which is in full flow on the album’s title track: “You give me hope in humankind, but are humans kind? / I don’t know but I hope so.” Second, in a less anodyne and far more striking form of introspection: on In My Mind, he admits a tendency towards myopic self-obsession and alludes to the bitter dismissal of a “minor friend”.

Carner has two young children, and the artwork for Hopefully! features the kind of felt-tip scrawl most toddler-wranglers will recognise. Parenting is the album’s major theme, and there are moments when Carner approaches it from a compellingly raw angle. On About Time, covering the tensions between fatherhood and artistry, the narrator lists the thrills of his job before describing what sounds like a fight with his partner, in which he lets slip yet “another fucking thing I know you couldn’t forgive”. Yet for all Carner’s accounts of the internal and external conflict involved in fatherhood, it’s hard to buy the more damning self-critique – on Lyin he claims to be “just a man trained to kill, to love I never had the skill” – from an artist who makes music this heartfelt.

Lyin introduces a third lyrical mode, capturing early parenthood’s transcendent surreality in a stream of impressionistic imagery: Carner looks for reassurance under sofa cushions; his bedroom walls fall “to Poseidon”. Progressing from anxiety to confusion to a strange elation, he is overcome by the way his child’s hand reflexively tightens as he attempts to let go of it and how bright the sky looks in the middle of the night. His voice radiates awe and trepidation-tinged delight. It is magical songwriting, and his most impressive work to date.

Even before fatherhood, Carner’s work fixated on family: his mother is unusually omnipresent in his music, even by hip-hop’s standards. His 2019 song Dear Jean even took pains to insist that his new girlfriend was no threat to the pair’s intimacy. She’s still never far away; over luminous guitars on All I Need, he recalls the smell of “the sheets on my mother’s mattress – just the place I learnt my backflips”. It’s classic Carner: the place where heady feeling threatens to tip over into cloying soppiness. Yet thanks to a pleasingly precarious new vocal style and some levelled-up lyricism, he’s more adept than ever at this specific balancing act”.

At the moment, Loyle Carner is still on his world tour for hopefully ! There are dates coming next year, that see him visit the U.S. and Canada. It has been an exhaustive tour, but there is that worldwide demand for his music. The brilliant hopefully ! is…

AMONG the best of this year.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Rochelle Jordan

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Elise K

 

Rochelle Jordan

__________

I will get to a review…

PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Elise K

for one of this year’s best albums, Through the Wall. The work of the amazing Rochelle Jordan, I was going to include her in my Spotlight series, though she has been on the scene for a long time now. Maybe you could say she is hitting a peak now so could be seen as a rising artist but, instead, I am including her in this Modern-Day Queens. Prior to getting to a review for Through the Wall, there are some great interviews from this year that I want to get to. I am starting out with an interview from The Culture Crypt. Having been releasing music since the early-2010s, you feel that Jordan is producing her best work at the moment. She may disagree, though I do feel that Through the Wall is her greatest album yet. The Culture Crypt speak with an artist who goes from “underground R&B to genre-blending electronica, her latest album is a triumphant return to her roots—and a bold step into new territory”:

“Born in London and raised in Toronto, Jordan has always operated on her own terms—here lies a visionary who saw the connection between soulful R&B and electronic music long before those around her.

Rochelle Jordan's early work has truly stood the test of time. And she knows this. She raps, "All these sons, I watch 'em run around," on the early KLSH-produced standout "Ladida". It's not a simple viral hit or two, Rochelle's vault of material—namely R O J O and Pressure—sounds just as great today as they did in the 2010s blog era.

Then, of course, there's her enduring 2014 debut album, 1021, the true benchmark for lo-fi electro-R&B. Sure, 1021 was adored by fans in 2014. But so was "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea and Vine. Where are they now? No, offerings from 1021 like "Follow Me", "401" and "Lowkey" have enjoyed their fair share of post-TikTok revivalism. More on "Lowkey" later.

Radio silence followed—a period of quiet. But what may have seemed like a hiatus for Jordan was actually a period of intense struggle. During this time, she navigated a harsh industry and overcame a series of professional hurdles that threatened to derail her career. It was a transformative chapter, ultimately proving that "the gift remains," according to her own mental manuscript.

This journey paved the way for a creative rebirth on her 2021 comeback record and second album, Play With The Changes. Critics and fans adored it alike and new listeners were easily magnetised by her strong artistic pull. It was an evolution of her sound. R&B was very much still in the foreground, but the likes of house, breakbeat and electronica had tracks like "Love You Good", "Already" and "Got Em" under groove hypnosis.

Its sequel and subsequent remix edit was stacked in the best way possible. Featuring the likes of Kaytranada, Sango, KLSH and LSDXOXO, it was a fresh and welcome reimagining of her album, with new producers using Rochelle's voice as a vessel to commandeer the dancefloor.

2024 saw another triumphant revival for Jordan: she featured on both Kelela's remix album, RAVE:N, The Remixes and Kaytranada's TIMELESS. Equally, "Lowkey" gained real traction all over social media, accumulating just under 30 million streams in the process. These chessboard manoeuvres aligned Rochelle Jordan perfectly for her second creative ascent. With time away from music alongside creative gestation and reflection in full swing, she's found herself once again.

Speaking with The Culture Crypt, Rochelle Jordan opens up about the inspirations behind her new album, her personal growth and how she's navigating this latest chapter in her career.

The title, Through The Wall, feels like a definitive statement. Is that how you see it?

"Absolutely. The title represents so many things for me. On one hand, it's about the emotional and mental walls we build as creatives—the insecurities, fears and imposter syndrome that hold us back. This album was a process of completely breaking those walls down and realising that I deserve all the wins and positive things that are coming my way.

But the title also has a deeper, more personal meaning: it's a tribute to my brother. When we first moved from the UK to Toronto, he brought a briefcase filled with cassette tapes from the '90s. He's autistic so that he would play these same tapes over and over through the bedroom wall very loudly.

I would just be on the other side playing with my Barbies, unknowingly absorbing all this beautiful house, garage, gospel and drum and bass. That music was my first education in the fluidity of sounds, harmonies and melodies. So the album is a thank you to him for being essential to my foundation as an artist."

You've cultivated a really devoted community of fans over the past decade, much like artists such as Kelela and Solange. How does it feel to be part of that group?

"It's beautiful. I never take it for granted. 'Day Ones'—my official fanbase—go all the way back to '09, so we have this very deep-rooted love for each other. I also love that my fan base seems to have the same taste as me. I think the reason they love artists like Solange or Kelela is that they recognise a shared sense of leadership in sound and self-knowing.

I have much respect for those women. It's a privilege, because there are millions of artists in the world, and to be in the small percentage of people that listeners truly care for is something special. I thank God for that every day."

I have to touch on the resurgence of "Lowkey" going viral on TikTok. For the new listeners, what do you want them to know about your journey so far?

"It's so crazy. I think the first thing I'd want them to grasp is the history, the deep-rooted history. As they are learning a song like 'Lowkey' and probably stumbling across my new album. I would love for them to go back even further. It's inspiring to listen to the blocks that built the house.

I would love for them to recognise that I am a mother, I'm no one's daughter [laughs]. Well, I'm the daughter of Mariah Carey, Aaliyah and Beyoncé as well. My music branches out from all of them."

Finally, for both longtime fans and newcomers, how would you define this new era of Through The Wall?

"The overall synopsis of this album is simple: Rochelle Jordan has broken through the wall. I'm just happy for people to come along on this journey because the train is moving, and it's only going to get better. Every single time I go into a project, my mindset is, 'How do I top the last one?' I hope the people coming along feel that same magic and get to enjoy the ride”.

Let’s move to NME. The British-Canadian artist started out in the 2010s, in the days of the music blog. When it was quite prolific asnd fresh. Then, her career sort of went into limbo. There was a period of inactivity and self-doubt. That is now behind her. On her third album, Through the Wall, that period of imposter syndrome is well and truly behind her. Great to see her free, released and confident:

“In retrospect, Jordan is grateful her career has been a slow burn. “When ‘1021’ came out, I was irritated that I wasn’t signed to a major and things weren’t connecting,” she recalls. “Now, I thank God. Because what would have happened is I would have been boxed into creating R&B – and I’m not the type of artist who likes to be boxed in. It would not have been easy for me to create different soundscapes and leave an impact, culturally push things forward and be in the conversation now. It’s not easy being the person that’s a forward thinker. It’s going to be painful, but it all connects in the end.”

Now, in 2025, the tectonic plates have shifted. Arguably, the ‘90s revival that she was at the vanguard of has never been more prevalent in pop, while ‘Lowkey’ – a cut from her debut – blew up on TikTok last year, a decade on from its initial release. “The TikTok girls! They’re so funny,” smiles Jordan. “I love that community – they’re tastemakers. It was very vindicating and victorious for ‘Lowkey’ to have its moment, ‘cause it’s a new generation. I’m like, god, you guys are ageing me!”

She feels the shapeshifting ‘Play With The Changes’, which saw her dig into club culture, is finally receiving its dues, too. “I believe I was part of that cultural reset, especially for R&B girls to be curious about house music,” she says, shouting out her forebears Azealia Banks and AlunaGeorge. She credits Beyoncé’s 2022 dancefloor opus ‘Renaissance’ with helping to “create a lane” for her now. “As much as I could have felt like, ‘Damn ‘Play With The Changes’ is not getting its shine for the door it kicked down in terms of the psyche of R&B girls moving into this space’, now when I look back, I’m like, ‘Yo, Beyoncé did me a favour man because she’s opened up the world’s mind to a Black woman coming into the electronic space merging with R&B.’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Elise K

Before ‘Through the Wall’ was released, Jordan predicted her fans would view “Charli XCX doing her thing”, with ‘Brat’’s slime-green chokehold on the zeitgeist, and ponder “Is Rochelle going to go deeper into the EDM/techno space?’”. While she did delve further into nocturnal club atmospherics, it was through honing and refining her core principles. Aided by a nexus of producers – KLSH, Kaytranada, storied Chicago house icon Terry Hunter, Initial Talk, Jimmy Edgar, and DāM FunK have all been invited behind the velvet rope – she’s carved a pummelling beat-filled sound of her breaking down her self-imposed final wall and dancing in its rubble.

What she’s learned from the journey is perhaps best summed up at the start of the masterful ‘90s Janet Jackson-recalling throwback pop-dance of ‘Doing It Too’ when she earnestly advises: “Don’t be afraid to take up space.” Eventually, sticking to your vision will pay off.

“The road of being an independent artist isn’t easy,” she says. “You’re going to be gaslit. You’re not going to be given your flowers so openly. I’ve been in this game for a very long time, and when you’re creating with great intention and you’re upping the quality each time, at some point, the world is going to wake up. It’s a testament to resilience, and I knew I would be able to tell my story – and it would be a story of champions.” Like any good diva, Jordan is ready for her close-up. “I believe in divine alignment and timing. I’ve earned my bragging rights,” she smiles. “It’s time to talk a little shit!”.

Two more interviews I want to cross off before getting to a glowing review of Through the Wall. One to Watch spent some time with an artist whose then-upcoming album was a love letter to freedom. Many people hailing this as a comeback or return. The truth is that Rochelle Jordan never went anywhere. However, I can appreciate the importance of the album, as it comes four years after Play the Changes:

“OnesToWatch: You are made up of so many different cultures at once. Being born in London, raised in Toronto, a British Jamaican, how do all of these different cultures make up one unified version of self?

Rochelle Jordan: That's a very interesting question. I think just naturally, I've been able to adapt very well in my whole life, almost like a chameleon. Not in a sense where I'm putting on a costume by any means, but I'm able to have a deep-rooted understanding for different cultures and have a very open mind to differences. Even down to the seasons. Being in Canada, you see all the different seasons all the time. Living in LA for 15 years and just kind of seeing one season, I was like, “I need the changes. I really need that spiritually.” For the most part, I had a very good upbringing, being around different cultures and everyone meshing in well with each other. It kept my mind open and wondering and very curious, all of that leads into the music at the end of the day.

That's what's so magnetic about your music; it's unconfined. What were you listening to growing up that informed your eclectic taste for music?

Oh, my goodness, so much stuff. My parents were obviously playing old stuff like Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and a lot of Vybez Kartel. My brothers were playing a lot of real deep cut UK garage. I grew up listening to a lot of pop music when I was younger, like my obsession with the Spice Girls, Janet, Britney. I was paying attention and not paying attention, just living through the music. And then suddenly, it just kind of struck something. My mom recently sent me my agenda from elementary school, and it was like asking questions like “What do you want to be when you're older?” And I just kept saying, “I want to be a singer.” I also used to write, which is kind of sad, “I want to be pretty. I want to be pretty.” I was so hard on myself, even at a young age. But it's very interesting to see the footprints of your thought process and the little things that you were thinking about when you were younger. All of it manifested into something that I hold so closely to my heart as an adult.

That little girl grew up to be someone so uninhibited. I think a woman who is healed is a woman who is the fullest expression of herself. How do you tend to that on a day-to-day basis?

For me, it's very much about holding true to the things that inspire me. That is the most important thing. I'm not somebody who is entertained much by trends. I’m pretty rebellious in that sense; if something is going one way, I try to dance the opposite way. I can understand why things have come out the way they have, and why things are the way they are for me. I'm very strong in who I am. I'm an independent thinker, and I am somebody who appreciates silence as well. I like to hear the voice of God, my inner voice as well. Social media is very noisy. My body, my spirit, my chakras don’t like that feeling too much, so I have to keep a certain balance. All of these things combined really help me hold on to who I am authentically. I think for everybody, you got to find out how to manage yourself personally in order to hold on to who you are authentically.

This is the calm before the storm. Soon, the project will be in the world’s hands. Are you ready for it, or do you still feel protective?

Oh, I'm ready for it to be in the world. I was very protective up until last week. I just want to make sure that my baby is still mine. But I'm excited about it going out to the world. I find that every single time I release music into the world, it sounds different. I can't put my hand on it. I just hear it differently. I can hear what the people are hearing, and it really excites me. I think it's because before it goes out, you are in an analytical mindset. I might be hearing things and paying attention to things that are more on the creative side. Once it's out, it's like freedom. It's gone. It no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the world, to the universe, and it's such a good feeling to let go”.

One more interview with Rochelle Jordan before closing up with a review for Through the Wall. There are chunks of this interview with PASTE that I want to include, as Rochelle Jordan talked about what being a diva meant to her. Using audience anticipation and longing as a tool for longevity. A fascinating and deep conversation with an artist that everyone should know about. Through the Wall is undoubtably up there with the best albums of this year:

“Jordan believes not just in the authenticity of her intentions, but in making those intentions known. “People will understand, because they’re going to hear that you’re doing the right thing,” she assures. “I just wanted to create a world for people to get lost in and to move into, especially in this time that we’re living in. People need a healthy escape, and I wanted for this album to be that healthy escape.” Short album, long album, it never mattered to her. It’s always been about bodies of work that deserve to be celebrated. It’s about artists no longer being afraid of being sincere about what they’ve made. “When I started making music seriously, that was the pact that I made with myself. Your responsibility is to pull people into a world and make them feel magic in music,” Jordan adds. “If you can do that, then you’re doing your job. It’s been a lot of epiphanies along the way. I know I’m on the right path.” There is one thing about the music industry that Jordan has her reservations about: how fast artists are putting out their albums. “That’s personally going to be a problem for me,” Jordan, whose two pre-Through the Wall releases came out seven years apart, clarifies.

The seven years separating 1021 and Play With the Changes were practically a lifetime, as far as the music business is concerned. “I spent years on a hope and a wish that an A&R that I entrusted with what would be Play With the Changes would be able to take me over the finish line,” she tells me. “And it was slowly unveiled that they wouldn’t be able to do that. And that slow unveiling takes up a lot of time, and it creates a lot of fear in the mind, especially being independent, because it’s like… all you have is your music, and you want to make sure that the train keeps on going.” That period was a disappointment for Jordan but not always. “It was very exciting, thinking that I had the right support. This person was a support, they were just not the right one, in order for me to get off what I was essentially trying to do. The journey of being an independent artist is hard. Even being a major artist is hard. Pick your poison, at the end of the day.”

THROUGH THE WALL BELONGS in the conversation of greatest contemporary dance music releases, alongside Dawn Richard’s Second Line, Kelela’s Raven, and Beyoncé’s Renaissance—the latter having opened the mind of the mainstream to, as Jordan puts it, “accept that sound of a Black woman being on dance and house records.” While the language Jordan is speaking on Through the Wall may be easier to understand now because Renaissance came out in 2022, one year earlier she was performing curious, palatable music that mixed R&B vocals with house, electronic, and D&B samples on Play With the Changes. Jordan has always been on the cutting edge but rarely given her due for it. Her nineties vocal on top of trap beats throughout Pressure in 2012 was called “trap soul” by 2015; in 2014, she wrote “Follow Me” and “Lowkey” before Kehlani and Ella Mai could write “Distraction” and “Boo’d Up.” “I know that I set a lot of groundwork that would, in the future, be doors that are wildly, widely open,” she attests, crediting Azealia Banks and AlunaGeorge for their soulful stance on dance music changing the culture first. “I think I opened my own door. Sometimes where I had resentment… I realize now that it’s all about timing.”

Through the Wall communicates with Black exemplars from then and now, like Janet, Diana, Chaka, and Sade, and Jordan aims for the “boldness, the bigness, the enchantment” of songs like the Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There” or Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy.” You can hear those motivations in the album’s addictive, acrobatic DNA, in the Brandy-summoning “Sweet Sensation,” the bouncing, provocative “Crave,” and the serpentine, four-on-the-floor “Sum.” “Get It Off” sounds like an aughts pop record, while “The Boy” is this plush, feral synth hit that exists not in the post-R&B or electronic tracts, but in a campy, escapist pantheon of its own. The colors streak and the repetition tastes so good you don’t even realize the party ended hours ago. After releasing Play With the Changes, it would have been reasonable to assume that Jordan would plunge even deeper into a techno space. That was her initial plan, at least, she reveals, “but I’m just so in love with nostalgia. I’m so in love with the past and mixing that with the future. I’m happy that I stuck to my guns and took the risk to do that, because you never know what people are going to take to.” She’s not a revivalist, though, but a tastemaker ready to talk her shit.

And Jordan is braggadocious on the mic but never obnoxiously so, after years of staying “modest” in an industry that’ll eat you alive if you ever blow your cool. There’s a method to her madness, she says. After the album’s hour is up, there’s no doubting that Jordan has come completely into her own, attacking every song with a time capsule of seductive vocal struts, disciplined and slinking rhythms, and lightweight, chrome-dipped improvisations. “That gives you bragging rights, when you have some history and lore and growth and dedication behind you that you can be proud of,” she declares. “There’s no Grammy or accolade that can replace the time that I’ve spent developing myself as an artist and trusting in my vision and, moving forward, that’s what I’m celebrating. When I’m singing a track like ‘Ladida’ and I’m saying, ‘got my dreams and got these dollar bills,’ it’s because I know. I know honestly and deep from within”.

I am going to complete things with a review from The Line of Best Fit. Awarding Through the Wall 9/10, it is great to see this album get such love and enthusiasm. I had not dug Rochelle Jordan’s music for a while, but Through the Wall reignited that fascination. She is a wonderful artist and a definite queen of the contemporary scene. Someone that should be on your radar:

“Helmed by her light vocals, Rochelle Jordan’s earlier records indulged in frothy, dark R&B, but her 2021 breakthrough Play with the Changes captured a breakbeat vision of club music: frenetic, dizzying, rapturous. Her follow-up, the sleek and luxurious Through The Wall, doubles down and delivers the purest distillation of her vision so far, and on top of that, it’s one of the best pop albums of the year.

Through The Wall bursts with energy; its sly mix of house, R&B and dance-pop demand movement. Her breathy desire on “The Boy” or “Bite The Bait” clash with their pummeling beats – there’s no choice but to submit, and it sounds like she does, too. But elsewhere she drives the beat and commands attention, like rapping on “Around” or “Ladida”. On the pulsating “Doing It Too”, she winks that “boys will be boys but the girls will too…the girls should do,” before kicking off one of the most infectious choruses of the year. It’s as if KAYTRANADA mixed Kelela’s “Contact” while on uppers; any club playing it less than twice an hour would be malpractice. It’s one of those endlessly addictive pop songs, and better yet, Through The Wall has about five more of those.

“TTW” could assist a poolside Ibiza resort or a sweaty club night. “Ladida” flips “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)” into a skipping, hip house anthem. The moans on “Close 2 Me” ache against its buzzy, erratic beat. “Eyes Shut” reckons with creative stagnation (“I don’t know who I’m working for”) with broader commentary (“It’s a heartbroken nation / And the money down, inflation”). It doesn’t totally come together, but points are given for singing about bureaucracy against an aqueous, dripping beat. “Get It Off” and “Sweet Sensation” are buzzy odes to early-aughts pop and R&B: breathy, dreamlike. Her command of vibe – across a similar but not homogenous tracklist – probes different areas and impressively never loses momentum. Its hour is weighty but svelte, generous and not bloated.

With beats so vigorous, and, to use a technical term, fierce, Jordan is right to position herself as the queen of the club. She’s in complete charge of the night; catty, sexy, yet still making sure everyone has a good time. This attitude is what makes a title like “I’m Your Muse” work, or an interlude on “Sum” bragging about her power to hypnotize. On that song, which is basically about how hot she is, she cuts the song short to foster for an encore, a crowd chanting “One more time!”, eventually integrated within the beat. But since she storms right after with “The Boy”, a throbbing track about missed connection, it works – one moment she’s liberated and twirling, then desperately lusting on her knees. Such is the politics of the dance floor.

Through The Wall’s heavy pleasure borders on indulgence, like eating an entire box of rich chocolates, but its novelty, cheek, and brash commitment to fun buoys likely one of the most fun hours of music since RENAISSANCE. Rochelle Jordan’s second album in her house matriarch makeover is proof she’s found her artistic voice – an alluring vision of deep house superstardom. It has the cadence of a glamorous, unforgettable night out, and better yet, you can relive this one over and over”.

If you have not heard of Rochelle Jordan, then do make sure that you follow her. Through the Wall is an unforgettable and hypnotic album. Such an arresting album, I am thinking about which song is my favourite. I think that it might be Doing it Too. It left the biggest impression on me, yet every track on Through the Wall is amazing. Go and listen to the album and follow…

FEATURE: The Best Albums of 2025: Olivia Dean – The Art of Loving

FEATURE:

 

 

The Best Albums of 2025

 

Olivia Dean – The Art of Loving

__________

I am nearly through…

PHOTO CREDIT: Lola Mansell

this series, where I highlight the best albums of the year. Not just those that have been acclaimed by critics, but ones that I really love. Released on 26th September, Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving is such a beautiful and phenomenal album. There was a lot of love for it. I am going to finish with a review for The Art of Loving. However, before getting there, there are some reviews with Olivia Dean that I want to get to. I am going to bring three interviews together. I am starting out with Vogue and their conversation. Speaking with an artist ready to take centre stage, Dean discussed, among other things, the inspirations behind her second album. I really love 2023’s Messy, though I feel The Art of Loving is Dean is her greatest work to date:

“Vogue: The Art of Loving is your second studio album, and you’ve said it’s lighter and more fun than your debut album, Messy. Can you describe how your headspace changed from one album to the next?

Olivia Dean: I think generally, as a person, I’m more centered and in touch with myself than I was two years ago. This album, I would like to think, has an emotional maturity that I’ve really been working on developing in myself. I would never claim to know it all. I’m not saying I know everything about love, guys. I’m trying to work on myself and learn and be a better person, and I think that was all through writing these songs. So yeah, I think I’m just older—and hopefully a little bit wiser.

And what were some of your inspirations for this album?

Bottom of Form

So many. I’m somebody that is such a sponge for things. I love art in many different forms. I was listening to a lot of vinyl and crate-digging, and listening to a lot of Brazilian music. There’s also always a lot of reggae music, and I listen to a lot of Ethiopian music and Fleetwood Mac. I really also got into more guitar-y music. There’s a singer I love called Alice Phoebe Lou—I’m always listening to her. I love her lyrics and the spirituality and emotional intelligence in her writing.

I was also going to a lot of exhibitions. I went to this exhibition called All About Love in LA, actually, which inspired the kind of theme for the album, and this amazing Brazilian modernism exhibition in London where I saw this specific painting. I took all the colors from that painting for the color palette for the vinyl.

I love that. And do you plan on staying in London, or do you want to eventually settle somewhere else?

It’s really interesting you asked that. I was actually having that conversation yesterday and talking about all the things I’d love to do with my life. London is somewhere that is so important to me and where all my friends and my family are, but I see myself in New York, maybe, for a period of time. I feel like New York is my vibe. I want that Sex and the City life. So maybe—we’ll see”.

I am moving to Rolling Stone UK and their talk with Olivia Dean. Discussing spirituality, and why love is the core and main theme of her second studio album, to “the frivolous fun of dressing up”, this is one of her best artists. Someone I am so fascinated in. Seeing where her career will take her:

“Olivia Dean grew up in Highams Park, a quiet, leafy suburb teetering on the outer edges of the capital, and right on the cusp of Essex. As a kid, she threw herself into everything from karate to musical theatre with varying levels of success: “I didn’t get very far,” she says, of the former. “Please do not quote me as saying I’m a black belt in karate.” Eventually, her mum Christine Dean (a former deputy leader of the now-defunct Women’s Equality Party) intervened. “She was like, ‘Pack it in, babe, choose a hobby — you’re doing too much,’” Dean laughs.

It was music, and the inherent sense of storytelling and drama in musical theatre, that immediately won out. Though she had always felt “a little bit like the odd one out” growing up, getting a place at BRIT School opened up a whole new world, and introduced Dean to like-minded mates in the process, some of whom she still works with today. As a sidenote, it was also one hell of a commute from Waltham Forest to Croydon. “An hour and 45,” she groans. “I would leave, and it would still be pretty dark in the winter, and dark again when I came back — it was quite a commitment.”

While she was studying there, her teacher Mr Doherty showed a 17-year-old Dean live footage of Paul Simon performing ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’ and “it just sparked something in me. I loved the coming together of the quite traditional singer-songwriter thing that Paul Simon does so well, with this South African music, and the players, and the brass, and I just remember thinking: ‘Oh, I’d love to do that. How could I do that?’ For want of a better phrase, it was a kick up the arse.”

Shortly after this, upon graduating, Dean met her manager, who was also working with Rudimental, and when the chance to join the group on the road as a backing singer arose, she went for it. “What were the chances: you get the opportunity to play in front of those big crowds, but it’s not about you — you can learn and take that feeling in, without the pressure,” she remembers.

“That was an invaluable experience for me, but it also definitely inspired me to go: ‘OK, could I do this myself? I think I’ve got some stuff that I’d like to say…’ I’m a real observer, I think, and I like to learn, and then apply,” she says, “without sounding too clinical about it.”

Asimilarly thoughtful approach has also shaped The Art of Loving. Following the huge success of Messy, Dean was feeling daunted by the idea of diving into its follow-up. “I had developed a bit of studio anxiety, I suppose, and was putting a lot of pressure on myself,” she explains. “I realised that all this time that I’ve been making music, I’ve never had my own studio. I’ve always been coming into other people’s spaces and trying to justify myself. And so I thought that I’d love to build my own space and create within it.”

Though Dean spent a couple of weeks working on the record in LA, and also recorded at New York’s Electric Lady Studios, much of it was made in London, where she decided to take a much more homely approach this time around. After converting an east London house into her own studio, she moved in, along with her piano from home, and lived there pretty much full-time throughout the creation of the album, which is produced by Zach Nahome, and features Max Wolfgang, Bastian Langebæk and Tobias Jesso Jr. as collaborators.

“I brought photos from my house, and I slept there. I would have friends round, outside of studio time, and I had parties there, so it was this real, living, breathing space. I was really deep in it, and maybe sometimes too deep in it,” she laughs. “Sometimes I was like, ‘Maybe I need to go home-home this weekend, and then listen again with fresh ears.’”

The initial title and overarching theme for the album came to Dean last year, after she saw an exhibition by the American visual artist Mickalene Thomas — known for her brightly patterned, rhinestone-peppered collages of African-American women — at The Broad in LA. “It’s in response to bell hooks’ [book] All About Love, which I’m a huge fan of. There’s this passage in the book about the craft of loving one’s own life, and I thought, ‘I think I’m gonna call this album The Art of Loving.’”

“Love is something I have always been interested in,” she continues. “For some reason, it’s seen as this mystical, untouchable thing that we’re all supposed to just have a go at and figure out. In All About Love, bell hooks is like, imagine if we had a class in primary school that was, like, emotional studies? So that we could teach each other a bit of etiquette, and how to fill each other with care? I just wanted to do a deep-dive on love, to understand why I love the way that I do, and how I love other people.”

Filled with warmth and joy, The Art of Loving is a continuation of Messy’s eclectic sound — and also shares the blurred aesthetic of her debut’s cover art. “It’s representative of imperfection,” she says. “Some of the stuff I’m speaking about isn’t fact, or always the truth — it’s just my truth. I kind of want people to hear their own truth,” she says. “So I don’t need you to have a big fat picture of my face when you’re listening to it!”.

The final interview is from W Magazine. Olivia Dean, so much more than a viral singer or someone who made a hit or two, is this genuinely wonderful artist who you can see growing between albums. When critics decide their favourite albums of the year, The Art of Loving will feature on most of them:

“The new album, out now, is an exploration of modern romance, set to lush, jazzy arrangements that crackle with excitement and invite you in with their easy vulnerability. The singer feels wise beyond her years, finding a sense of comfort in the contradictions and confusion of love. In her viral single, “Nice to Each Other,” Dean is happy to savor a connection she knows won’t last long, but is consumed by uncertainty in “Close Up,” singing, “I can’t tell if you need me / Or want me all that much / Did I misread completely every single touch?”

The cover art for The Art of Loving, photographed by Jack Davison.

She leaves her fate up to the universe in the funk-laden “Lady Lady,” puts herself back together after a breakup on the shimmering, “Baby Steps,” and on the Motown-inspired track, “A Couple Minutes,” she finds the silver lining in a relationship that didn’t work out: “Love’s never wasted / When it’s shared.”

To her, love is a skill to be practiced and improved upon—something she learned from reading bell hooks’ All About Love, which served as one of the main inspirations for the album. “I’m aligned with her view that love is the most important thing in the world, and we don’t take it seriously enough,” Dean says.

As a chronicler of love, Dean’s diagnosis of today’s dating culture is that people are too quick to dispose of each other. There’s a line, she says, between holding out for what you deserve, and moving on the second things aren’t perfect. At her shows, the lyric, “I don’t want a boyfriend,” has become a rallying cry among her fans. But Dean’s feelings are more nuanced.

“I think it’s okay to want to be in love and to be loved,” she says. “But it’s a fine line between I don’t need a man or Men are trash, and that becoming a negative mindset. I’m more interested in where feminism takes us from here. Can we find an equilibrium and learn to respect each other?”

Along with bell hooks, Dean credits her family with shaping her expectations of love. Her parents have been together for almost 30 years. “Perhaps that’s why I’m such a romantic,” she says. Meanwhile, the women in her life taught her she didn’t need to shrink herself to find love. Her mother, Christine, is a lawyer who became the deputy leader of the Women’s Equality Party in 2020, while her grandmother Carmen, the subject of Dean’s 2023 song of the same name, was part of the Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants who helped rebuild the U.K. after World War II.

“It would have been impossible for me to not have developed into the feminist I identify as today because of them,” she says. “My mum and my auntie and my granny are too powerful. At the same time, there’s room for both: you can be this independent, strong woman and still have love. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.”

In the two years since Messy, Dean might not have all the answers, but she’s found the beauty in figuring it all out.

“I’ve only become more crystallized in the sense that romantic love isn’t the be-all and end-all of my life,” she says. “When you’re younger, you’re led to believe that it is, but I feel love in so many areas of my life.”

It’s a sentiment she echoes on the album’s closing track, “I’ve Seen It.” “Writing it, I’d had a lot of red wine,” she recalls with a laugh. “When I heard it back for the first time, I burst into tears.” It’s a sweet song, sung over a simple handpicked guitar melody. Without ever saying the word “love,” she manages to capture the feeling precisely. “It felt like the loveliest note to end on,” she says. “Whether it’s within your friends, your family, or just the love that exists in the strangers around you, it’s there, and it’s inside of you, too”.

I’ll end with a review for The Art of Loving. The Guardian were among those who reviewed The Art of Loving. Perhaps more ambitious, assured, distinct and personal than Messy, The Art of Loving, I feel, is going to scoop awards and will definitely give Olivia Dean so much inspiration and push when it comes to a third album. That might not happen for a couple of years. She has some incredible dates booked for next year across the U.K. and Europe:

“Dean’s 2023 debut album, Messy, attracted respectful but mixed reviews and did respectable, rather than remarkable, business. It spawned a hit single in Dive, but seemed very much standard-issue stuff – tasteful neo-soul replete with vintage horn arrangements, ballads accompanied by lo-fi, slightly out-of-tune piano, tracks that opened with the sound of crackly old vinyl. Its author did the type of things that tasteful British neo-soul artists do: appearing on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny belting out You Can’t Hurry Love, covering The Christmas Song as part of a seasonal Amazon campaign, turning up on the soundtrack for the new Bridget Jones film alongside Jamie Cullum and George Ezra. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of that, but nor did any of it suggest that Dean was the kind of artist built to contest the dominance of a $100m (£74m) smash-hit animation, the soundtrack of which has topped the charts in 16 countries.

So how has it happened? High-profile support slots on Sam Fender and Sabrina Carpenter’s stadium shows early in the summer probably helped broaden her audience, but the real answer seems to lie on The Art of Loving. While you wouldn’t describe it as a complete reinvention, it certainly constitutes a noticeable rethink. It expunges most of the cliches of Dean’s debut album – or rather quarantines them on a track called Close Up – and instead looks for inspiration to music that emanated from recording studios in 70s LA. The Art of Loving dabbles in both Rumours-adjacent soft rock – you’re never far from a sun-dappled electric piano line or a breezy acoustic guitar; Baby Steps offers up slick, yacht rock-y funk – and, on So Easy (To Fall in Love), Carpenters-style MOR pop that would once have been considered entirely beyond the pale.

It’s a sound that’s familiar without feeling hackneyed or self-consciously retro: Something Inbetween is powered by a muffled rhythm that sounds like someone playing a techstep drum’n’bass track with a duvet over the speakers; lurking in the depths of Nice to Each Other there’s a wash of shoegaze-y guitar noise and gusts of ambient synth drone. Airy and inviting, it suits Dean’s sweetly understated vocals – mercifully lacking affectation, either of the post-Winehouse “jazzy” variety or the weird, consonant-mangling “indie voice” that’s supposed to connote intimacy in 21st-century pop – and adds a cinematic gloss to her lyrics. Dean is big on diaristic detail as she navigates ex-related angst and tentative new relationships: “I don’t know where the switches are, or where you keep your cutlery.”

Perhaps more importantly, Dean and her co-authors – including Tobias Jesso Jr, and Matt Hales, who once plied his trade as singer-songwriter Aqualung – have significantly upped their game. Every chorus has been polished until it catches the light (Baby Steps offers a particularly gleaming example), while one suspects that an enormous amount of effort has been expended on making the melodies of Nice to Each Other and I’ve Seen It sound as effortlessly charming as they do.

So the album breezes past. It’s exceptionally well made but feels entirely natural; it’s mainstream commercial pop, but laudably devoid of obvious cliches. If Dean’s debut seemed like an artist trying to find their place in the landscape by ticking relevant boxes, The Art of Loving seems like someone finding their own voice. The sight of Olivia Dean battling a cartoon K-pop band in the charts’ upper echelons is proof that pop in 2025 is a business you can’t really predict, but still, The Art of Loving’s success seems a foregone conclusion”.

A stunning album from Olivia Dean, it is definitely one of my favourites of the year. I do feel 2026 will be the most important years of her career. In terms of where she plays. In terms of her personal life, maybe a move to News York will come about. It is very exciting to consider…

WHAT will come.

FEATURE: The Best Albums of 2025: CMAT – EURO-COUNTRY

FEATURE:

 

 

The Best Albums of 2025

 

CMAT – EURO-COUNTRY

__________

ONE of the best albums of this year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Suki Dhanda/The Guardian

is CMAT’s EURO-COUNTRY. As I have done with the albums in this series, I am going to get to some reviews with the artist, then I will end with a review of the album. The incredible Irish artist put out a work that gained huge critical acclaim. It is a funny, open and fascinating album that is distinctly the work from Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson. I am going to start out with an interview from The Guardian. They note how, from playing major gigs, to being this political and socially conscious artist, she was going supernova. EURO-COUNTRY is one of the most important albums of the year, I feel:

“She is incredibly forthright on a huge range of topics. She stands up for trans rights – “If you think of social media as like a video game, you rack up the spoils really high when you decide to go for a group of people who are already at risk” – and confronts the culture of wellness and self-improvement or, as she calls it, “the rise-and-grind ethic which is making people insane and making them unable to communicate with other people because they’re so obsessed with focusing on themselves”. Sometimes she’s too forthright for her mum, though: a recent appearance on Adam Buxton’s podcast provoked a dressing down. “She told me it made her cringe: ‘That lovely posh Englishman, so well spoken, and you calling yourself a cunt the whole interview. And you’re not a cunt, you’re lovely.’”

And yet, she concedes there has been a significant downside to her breakthrough. “The kind of headspace that good songs come from is one of extreme emotion, extreme depth of feeling,” she says, “which has an impact on my life. I do live in that really heightened state of emotion all the time. I’m crazy and I do crazy things, and I have crazy relationships with people.” She doesn’t mean crazy as in wild or outrageous, she qualifies. She means crazy as in authentically unwell, or – as she puts it with characteristic bluntness – “mental”.

Now 29, Thompson thinks she has always suffered from auditory hallucinations, but during the making of her third album, “I started actually hallucinating. I was in New York, writing. I didn’t realise for the first two months that was what was happening, but I basically imagined the entire apartment I was staying in was crawling with insects, that I had insects crawling on my skin all the time. I was calling the landlord, letting off bug bombs, I made them throw the couch out because I thought it was covered in fleas. I was itching all the time. I was texting a group chat of friends, sending them pictures of all the bug bites on me: New York’s disgusting, full of insects. And they didn’t exist. I went to the doctor and showed him my bites and he said: ‘Those are stress hives; you’re mental.’” (Possibly not an exact diagnosis.) “I was hallucinating the whole time.”

For that reason, she worries that songwriting might not be a sustainable occupation for that reason, or that taking medication might cause the flow of songs to stop. But whatever the pains staked in writing its contents, her new album is superb. It pushes at the boundaries of her previous work’s sound: into synth-heavy territory on the title track, pop soul on Running/Planning and distorted alt-rock on The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station, a song during which the constant sight of the TV chef’s face in Britain’s motorway services seems to bring about an existential collapse in the mid-tour CMAT.

It arrives in a sleeve featuring its title, Euro-Country, written in the kind of Gaelic script beloved of Irish theme pubs, above an exceptionally striking photo based on Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1896 painting Truth Coming Out of Her Well. It features Thompson emerging from a fountain in the middle of a shopping centre near her home town of Dunboyne. “Blanchardstown shopping centre,” she says. “For the first 10, 11 years of my life, it was like my local village. My sister, who lives in Blanch now, goes to the shopping centre every day. You drive there if you want to see other people and then you drive back home again and live in your house by yourself.”

That’s the reality of much of Irish life, she says. “There’s a kind of space that Ireland is occupying in western media culture right now, a little more fetishised and trendy than it’s ever been. Americans think it’s cute; English people are like, ‘Ooh, I love Guinness and Kneecap and The Banshees of Inisherin, and I’m getting my Irish passport and mmm, I love potato farl.’ People talking about Hozier like he’s a magical, delicate fairy from the bog. It’s a romanticised version of Ireland that doesn’t exist. It’s a really hard place to live, a really hard place to grow up, unless you have money, which we didn’t. So yeah, magical, beautiful, mystical Ireland: it’s a shopping centre, that’s what I grew up with. A shopping centre.”

Thompson says she is aware that the political bent of Euro-Country is a big ask of audiences in 2025, when pop seems to largely function as a means of temporary escape from a terrifying world. “It can be read as incredibly cringe and incredibly earnest and on the nose, right? It’s an embarrassing thing for me to be asking of people. Because it’s not trendy to be earnest any more. I’m aware of that, and …” She laughs again. “Actually I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m putting my foot in it, I don’t care if I’m saying something wrong. We’ve all been too measured, too careful because we’re being witnessed all the time. I think we need more willingness to fail. Even if it’s futile, you’ve got to fucking try. Because it’s fucking depressing otherwise”.

I am going to move to DAZED and their chat with CMAT. Having moved from Dublin to London, there were questions around the city and CMAT’s relationship with it. They also asked about the politics on EURO-COUNTRY, her fascination with Charli xcx, and her sudden rise to fame:

“How has your relationship to Dublin changed now that you’re older?

CMAT: I just like looking back and seeing it from the outside, even though I’m still connected to it. I love Joan Didion and I love her writing on California because she talks about the texture of living there, not some romanticised idea. I try to reflect that mentality in my songwriting about Ireland and Dublin. There’s a version of Ireland people think about from afar, and then there’s what it actually feels like on the ground.

Do you think people from other places can relate to that feeling?

CMAT: I think that’s true of every country. Everybody has their own relationship to this, and a lot of countries are going through similar things. Some politicians I mention in my album, like Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are getting voted back in again in Ireland, the same ones that messed things up 25 years ago. A lot of countries are falling to fascism. I was talking to someone from the Philippines recently, where the son of former dictator Marcos is now in power. A lot of countries are repeating mistakes; it’s madness, but I suppose it’s because people love convenience.

People in the world really hate me for speaking out, I get horrible messages all the time

Alongside tackling political issues in EURO–COUNTRY, you also spoke out about Palestine on stage – what was that moment like?

CMAT: That was… mad. I knew I was going to say something – obviously, I had to. I’d been given the biggest opportunity of my life, and if I didn’t do or say anything, I’d be kicking myself. But I was so scared of that gig in general. I actually wrote a speech, and then, like, an hour beforehand, I was like, ‘I can’t make this speech, I’m going to fuck it up so badly because my nerves are unbelievably bad.’

So I thought, you know what? I’ll just get through the show and say it at the end. I probably would have done something more elaborate if I could, but it’s scary being on stage. It’s not as bad as it is for the Kneecap boys, but it’s terrifying. You’re in front of 60,000 people, and you want to give a speech about something real. People in the world really hate me for speaking out, I get horrible messages all the time. When I played Latitude last year, I had pulled out initially because of Barclays sponsoring, then came back when they dropped them, and in the front row were two guys with massive flags, there specifically to antagonise me. There were 25,000 other people there, and these two were trying to intimidate me.

I think more credit needs to be given to people like Kneecap and Amyl and the Sniffers or anyone who speaks out, because it’s genuinely scary. These people exist, they want to harm you, and you’re just standing there going, ‘Let me run away.’ It’s such a fucking weird time.

What do you want people to take away from the album?

CMAT: If someone listens to the album and doesn’t like it, that’s literally fine, I don’t care, and that’s literally grand. But I hope anyone who’s gone through any of the things I mention in the songs can identify with them and that it helps, in any way, shape or form. That’s the job. That’s the most useful thing. Like, when you write a sad song and someone says, ‘I listened to that the day someone died,’ yeah – that’s the job. So I hope that happens”.

I am going to bring in a final interview before coming to a review. VOGUE published an interview in August. CMAT is clearly ready to take over America. I am not sure if that is a goal of hers. However, EURO-COUNTRY has translated beyond Europe and a small section of people. It is a global success. With it, CMAT is being hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of this age – and rightly so! Make sure you hear this masterpiece of 2025:

“Thanks to the distinctly American country-pop influence in her music, she’s come to understand certain cultural discrepancies between the US and the UK. “Class works very differently in America,” she says. “In the United Kingdom, all of the bands, musicians, British celebrities, actors—they went to private school. If you click on their Wikipedia, their dad owns Northern Ireland, and you’re like, what?” she says. “That’s who my colleagues are. I’m very fucking aware of how precarious my position is as a result of that. I’m just trying to work four or five times harder than them to make sure that I can stay here for as long as possible.”

American culture was inescapable when she was growing up: “Johnny Cash was the most famous guy,” she says. “I thought he was a pop star. I thought he was like Robbie Williams or something.” Much of the fascination, she says, came from America’s capitalistic hustle culture. “The way everybody [in America] is always trying to gain something and make something of themselves,” she says, “you’re not allowed to talk about that kind of stuff in Ireland, and yet we’re so fascinated by it.”

Despite the impression that her campy, wisecracking lyrics may give, CMAT’s love of country music is pure of heart. “Isn’t it interesting that I have a terrible time in Nashville?” she wonders aloud. She loves the people and the culture, “but the country music establishment in Nashville hates my fucking guts.” CMAT has found that people treat her like an “intruder”: “People think that I’m taking the piss or I’m using elements of country music because I think it’s a funny, interesting thing to do, and not because it is a really inherent and important pillar of my work as a songwriter,” she says.

It’s CMAT’s working-class Irish roots, however, that stoked and sustain her love for country in the first place. “This is a genre that inherently allows voiceless people to come to the front,” she says. “That’s why it’s amazing and that’s why we’ll always have an appeal, and it’s why people will always want to listen to it”.

NME provided a five-star review for EURIO-COUNTRY when they sat down with it. Hailing CMAT’s third studio album. NME note how modernity has failed us, yet CMAT has laid it all out on this extraordinary and “full-bodied” work:

“It’s been a CMAT summer, for sure. She’s charmed the pants of many a festival – sealing the deal with real Glastonbury moment – ‘Running/Planning’ was ironically inescapable for radio play, and she struck TikTok gold with the celeb-endorsed viral dance challenge for ‘Take A Sexy Picture Of Me’. There’s an infectious joy to all that Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson does, but she wouldn’t be here (on the brink of proper superstardom) if it wasn’t for the emotional suckerpunch she lands with each LOLsome lyric, every pintful of charisma, every bedroom mirror dance moment.

While her strong 2022 debut ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ and buzz-building follow-up ‘Crazymad, For Me’ saw her hailed as “Dublin’s answer to Dolly Parton” by translating her troubled romances and chaotic personal life into rootin’ tootin’ bangers, the political pressures of the world elevate her third album to a more profound level. Camp, conviction and catharsis burst from ‘Euro-Country’.

Birdsong and a gentle Irish voice lead us into ‘Euro-Country’, but where are we? It’s as much a place as it is a concept and a state of mind. As she puts it herself, it’s a term she coined for her continental take on the genre, a nod to how Ireland still sits proudly in the EU under the euro, and how “capitalism is one of the worst things to ever happen to us”.  “I was 12 when the da’s started killing themselves all around me,” she sings on the opening title track, remembering the impact of the financial crash on families when she was growing up, “And it was normal… Building houses that stay empty even now.”

There are straight lines to be drawn between this and For Those I Love’s recent opus ‘Carving The Stone’ in the depiction of the havoc wreaked on Ireland by greed, but this is less brutal, with different shades of light. Adele-sized in its scope and in showcasing Thompson’s lung capacity, ‘When A Good Man Cries’ takes a fiddle to the heartstrings as she cuts to the heart of her evolution as a writer (“All of my jokes have turned to prayers because they’re scarred just like their mother”), while the the pop highs bring on altitude delirium.

The mini-epic almost proggy pure jam of ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ is a hilarious therapy session on her misplaced not-really-hatred for the celebrity chef in lost hours at motorway services, while ‘Take A Sexy Picture Of Me’ just totally pumps while reflecting on the pressures of social media and ultimate ear-worm ‘Running/Planning’ lampoons the relationship expectations put upon women.

From the bubbling, genre-smashing ‘Tree Six Foive’ to the existential ‘Ready’, the hilarious open road anthem ‘Coronation St.’, the brilliantly bitter ‘Lord Let That Tesla Crash’, and pleading showstopper ‘Janis Joplining’, the personal meets the political over a cosy bed of dreamy pop.

Modernity has failed us, but that won’t stop Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson. That’s the CMAT way in 2025: approach with absolute confidence, total honesty is the only option, and you might as well have a laugh and shake your bits while you’re at it. ‘Euro-Country’ has the courage and the consistency to land high on the fast-approaching end-of-year lists, and to make CMAT the icon she’s been giving all this time”.

I am going to wrap up. Not only one of the critics’ favourite album of the year, EURO-COUNTRY is one of mine. I wanted to spend time with it and the artist behind it. You wonder what is in store for CMAT next year. Massive stages and maybe more singles. Perhaps collaborations with artists like Charli xcx and some surprises here and there. Who knows. What we do know is that her fanbase will continue to grow. With EURO-COUNTRY, CMAT has released one of the best albums…

OF this decade.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Picture Parlour

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Shot By Melissa

 

Picture Parlour

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I spotlighted the amazing…

Picture Parlour back in 2023. A couple of years later, and a lot has happened. Their debut album, The Parlour, was released last month. Back in 2023, I talked about this band that consisted of Katherine Parlour (vocals and guitar), Ella Risi (guitar), Sian Lynch (bass), and Michael Nash (drums). Though, two years later, the core members are Katherine Parlour and Ella Risi. They are often joined by a rotating line-up of musicians for live shows, which in early-2025 included bassist Michael Nash, Kitty Fitz, and Joey Django. So a line-up shift or a slight reconfiguration has happened. Picture Parlour’s sound has slightly altered/expanded in the past couple of years. I think that the debut album is their most extraordinary and complete work. In April, they have a run of tour dates, including a date at Oslo Hackney on 21st. I might have to go to that gig, as the venue is very close to where I live. I am going to drop in some recent interviews with Picture Parlour. A great time to revisit a music force formerly based out of Manchester (Parlour and Risi met there as students). I believe they are now in London. I wonder if they will play a date in Manchester next year. I will end with a review for the exceptional The Parlour. Katherine Parlour and Ella Risi discuss one of the standout and brilliant debut albums of the year. I have said that a lot in features, though I feel The Parlour is in the top five best debuts of 2025! At the end of last month, DIY spoke with a sensational duo (I am referring to them as such, as the majority of press is conducted by Parlour and Risi) that “usher us into the places, culture and magic that shaped them, and which gave rise to the imaginary world of ‘The Parlour’”.

“Since that lightbulb moment at The Castle in Manchester, before bubbling together in lockdown, Ella and Katherine’s brief journey as Picture Parlour (later completed by drummer Michael Nash and, recently, touring musicians Joey Django and Kitty Fitz) has been more of a hurricane than a whirlwind.

2023 was the eye of the storm; they gained a fan in Courtney Love and earned a festival slot with Bruce Springsteen off the back of their live show, before debut single ‘Norwegian Wood’ had even landed. The industry buzz that followed the single’s release resulted in naysayers who tried to rip them apart, sneering ‘industry plant’ and belittling the word-of-mouth buzz they had built since relocating from Manchester to London. Understandably, the duo needed some time to retreat and recalibrate. “It scarred us a little bit,” admits Katherine, two-and-a-half years down the line. “It was a super conscious decision to put a pause on everything, [and reject] running with the wind to try and catch this buzzy moment.”

In an age where artists are constantly pressurised to capitalise on momentum, it’s proven vital that Picture Parlour acted to prevent things from spilling over. If they were not so “locked in” with one another, trusting the fact that they had each other’s backs, Ella suggests things might have gone differently.

“We opened the door to what we thought were our dreams, and everything in the room was on fire,” continues Katherine. “We closed the door, and promised each other that we’ll follow our instincts. Our idols, like Joan Jett, are people who demand control of their own destiny. You can hear it in the music, there’s this confidence and stubbornness. I don’t think that the greats made the legacy that they’ve got out of being ‘yes’ people.”

Channelling the spirit of legends like Jett, as well as David Bowie and The White Stripes, the duo’s “semi self-titled” debut album, ‘The Parlour’ is finally imminent. Written between London, Katherine’s hometown of Liverpool (Ella is originally from North Yorkshire) and Nashville, where it was recorded in September 2024, ‘The Parlour’ globetrotted its way into existence. So, how do we find this self-styled ‘parlour’?

Whipping ‘The Parlour’ into shape, one Jack Daniels and coke at a time, the end result is a culmination of the duo’s story so far, from the heartfelt balladry of ‘The Travelling Show’ to some of the “frustration and rage” that emanated from the confusion of their breakout period, which they bring onto their own terms via the tongue-in-cheek, playful ‘Talk About It’.

Today, as they finish the conversation on a street-side bench, they are demoing songs for their “darker” second album. Does that mean ‘The Parlour’ is closed for business? “I think we have no choice, we’re stuck with ‘The Parlour’ forever!” jokes Katherine. “The shit that we’re working on now feels like ‘The Parlour’ has been closed down, it’s all rubble, and there’s one old man, still there with his whiskey, refusing to leave. There’s just one candle on, in the corner of the room…”

After stepping back to figure out the type of band they wanted Picture Parlour to be, Ella and Katherine actually now find themselves “10 steps ahead”, deep into their second album before their first has even seen the light of day. Crucially, they tell DIY the pace is now entirely on their terms, ready to “crack on” with a renewed sense of clarity, “that maybe we didn’t have two years ago,” ponders Katherine.

“As they say, hunger is the best sauce, and that’s what I’m living by,” she smirks, before Ella doubles down with the final word. “We are very hungry for it”.

I love how Picture Parlour relocated to Nashville to record The Parlour. The city has attracted many British artists and provides inspiration and an incredible community of artists. NME spoke with the duo about their debut album, the work they are doing on the second album, and why they focused on northern Soul when it came to the sonic core of The Parlour. If you have not heard the album yet, it is such a wonderful experience. You will not forget it, I can guarantee! A big reason why I wanted to revisit the awesome Picture Parlour:

“You talk about the backlash around your breakout moment on ‘Talk About It’. How did that song help you process that experience, draw a line under it and move on?

Katherine Parlour: “‘Talk About It’ started as a joke. It was like, ‘You know what? Imagine if it was all fucking true and we were these industry plants – what would be the song that we do?’ It just started off as taking the piss, never gonna see the light of day. We finished it and, to be honest, we hated the song.”

Ella Risi: “It was the classic you put it at the bottom of the demo link, and everyone was like, ‘What’s that tune, though?’”

You recorded the album in Nashville, which is known as Music City. What was it like relocating there to work on this record?

Parlour: “We just didn’t sleep for three weeks.”

Risi: “We were jet lagged as well, so we were just naturally waking up at 5am, and after the studio, we didn’t want to go home, so we’d be like, ‘We gotta go out!’ We were just living off adrenaline.”

Parlour: “It was an amazing place to be. Growing up, my nan shoved Johnny Cash down my throat – she was all about country and ’50s rock’n’roll. So to get to go there… we went to the Johnny Cash Museum. I cried looking at the letters between Johnny and June – that got me going. We did all of the cliché things, like walking up and down Broadway and the honky tonk bars. One night, I got up and did a Johnny and June duet with some bloke with a huge handlebar moustache, so I felt like we really became local after that. The general Americana sound and that magic of Nashville bled into the record, which is everything we always wanted. We’ve always dreamt of being an international band, and a dream of mine is to go over to the States and tour, so for me, it was a dream come true, and it definitely impacted the album.”

The album was also inspired by Northern Soul, which is having a resurgence in the UK right now. Why do you think young people are connecting with that genre and culture?

Parlour: “There’s so many reasons. I was lucky enough to have a dad who did Northern Soul dancing with his brother when he was young, so I grew up with that. It reminds me of home. But I think the reason it’s connecting with so many people now, which is amazing to see, is not just about the music. Obviously, the music’s a sacred part of it, but it’s a sense of community, and it’s such a free space. It’s euphoric; you just let go. I think there’s a nice synergy there with live music and how going to gigs makes me feel.”

Risi: “But there’s an intimacy with Northern Soul in the community. We’ve been going to nights down here and we’ve met so many people. People are just craving human connections and care at the moment. I think that’s what the Northern Soul community prides itself on.”

How is that partnership feeding into album two, which you’re working on now? Where is this album taking you?

Parlour: “Straight away, it’s definitely darker. It feels a lot more confident as well. Obviously, I love album one, but it was written in the midst of a lot of changes and new things – having a manager and then getting a record deal. These things are just like The Twilight Zone.”

Risi: “I think now we trust ourselves and our creative instincts. Towards the end of album one, we were just like, ‘Fuck it, let’s do what we want to do, and it doesn’t matter if anybody thinks it’s going to be a hit, as long as we’re proud of it and we can stand by it and enjoy listening to it and love it.’”

Parlour: “I think reaching that for album one has really put us in good stead to just build for album two, so there’s a lot more creative confidence to this new record”.

I want to include a part of DORK’s November interview with Ella Risi and Katherine Parlour. It is hard to state what genre you can attach to The Parlour. I have mentioned Northern Soul, though DORK called it a  “sexy, seedy rock record”. It is restrictive to label or pigeonhole the music, though there are elements of different genres and time periods. However, it is the unique vision of Picture Parlour that makes their debut so long-lasting. How it is familiar but fresh:

“The world of ‘The Parlour’ isn’t all mood lighting and lust, though. Tracks like ‘Talk About It’ are sharper, more direct. “We wrote it as a bit of a joke, a cathartic game for ourselves after being written off as industry plants early on,” they explain. “Those false narratives still impact us today; that’s the truth of the matter. It’s hard to know people have developed misinformed opinions on this project because of a rancid and misplaced witch hunt.” The anger is still there, but so is the perspective. “It thickened our skin very early on and reminded us how important it is for artists and fans to advocate across the board for minority groups who come under scrutiny for simply existing.”

Making the record brought lessons, too. “Patience. It is only possible to be patient when there is no choice but to be patient.” The songwriting pushed them into new territory. “A leap for me was writing with other people. It’s not something I’ve ever done or felt comfortable with,” one of them says. “Allowing myself to be open and honest enough to collaborate was a big leap. And to also stand my own ground when I knew a particular thing needed to be a certain way. I’m a professional compromiser now.”

Their influences go beyond music. “Film is always influencing our work. Particularly David Lynch, which I know a lot of musicians feel,” they say. Right now, it’s ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ that has their full attention. “I think that may be my muse for album two.”

And what’s the best thing someone could say about ‘The Parlour’? “There are two things. One, that it made them want to pick up a guitar or bass and learn a riff. Two, that it helps them get up and ready to kick some ass in their day-to-day life.”

As for what’s next, they’re keeping it honest. “Depends how this album does, to be honest.” But the dream? “Picture Parlour support tour with Jack White.” If that happens in 2026, you heard it here first.

Until then, there’s just one final message: “Buy the record and be nice”.

I am ending with a review from The Line of Best Fit. With an album cover that puts me in mind of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here – just with less fire! – and music that will remain in your mind long after you have finished listening to it, I think they will have a huge 2026. It will be a year where they truly go worldwide. I can see some big U.S. dates very soon:

“On their debut LP, they justify the hype that has been building for the past two years. Describing the album as a jukebox, which is certainly apt, with influences ranging from Northern Soul to psychedelia and 70s rock n roll.

“Cielo Drive” captures the rock n roll influence in an explosive cocktail, Katherine Parlour’s vocals stretched and capturing something rough and ready. The dirty riffs recall their 70s influences, including T. Rex and Patti Smith. It is an expansion of the sounds the quintet has dabbled in on their eps and really sets the tone for what is to follow. There is an irrepressible energy that is palpable across the LP.

“Who’s There To Love Without You” also leans into a similar incendiary atmosphere, almost punk-like and full of swagger and verve. It is the sound of a group full of confidence and now bringing it to the masses.

While the group’s EPs leaned heavily into baroque sounds on the likes of “Judgement Day”, there is certainly more variety here. “24 Hr Open” is full of angst and dirty riffs; its grungier sound is a departure, but one Picture Parlour slips effortlessly into. It is to their credit that they do not rely on tried and tested sounds and push themselves, often rising to the challenge.

There are shades of a more pop-rock, new-wave sheen on “Used To Be Your Girlfriend”, however, this quickly segues into something more feral. It really cuts loose in its second half, allowing the rhythm section to unfurl. This track really strikes a nice balance between a lighter side to the group’s sound and the rougher moments earlier on.

The more operatic, baroque influences are still apparent in places. Having drawn comparisons to Alex Turner, this influence is more readily visible on “Around The Bend”. It is a melancholic, slow burner that, rather than feeling at odds with other parts of the record, feels like a natural extension and keeps it from ever being one note. It shows that they are as comfortable with quieter, intimate songs as they are with swirling epics. It offers more of an opportunity for their musicianship to shine through.

In addition to more classic rock and baroque influences, folk rock certainly feels more left field, but “Ronnie’s Note #3” sees them veer more into this territory with acoustic guitars and strings the main focus, alongside Parlour’s vocals. It is one of the album’s highlights and an area that, while unexpected, feels right given the range of their inspirations. There is a richness to the storytelling, and while clearly aping Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen, it is shot through with Picture Parlour’s distinctive brand.

The inclusion of “Norwegian Wood” feels a tad out of place given that other EP tracks are absent, but it serves as a reminder of what made audiences fall in love with the group in the first place and why it remains a fan favourite.

The Parlour embodies all of what makes Picture Parlour a unique force. There is such a heterogeneous mix to their sound, yet it never losses their singularity, spark, and charm. There is a broad crossover appeal, and there is so much to unpack. They have taken the sounds of their EPs and expanded into something more expansive, without losing what endeared them to audiences. This is a thrilling, evocative debut that lives up to the hype”.

Two years after I spotlighted Picture Parlour, I needed to come back to them and ensure anyone who has not heard them listens to them. As I started out by saying, there have been some changes and shifts, so things are not exactly the same as they were in 2023. If you have not heard this magnificent duo, then make sure you check them out. The Parlour is a truly exceptional debut album. However, you feel like Picture Parlour have just got started! It is fascinating imagining where they are going to be…

A few years from now.

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Follow Picture Parlour

FEATURE: Spotlight: Bay Swag

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Bay Swag

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THIS has been a busy…

PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua Holmes

and standout year for Bay Swag. New York-born Lloyd McKenzie Jr. released his debut album, Ahead of My Time, last year. He released Damaged Thoughts earlier in the year. And he also put out the E.P., Swiggity. An artist who weaves his love of R&B into Sexy Drill, he has just been named as one of Vevo DSCVR Artists to Watch for 2026. It is confirmation that this artist is someone that you need to put on your radar:

“Mika Sunga, Director of Programming: “We’re excited to welcome Queens-born drill rapper Bay Swag to our DSCVR ATW 2026 class. He’s helping define the Sexy Drill movement, which blends the hard-hitting beats of drill with the smooth, soulful feel of R&B.

“His debut album really stood out to me because it’s raw, introspective, and gives a real glimpse into his world. You can tell he’s got that star quality and drive to take things to the next level. “

Bay Swag: “Being named one of Vevo’s Artists to Watch 2026 means everything to me. It’s more than recognition — it’s reassurance that all the long nights and sacrifices are paying off. I don’t take this moment for granted; it just fuels me to go even harder and keep proving why I’m here”.

I will move to some interviews from this year with the amazing Bay Swag. I must admit that I am quite new to his music, so I have been catching up and listening back. Damaged Thoughts is one of this year’s albums that will not get the same acclaim and buzz as the most commercial and successful, though it is one that needs to be heard. Even if you know nothing about Sexy Drill or do not think it is your sin, you will definitely be able to connect with Damaged Goods.

I will move to a new interview from XXL Mag. One of the hardest-working artists out there, there are personal reasons why he is pushing so hard. With his father incarcerated and his mother having just beaten cancer, there is this motivation and challenge set of circumstances that means Bay Swag is putting his everything into the music:

“The Queens native, who proudly reps the New York City borough with QGTM (initials for Queens Get The Money) tattooed across his neck, has been preparing for moments like this ever since he started grinding 10 years ago. “You just gotta wait your turn and be patient,” Bay insists. He did just that when “Fisherrr,” a flirty, sexy drill track he collaborated on with Cash Cobain last February, took off in the Big Apple and beyond.

Over 40 million Spotify streams later, a remix with Ice Spice helping bring in 17 million YouTube views, and his lyrics soundtracking social media posts for plenty of baddies across platforms have allowed Bay Swag’s slick-talking lifestyle raps and sticky melodies to fall on more ears. The rising rhymer is part of a rap renaissance in New York City that pushes positivity rather than popping off.

Before he was outside bringing his music to the masses, Bay Swag, born Lloyd McKenzie Jr., was a fun-loving kid who was really outside back in Jamaica, Queens, running around, playing tag and Manhunt with his friends on the block. Music was always heard in his household, where he lived as an only child with his mom, who worked at Geico selling insurance for over 20 years. At 5, thanks to car rides with his dad, little Lloyd was listening to Jay-Z’s hustler mentality through his rhymes. As Bay got older, Juelz Santana and Dipset’s swag drew him into the Harlem rap scene. He also latched onto Trey Songz’s R&B melodies.

By 12, Bay was witnessing the rap lifestyle unfold right before his eyes. His uncle, Windsor “Slow” Lubin, who launched the popular New York clothing line SlowBucks, had a warehouse in Queens for the brand, where rappers, actors and athletes often came through. “They all loved me ’cause I was just ahead of my time,” Bay recalls. “I was fly. So, I’m like, you know what, why not just start making music? I’m around it, so why not take advantage of it?”

He made his first song in a friend’s basement studio. With the help of his father, Lloyd “Bay Lloyd” McKenzie, a former party promoter who worked with artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Junior started hitting the studio consistently. At first, his dad would have the beat and songs already written. “Everything was already ready for me,” shares Bay, who graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo High School. “All I had to do was show up. So, now when he goes to jail, I don’t have that no more. So, I’m kind of like lost a little bit, you know?” Bay began writing his own bars out of necessity.

For the next few years, the self-described “young OG” was putting in work. In 2017, his father was convicted for allegedly ordering the 2012 hit on law student Brandon Woodward, who was moonlighting as a drug courier. McKenzie Sr. was sentenced to 85 years to life for second-degree murder and operating as a drug trafficker. Bay Swag put his pain into his music. “Daddy got locked ’cause my daddy was trappin’/They tried to say he killed a ni**a in Manhattan/Jury believed the ni**a that was rattin’/I’ma get you out, Pops, swear I ain’t cappin’,” he raps on the 2017 track “Saucin.” “Music is my therapy,” he explains.

By that point, he was locked in on his career. There were local performances, connecting with Diddy’s son King Combs as part of the CYN collective in 2015, Bay’s track “Rumors” getting him some early buzz online in 2016, and his mixtape, Leader of the New School, the same year, earning him a short-lived Interscope Records publishing deal, which all increased his potential. He continued dropping more loosies and connecting with the right people, like rapper-producer Cash Cobain, in 2020. After Bay released his Ahead of My Time project in 2022, a mix of different sounds to see what would stick, the Auto-Tune-drenched “Quagen” did the job. “That brought me back to life,” Bay admits.

Tracks like the emotionally-driven “Therapy” in 2023, and the gold-certified hit “Fisherrr” followed a year later. “Not only is it positive, but we bringing everybody together,” he tells of the latter song’s success. “Good feelings and positive vibes.” To capitalize on the track’s impact, Bay joined Cash as the opening act on Ice Spice’s Y2K! World Tour in the U.S. last summer.

It’s clear Bay Swag has never stopped working—rapping is the only job he’s ever had. There’s a deeper meaning to his motivation. “My dad being incarcerated, and also my mother just beat cancer,” he reveals. “How can I give up? I got people depending on me.” His work ethic is what Deon Douglas, cofounder of Standard Records, noticed when he signed the rapper in 2024. “He sticks to what he’s doing,” says Douglas, who’s also the cofounder of 11AM management, where he helps guide the careers of artists like Lil Tjay. “[Bay Swag] does the work. He keeps getting better, he keeps learning. You always meet him in the studio or a video shoot, at an interview. So immediately, that’s what I appreciated about him”.

I am going to move to Rolling Stone and their interview from earlier in the year around the release of Damaged Thoughts. This incredible talent that is going to be an icon of the future, he spoke about “his friendships with rap legends, and the influence of his incarcerated father on his work”. There are a couple of future U.S. dates booked for Bay Swag. I do wonder if he has plans to come to the U.K. and play soon. Maybe better known in his native U.S., there is a growing fanbase here that would love to see him perform:

“The album’s title track is the most personal, as he raps about his mom’s cancer diagnosis (he tells us that she’s since “beat it”) and rhymes, “Sometimes I be lost in my thoughts with my friends/But it’s not my fault, ‘cause I don’t talk about my problems” over a heartfelt vocal sample. The line is true to life, he admits, telling me, ”Music is therapy. I don’t talk with people [about hard times], so I just rap about it.”

The result is a holistic project that marks him as an artist willing to dig deep. There’s a scene in the upcoming Spike Lee film Highest II Lowest where Denzel Washington, playing a record executive, demands that a posturing artist shed his swagger and be vulnerable. The moment speaks to the throng of rappers who are quick to rap about violence or be braggadocious but won’t always admit the trauma that such bravado conceals. Damaged Thoughts shows Swag never needed that memo. When I ask him how he manages to have the fun he has on the album while going through some of the turmoil he rhymes about, he smiles and says, “I don’t know,” while shaking his head. “A day at a time,” Maria Gracia, a senior marketing director at his label, adds.

He’s wearing a white hockey jersey and designer jeans, though he might be changing for the video shoot in Teaneck, New Jersey, that he’s headed to after our holistic interview. Swaying back and forth in his roller chair, he makes consistent eye contact, and after expressing himself sometimes asks, “You get what I’m tryna say?” in a way that doesn’t feel like a knee-jerk punctuation, but a genuine desire to have a two-way conversation.

Even without his lineage, Bay probably would have won over many of the artists in his vast network. Damaged Thoughts boasts appearances from 42 Dugg, Sheff G, Meek Mill, Quavo, Kyle Ricch, and Young Thug. Bay Swag recorded “Lil Jasmine” with the latter artist before the YSL indictment, and says they have since recorded another song alongside Ty Dolla $ign. He counts Thug as a friend who once offered to pay for his father’s lawyer.

And, of course Bay, Swag gets slizzy alongside Cash Cobain on the smooth “Don’t Care No More” and bouncy “Caicos,” which has a similar island vibe to Cash’s bubbling “Feeeeeeeeel” single. When I ask Bay Swag about the first rap song he fell in love with, he mentions Nas and AZ’s “How Ya Livin’,” saying he loved their back-and-forth rhymes and enjoys emulating that format alongside Cash.

Many were first introduced to Bay Swag’s music when he featured on Cash’s “Fisherrr,” a silky track that helped set off last summer. Bay Swag says he thinks people love the sexy drill movement because people “feel good” listening to it, and it’s danceable without being violent. As I wrote in 2022, it’s an offshoot of drill where listeners can have fun shimmying and mimicking the slithery cadences without worrying about lyrics dissing dead people or other borderline themes. Bay Swag is a notable figure in that shift, entrenching his name in the fabric of New York culture in the same way his father did years ago.

He shows me a promotional clip for the album where he notes, “If [my father] would’ve never went through that, went to jail, had life in prison, I would’ve never had that hustle. I would’ve never had that drive. That made me become the man of the house, at a young age too.” New York City, like so much of America, is plagued by the justice system’s systematic thrusting of parents from homes, sparking changes of fortune that only sometimes lead to triumphs like Bay Swag’s. Hopefully, we can reach a world where more artists can find their greatness without having to prove their resilience amid tumult. But in this one, Bay Swag is yet another example that it’s possible”.

I want to take things back to the start of this year, as Bay Swag was coming off the back of a breakthrough and successful 2024. He spoke with Billboard about the Sexy Drill movement, addressing the violent lyrics associated with Drill, working alongside Ice Spice and Cash Cobain:

“What was it like to see “Fisherrr” all over social media and blow up on TikTok?

We knew it was a fire song, but we didn’t know it was going to be the way it is. I feel like you never know. The songs you think is a hit don’t do nothing, but the songs you least expect [end up being] the one. It’s a blessing seeing all the kids, dancers and influencers dancing to it and having a good time. It really started a whole new dance. Shoutout Reemo. He started that s–t. It’s a whole new wave of music. It’s a whole new energy.

How did the feature with Ice Spice happen? Was it intentional to have a female rapper on the remix?

It just made sense. She’s the Queen of New York. I was super excited. I wanted to hear how she would come on it because that’s not the typical music she be dropping. She did her thing. Shout out Ice Spice.

Over the last year, you’ve been consistently releasing singles and helping spur this sexy drill wave. How are you putting your signature spin on this sound?

I call it being myself — and that’s a problem, too. A lot of people will try to do sexy drill and try to sound like someone, when you can just be yourself and that’ll make a difference. That’s why people will say it all sounds alike.

You’ve also mentioned in past interviews that New York artists are more united. How is it making music in this era of New York?

It’s good vibes. Especially right now, sexy drill is good energy. Even when we’re recording the music, it’s good energy. We’re dancing and we’re just having fun together.

In the past, drill has been criticized for its violent lyrics. How are you, Cash and Chow helping to rewrite that narrative?

We’re talking to the women. We’re telling them how pretty they are and how sexy they are. It’s a big difference. It’s fun. It makes you want to dance. We got the kids, elders, and the women, of course. We are trying to separate ourselves from that. We don’t want violence. We just want good vibes, good energy and good parties”.

Apologies that the timeline and chronology is sort of back-to-front when it comes to interviews! I wanted to lead with the most recent one, as it caught my eye, though there will be a lot more interviews and features next year. One of Vevo’s hot tips for next year, I know that we are going to be talking about Bay Swag for years to come. He is this astonishing talent whose clear determination and vision has turned heads. People talking about him as this unmissable talent. Go and check out Damaged Thoughts and Swiggity. Proof that we have this truly amazing artists in our midst. I do wonder just how far Bay Swag can go…

IN 2026.

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Follow Bay Swag

FEATURE: I Can’t Give Everything Away: David Bowie’s Blackstar at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

I Can’t Give Everything Away

 

David Bowie’s Blackstar at Ten

__________

THERE is no doubting…

IN THIS PHOTO: The final photos of David Bowie were published on his 69th birthday, 8th January, 2016 (the same day his final album, Blackstar, was released)/PHOTO CREDIT: Jimmy King (via The Hollywood Reporter)

the fact that 2016 is one of the strangest, most eventful and memorable years of this century. Perhaps not for great reasons. In terms of the albums that were produced, some modern classics definitely came about. From Beyoncé’s Lemonade to Frank Ocean’s Blonde to A Tribe Called Quest’s final album, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, and Solange Knowles’s A Seat at the Table, there were so many remarkable albums that still reverberate today. However, 2016 was a year when we lost more than one music great. George Michael left us on Christmas Day. Prince on 21st April. Leonard Cohen on 7th November. Sharon Jones on 18th November. An artist who both released a modern classic and sadly died in 2016 was David Bowie. I am going to write a couple of features marking the tenth anniversary of David Bowie’s death. He died on 10th January, 2016, a mere two days before the release of Blackstar. Nobody knew that Bowie was so close to death when he released his twenty-sixth album. 8th January, 2016 was a double celebration, as it was also David Bowie’s sixty-ninth birthday. Fans had a couple of reasons to be joyful. Blackstar, in retrospect, has so many references to Bowie’s impending death and mortality though, for those hearing it fresh two days before he died, we did not know that. Rather than dwell on his tragic and untimely passing, I am going to focus on Blackstar. Some of what I bring in may reference his death and how we view the album, though there was vast positivity around the album. One of his masterpieces. An artist who had periods of real genius, and others that were less prolific, definitely finished his recording career with one of his greatest albums.

As it turns ten on 8th January, I know that Blackstar will be assessed and reviewed fresh. What it means a decade since it came out. Of course, people will also remember David Bowie on the tenth anniversary of his death. I am going to bring in reviews for a staggering seven-track album. From the extraordinary near-ten minute title track (listed as a black star symbol rather than the word) to the devastating finale, I Can’t Give Everything Away. The final album track released in his lifetime, it is both a beautiful and hugely affecting way to sign off. I think my favourite track off Blackstar is Lazarus. Bowie’s vocal performance is extraordinary! Even so ill living with liver cancer, he gives his everything to the songs on Blackstar. Some of his rawest and most revealing vocals, the composition and the band he plays with are simply incredible. One of his most experimental albums, with Art Rock and Jazz fusing together, Bowie drew inspiration from artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips. The singles, Blackstar and Lazarus were released late in 2015 - so there was this excitement and building anticipation. Both has music videos, though we were not looking for clues or noticing anything that suggested Bowie was ill and near death. These two videos especially are so moving to watch now, knowing what we know. However, they are both incredibly power and these amazing visuals that make us remember what an icon and innovator Bowie was! It is no surprise that Blackstar hit the top of the album chart in pretty much every country is was released in. This massive commercial and critical success, there were so many five-star reviews.

Not attacking those who scored it lower, but I wonder why they did not award it five stars! Objectively, Blackstar is a remarkable and unforgettable album without a weak track or moment. Critics did not know about David Bowie’s illness, if they were reviewing it before the album release. But you would have though Blackstar would get a perfect score from all. Maybe it will ten years after its release. I want to start with this article from The Guardian that was published on 11th January, 2016. They ask whether Bowie was saying goodbye on Blackstar. Whether it is an album about his death and the afterlife:

“The songs on Bowie’s inspired new album speak of illness, death and heaven – and offer intriguing insights about the man who sang, ‘I’m not a pop star, I’m a Blackstar”

One thing that struck reviewers who were grappling with Blackstar, David Bowie’s final album, was how tricky it was to interpret lyrically. Kitty Empire, writing in the Observer, described it as elliptical, while the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis wrote that the album “seems to offer those attempting to unravel his lyrics a wry ‘best of luck with that’”.

What the critics didn’t know, however, was that the man behind it had been diagnosed with cancer 18 months ago, and that he knew his life was coming to an end. If this had been common knowledge, they would all no doubt have looked at Blackstar in a different light. Was David Bowie saying goodbye on it? And does it seem obvious now that he has died?

I Can’t Give Everything Away, the album’s final track, is perhaps the most potent song to re-examine. “I know something is very wrong,” he begins, then sings: “The blackout hearts, the flowered news / With skull designs upon my shoes.” The sense that Bowie has an unhappy secret he desperately wishes he could share is reaffirmed in the chorus: “I can’t give everything away”.

There is a lot that I want to bring in. However, this feature from Rolling Stone, I can only bring so much in, as it is paywalled, so I cannot include everything. However, it tells the story behind the stunning revelation that was Blackstar. We do get a bit of background and context. I am going to bring in a more comprehensive (and un-paywalled) oral history of Blackstar from NME:

“One Sunday night in the spring of 2014, David Bowie walked into 55 Bar, a 96-year-old jazz joint tucked away on a quiet side street in New York’s West Village. A friend, jazz bandleader Maria Schneider, had suggested he check out the night’s headliner, a quartet led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Bowie grabbed a table near the stage and took in a set of exploratory jazz, then left without speaking to the band. “A server was like, ‘Wait, was that David Bowie?'” McCaslin says. “It started dawning on people.”

Ten days later, McCaslin got an email: Bowie wanted him and his drummer Mark Guiliana to join him in the studio. “I thought, ‘This is David Bowie, and he chose me, and he’s sending me an email?'” McCaslin says. “I tried not to think about it too much. I just wanted to stay in the moment and just do the work [he wanted].” That work, initially, was only one song: the trippy, jazz-infused “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” which Bowie released on his 2014 compilation album, Nothing Has Changed.

Then, last January, Bowie called McCaslin’s entire group to the downtown studio Magic Shop to begin work on his 25th album, ★ (pronounced Blackstar), which is due out on January 8th, Bowie’s 69th birthday. “It did surprise me,” says Guiliana of being asked to play on the album. “But I feel like he’s built a career and artistic identity on surprises. It falls in line with who he is as an artist.”

The seeds of ★ date to mid-2014, when Bowie met with longtime producer Tony Visconti and drummer Zack Alford to cut some demos at Magic Shop. Then Bowie disappeared for five months to work on the new material at his house. “He’s got a little setup there,” says Visconti. “And there was no clear communication from him until December. That’s when he told me he was ready to make the album.”

Two years ago, Bowie released his first album in nearly decade, the relatively traditional (by Bowie standards) rock album The Next Day, which he cut with Visconti and members of his old touring band. For ★, he was determined to do something very different. “We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar,” says Visconti. “We wound up with nothing like that, but we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn’t do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll.”

McCaslin and his bandmates were able to handle whatever Bowie threw at them, from Krautrock to hip-hop to pop to jazz, creating an incredible fusion sound that can’t be pinned to any one genre. “They can play something at the drop of a dime,” says Visconti. “[Keyboardist] Jason [Lindner] was a godsend. We gave him some pretty far-out chords, but he brought a jazz sensibility to re-voice them.” They cut the album on ProTools, though much of the gear was vintage. “Jason’s synthesizer didn’t have a computer with souped-up programs like Omnisphere on it,” Visconti says. “He would just do it with guitar pedals, making all the sounds unique. We’re like old school like that. Also, [bassist] Tim Lefebvre was just phenomenal to work with. He pretty much nailed every take right on the spot”

Moving to an NME feature from 2021. Looking back at Blackstar five years after its release, I am sure that we will get similar retrospectives and examinations on its tenth anniversary. There were recollections from those who worked with him, including Donny McCaslin (tenor saxophone, flute). Produced by David Bowie and his long-term friend and producer, Tony Visconti, it is wonderful that Bowie got to release this stunning album whilst he was still with us. He would have heard some of the reaction to the Blackstar and Lazarus singles, and he would have known how people felt about those. Hopefully it gave him solace and satisfaction:

“Where Bowie often returned to the same group of trusted musicians to join him on his records, ‘Blackstar’ saw him bring in a jazz ensemble to work with him for the first time. Donny McCaslin, leader of New York’s The Donny McCaslin Group, came recommended to him by musician Maria Schneider, who Bowie worked with on the 2014 version of ‘Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)’. McCaslin, a part of Schneider’s orchestra, also appeared on the track.

Donny McCaslin: “Bowie’s team had reached out to Maria to do a collaboration on ‘Sue…’ with her orchestra. During that time, she was talking with me about it, and she called and said that David had been trying to describe to her what he heard as the rhythmic underpinning of the song and that it made her think of me and my group. So she played him a record of mine called ‘Casting For Gravity’ and that led to them both coming to hear my band play at a club in New York called The 55 Bar about a week before the first workshop session for the David and Maria version of ‘Sue…’.

“So they come to the show and I didn’t meet him, but I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Then, a week later, I met him for the first time at this session and we’re talking and he asked for my number and email address. The next morning, he sent me an email saying he’d love to do something and sent a home demo of ‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore’ that he had sequenced at home – he played the saxophone on it and had done everything as far as I could tell.”

Once the recording of ‘Sue…’ was complete, Bowie and McCaslin stayed in touch, with Bowie emailing over several demos for the bandleader and his group to get familiar with.

Donny McCaslin: “It was exciting – that’s the first word that comes to mind. There just felt like there were so many possibilities in what he sent. The framework of the songs was in place in these demo versions and they sounded, to my ear, really strong. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him in the studio so I tried to prepare by really immersing myself in every detail of the songs so I would have the flexibility to pivot if need be in the studio.”

‘Blackstar’ bursts into life

Unbeknown to the rest of the world, 2015 began with Bowie hunkering down at New York studio The Magic Shop with McCaslin, pianist Jason Lindner, drummer Mark Giuliana, bassist Tim Lefebvre and his long-time producer Tony Visconti to begin work on ‘Blackstar’. The recording was split into three chunks – a week a month from January to March – and saw Bowie’s collaborative spirit in full flow.

Donny McCaslin: “The first day in the studio was a mixture of excitement, anticipation and hoping that it was all going to go smoothly. I was loving the music he had sent and I had done some work on it on my end with woodwinds and with voicing things that I hadn’t told anybody about, so I was excited to unveil that. When we got going, it just felt seamless and organic – the analogy I would use is that the group was like a basketball team where we were constantly sharing the ball and throwing it back and forth.

“That first day, the spirit of what David told us was, ‘Let’s not worry about what this will be called, let’s just go have fun and anything you’re hearing I want you to go for it’. He didn’t say ‘no inhibitions’, but that was the spirit of what he said. It was great to have that affirmation before we even started and to sense that he trusted us with this music. You couldn’t have asked for it to be a better environment creatively.”

Inspiration strikes

During the second recording session in February, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy joined the group after his work on Arcade Fire’s ‘Reflektor’ inspired Bowie to remix ‘Love Is Lost’ on ‘The Next Day Extra’.

Murphy’s role was meant to be far bigger than it ended up being, with Bowie and Visconti asking him to co-produce the record – as he explained on Radio 1 in 2017:“I played a little percussion. I was supposed to do a lot more but I got overwhelmed. It takes a different kind of person than me to walk into that room and be like, ‘I know exactly… I belong here, I should definitely insert myself in this relationship because they just can’t manage to make a record without me’.” 

Donny McCaslin: “James came into the sessions for the second block of recording. He was great. I remember there was a horn line on a tune that didn’t make the record, but when we recorded that he wanted to do another version where it was messier and not as polished – not even totally in the execution but just in the note twists. I appreciated that and it was fun to work with him on that. It’s hard to know if he had any influence on the sessions even after he’d gone because Ben Monder came in on guitar for the third batch and so there was a different dynamic.”

Even before ‘Blackstar’’s release, the central influence on it was often cited as Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’. Bowie and Visconti had been playing the record on repeat, with the producer saying his friend’s goal was to “avoid rock and roll”.

“He was so full of life and laughing, it was impossible to imagine there was anything wrong with him” – Jonathan Barnbrook

Donny McCaslin: “That record came up as something that he was listening to and checking out. It’s not something that we played in the studio. The one connection I can think of is the song ‘Girl Loves Me’, there’s that sort of a made-up language that’s happening on that song. Some of that was from the language of A Clockwork Orange. But some of it was also very old British slang. It would sound very odd to hear David Bowie rapping in today’s language, right? I think it could be thought of that that was a way that he was looking to find language that would work for him. And that’s the connection that I see, which is brilliant.”

Bowie hits the drawing board

With recording completed in March and overdubs and final additions done by May, it was time to start thinking about the other aspects of the record. Bowie brought back graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook, who he’d worked with on all his album art since 2002’s ‘Heathen’.

Jonathan Barnbrook: “It was quite unusual that time because he asked me to go to New York to talk to him about it – normally we do everything by email or Skype. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he especially just wanted to sit down with me and listen to the album together. It’s quite terrifying with David Bowie sitting next to you, listening to his album and he’s looking at your face to see if it’s good or not! I couldn’t tell he was ill at the time and actually, we didn’t discuss the issues of his health, it was more about the universal idea of mortality that was represented in ‘Blackstar’.

“The idea of the cut out black star was the main idea from the beginning. My feeling was that it should be quite minimal because the music, especially the main track ‘Blackstar’, had such a heavy, dark feeling which…. was very much of the time. It was never the case that it was going to be a nice picture of David and a bit of text saying ‘Blackstar’.”

The first clues arrive

“Look up here, man / I’m in heaven,” Bowie sang on ‘Lazarus’, which featured both on ‘Blackstar’ and in the musical that shared its name with the track. With the power of hindsight, it’s laden with all kinds of clues to the legend’s health issues, but few picked up on them on first listen.

Robert Fox: “I must have heard ‘Lazarus’ for the first time just before rehearsals for the musical started, because it was around then that I went to see the filming of the music video for it. Because I knew what the content of the story that we were telling was, it felt entirely appropriate to the musical. If I hadn’t had the context of the show, it probably would have been quite a different experience. But it completely made sense for the character of Newton to be singing that song in our show. So it was great to hear; it was exciting and felt completely right for what we were doing.

“There’s lots of discussion about to what extent he identified with the character of Newton, to what extent what he was going through in his own life, with illness, and possible death and all of that influenced his work around that time. It was not the first time that he’d had health scares, so I think his own mortality was very much on his mind.”

Mortality is a very big theme of the music video for ‘Lazarus’, which saw Bowie lying in a hospital bed with a bandage over his eyes. It’s ending – which saw him climbing into a wardrobe and closing the door – was later theorised by fans to represent the icon closing a coffin lid”.

Prior to ending with a couple of reviews for Blackstar, there is a 2016 feature from Observer, where Ben Monder (guitar), Tim Lefebvre (bass) and Donny McCaslin (tenor saxophone, flute) shared their experiences and impressions of working on the final masterpiece from David Bowie. Blackstar is an album that everyone needs to seek out. If you do not own a vinyl copy or have not heard it at all, go and find a copy or stream the album. It is such a spellbinding and seismic listening experience. I cannot overstate that! Even if you do not know much about David Bowie and who he was, the gravity of Blackstar and what it means will hit you on the first listen:

“Donny, your sax playing on Blackstar is very reminiscent of Dick Parry from Pink Floyd or even, in certain aspects, Andy Mackay of Roxy Music. Is that what were you aiming for?

McCaslin: Honestly, what I was thinking was more about trying to just immerse myself in these songs. My process was figuring the deeper I got into these songs, the freer I was in the sessions to express myself. So before the sessions, I listened to the demos a lot, and when we were playing I was just trying to play from the spirit of those songs and also reacting to David’s vocals, which were really passionate and really compelling. He was tracked with us live. And so we were already a band and the four of us have played on the road a lot together, but even still he was such a strong and inspiring presence to us in the room. It was so natural.

What was your favorite moment on the album?

Lefebvre: There’s a couple, actually, that still completely blow my mind. Just from how I play the bass, the second two-thirds of “Blackstar,” when it goes from the middle section out, I had fun playing that.

Monder: “Blackstar.” I’m pretty sure that was the first take. I remember David saying, “Well, why don’t you just naturally dissolve it and it will go into this other part,” which we had recorded right after. And that first time we tried to dissolve it, that’s what appears on the record.

‘His vibe was very open and collaborative. I remember him just encouraging us to just go for it…’

McCaslin: In terms of how “Blackstar” was put together, we recorded it in two halves. From what I remember, I think David always knew it was going to be one song, but we recorded it in two different sections. I didn’t know it was going to be sax on the first half and flute on the second. What happened was that flute solo at the end was something I had added on an overdub day when I was there just overdubbing flute parts, so that came a little bit later in the process. It was really cool they included it.

Lefebvre: I also really love the tag outs we did on “Girl Loves Me.” I love that song so much. The end of “Dollar Days” as well, right when things get real colorful. Actually, all of “Dollar Days” blows my mind. You can really feel him in those songs.

It must have been fun to play these songs and to interact with David.

McCaslin: It was tremendous. I felt like just all the tunes to me were really strong, and getting inside them was just thrilling. Yeah, when I had my moments of soloing, it was a great time and always really fun. It’s hard to put into words, it was such an inspiring experience. And I loved the music, and when we were making it, it felt really good. It was emotional and it sounded so great, and it was us.

We had finished tracking in March, and I hadn’t really heard it until recently. It’s neat to hear what David and Tony did and how they put all the pieces together with all the elements that they used. One thing that stands out to me is what we did—me, Tim, Mark and Jason—we do in fact do a lot of improvisation and we always feed off each other. It’s just this constant conversation, and that’s where we try to find the magic with the music we’re playing, be it my tunes or Bowie’s songs. That’s such a part of the whole jazz thing, right? The interaction and the storytelling you create as a band. And then David was right in there doing that, too, and I felt like that was really captured in the finished product, and I think that’s really special.

It’s not like it was this pre-programmed whatever. We were playing live, and we’re playing off each other. You can hear the interaction and you can hear the spirit of the communication in these fantastic songs. And David, he’s singing his tail off, and hearing it all together was really a thrill to me.

Monder: One of my favorite clips of his on YouTube is this acoustic performance of “Dead Man Walking.” It’s just him and Reeves Gabrels on acoustic guitars. And if you’ve heard the original version on Earthling, it’s like this extreme electronica cut. But it sounds so amazing stripped down like that, and the main guitar part was this riff Jimmy Page had taught him in the ’60s. It’s such a beautiful song, and this acoustic version is really striking. I remember hearing it on the radio years ago.

I don’t think it’s ever been recorded, but I think some station like WFUV or something played it on air and I didn’t even know who it was at first. So I decided I needed to learn it, so I was trying to learn it off the YouTube clip, but I wasn’t sure about the tuning of it. So I went to David and said, “Hey David, you gotta show me this,” and I started playing it for him. He got a kick out of that, me wanting to learn this obscure version of the song”.

There are two reviews I want to end with. I am starting out with The Guardian and their detailed and insightful four-star review. I started out by discussing critics who did not give out a full five stars and asked why. I do wonder whether they would change their minds. That one missing star. The black star. Even taking its context out of the equation, Blackstar is one of the defining albums of the 2010s. One that has undoubtably inspired so many artists since 2016:

“More striking still is the synergy between Bowie and the musicians on Blackstar. You can hear it in Bowie’s whoop as McCaslin solos amid the sonic commotion of ’Tis Pity She Was a Whore. He sounds delighted at the racket they’re creating, and understandably so. Simultaneously wilfully synthetic and squirmingly alive, it has the same thrilling sense of exploratory, barely contained chaos found on “Heroes” or Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), or in the tumultuous, wildly distorted version of the Spiders from Mars that rampaged through Panic in Detroit and Cracked Actor. Better still, it doesn’t actually sound anything like those records.

And you can hear it by comparing the album version of Sue (or in the Season of Crime) with the single released in 2014. The earlier version felt like a statement rather than a song; a series of ideas (drum’n’bass-inspired rhythm, Maria Schneider’s high-minded, uncommercial big-band jazz, a fragmentary lyric) thrown together to let the world know that Bowie wasn’t done with being avant-garde yet. It did that job pretty well, but never became a satisfying whole. On Blackstar, however, everything coalesces. The rhythm is sample-based and punchier, the agitated bass riff distorted and driving, the seasick brass and woodwind arrangement is replaced by sprays of echoing feedback, electronic noise and sax. It sounds like a band, rather than Bowie grafting himself on to someone else’s musical vision.

Over the years, rock has frequently reduced experimental jazz to a kind of dilettantish signifier: few things say “I consider myself to be a very important artist unleashing a challenging musical statement, I demand you take me seriously” quite like a burst of skronking free brass dropped in the middle of a track. But Blackstar never feels like that. Nor does it feel like it’s trying too hard, an accusation that could have been leveled at the drum’n’bass puttering of 1997’s Earthling.

Blackstar lacks the kind of killer pop single Bowie would once invariably come up with amid even his most experimental works – a Sound and Vision, a Heroes, a Golden Years – but only Girl Loves Me feels like a slog: lots of Clockwork Orange Nadsat and a smattering of Polari in the incomprehensible lyrics, thuddingly propulsive drums, no tune. Instead, you’re struck by the sense of Bowie at his most commanding, twisting a genre to suit his own ends. Dollar Days might be the most straightforwardly beautiful thing here, a lambent ballad that doesn’t sound jazz influenced at all. But it’s lent a curious, slippery uncertainty at odds with the bullish lyrical pronouncements (“If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to, it’s nothing to me”) by Mark Guiliana’s drumming, the emphasis never quite landing where rock-trained ears might expect it to.

The overall effect is ambiguous and spellbinding, adjectives that apply virtually throughout Blackstar. It’s a rich, deep and strange album that feels like Bowie moving restlessly forward, his eyes fixed ahead: the position in which he’s always made his greatest music”.

I will finish off with Pitchfork and their opinions on Blackstar. It is certainly one of my favourite David Bowie albums. Different to anything he had done before, but still unmistakably him. I do wonder whether there will be any reissues or anything special planned for the tenth anniversary of Blackstar on 8th January. It deserves to marked somehow:

“Because as much as Blackstar shakes up our idea of what a David Bowie record can sound like, its blend of jazz, codes, brutality, drama, and alienation is not without precedent in his work. Bowie’s first proper instrument was a saxophone, after all, and, as a preteen, he looked up to his older half-brother Terry Burns, who exposed him to John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Beat Generation ideals. The links connecting Bowie, his brother, and jazz feel significant. Burns suffered from schizophrenia throughout his life; he once tried to kill himself by jumping out of a mental hospital window and eventually committed suicide by putting himself in front of a train in 1985.

Perhaps this helps explain why Bowie has often used jazz and his saxophone not for finger-snapping pep but rather to hint at mystery and unease. It’s there in his close collaborations with avant-jazz pianist Mike Garson, from 1973’s “Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)” all the way to 2003’s “Bring Me the Disco King.” It’s in his wild squawks on 1993’s “Jump They Say,” an ode to Burns. But there is no greater example of the pathos that makes Bowie’s saxophone breathe than on "Subterraneans," from 1977’s Low, one of his most dour (and influential) outré moments. That song uncovered a mood of future nostalgia so lasting that it’s difficult to imagine the existence of an act like Boards of Canada without it. Completing the circle, Boards of Canada were reportedly one of Bowie’s inspirations for Blackstar. At this point, it is all but impossible for Bowie to escape himself, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try.

Thematically, Blackstar pushes on with the world-weary nihilism that has marked much of his work this century. “It’s a head-spinning dichotomy of the lust for life against the finality of everything,” he mused around the release of 2003’s Reality. “It’s those two things raging against each other… that produces these moments that feel like real truth.” Those collisions come hard and strong throughout the album, unpredictable jazz solos and spirited vocals meeting timeless stories of blunt force and destruction. The rollicking “’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” gets its name from a controversial 17th-century play in which a man has sex with his sister only to stab her in the heart in the middle of a kiss. Bowie’s twist involves some canny gender-bending (“she punched me like a dude”), a robbery, and World War I, but the gist is the same—humans will always resort to a language of savagery when necessary, no matter where or when. See also: “Girl Loves Me,” which has Bowie yelping in the slang originated by A Clockwork Orange’s ultraviolent droogs.

Though this mix of jazz, malice, and historical role-play is intoxicating, Blackstar becomes whole with its two-song denouement, which balances out the bruises and blood with a couple of salty tears. These are essentially classic David Bowie ballads, laments in which he lets his mask hang just enough for us to see the creases of skin behind it. “Dollar Days” is the confession of a restless soul who could not spend his golden years in a blissful British countryside even if he wanted to. “I’m dying to push their backs against the grain and fool them all again and again,” he sings, the words doubling as a mantra for Blackstar and much of Bowie’s career. Then, on “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” he once again sounds like a frustrated Lazarus, stymied by a returning pulse. This tortured immortality is no gimmick: Bowie will live on long after the man has died. For now, though, he’s making the most of his latest reawakening, adding to the myth while the myth is his to hold”.

I am going to write about David Bowie’s death for other features. That hugely sad day on 10th January, 2016 when we heard the awful news. However, I wanted to isolate Blackstar and the fact that it turns ten soon. The incredible excitement around its release the impact it made, both critically and commercially. Featuring some of David Bowie’s most ambitious and astonishing songwriting, I think his vocals have never sounded as emotionally moving. Even though he was ill and it must have been a difficult recording process, David Bowie sounds utterly entrancing and incredible! Rather than think about the tenth anniversary of Blackstar as a sad thing, instead, we must be eternally grateful for this final glorious album that David Bowie…

LEFT to the world.

FEATURE: These Three Queens… Celebrating a Triumphant and Memorable Year for The Trouble Club

FEATURE:

 

 

These Three Queens…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Trouble Club’s owner and CEO, Ellie Newton (right), alongside the acclaimed author, podcaster, speaker and journalist, Candice Brathwaite, at St Marylebone Parish Church, London on 2nd October, 2025/PHOTO CREDIT: Iona Marinca

 

Celebrating a Triumphant and Memorable Year for The Trouble Club

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I must start out…

IN THIS PHOTO: Margaret Atwood joined her fellow author Elif Shafak on stage for a funny, tender, thought-provoking, fascinating and unforgettable Trouble Club conversation at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on 14th November, 2025/PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Wahl/The Guardian

like I always do when writing about The Trouble Club, by giving you the link to their website and Instagram. I am urging everyone to become a member and check out what they do. The title of this piece is Christmas-based – the Christmas carol, We Three Kings of Orient Are - and it could refer to a few of the brilliant women who make The Trouble Club what it is, not least their inspiring and amazing CEO and owner, Ellie Newton, alongside Zea Stuttaford and Jen Needham. Organising these amazing events, venues and marketing, it is a huge feat making sure that the club keeps running and showcasing these wonderous and compelling guests and events. Not just speakers coming, there are social events (like members’ dinners) and book clubs among the other activities for its members. Rather than look at future events and highlight them, instead, I am going to nod to the year that has been and, cheekily, think about three queens I would love to see speak for The Trouble Club. You can see what events are booked for the remainder of the year - and what is already confirmed for 2026. Laura Bates speaking again for The Trouble Club will be a hugely popular event. That is on 19th February. With an incredible new website and the memory of perhaps their biggest event yet still in the mind and heart, it has been perhaps the most successful and notable year for The Trouble Club. This is, again, credit to those who work tirelessly every day. Ellie Newton and her team, ensuring that the Trouble members have these regular events where they can go, meet and socialise - and come away with these indelible and incredible memories! The big event that I was referring to was on 14th November. Margaret Atwood & Elif Shafak: Words Like Fire took place at Fairfield Halls. It was a packed venue to see this once-in-a-lifetime conversation. I had never seen Margaret Atwood speak. She and Elif Shafak had this incredible bond and mutual respect. This frank, funny and fascinating conversation was a definite highlight of the year! There have been so many moments like this. The Trouble Club goes from strength to strength in terms of the calibre and variety of guests booked. Some wonderful and large venues alongside the more intimate and homely.

IN THIS PHOTO: Actor Jodie Comer is one of my dream guests that I would love to see speak for The Trouble Club in 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Scandebergs for British GQ

Candice Brathwaite speaking for The Trouble Club on 2nd October was another big highlight! To be fair, there have been loads of really great events. I joined in 2023, and it has been such a wonderful experience being a member of The Trouble Club. Not only because you get to see so many compelling, powerful and amazing women share their work, stories and experiences. The new faces and familiar at each events makes it feel like a family. The Trouble Club family is this community that continues to grow. As we look to 2026, it will be fascinating seeing what is in store for The Trouble Club. I asked this I think when I interviewed Ellie Newton but, in terms of next steps, it will get bigger and grow. Though I feel she will take a little bit of a step back at some point. In terms of being the interviewer and attending nearly every event. As owner and CEO, she does so much for The Trouble Club; I am sure that she will probably scale back at some point so that she can focus on other things and just have some more free time. However, like I do with each feature, I pop in some dream guests. There are so many women I would love to see at The Trouble Club. Emerald Fennell, Gillian Anderson, Michaela Coel, Leah Williamson and Lauren Laverne are among them. However, as a big fan of Jodie Comer, this is someone who I think would be a wonderful guest. The Trouble Club have had actors speaking before, but there have not been too many in recent months. Someone who everybody knows but had this incredible career, she would be someone who would appeal to so many Trouble Club members. Also, Greta Thunberg would be a dream guest. Having been held hostage alongside fellow campaigners and activists protesting Israel’s genocide against Palestine, she has thankfully returned home. Thunberg would be among the most popular guests ever. An activist, climate crisis campaigner and environmentalist who has this huge social consciousness, there are so many young people who look up to her.

 IN THIS PHOTO: The national treasure that is Kathy Burke/PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lake/The Observer

In terms of the final of the three queens I would like to see, well that would be Kathy Burke! Her memoir, A Mind of My Own, was released in November. This is one of our most beloved actors and directors. An incredible woman who is not only an amazing comic actor, but someone who has been in hard-hitting T.V. films and stage productions, she is so raw, open and real. Someone who would no doubt be liberal with her language (a few C-bombs would only be right!), it would be a really funny and captivating event. I am not sure whether Burke is on the Trouble radar but, given the press for her memoir, there would be a lot to talk about. Let’s see what is planned for next year! I am keeping this pretty short, as I just want to give a general thanks to Ellie Newton and everyone at The Trouble Club for organising the events and making the club such a success! I know so many new members will come on board next year. This year has been a massive one for them, and they can be hugely proud of everything achieved. In terms of next year, maybe some of the biggest guests ever – film directors, politicians, authors and businesswomen alike – and a more regular podcast or new series? I would love to see more written about The Trouble Club. Ellie Newton profiled and interviewed. An entrepreneur and this phenomenal businesswoman and owner under the age of thirty who is achieving so much, she is worthy of some column inches and podcast chats! Even thought his year has been an extraordinary one I, like every Trouble Club member, is excited by…

WHAT comes next.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Sigrid

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDITS: Charlotte Alex

 

Sigrid

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I am returning to an artist…

who I have written about before. The amazing Sigrid (Sigrid Solbakk Raabe) released her latest album, There’s Always More That I Could Say. The third studio album from the extraordinary Norwegian artist, it follows 2022’s How to Let Go. I think that Sigrid’s latest album is among the best of the year. I will end with a positive review of it. I am going to start out with some recent interviews with Sigrid. I am going to start out with an interview from The Independent from July. It was published around the release of Sigrid’s single, Jellyfish.

“Jellyfish” is the first time that Sigrid will be credited as a producer on a song. “It doesn’t really change a thing,” she said of the milestone. “I’ve been co-producing my whole career. It’s just this time I’m being credited for it. That’s the difference.”

Sigrid was 19 years old when she released her debut single, 2017’s “Don’t Kill My Vibe”, kicking off a period in the spotlight that she described as “intense” and “amazing”.

“I’m so thankful for all of it, obviously, but it’s kind of going through a washing machine,” Sigrid continued. “And I think on the second album [How To Let Go] , I really wanted to be taken seriously and I put a lot of heavy pressure on myself to write serious songs.”

Sigrid said she is “having fun again” on “Jellyfish”, adding: “I think you can hear it in the song. I’m not trying to sing perfectly.”

“I take the piss out of myself a bit with the new music as well,” she said. “I’m trying to not take myself too seriously and allow myself to not always be the hero in a situation.”

The jubilant new single will be one of many she performs during her set at Latitude festival, which she first played in 2017.

“I love any festival that has a bit of nature in it,” she said of its bucolic setting in Henham Park, Suffolk. “I remember rowing in a rowboat to get back and forth from backstage.”

Imploring festival-goers to catch her set, Sigrid said: “My humble opinion is that we do deliver. I give my all on stage. It’s my favourite thing to do and to see everyone singing along is super special and makes me feel confident again.

“I’m a bit of a word of mouth artist but when you go to a show of mine, you know you’re going to have a good time”.

Perhaps the first album where Sigrid is in control and can craft something true to her, DORK spoke with Sigrid in the summer. Her boldest and most exciting album yet, I do feel that this is the start of an exciting new phase for one of the greatest modern artists. Twelve years into her career and the incredible Sigrid has taken her music to another level. There’s Always More That I Could Say is without doubt among the very best albums of this year:

“I love this record,” Sigrid states. “This is my favourite album.”

“It’s crafted with so much love and attention to detail. It’s a deadass serious album, but it’s also a funny one. I take the piss out of myself a lot, and some songs sound a bit stupid but are smart at the same time. It’s just a fun record; I just love it so much!”

The sonic details – whether in the form of Peter Bjorn and John-inspired drums on ‘Jellyfish’ (one for all the FIFA 08 fans out there), lo-fi synth-pop on ‘Hush Baby, Hurry Slowly’, or the simply massive pure-pop opening track ‘I’ll Always Be Your Girl’ – are matched by the mechanical elements that help expand on the emotions that thread this album together, most obviously seen through the tracklist.

“I’ve worked really hard on creating this journey sonically and lyrically, but also with placing songs in the right place. It’s explaining how chaotic it is going through a break-up; it’s not straightforward, it’s a lot of turns and twists and one step forward and five steps back, but it’s also a really funny journey too!”

And that’s the real heart of the record: fun. In fact, that’s really been the heart of Sigrid’s career so far. Her breakout single, ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’, was a tongue-in-cheek jab at a producer who tried to dictate her journey, while her other hits, ‘Strangers’, ‘Don’t Feel Like Crying’, and even ‘Head on Fire’ with Griff, all highlight her ability to transform emotionally fraught topics into unadulterated pop classics.

The difficulty that came with even choosing singles for this album cycle, though, shows that Sigrid is only growing stronger.

“I don’t want to sound cocky, but it was really hard to pick singles for this campaign because all the songs are great,” she grins. “I feel like it’s the first album I’ve written where I genuinely feel like there’s no fillers.”

“But ‘Jellyfish’ is one of my favourite songs on the record, if not the favourite, because it’s a song about friendship. I think that it is so important to have a song about friendship on a record that is a lot about love, because who’s there for you when the shit hits the fan?”

“It’s also one where I was having fun recording it and not focusing on singing perfectly – people know I can sing, I know I can sing, I don’t need to prove that to anyone. We recorded in a cosy attic studio about five minutes from here, and it felt like something new, something different. And then having ‘Fort Knox’ next was like boom! This feels like a part of my DNA.”

In case it wasn’t clear already, Sigrid isn’t interested in creating something you’ve heard before, and she’s certainly not interested in playing by someone else’s rules. Part of the joy she found in making this record was discovering new ways to be creative, using every inch of her twelve-year career to dissipate writer’s block and give some old ideas a second chance.

“The worst thing a person can say to me when I walk into the studio is, ‘You should make another ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’,'” she explains. “Because that’s not how it works; I couldn’t write a song like that now because it wouldn’t be authentic – I’m not the same person I was when I wrote that song.”

She continues: “The writing session culture in London, LA, even in Oslo – where you walk into a studio with two new people and the ambition is to have a fully finished produced demo with lyrics, melody, and initial production done – made me the writer I am today, but it got to a point last year where I was really tired from writing in that way.”

“So I put the process on hold for a bit because I was just tired. I just couldn’t see the vision. I had a few songs finished, but it wasn’t until last summer that I properly discovered ‘Jellyfish’ and thought there was something there. I went into the studio with Askjell Solstrand, who I wrote ‘Dynamite’ with ten years ago, and I just felt like I was a kid again. There was no pressure. We didn’t have to finish a song in a day. It just didn’t fucking matter if I made a banger or not. That’s when the album really came together.”

In this way, ‘There’s Always More That I Could Say’ became simply a part of Sigrid’s life instead of a forced project. It was an album born of passion, not productivity. Instead of grinding out tunes in a high-pressure stop-off at a writing camp, songs grew out of everyday experiences and inspirational moments.

“I think I would feel pressure no matter what job I did, because that’s just who I am, but I have to give myself a reality check. I’m so lucky to be doing this job, to have people excited to hear this album. Sometimes I do think, like, what actually is my motivation for doing this? And, honestly, on those days, I think it’s just because I’m good at it. I’m good at writing songs, I’m good at playing live, and I’m good at creating things to create joy.

“But actually, it’s because I love music, and I’m taken aback that, twelve years into my career, music still makes me so emotional. I can’t fake the excitement I have at going on stage, or the stars in my eyes when I think about all the songs that are yet to be written as well – y’know, there’s always more that I could say!”.

Prior to getting to a review of There’s Always More That I Could Say, there is a review from The Pink News that I want to spotlight. Sigrid’s third album was born out of heartbreak, rage and liberation. Fitting in with some of the queens of modern Pop in terms of themes and a slightly messy album, Sigrid is so real and revealing on this album. Not sugar-coating anything, Sigrid has released her most powerful and affecting album. Though there is plenty of fun and pleasure throughout:

“She can be difficult in relationships, and she’s “definitely owning up to it” on the album. “I think people probably think of me as the ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ girl, which is great,” she stresses, but the track came with the expectation that she would forever be tough but easy-breezy in the face of conflict. “I’m also the type of person that will have all these great comebacks two hours later.”

The reason she’s finally able to put all these thoughts on record, she suggests, is the current state of pop. “There’s a lot of room for being more messy,” she says, reeling off a list of her “favourite pop girlies” – Charli XCX, Zara Larsson, Lola Young, Chappell Roan, Olivia Dean – who are proudly and forthrightly putting their vulnerabilities and contradictions into their music. “I have felt like I can, on a personal level, be more open and funny and satirical and take it to the extreme,” she says. “[There] hasn’t been the space for pop to not be so rigid, but the rule book is [now] thrown out the window. There are no rules anymore for what is pop.”

Since her major breakthrough – she won the BBC Music Sound of 2018 poll, previously won by Adele, Sam Smith, and most recently, Chappell Roan – Sigrid has been whisked out on stage at every summer festival going. “I have the best job in the world,” she urges, but points out: “There is always summer somewhere in the world.” After releasing How To Let Go in 2022, she toured continuously – “I never really stop touring” – and ended up, though she doesn’t use the phrase exactly, probably a little burnout.

Until now, everything has been quite deep for Sigrid. Historically, she has been a self-confessed control freak, shy, and painfully self aware. After starting piano lessons aged seven, she tried to quit, fearing the hobby wasn’t cool enough for her peers’ approval. She first wrote songs after her brother, also a musician, invited her to perform with him, but told her she couldn’t sing the Adele covers she’d grown comfortable with.

In 2022, she told an interviewer that she admired Taylor Swift for her business-like approach to the music industry: “That’s not calculated, it’s just smart. It’s smart to have a plan,” she said. But with There’s Always More That I Could Say, she’s finally learning to let whatever happens, happen.

“You have to be OK that the plan can change. You never know what’s going to happen around the next corner,” she says. Earlier this year, Ed Sheeran was performing in Oslo, and invited her to perform on stage with him. Afterwards, she asked if she could support him on tour. He dutifully agreed, and she’s heading over to the US with him in July. “That’s how the industry is. It can change so quickly.”

Almost ten years into her career, and Sigrid is finally learning to roll with the punches. When she’s not delivering them, that is”.

If some reviewers feel the second half of There’s Always More That I Could Say is weaker than the first and the album does not meet the highs of her earlier work, I would say this is Sigrid’s most confident, unapologetic and personal album. Maybe there are nods to contemporary Pop artists, though there is plenty of individuality and distinction throughout. Sigrid’s latest album needs to be heard. This is what DORK said in their review of There’s Always More That I Could Say:

“Nobody has ever doubted Sigrid’s credentials as a pop star – you don’t get to perform with Bring Me The Horizon or support Ed Sheeran on tour if you don’t have fans in high places. That doesn’t mean, though, that she always gets the praise she deserves for always pushing her own boundaries and working to become the best artist she can.

This third album is still the same Sigrid, an artist full of passion and uncontainable, fizzy enthusiasm, except this time she comes with added self-assuredness. Playing freely with tempo, structure, and genre, ‘There’s Always More That I Could Say’ is a journey that underscores Sigrid’s confidence in what she does best: make pure pop bangers.

Even then, she plays at the fringes of what pop can be. Effortlessly switching from the folk-slash-indiepop of aptly fluid single ‘Jellyfish’ into the piano ballad title track, before sparking back to life with crunchy dance anthem ‘Fort Knox’, the record is elevated to more than simply a pop record. Of course, she still does sunny, shiny pop better than most – most notably in huge opening tune ‘I’ll Always Be Your Girl’ and ‘Do It Again’ – but with enough versatility and tact to keep the whole project fresh and exciting.

All the sugary sweet sonics and high BPM rhythms are balanced out by lyrics that showcase the vulnerability of someone who was in the throes of heartbreak when first writing for the record. ‘Kiss The Sky’ paints a picture of someone tearing their own personality apart, even while trying to present as rock-solid, while ‘Eternal Sunshine’ is a yearning, cathartic cry for better times to present themselves.

Sigrid has never seemed more liberated or more confident. She doesn’t care what you think, and this album is all the better for it”.

An artist I have loved and respected since her 2019 debut, Sucker Punch, I love her new album. I have never seen her live, though she plays London’s Roundhouse on 13th March, and that venue is near where I live, so I will try and come see her play. A modern-day queen that I wanted to salute, make sure you follow and listen to Sigrid and her amazing music. She is one of the best and most interesting Pop artists on the scene. I feel like she has a lot more to say. It will be fascinating discovering…

EXACTLY what that is.

_______________

Follow Sigrid

FEATURE: Needle Drops and Scores to Settle: Scene Five: Don’t You (Forget About Me): The Breakfast Club (1985)

FEATURE:

 

 

Needle Drops and Scores to Settle

 

Scene Five: Don’t You (Forget About Me): The Breakfast Club (1985)

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THIS time around…

I am including one of the most iconic soundtracks of the 1980s. The Breakfast Club soundtrack accompanied the hit John Hughes film. The film was released in February 1985. Hughes sadly died in 2009, though films like this have endured. Responsible for shaping the teen genre in film and creating these coming-of-age classics, I wanted to spend time with the soundtrack of The Breakfast Club. There are some that say the soundtrack is only really good because of Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me), and the rest is disposable. I would strongly disagree. Each song on the album plays its part and is strong. Together, this soundtrack definitely stands the test of time. I would advise people to watch the film before hearing the soundtrack. I want to start out with a feature from Medium and their take on this symphony of teen rebellion. Magical and evocative music that still sounds impactful forty years later:

“In the hallowed halls of ’80s cinema, one film stands out as the quintessential coming-of-age masterpiece — “The Breakfast Club.” While John Hughes’ iconic teen drama captured the essence of high school life, it’s the film’s soundtrack that truly elevated it to legendary status. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and explore why “The Breakfast Club” soundtrack remains a timeless symphony of teen rebellion and musical magic that continues to captivate audiences decades later.

The Power of Simple Minds

The opening strains of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds are etched into the minds of anyone who has ever experienced the tumultuous journey of adolescence. This anthemic track, which plays during the film’s unforgettable closing scene, became synonymous with the film and encapsulates the struggles and triumphs of the teenage experience.

Dancing with Tears in My Eyes

The eclectic mix of genres on the soundtrack mirrors the diverse personalities of the film’s characters. From the upbeat and rebellious “We Are Not Alone” by Karla DeVito to the emotionally charged “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes” by Ultravox, each track captures a different facet of teenage emotion, creating a sonic landscape that resonates with viewers on a visceral level.

Iconic Instrumentals

Beyond the vocal tracks, the soundtrack boasts unforgettable instrumentals that enhance the film’s emotional depth. The haunting melody of “Wang Chung” and the synth-driven rhythms of Keith Forsey’s “Love Theme” contribute to the overall atmospheric brilliance of the soundtrack, transporting listeners back to the nostalgic era of big hair, neon lights, and adolescent yearning.

Synthesizing the ’80s Vibe

“The Breakfast Club” soundtrack doesn’t just encapsulate the essence of the film; it encapsulates the spirit of the entire ’80s era. With tracks like “Fire in the Twilight” by Wang Chung and “I’m the Dude” by Keith Forsey, the soundtrack becomes a time capsule, allowing listeners to relive the vibrancy and rebellious energy of the decade.

Impact on Pop Culture

Decades after its release, the “Breakfast Club” soundtrack has left an indelible mark on popular culture. Its songs have been featured in numerous films, TV shows, and commercials, proving that the emotional resonance and cultural relevance of this musical masterpiece are everlasting.

“The Breakfast Club” soundtrack is more than just a collection of songs; it’s a cultural touchstone that continues to define the essence of teenage rebellion and self-discovery. From the anthemic call of Simple Minds to the synth-driven beats of Wang Chung, each track weaves together to create a sonic tapestry that transcends generations. As we revisit the halls of Shermer High School through the music that fueled the iconic film, we rediscover the enduring power of “The Breakfast Club” soundtrack — a musical journey that will forever hold a special place in the hearts of rebels, misfits, and dreamers alike”.

Without doubt one of the best film soundtracks of the '80s, I feel that young audiences and listeners can connect with it. This definitive snapshot of the teen music of the mid-'80s, at a time now when coming-of-age films are rarer and different in tone, I think there is something special and distinct about The Breakfast Club. However, the soundtrack and John Hughes has influenced everyone from M83, The 1975, and Neon Indian. I am moving to this feature that talks about the influence and legacy of The Breakfast Club’s soundtrack:

“As the 1970s came to a close, pop music found itself at a crossroads, Power rock bands like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin had ruled the back end of the decade, inspiring a generation of cartoon-ish imitators that would produce the Hair Metal of the 80s. But meanwhile, the start of a new movement was bubbling under the end of the late 70s, a generation was growing up on the angst and melancholy romanticism of bands like Joy Division and The Cure. This new sound would set the template for what would become the New Wave music of the 80s. This new musical movement would come to envelop and define the youth culture of the era.

It should perhaps then be no surprise that young audiences were rejecting the simplistic archetypes and false emotion of the bubblegum high school movies of the time. This was until John Hughes. Drawing upon inspiration from the pop culture of the time and his own childhood in the suburbs of Chicago, Hughes approached the emotions of adolescence with a sincerity unseen at the time. All the angst, melancholy, and romance that had defined the pop music of the era was brought to the forefront in the films of influential director.

With The Breakfast Club, Hughes made his definitive statement as a filmmaker. The Breakfast Club took the social and film archetypes of the time and thoroughly dismantled them, finding the real human drama and heart that underlined them. The film is a perfect embodiment of the spirit of the New Wave movement, capturing the romance, energy, and instant nostalgia of the music of the era.

Also, while the film’s soundtrack might actually be short on pop music, it still provides one of the most recognizable musical moments in cinema history: the enduring image of Judd Nelson’s alienated rebel raising his fist in air in pure joy at finding romance and human connection as Simple Minds’ soaring synthpop anthem “Don’t You” soundtracks the film’s closing. The song became a defining hit of the New Wave movement and perfectly echoed the spirit of the film.

What few could have predicted, however, is just how enduring The Breakfast Club‘s relationship with music would be. Just as the film was influenced by the music of it’s time, the raw emotions and angst of young adulthood that the film brought to the cultural forefront would continue to inspire music over the next 30 years. Artists like M83, Twin Shadow, The 1975, Neon Indian, and Washed Out have all cited influence from the inseparable relationship between New Wave and the John Hughes films of the era. Albums like M83’s Saturdays = Youth even play out like extended love letters to the Brat Pack films, with their embrace of everything from the themes and music to even the imagery of those films”.

The soundtrack does have its detractors. However, in 2022, Variety ranked The Breakfast Club (alongside a couple of other John Hughes soundtracks) fourth in the list of the quintessential film soundtracks of the 1980s. In 2023, Entertainment Weekly ranked The Breakfast Club Soundtrack thirteenth, when they discussed the best soundtracks of the '80s. This is what they said: “What happens when five students from different cliques get Saturday detention in the suburbs of Chicago in 1985? Just a plethora of catchy songs, quippy dialogue, and layers upon layers of teenage confessionals. In John Hughes' Brat Pack classic The Breakfast Club, Karla Devito's "We Are Not Alone" serves as the killer tune that gets the gang out of their seats for a library dance montage. However, we all know the true crown jewel of this soundtrack, "Don't You (Forget About Me)'' by Simple Minds, which bookends the film and will forever be tied to John Bender's triumphant fist pump in its final frame — and we wouldn't have it any other way”. I am going to finish off with this feature from The Film Experience:

“Like the best high school films, The Breakfast Club exists somewhere between painful reality and gilded fantasy. Its anthem is similarly accessible but hyper-produced, filled with relatable feeling but kind of untouchable in its chilly groove - it’s consumable but truthful product, so naturally we eat it up like the candy it is even as it affects us deeply. The world isn’t real (detention for bringing a gun to school, instant makeovers, etc.) but the emotion is. And when you are this age, the emotion is everything.

The song begins in a burst of bottled rage and has the rhythm of an adolescent tantrum, making it a fitful match to the group therapy session we’re watching. It feels like something written by this group both in response to one another and the social strata that forces them into these prescribed roles. If the unfolding day serves to undermine the hierarchy by revealing their individuality, then the song reminds them that there’s no going back from showing one’s full self or from the seeing. “As you walk on by...” the ghost of what was shared remains.

But does the song’s questioning of the future reveal the closing commeraderie as bullshit or does it play with the tension of the uncertain future of their new bond? The lyrics ruminate on profound but transient connections and the weight of social promises, complicating what still feels dangerously close to a improbably transformative ending. Maybe we’re not led to believe they will all stay besties, but the film certainly dances toward assuredness. Call it youthful optimism or steered by foolish feeling, but this tension is one of the things the film and its song get wholeheartedly right about the high school experience.

However there is something triumphant in the “la-la la-la” chorus as Judd Hirsch throws a first in the air, a certain battle won no matter what happens on Monday. For one brief moment, in this forced oasis away from their outside pressures, they actually were seen”.

If you have not heard the soundtrack for The Breakfast Club, then I have put the soundtrack below. I would urge you to go and watch the 1985 film, as it is a fantastic watch. Even though there are some teen films influenced by it today, you don’t see as many as you would like. Simple Minds, Wang Chung and Joyce Kennedy help make The Breakfast Club’s soundtrack one of the defining moments of the 1980s. Take some time out today and…

GIVE it a play.

INTERVIEW: Carly Wilford

INTERVIEW:

 

Carly Wilford

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I am not sure whether…

I can do full justice to the talents of the amazing queen, Carly Wilford. I have interviewed her a couple of times before for my website. However, as she has had such a busy and incredible year, I wanted to check back in. You can follow Carly Wilford on Instagram. Check out her music. One of the very best DJs in the world, she has travelled far and wide, and played some truly huge and prestigious festivals. I have known her for a long time now, and I am always blown away! Such energy and passion in everything she does! Also, go and check out her official website. It is a real pleasure to interview her again. Before I get there, below is some biography about and insight into the spectacular Carly Wilford:

“With her weekly show 4:4 on Tomorrowland One World Radio, Carly Wilford pioneers the first ever dedicated house music show on the station. Bringing the underground to the global stage and championing club culture on one of the world’s biggest dance platforms. After a breakout run of releases that landed across Spotify and Apple Music’s most influential playlists, Carly has secured her space as one of the most promising names in dance music. This summer marked a turning point: opening for Paco Osuna and Armand Van Helden, sharing line-ups with Tini Gessler and Franky Wah and dropping peak-time sets at Tomorrowland, Glastonbury and Boardmasters. With tunes out on Toolroom, Armada and Nervous Records, Carly’s now channelling a darker, more club-driven sound with stripped-back grooves, heavy low-end and raw percussion. It’s a shift that marks her evolution from selector to serious producer; one who’s not just playing the scene but pushing it forward .Her high energy sets bring forward a new wave of house music whilst honouring the very roots of the scene she grew up raving to. After learning to produce in lockdown and hearing the statistic that only 2% of women were Music Producers, Carly decided that there was work to be done. Joining Toolroom Records, Toolroom Academy Course, she set out to learn how to make music.

Going on to release her debut single ‘Generation X’ with Mr V on the label with the track being signed within ten months of her laying down her first beat on the course. Found behind the decks at the UK’s most celebrated clubs and touring festivals across the world, she strongly connects both the US and UK music scenes, her solid roots in the UK have helped to bring through so many of the artists on today’s airwaves. Her confidence to take risks on musicians from a very early stage has seen her build bonds with the likes of Sam Smith, SG Lewis, Rudimental and Skrillex who have all spoken publicly about her unrivalled support. As a Presenter, she fronted travel documentary 'Sampled' on MTV & Paramount Plus starring alongside renegade Marc Rebillet. The episode saw them explore London's rich musical foundations and channel the rebellious energy of the city, from making a Grime beat in Jammer's basement to shutting down Shoreditch with an unannounced street rave. Alongside music, Carly broke new ground launching meditation and wellbeing platform a:live. An essential support network to the unconventional, always on, culture of the music industry. Having worked as a Personal Trainer before jumping into the music business, her knowledge and experience has created an invaluable space bringing together some of the most ambitious minds in health, fitness and performance”.

I wanted to talk to Carly Wilford about her eventful and incredible year as a DJ, artist and producer. I was also keen to learn more about the physical demands of the job and how she manages that. Such a high-energy and sometimes gruelling commitment, I also asked Wilford about ongoing inequality and misogyny that women face as DJs. Whether we are going to see improvements and what needs to be done. I was keen to know more about her phenomenal music and what we can expect going forward. Having played across the U.K. and Europe this year, it is going to be a moment of brief reflection and rest before embarking on what is likely to be a huge, glittering and truly memorable 2026. I previously interviewed DJ Rowena Alice, and here is another queen of the decks who talks about her experiences. Always so wonderful to speak with someone who I…

ADMIRE and respect enormously.

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Hi Carly. How has this year been for you? What have been your highlights and outstanding moments of 2025?

2025 has been one of the biggest and most exciting years of my career so far. It’s crazy, because stepping in to it, I’d just closed the door on a really challenging 2024. I think choosing to let that be the fuel to smash this year was a real turning point. Looking back, there have been so many highlights, but starting my radio show, 4:4 on Tomorrowland One World Radio (this curated playlist is amazing), in January was so pivotal. It’s the first fully dedicated House music show on the station, and I love being able to represent the artists and the sound that I love to a global audience. I have so much respect for the team at Tomorrowland, not only are they incredible to work with, they dream big and make magic happen. Playing the House of Fortune stage at this year’s Tomorrowland was something I’ll never forget. Gigs like that make you really step up as an artist. Other stand-out moments were playing before Paco Osuna in Ibiza at the end of the summer; warming up for Armand Van Helden to a packed-out crowd at Love to Be Festival in Harrogate; playing The Glade Dome at Glastonbury, and standing on stage at Boardmasters and realising I was playing to over 6,000 people. It’s amazing to sit back and think about it, because sometimes you can be so busy that you forget to take it in, so thank you!

You are wrapping up a tour at the moment and have played across the U.K. and Ibiza. Do you have to adapt your set and change things between towns and cities? How important are the venues and the vibe from the crowds when it comes to setlist and how you perform as a DJ?

Every set I play is totally different. I always create a playlist of tunes to select from before gigs, but often it can change as soon as you step on stage. Reading a crowd and knowing what will work in different venues is part of the art. Connecting to an audience and feeling out where you should take a set is so instinctive, and it’s listening to that which builds the energy and vibe between you, the music and the people who have come to see you. The crew that come to my sets are proper ravers and they are always up for it, which means that things get crazy. As a DJ, you never know what you are walking in to, and there are always so many variables. Across the summer, I stepped on stage to shows that were way bigger than I imagined. During that, I’ve had my headphones stop working, the tunes on my USB decide to not play, and under that pressure you still have to make sure that you deliver. I’ve had so many moments this year where I’ve looked out and realised that the things I dreamed of a few years ago were unravelling in real time. I’ll never ever take that for granted and, if anything, it makes you think bigger and decide to push even further.

“My love for Ibiza started back then and grows stronger every time I visit”

Ibiza seems to hold a special place in your heart. What is it like playing on the island and its people, and how was it playing the Tomorrowland Store?

When I first got in to raving, I found myself at Manumission in Ibiza at sunrise and loved the feeling of hedonism, connection and freedom that I felt on the dance floor. We went on from there to Space Carry On, and as we walked in it was daylight on the terrace. We were given feathers in our hair and coloured paint on our faces, and looking around the club, everyone had been made in to Native Americans. They were playing the sexiest Balearic House, and we danced until late in to the afternoon. It was such a golden era for the island - and a time I will never ever forget. My love for Ibiza started back then and grows stronger every time I visit. As a raver, I never knew that I’d go on to have a career as a DJ, so playing there is always so special. The people and the crowds are like nowhere else in the world, and the island sets the pace for so much of Electronic music globally. I’ve been so lucky to spend so much time out in Ibiza this year; from being in the studio making music to playing gigs there and broadcasting 4:4 from the Tomorrowland Store too. We closed out the season with sets from some of the island’s most-loved DJs, from Paco Osuna, Tini Gessler, Franky Wah and Francisco Allendes - which felt like such a strong end to an unforgettable season.

As part of your sets, you must play unsigned acts and lesser-known music that is discovered after they are heard on your setlists. Is that one of the most rewarding elements of your work?

Hunting out unsigned artists and undiscovered music was how I started out in the music industry, and it’s something that has been ever-present in my career. Being able to share tunes that people are yet to know about and give those musicians a platform to be heard is not only hugely rewarding but something that is so important, especially with where the industry is at right now. There are more producers and DJs than ever before, and with so much music being released, it’s very difficult for people’s art to reach audiences like it used to. This is why tastemakers are so important.

Like other areas of the music industry, there is gender inequality and discrimination when it comes to female DJs In terms of opportunities, pay imbalance and underrepresentation on festival line-ups. Do you think that there has been any improvement in these areas, and what does the industry need to do?

This is such a tricky conversation, because in all honesty, over the last year it seems to have taken a real step backwards. We had got to a place where line-ups were hugely diverse, but now I’ve noticed that sometimes I can be the only female on there again. The calibre of diverse talent globally is stronger than it has ever been, so really there are no excuses. The diversity conversation isn’t new. So many of us have been fighting for it for a long time, and we should never not appreciate the progress that has been made, especially when it comes to respect in the booth and on dance floors. Things were very, very different ten years ago and trust me, we have come a lot further than we realise. As an industry, I think it’s more about ongoing awareness and day to day decisions when it comes to programming line-ups and highlighting the next wave of talent. I still feel so proud of where the industry is at and how many powerhouse women are at the helm because, for that, it’s never been stronger.

Maybe an obvious answer, but do you listen to a lot of music away from DJ sets. Or do you prefer switching off? In terms of the music you are drawn to and your favourite albums and artists, what would be on your personal playlist?

It’s interesting, because the music that I listen to generally is very different to what I produce or play. I rarely watch TV, and I always have a playlist playing through the speakers at home, in my car, or whilst I’m training. To switch off, I listen to chill-out Electronic playlists with artists like Four Tet, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Nora En Pure, TSHA, Fred again.., and Bicep. Been loving the Spatial Audio sets on Apple Music from UNVRS and Hï in Ibiza this year. You can hear the crowd and it catapults you to being on the dancefloor, especially if you listen in headphones. I’m forever listening back to sets of the artists that I rate to check out their blends and track selection. Some of my favourite DJs have to be Solomon, Carlita, Illario Alicante, Andrea Oliva, Honey Dijon, Green Velvet, and Hot Since 82.

One thing I notice about DJs is how much energy you need and how physical it is! In terms of that side of things, it must be euphoric and a thrill. But how do you prepare for yourself for the demands of DJs sets, and how do you adjust to the post-gig comedown?

Before I was in music, I was a personal trainer, so the gym and staying healthy is so important to me - and actually has become something that brings discipline and structure. Feeling strong and fit on stage means that you feel sharp and know that you’re going to bring your A-game. The music industry is filled with temptation, but when you’re busy and gigging, a lot of that can knock you off course. I find that feeling healthy and looking after myself makes me think twice about drinking or going to an afters when I’ve finished playing. After some sets I love to go for drinks with mates, but other times I need a second to take in what has happened. On the big shows, it’s a huge energy exchange between you and the crowd, and that can sometimes take time to wind down from. There’s been sets where I have finished on stage, jumped in to a car, and then found myself alone in a hotel room minutes later thinking what on earth has just happened. So now, I like to take things a bit more slowly, take in the atmosphere, go and meet people that have come to see me, and hang out with other artists on the line-up. Then when you go to bed, you’ve given yourself time to unwind, rather than laying there wired on adrenaline and not being able to sleep.

Can you take me back to the start. What drew you to becoming a DJ in the first place? Was music always a passion, or was there something particular about being a DJ that spoke to you?

When I first started to DJ, it was in the days that I was out raving every weekend. At the time, I was working in recruitment and it was super stressful, so I decided to get some decks at home and teach myself to mix when I got back from work as a way to chill out. It felt like meditation in many ways; it’s hard to think of anything else in that moment, and so you become very present. I started by mixing vinyl on Technics 1210s and spending my weekends in record shops hunting out new tunes. Fast forward to starting the breakfast show on Rinse FM, living in London, and needing to find a way to pay sky-high rent, I began to look for gigs. From that day, I’ve been a DJ, and I’ve never looked back.

You get to travel the world and play at so many amazing places! I think you could make a documentary about that. It must have so many highs and amazing moments. Do you have particular favourite venues or countries to play?

Every day, I wake up and feel so grateful for the life I live and the job that I have. I was looking back at my Instagram recently and realising how incredible the last few years have been, and I think that it’s the travel and the variety that makes the hard work become addictive. I played Outernet in London a while ago, and that was such a world-class venue. Club Chinos in Ibiza was one of the best sound systems and lighting set-ups ever. Playing on a yacht track-side for the Grand Prix in Monaco as the cars raced by was wild. Playing Tomorrowland in Belgium this year was really special, especially after everything that happened with the Main Stage. What the team achieved there in 48 hours was actually unbelievable. There was such a feeling of gratitude and unity across the festival, and it goes to show what you can do when you decide to push forward against the odds. I’d love to spend time in America next year. House music is flying over there at the moment, so I would love to tour in the States when the time is right.

I love your own music too, and I know you have been recording tracks recently. Can you reveal whether a Carly Wilford E.P., mixtape or album might be released in the future?

Over the last year, I decided to pause releasing tunes and spend time in the studio refining my sound and the music I was making. It’s been so brilliant to collaborate and work with other artists and producers, and I am currently sat on some of the best music of my career. Over the summer, I have been road-testing the tracks in my sets, so if you have seen me live at all, I am sure you would have heard what’s to come. I’m going to be releasing a run of tunes as we head in to next year, and I couldn’t be more excited.

“I feel like 2025 was all about setting the foundation and 2026 is lift off… it’s time!”

As part of this series, I am asking incredible female DJs which women they look up to. Are there particular DJ queens that you either drawn inspiration from or suggest that we check out?

From an artistry perspective, Miss Monique and Korolova are at the top of their game right now. Sonically, the music I play is different, but I have a lot of love and respect for the level that they have taken their careers to. Other producers that I rate are Azzecca, BIIANCO, Carlita, Chloé Caillet, Chelina Manuhutu, DREYA V, HoneyLuv, Jackie Hollander, Olive F, LINSKA, TSHA, SYREETA, Arielle Free, Sarah Story, Hannah Laing, Tini Gessler, JAGUAR … I hope I haven’t missed anyone, but there are so many. The Electronic music scene is so strong right now, and this list is ridiculously inspiring.

We are coming up for Christmas and the end of the year. Will you get time to relax and spend time for family? What plans are there for 2026, and how is the year shaping up so far?

Christmas is really busy for gigs, so I always get amongst it as well as spending time in the studio to finish music for next year. Looking forward to seeing my family over Christmas and unplugging a little. I’d also love to go away and get some sun and plan a trip where I am not working. 2026 is already shaping up to be incredible. I have some really exciting projects I’m working on that will be announced in the new year, as well and starting to drop new music, which I really can’t wait to share. I feel like 2025 was all about setting the foundation and 2026 is lift off… it’s time!

Finally, I will finish this interview by playing a song of your choice. It can be one you play in your sets or a personal favourite. What shall we go with?

Tangerine Beam by Johannes Albert & Biesmans. I have it on repeat recently. They have sampled an old classic and have completely smashed it.

FEATURE: An Open Letter to NYC: How New York City’s Mayor-Elect, Zohran Mamdani, Will Inspire Music and Culture Beyond the U.S.

FEATURE:

 

 

An Open Letter to NYC

 

IN THIS IMAGE: A flyer for Indie Rockers for a Better New York/ART CREDIT: Sarah Goldstein

 

How New York City’s Mayor-Elect, Zohran Mamdani, Will Inspire Music and Culture Beyond the U.S.

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THERE is this glimmer of hope…

PHOTO CREDIT: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

in America against a political blackness. The president of Donald Trump has set America back generations. In terms of how regressive and dictatorial he is, you do wonder why the country voted him in for a second time – and whether there are any regrets. He is someone who does not care about minorities, women, immigrants, the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, or anyone that he considers to be an outsider or un-American. Someone who very much serves himself, it has been one of the bleakest times in history for the U.S. However, the hugely popular and optimistic election of Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of New York City seems like a turning point. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, he has served as a member of the New York State Assembly for the 36th district since 2021, representing the Queens neighbourhood of Astoria. Even though he and Donald Trump met recently at the White House and it was cordial, you know that Mamdani loathes Trump. He has called him a fascist, and will continue to. This inspiring and loved left-wing politician is going to bring progress and change to New York City. Someone who cares about everyone and is putting the people first, he is almost the angel to Donald Trump’s devil. One hopes that Zohran Mamdani will be President one day, as he is someone who could genuinely bring hope to America. How does this all relate to music? Well, as that is what I am focused on, I wanted to argue that Zohran Mamdani will bring optimism to musicians around the world. I have talked a lot about how I would love to record an album. As a songwriter rather than singer, bringing people together in a New York City studio to record these songs. I have the album and song titles worked out, but I want to call the group/collective Mamdani, as I feel he will create this movement of positivity and hope through music.

Obviously, whether a musician or anyone across the arts, you are going to be influenced and inspired by what is happening on the worldwide stage. Artists have written about America: its landscape, people, politics, history and wonder. Whilst one would like to see more artists tackle and admonish Donald Trump and his dictatorial regime, maybe there is a fear. Creatively and commercially. Huge artists holding back because they fear of big losses and consequences. It is sad. However, I feel many artists are avoiding writing about American politics because of a certain fear or futility. It is a horrible time. However, the election of Zohran Mamdani could be a turning point. It is clear that there are challenges. It is not going to be the case Mamdani will come in and everything will be wonderful in New York City. Donald Trump has too much power and there will be obstacles. However, I do think that there is this feeling that a genuinely good and good-hearted person is in a position of power and is in charge of a huge portion of America. I have resisted going to New York City because Donald Trump is President. However, with Zohran Mamdani as Mayor, there is this lure. How the city and state is very much in safe and caring hands. Not only will more positive narratives come from artists. The romance of New York City revived and affirmed. In a wider sense, this feeling that America could change and we might see a positive change at the very top. Also, as Zohran Mamdani is a supporter of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community and an ally, there is less fear and feeling of isolation. Something that will resonate with L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists beyond New York City. You feel in the U.K. there is this optimism. We look to the U.S. and our hearts weep. However, many artists will feel inspired by Zohran Mamdani and see America in a new light.

It is clear that he is someone who will help preserve and protect American music and culture. Zohran Mamdani was part of the music community. Enjoying a brief Rap career under the moniker of Young Cardamom, it is clear that Zohran Mamdani understands the importance of music and how it is part of the fabric and history of New York City. A time of timidity and fear, he will compel artists and those in music to speak up and fight back. This Pitchfork interview from June highlights five songs that define Zohran Mamdani mayoral campaign. Someone who very much has his finger on the pulse of modern Hip-Hop, he will add something to modern Hip-Hop. I feel it has been somewhat apolitical and lacked the urgency and social conscious that groups like Public Enemy and N.W.A. expounded in the 1980s and 1990s. Maybe artists feeling repressed by Donald Trump or reluctant to write about the Republicans being in power. Zohran Mamdani will revitalise and reignite the New York City Hip-Hop scene but, wider afield, I feel we will also create something seismic through music. Even though he played Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ in a spot on social media, and was told by the company that owns Dylan’s catalogue that his songs can’t be used for politics, the songs he has used for his spots and campaigns have been powerful and true to him. Unlike Trump, who just steals songs and annoys artists because he does not ask for permission! Politicians can inspire incredible music but, at a time when there are few political role models, we now have one that cares about music, culture and all people. This can only infuse music and lead to revolution and reflection.

Last month, FADER wrote how “After years of shuttering venues and rising costs of living, these musicians are betting on Mamdani’s vision for the future”. Someone mobilising N.Y.C.’s Indie-Rock community and scene, I think that Zohran Mamdani will give fresh energy, priority and much-needed financing to New York City’s venues and arts. This is not only vital when it comes to the vibrant and fascinating tapestry of the city. It will also give stability and hope to artists coming through. If such a huge city and important part of American music was threatened, diminished and weakened by venues closing, it would affect the entire music world. Another reason why Zohran Mamdani is such a good force for progress and future optimism:

“This was the atmosphere when musicians and friends Rachel Brown of Water From Your Eyes and Charlie Dore-Young of Sweet Baby Jesus started planning the Indie Rockers for a Better New York, a Rallying for Zohran benefit show series. Brown and Dore-Young — who first met at Palisades, a beloved Bushwick venue that closed in 2016, a decade ago — have witnessed profound changes in the city’s art scene. Not only Palisades, but The Glove, Shea Stadium, Silent Barn, Death By Audio, Glasslands, Secret Project Robot, and various other consequential N.Y.C community music venues have closed, while rent and grocery prices skyrocketed. Brown and Dore-Young are among a sizable group of N.Y.C.-based musicians and artists who are seeing Mamdani as someone who will revitalize the scene once more — or at least, are hopeful he’ll make it easier for there to be one.

The Zohran Effect is so strong,” Lily says. Though the British native can’t vote in New York, she felt drawn to being involved in some way, if only because she’s experienced how the quality of live music has declined since COVID, she says. “Venues shut down, the cost of living went up, streaming is a nightmare, Spotify is run by the worst guy ever. But then Zohran came along and it was like, Someone has practical, kind ways to make the future not a scary place.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Sweet Baby Jesus performing at an Indie Rockers for a Better New York show/PHOTO CREDIT: Emilio Herce

Mamdani hasn’t detailed specific policy plans or made any promises when it comes to arts funding or nightlife; mostly, he’s made comments about the intrinsic link between economics and art-making, and his belief in the value of arts accessibility. When he was endorsed by musicians union AFM Local 802 in July, he said, “Art can't just be a luxury for the few. That requires a city where artists can actually afford their rent, groceries, childcare and transit.” (Notably, he’s the son of filmmaker Mira Nair, and lived a previous life as a rapper.)

The closest he’s gotten to an official policy statement was at BRIC’s Arts & Culture Mayoral Forum in February, where he said, as mayor, he’s committed to “understanding art beyond simply tourism, beyond the fiscal impacts,” and that he would bring an administration that values art-based community organizations as much as their religious counterparts. But this was enough to gain the faith of artist Salman Toor, model and activist Bethann Hardison, and Zoe Saldaña, who all commented on the post. And Mamdani has since also been endorsed by the Actors’ Equity Association, and called “the Downtown Scene’s pick for New York City Mayor” by ArtNet.

Dore-Young acknowledges that Mamdani’s election won’t bring solutions for all the problems that ail the city’s arts scene, but “I think [his election] is an extremely necessary first step for our survival. For native New Yorkers who have stuck it out here, they're struggling and they think about how they might have to leave. It seems like this guy wants to help us. We might have to fight him, but I'd much rather it be him than literally anyone else.”

At an MJ Lenderman show at Brooklyn Steel in April, Mamdani made an appearance, and, Brown recalls, “I have never heard people clap and scream that loudly for any band. But probably most people at the MJ Lenderman show, at the indie rock benefit shows, at the Fenne Lily show, at Rash Bar last week, etcetera, were likely to vote for Mamdani anyway. What feels different, special, rare, is how his messaging has resonated beyond the local community. This summer alone, Mamdani’s surprised Lucy Dacus’s audience at All Things Go, went to Madison Square Garden for Wu-Tang Clan, pulled up to BAYO Festival at Barclays, and held a Trans Community Town Hall with Ceyenne Doroshow at Ridgewood dance hub Nowadays. There was a Rave 4 Zohran at Market Hotel, a Rock ‘n’ Roll and Rent Control at Xanadu, and a Change Becomes Us benefit at Hyperballad”.

I hope what I have written makes sense and makes a point. The U.S. is a nation who has provide some of the best music ever. New artists in the country making some of the best music around. Artists from around the world dream of playing in the U.S. Donald trump does not care about any of this. Not only are artists perhaps holding back on addressing changes and ills in America because of Trump’s power and lunacy. There is this fear that music venues and the industry will be damaged. Someone who is racist, homophobic, misogynistic and a dictator can do so much damage to music. Even though Zohran Mamdani is not President yet – he will be one day! -, he is Mayor of one of the most influential and populous areas of the U.S. New York City’s joy and togetherness at the moment will create ripples around the U.S. Not powerful enough to drown and overwhelm Donald Trump, there is a brighter future ahead. The protection and preservation of venues and music across New York City is a relief. I know artists will dedicate songs to Zohran Mamdani and look more positively on American because someone who cares and is a decent person has arrived at such a dark and terrifying time. I am going to end on a selfish and self-indulgent note. Randomly, ever since I first saw the 2013 film, Frances Ha – which was last year -, I have had this burning desire to go to New York! However, against this seduction is Donald Trump and his fascism. How it has taken the romance and appeal off. However, Zohran Mamdani has brought pride and strength to New York City and the state. The album I mentioned at the start will (theoretically) end with a song called I’ll Get to New York City One Day Soon. Looking back at the romance and cliches of old New York with some newfound revitalisation and change, the city and its people once more beckons. More importantly, the fact we have someone who cares about the vital and hugely influential music scene of the city will affect artists across the world. Making New York City safer and more affordable will beckon people in. This will, in turn, add vibrancy and new voices to the music scene. After one of the bleakest years in recent history, Zohran Mamdani has given us some reasons to cheer and look forward as we head to the…

END of 2025.