FEATURE: Can’t Buy a Thrill: Is There Room for Nuance and Discussion in Songs Around Some Tough and Controversial Themes?

FEATURE:

 

 

Can’t Buy a Thrill

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Green/Pexels

 

Is There Room for Nuance and Discussion in Songs Around Some Tough and Controversial Themes?

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I have written features…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alexandre P. Junior/Pexels

before around a dream or hypothetical album. I am not a musician myself, so I could not compose songs. Though I have titles and ideas for lyrics. A cover for an album called, American Grammar, and a composition on the cover that depicts various controversies and scenarios. Including women’s reproductive rights being removed in the U.S. Looking around music, there are artists who are tackling bigger themes. Hip-Hop used to be the scene where big issues in society are tackled and discussed. Pop artists might occasionally discuss something away from the normal themes, though there has been a real absence of anything approaching political, socially-minded or controversial. A few songs here and there but, as there are so many big issues that can be discussed in music, I wonder whether artists feel nervous of blowback or dividing fans. When I mooted the possibility of an album, I mentioned Donald Fagen as a songwriting inspiration. What he has done in his solo album and being part of Steely Dan. He has addressed subjects that are quite tough or not discussed by other artists. He has not released an album for a while, and I look around if bigger subjects can be represented with some humour but also nuance and urgency. What is off limits and what is okay to put into song? When I was putting tracks together and themes in each, they did include sexual assault and misogyny, the climate emergency, and an ageing hipster that might be out of touch and struggles to keep up with modern music. Few artists are tackling a (pun not intended) burning issue. The climate emergency and how it is out biggest threat. Not to say the song would be humours, though you can write about it on an album and get a serious message across, but do so with a slightly lighter heart. Giving it layers and nuance. There have been songs in the past, mainly be female artists, about weight loss drugs such as Ozempic. It is not deigned to be a weight loss drug. It is designed treat adults with type 2 diabetes by helping manage blood sugar levels and lower cardiovascular risks. However, it has sort of been repurposed by many celebrities.

At the moment, there are a few celebrities who have been highlighted on social media and the press because of their dramatic weight loss. Ariana Grande was subjected to so much scrutiny. Whilst many were concerned and felt they needed to speak out, there was a lot of judgement and pressure on her. Though she is a role model, so it does need to be brought up, though in a more sensitive and respectful way. The same with actress Jenna Ortega. I suggested a song called Can’t Buy a Thrill (the title of Steely Dan’s 1973 debut album) could look at American culture and mention drugs like Ozempic and this horrifying thing of celebrities using it to lose weight. Can a subject like this ever be brought into music? If done with intelligence, seriousness but also some wit, would the risk of criticism be there? The same with some universal like the climate emergency. So few artists documenting this in music. Reproductive rights, misogyny, racism, the endless horrors of Donald Trump, evil billionaires and A.I. I think all of these can and should be brought into music, though getting the tone right is difficult. Why are relatively few artists using their platform to go beyond their own lives? It is important they are open. Subjects like depression and loss are themes that definitely need to be in music. Though there is so much that should be tackled in music. Genocide in Gaza. It may seem a weighty album and quite bleak, though some of these topics – not the genocide, of course! -, can be slightly lightened by humour. We do seem to have reached a point where there are a few artists speaking out against genocide, highlighting he climate emergency, and attacking corruption, sexism and injustice. It is wonderful to see, though little of this goes into the music. Not to say Donald Fagen and Steely Dan are the best examples of artists incorporating serious issues into the music and doing it in a humorous or lighter way. Yet there have been songs in their catalogues that have a darker side. Maybe not ones we could write today. I do worry about all the things that should be sung about in songs that isn’t – or is done so rarely. Rather than it being a lack of awareness or concern, is it anti-commercial or not personal enough? Will fans take offence or hit back? My pitch of an album would blend in some funnier and lighter songs with ones that definitely highlight some, very impotent themes. Right now, we are seeing the planet burn, the ethics of the press and academia brought into question, genocide and warfare rage, and women’s rights and safety threatened and not really a priority. Music should be a place where these subjects are spotlighted. This might change. I hope so. We need more artists to…

TAKE a stand.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Keith Moon at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Keith Moon in London in 1968/PHOTO CREDIT: Barrie Wentzell 

 

Keith Moon at Eighty

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I do wonder whether…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Who (Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, John Entwistle, Pete Townshend) in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: Tony Frank

Shaun Keaveny will salute Keith Moon on his BBC Radio 2 Rock Show on Friday, as Moon turns eighty two days later. The late drummer for The Who is one of the most influential and the greatest drummers ever. In terms of his talent, power and technical ability, he is right up there with the most celebrated drummers ever. If I had a top-five, I would have Keith Moon in there with Ringo Starr (The Beatles) and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin). Perhaps Meg White (The White Stripes) in there. I am going to mark Keith Moon’s eightieth birthday with a mixtape featuring some of his greatest drumming performances with The Who. First, there is some biography about a legend who died aged thirty-two in 1978:

“Keith Moon, The Who’s celebrated drummer, was born in Wembley on 23 August 1946, and is widely acclaimed as the greatest drummer in the history of rock. Brashly confident, he played quite differently to his peers, turning his massive kit into a lead instrument, and his up-front technique was crucial in establishing The Who’s passionate style. His playing ushered in an era wherein the drums became far more than simply a means of keeping the beat, and much of his recorded legacy from 1965-73 has a timeless quality that has never been repeated, let alone bettered. In this respect Keith Moon was to the drums what Jimi Hendrix was to the guitar – a complete original – and as such he was probably the most influential drummer the rock world has ever seen.

There was nothing in Keith’s humble background to suggest the extraordinary turn of events his life would take. He became a surf music fan as a schoolboy, took early lessons on drums as a teenager and played with three local bands in his native Wembley in north west London, the Escorts, Mark Twain & The Strangers, and The Beachcombers, before joining The Who in the spring of 1964 after an impromptu audition at the Oldfield pub in Greenford. Shortly after Keith’s recruitment, the Who became managed by Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp whose energy and ambition focused the group and set them on the road to stardom.

Moon announced his arrival in spectacular fashion on The Who’s first real single ‘I Can’t Explain’ (1965) on which his rifle-shot snare pre-empted Roger Daltrey’s leap into the chorus. Mostly, though, his foil was Pete Townshend with whom he developed an uncanny musical relationship, the product of which became one of the Who’s great trademarks: the chiming, bell-like, open-stringed power chord, cross cut against pounding drums and bass and allowed to feedback on itself and drone into a wall of electronic discord.

Moon’s drumming is outstanding throughout the group’s début album My Generation and on several Sixties singles, most notably ‘Happy Jack’ (1966) and ‘I Can See For Miles’ (1967), but it is on the double album Tommy (1969) that his talents are best utilised. On Townshend’s celebrated rock opera he becomes an orchestra within himself, driving the band along with an intelligence and sureness of touch that defies analysis. On Who’s Next (1971) Moon is reined in somewhat but his playing on the bridge on ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and throughout both ‘Bargain’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ ranks with anything he ever did.

The Who’s greatest strength, though, was in concert and by the end of the Sixties they were justifiably billing themselves as ‘‘the most exciting rock band in the world’’. To this Moon contributed an almost superhuman energy, his hands and feet battering his kit into submission night after night, the relentless power of The Who in full flight spiralling out from his arms and legs.

Moon’s kit was the biggest in rock, at one stage boasting at least 10 tom-toms, twin bass drums, twin timpani, snare, half-a-dozen cymbals and a gong. With this vast array of percussion at his command, he adopted a peculiar style wherein he pointed his sticks downwards and, as John Enwtistle once remarked: “He didn’t play from left to right or right to left, he’d play forwards. I’ve never seen anyone play like that before or since.” Keith was also a virtuoso showman, twiddling his drumsticks between his fingers and flamboyantly tossing them into the air and, occasionally, catching them when they fell. He developed an on-stage image as a wise-cracker and often ad-libbed comical asides between numbers, and like Pete he took an almost manic delight in wrecking his equipment at the close of a concert, especially in the group’s early days.

At the same time Keith was rock’s wildest character in the Sixties and Seventies, an unapologetic freewheeling hedonist whose lifestyle became synonymous with the mad, carefree image of the rock star at large. He courted the press and became notorious as ‘Moon The Loon’, the incorrigible clown who respected no authority whatsoever and never knew the meaning of the word embarrassment. As The Who became massively popular worldwide, so Keith Moon became a celebrity, not just as a drummer, but as the mad jester to rock’s high court whose exploits included cross-dressing, elaborate practical jokes and a much-publicised episode when he and his great friend Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band visited a London beerkeller dressed in Nazi SS uniforms. Keith’s Chertsey home, Tara House, became the venue for many memorable parties, not least the 1971 launch of Who’s Next.

When The Who slowed down and Pete Townshend sought creative outlets elsewhere Keith moved to California and took cameo roles in several movies, most notably in That’ll Be The Day (1973) and its sequel Stardust (1974), as the drummer in a fictitious rock band led by David Essex. He also completed a solo album, Two Sides Of The Moon (1975) before moving back to the UK in 1977 to play on Who Are You, his last recorded work with The Who.

Keith died in London on 7 September 1978, from an accidental overdose of the prescription drug Heminevrin, prescribed to combat alcoholism.

In 2016 Keith’s life was celebrated in the book There Is No Substitute, A Tribute To Keith Moon, in which fellow drummers, musical allies, friends and fans assessed Keith’s impact on rock and its lasting legacy. The book, with an introduction by Pete Townshend, was authorised by his Estate”.

Because this drumming genius turns eighty on 23rd August, I wanted to pay my respects to someone who has not really been equalled. There are some great drummers around today, though none that have the same abilities and that sound that Keith Moon crafted. Many might seem him as quite ramshackle and lacking technical ability. That is wrong. He mixed groove, a distinct and personal sound with power. This feature lists five reasons why Keith Moon was a genius. Unconventional yet hugely popular, he was the heartbeat of The Who: “Keith Moon wasn’t “drummy” for the sake of being “drummy” – he accented and accompanied the music expressively, much like a jazz or orchestral drummer. Pete Townshend once said, “Keith decorated as he played”. Max Weinberg (Bruce Springsteen’s drummer) says, “He was as influential in the sixties as Gene Krupa was in the thirties” and “in my view, was the lead instrument in The Who”. Below is a mixtape of epic and unforgettable Keith Moon performances. Proof, if any were needed that, he was…

IN a league of his own.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Jorja Smith

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Annie Reid for GQ

 

Jorja Smith

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THIS is one of my…

favourite artists. Someone I have been following since the start of her career. Jorja Smith is one of our greatest treasures. Her new album, What Are the Odds, is out on Friday (21st August). I am going to end with a review of the album. Smith has a busy diary and she plays All Points East in London thew day her album is released. I am going to come to some interviews with this queen. I will come to a fairly recent interview, though I do want to head back to last year first. Jorja Smith has stepped away from the spotlight, or she did in 2025, and was living away from London. That peace and being close to family has been of real benefit. Vogue spoke with her last year:

“Beyond a new ease in her style, a fundamental ground shift has occurred for Smith. On “High”, her first single back last year, she asked: “Where do you run if you can’t?” For Smith, the answer was simple: home to Walsall, the West Midlands town just north of Birmingham. Inspired by a friendship breakup and reconnection, the track flows almost like a voicenote. When she sings, “I went to find myself, I couldn’t take you there”, it feels like she’s addressing something deeper. “I can’t lie, I didn’t think me moving back home would be such a big thing,” she says, laughing. When she made the move from London in 2023 it became a news story in itself, people seemingly incredulous that a star might choose to live somewhere other than the capital. “I’m from Walsall, and I’ve gone back home,” she shrugs. “That’s it.”

She has chosen a home town date in Wolverhampton to kick off her upcoming tour in May, which will be followed by two London shows and dates in Europe, North and South America. After we meet, she releases a new single, “Crush”, with AJ Tracey, which sees her try her hand at a sprinkle of rapping, over a beat that feels like it’s lifted directly from the Channel U era. (Days later, her Black Country accent goes viral on TikTok, with thousands of viewers around the world lipsyncing to her playfully rounded vowels.) A joyous performance at the Brits, where she was nominated in the best R&B category, with Mercury winners Ezra Collective, was proof of just how pleased she is to be back where she belongs.

“When I was in the studio and he played me the song, it just took me back. It’s proper nostalgic,” she smiles. She connects to my Bluetooth headphones to play me the two songs she’s working on right now, written with Maverick Sabre and producer Ed Thomas. Even in their nascent stage, I’m transported. The lyrics are brooding, her vocals that signature rich blend, over a Y2K-tinged breakbeat. “I used to come up to London when I was 15, in the summer holidays and work with Mav and Ed and it just felt like that. They were the first people I ever wrote with.” Playing the next one, she says, “This reminds me of a sunrise and a sunset at the same time.”

Even if Smith doesn’t get the big deal about leaving London, when I ask how she’s gotten closer to the peace she’s after, it dawns on her that the biggest catalyst has been her move. “Maybe moving back did have a big impact on me, I think it did,” she pauses. “Even my mum says to me, ‘You look like your old self.’ She texted me that and I thought it’s kind of sad and really sweet.”

There’s a sense that, despite her business, fame is her lowest priority. “I didn’t go in thinking, ‘I want to be famous.’ Oh, man, even the word,” she cringes. “When I started, all I wanted to do was put out music. I didn’t even want to be in my first video because I thought, ‘I just want to be music. How can I just be music?’” It’s a luxury so few femme artists are afforded, instead required to be the perfect blend of everything to everyone: alluring and relatable, accessible yet infallible, outstanding but nonthreatening. But, from Chappell Roan to Doechii to Billie Eilish, we’re in an age of pop stars refusing to bend to the will of the machine. So the fact that Smith spends her time talking about where she lives and what her body looks like feels bizarre: “When I put out music when I was younger, this is not what I thought we’d be talking about.”

She’s protective of her privacy now – be it familial or romantic – and says she now fills her time with stillness and play; writing songs at the piano and going on long countryside walks like she did when she was younger. “I like getting lost,” she says with a smile. “Phone’s dead, off-track, but I’ll find my way back eventually”.

Before getting to a GQ interview with Jorja Smith, I want to come to this one from AnOther. The fired twenty questions at Smith. She is one of our greatest artists. Someone I have not seen live yet, I do feel that I need to correct that. She has a very busy tour diary, so it may be next year when I can see her next:

“How would you describe it in three words?

Upbeat, fun and in motion, if that’s a word … Well, it’s kind of two words.

Is there a song that you’re particularly excited about? Can you tell me about it?

I’m excited about a song called I Lied You Lied. It’s super funky, and when I say funky, I mean a bit housey funky. It’s just a song about when shit isn’t reciprocated and being fucked about, really. I like it.

How long has What Are The Odds been underway? What is the process of making an album for you?

This is my third album and making it was a totally different process to my last two. It’s produced by P2J. We started talking about making this music in 2023 and we were going back and forth for like two years, and then we finally got together in September 2025 and I submitted it in April 2026, so it’s the shortest time I’ve ever spent making an album. Everything felt right, and I just kept moving forward with this energy – I felt really present. My first album was like a collection of songs, and the second, I had decided I’d make an album but hadn’t fully figured it out, so that was a challenge. And now, this third time, I’ve really enjoyed the process.

What does music offer as a tool for communication?

I like listening to people sing about things they’re going through and relating to them. Maybe I’m going through them too – then I don’t feel so alone. It’s the same when I’m writing music about things I’m going through and people say how they relate to it and that listening to it helped them through something. I also love how songs can take a life of their own. How I interpret a song may be nothing like what it was written about. Sometimes they mean completely different things for other people, and I think that’s beautiful.

If you weren't doing music, what do you think you’d be doing?

I think I’d still be writing – maybe I’d be writing books, novels, scripts. I used to write poems. Before I wrote songs, I wrote stories but I never finished them. I’d always do like chapter one and a blurb, then stop.

How do you find life in the public eye?

Strange. It’s challenging. It’s still changing and I’m still figuring it out. It’s not something I wanted as an 18-year-old putting out music. I didn’t really think about the consequences of what happens if you put out music and it does really well. I’m getting to grips with it, trying to take it in my stride, and yeah, I’m still figuring it out. It’s only now I think I’m reflecting on it, and thinking about, you know, going from being somebody nobody knows from Walsall to someone people from across the world know. It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? It’s definitely not normal”.

I shall end with a review for What Are the Odds. GQ interviewed Jorja Smith last month. After a career break, she “is as revitalised as her music sounds”. I don’t think there is anyone in music who sounds quite like her. A unique and brilliant artist who is going to be making music for many years, she sounds at her most relaxed and free:

“Smith, right now, is “so excited that we need a new word for excited”. Her third album, What Are the Odds?, has been finished for months, and she’s waiting for it to come out; her pure ebullience is practically seeping through the screen. The promotional grind hasn’t always been Smith’s bag, and a few years ago, while releasing her second album, Falling or Flying, she actually reached breaking point (more on that later). This time around, however, she feels energised. “We’ve got shoots, we’re planning videos; I’ve been in the studio, but nothing to do with my album – I’ve been working on other stuff because I’ve got lots of ideas floating around up here that I want to get down,” she says. “It seems quite natural, so I’m just taking it in my stride. I’m trying to make everything as easy and fun as possible – I know some things can make it not enjoyable, early call times and whatnot, but…”

Made entirely with Richard Isong, the London producer and Beyoncé collaborator better known as P2J, What Are the Odds? is a dynamic survey of British and African dance sounds, from funky house to garage, drum’n’bass and Afrobeats that highlights Smith’s power as a club vocalist. Lyrically, Smith is still laser-focused on relationships, whether between friends, lovers or exes – but, with the help of P2J and longtime co-writers Hope and Millie Katana, she translates everything into the drama and shimmer of the dancefloor.

Smith says What Are the Odds? is a natural transition from the elegance and grandeur of 2023’s Falling or Flying – an outgrowth, in fact, of “Little Things”, a P2J-produced track from that record. “After those songs, me and P were like, ‘It’d be great to explore more of this music.’ Tap into funky house, garage, more of that, because I have a lot of fun making it,” she tells me. For the better part of two years, she and P2J talked through “how we wanted to feel and make people feel,” she says. “We’d share some music – little sounds we liked, whether it was a bass line and how it made me feel, or the sound of certain keys.”

In September 2025, they met up in the studio again with a view to making a four-song EP. To Smith’s surprise, P2J revealed that he had an entire tranche of beats made just for her, based on their conversations over the prior years. In just one day, Smith laid down vocals for five tracks; the next day, she freestyled four more. “It’s probably the quickest album I’ve ever been involved with – we were just flowing, literally going back to back,” says P2J over the phone. “When we work, it’s always fun – we don’t overthink it. She makes me feel proper heard in the studio and vice versa. She’s always coming with sick ideas; we’ll send each other old-school songs and new-school songs, and it’s super organic.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Annie Reid

After the second session, Smith walked around the corner to the office of her label, Famm, played them some demos, and delivered a surprising message: “I was like, ‘Guys. I’ve got an album,’” she recalls. “They couldn’t hear [what the songs would sound like] – I can hear everything finished, where it’s gonna go – but they can feel it.” Smith was so excited about the music she was making that it even impacted the holiday she went on shortly afterwards. “I was like, ‘Oh, fuck’s sake, I just want to be in the studio,’” she says, slipping into an exaggerated, clowny sad face.

The album is called What Are the Odds? in part because, when they started making it last year, Smith wasn’t sure she’d ever truly love making music again. “Falling or Flying was at a time where I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ I’ve been in this industry for so long – it gets a lot, and I don’t think I was enjoying it. I don’t think I was enjoying being Jorja Smith,” she says.

She is quick to clarify that this industry break wasn’t as dramatic as she’s making it sound. Or maybe it was. She’s working on expressing her emotions without minimising them. “I didn’t even step away, I can’t lie – I still had shows. I just –” She pauses, about to say something she doesn’t mean. “I’m not dramatic, actually. I need to stop saying that, because I’m actually not dramatic. I wasn’t on socials as much, so it was that type of break, you know?” she says.

Smith makes a point, whenever she meets a younger artist, to offer herself up as a font of knowledge and advice on how to navigate the industry, given how thorny it can be for young artists, and young women especially. When she was coming up, she was fortunate enough to have other musicians in her corner offering advice on how to make sense of the world. The Iranian Dutch singer Sevdaliza reached out on Twitter early on, “being like, you know, ‘The industry’s tough for young women.’” Raye, back when she was just a songwriter and not an arena-selling superstar, had Smith’s back too. “I met her at a studio in London before I dropped ‘Blue Lights’ – we followed each other and then she messaged me, and we hung out a few times when I started,” Smith recalls.

Despite the occasional reminder, Smith hasn’t been consciously thinking about the fact that it’s been a decade since she released her first song. “I’m definitely like, Wow, I’m still here and making this music, and people still listen to me and come to my shows,” she says. “I’m continuing to grow my audience and I’m able to touch more people with my music. This whole year has been emotional, but I’m more thinking about the future – 90 per cent thinking about the future. No, 25 per cent reflecting, and the rest thinking about the future”.

NME gave a four-star verdict of What Are the Odds. A slightly stylistic shift and evolution, Smith “uses dance as her source of refuge on album three”. I feel that this will rank alongside the best albums of this year. Make sure that you pre-order What Are the Odds:

“Jorja Smith has never been afraid to be noisy. Among sombre and sobering offerings lie the exhilarating, elastic segments of the 29-year-old Walsall native’s discography; the pulse of the two-step-infused ‘On My Mind’, the clubby ‘Little Things’ or the alt-leaning ‘Go Go Go’. Smith is as much R&B as she is house, an equilibrium of sorts – once she acquaints herself with a genre, she’s able to contort it to her will, translating it to her audience in a hue that makes sense to her.

On ‘What Are The Odds’, however, the singer-songwriter clearly wants to dance. What happens when Smith embraces the noise? Perched alongside executive producer P2J, the pair worked across three immersive sessions to create an arresting, club-ready collaborative effort. There’s a familiar tension amid the escapist synths though: the confrontation of emotions. The all-encompassing embrace of the challenging, difficult, soothing and harsh realities of a person that’s lived, loved and wore her heart on her sleeve along the way.

Smith has always been one to confront her realities in the booth, and ‘What Are The Odds’ is no different. ‘What’s Done Is Done’ is cocky and confrontational as it taunts a guilty ex. “Do you think about me / Do you know it hurt me”, she hisses. Her hollow assertions a near-perfect match atop a moody, smoky blend of hip-hop and garage. Here, Smith flirts with rapping once again, but on the album’s title track, she leans in fully, utilising a skill she’s harnessed as a feature artist alongside Enny (‘Peng Black Girls’) and AJ Tracey (‘Crush’). “That’s a thing about a life up high / In the lights you can’t see what’s off”, she warns. It hints at the star’s relationship with fame. Perhaps it explains her aloof relationship with hypervisibility, her retreat, away from London back home.

‘What Are The Odds’ is also flirtatious in its use of sonics, ‘I Lied, You Lied’ acting as an ode to P2J and Smith’s first project together ‘Little Things’ – a single that formed the genesis of the pair’s ideas for a holistic dance LP. Here, the singer embraces her mystery, an alluring meld of funky house, jazz, afro-house and R&B prancing beneath Smith’s runs. “You won’t figure me out,” she asserts. ‘Dancing’ leans further into percussion, a rumba tease ushered onto the dancefloor. “The music feels like, la, la, la, la / Makes us move like la, la, la la”, it appears that Smith is ready to get lost, enchanted and mystified by each and every note. Soon joined by Wizkid, for ‘Alive’, P2J’s afrobeats signature makes an appearance, something which feels equally as natural to Smith as it does to Wizkid.

‘Young Heart’ also exists in this eco-system, its name as a double-entendre of sorts. It both explores Smith’s youthful approach to love, sometimes naïve in calming her yearn to love and be loved, but also speaks to her sentience as someone still in their 20s, her ability to embrace the youthful sounds of the dancefloor. In 2026, afro-house – through the likes of Piano People, Dankie Sounds, GroupTherapy – is steering a new generation of ravers. Smith’s ability to champion and harness such sounds speaks to her adaptability as an artist – and in this case, it works for her.

‘What Are The Odds’ is Smith at her most comfortable, loosely embodying her emotional state. All that she’s been, and all that she will be – the mess, desire, regret and state of armour she’s built across her ten years in the headlights. It’s endearingly charming, brutally honest and ultimately fun. Now able to enjoy the catharsis that comes with perspective, Smith comes of age once again on this album, this time bold in her instincts and ability to laugh at herself along the way”.

I wanted to feature Jorja Smith in this Modern-Day Queens, as she is an artist I have admired for over a decade now. Her latest album finds her in a happy space. Maybe it is being where she grew up and having that comfort around her. It may be her stage of life and this new perspective she has. Whatever it is, Smith is at the top of her game. One of our best and most consistent artist, she is someone I will follow for as long as she is recording music. The divine Jorja Smith is…

AN amazing songwriter.

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Follow Jorja Smith

FEATURE: Before the Names Are Announced… What the Glastonbury Festival Has to Consider Next Year

FEATURE:

 

 

Before the Names Are Announced…

 

What the Glastonbury Festival Has to Consider Next Year

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IT is that time of year…

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna

when Glastonbury Festival preparing to announce its first names. Well, it will be in the autumn at some point. Though there is this usual speculation and rumours happening. Everyone has their own idea of who will or should play. People hoping that Madonna would headline next year have been disappointed, as organiser Emily Eavis said this will not happen. The Guardian provide information about what Eavis’s reaction was to the rumours:

“Madonna will not be performing at next year’s Glastonbury, the festival’s organiser, Emily Eavis, has said.

The singer, who has the most top 10 singles in UK chart history of any female artist, has never featured at Britain’s biggest music festival.

Eavis said Glastonbury had booked all its headliners for June 2027. Asked about the lineup and speculation that the Queen of Pop would make her debut at the event in Somerset, Eavis told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: “No, it’s definitely not Madonna, I’ll tell you that.”

She added: “But we have got three [other] headliners and we’re very excited about it – it’s all coming together really well.”

When asked about the possibility of a performance from Taylor Swift, Eavis laughed and said she did not want to discuss the lineup any further.

Speculation about Madonna, 67, appearing at Glastonbury began in June when the singer suggested to the BBC talkshow host Graham Norton that she was planning “something bigger” in the UK next summer.

Eavis said: “Pretty much 95% of the stories [about Glastonbury] you read are not true, and rumours are pretty much always wrong.

“But the good news is that we’ve got our headliners and we’re cracking on, and we just can’t wait to get back.”

Last year’s Glastonbury festival was headlined by the 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo, with Rod Stewart in the legend slot”.

I didn’t think Madonna would headline. For a start, I think that she would be too expensive. In terms of her budget and fee, I am not sure that this is something Glastonbury would accommodate. Also, she might not be interested in doing that. She does her own thing, so is Glastonbury going to hold any appeal? As I will explore later, Glastonbury has only once booked a woman to headliner the Pyramid Stage over the age of forty. I am not including the Legends slot, as that is reserved for older, more established artists, I do worry that the weather will play havoc. This year has been one of the most brutal and horrible summers ever. In terms of the relentless heat, droughts and the issues we have faced, what is that happens next year? Glastonbury has always conscientious of the environment, but are artists going to be attracted to performing at the height of summer in extreme heat? Also, there are thousands of people coming together, and it is worrying to think what could happen. It is going to be a struggle. In years to come, I feel a lot of festivals will have move to the autumn, because it will be too hot. Glastonbury will happen next June, so it might not be as hot as it is now. Though I do worry that it is going to be a heatwave and this might put some people off. Though there is no point predicting who will headline, some feel that Harry Styles is going to be one of the names. This article explains more:

“Festival organiser Emily Eavis reportedly called Styles her Glastonbury’s dream booking back in the lead-up to the 2025 festival (which he reportedly was also approached for). In an interview with The Sun, an insider told the paper that: "Harry would be the perfect Glastonbury headliner and Emily has long wanted him on stage at Worthy Farm, but the dates have never quite worked out.”

“Harry would be an incredible act to watch on the Pyramid Stage," the insider continued. "Glastonbury has a fallow year in 2026, so booking Harry for next year would be perfect. It is something the team at Glastonbury are pushing for. Whether that dream will come true, however, is still to be decided by Harry’s team”.

His fourth studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, was met with some positive reviews, though it is not his best. Even so, his live dates in support of the album have been well received. Incredible shows that have won massive reviews. If Harry Styles’s name was one of the headliners, it would mean that there is not going to be an all-female line-up. Glastonbury has never had an all-female line-up. There are other male artists who could headline. Queens of the Stone Age, Muse and Jack White. I do hope that there is only one male headline act, as Glastonbury has only once had more than one women/female act headline the Pyramid Stage. That was in 2024, when SZA and Dua Lipa were headliners. Only ten women have headlined the Pyramid Stage. I mean in terms of acts, even if they have had more than one woman in. Ten female headliners since 1970. That is out of eighty-seven. Half of those female headliners have been booked in the past decade. Most of the 1990s saw no female headliners booked. It is not just Glastonbury that has an issue. This year, Reading & Leeds had gender balance regarding headliners, though I think this is the first time this has ever happened. As most of these major festivals have been going for decades, it is appalling that they have taken so long to balance the headliners. Women rarer in the headline slots than men. Glastonbury is our biggest festival, so it should lead be example. The best-case scenario would be two female artists being booked, though you have a feeling that it may just be one again. If there is only one female artist headlining in 2027, Glastonbury would have to answer some questions. Will they ever book three women to headline? Given how women have been dominating music for years, why is it so hard for festivals to reflect this? Not only in terms of headliners. The bills in general.

There has been a lot of talk about Taylor Swift. I feel she is another artist who will have this big budget and might be a bit challenging to spring for. Also, is 2027 the right year to headline her? She would have been more at her peak last year or the year before. Though it would be amazing if Taylor Swift headlined. There are so many female artists that could and should headline Glastonbury. Phoebe Bridgers, Hayley Williams, Jill Scott, Robyn, Mitski, Kylie Minogue, ROSALÍA, Björk, RAYE, Olivia Dean, Wolf Alice, Slayyyter, Sabrina Carpenter, Zara Larsson. I think that Raye and Kylie Minogue would be incredible to go alongside Harry Styles. We all predict headliners and we are rarely bang on, so this is just a guess. What is evident too from Glastonbury’s headliners, aside from the fact that most are men, is that the women booked are younger. Only once a woman over forty has been booked to headline (Marcella Detroit of Shakespears Sister). Kylie Minogue seems owed a headline slot, as she was due to headline in 2005 and has not headlined. Why has she been overlooked? I do hope that Glastonbury books a female headliner over forty. It absolutely has to book at least two female headliners, because it fears going backwards. Only one year since its start where there has been more than one female headliner, it cannot afford to regress. There are more positives than negatives regarding Glastonbury. It is the broadest line-up and so many artists get their first big break playing Glastonbury. So many stages and artists across multiple genres, there is a reason why it is the most popular festival we have. We will discover soon enough who is headlining Glastonbury. It is this festival that so many people look forward to. Those who have been going for years alongside first-time attendees. The headliners are the biggest pulls, and it will not be long until we find out…

WHO will feature.

FEATURE: If I Fell: The Undying Magic of The Beatles’ 1964 Film, A Hard Day’s Night

FEATURE:

 

 

If I Fell

 

The Undying Magic of The Beatles’ 1964 Film, A Hard Day’s Night

__________

I have been thinking a lot…

about The Beatles films that are due in 2028. Sam Mendes’s films that focuses on each of the four members. I am not sure what time period each films concentrates on, whether there is crossover and what to expect, but it looks exciting. Apart from people slagging off those cast and commenting on their lack of resemblance to who they are playing - Saoirse Ronan plays Linda McCartney, and many have said she does not look anything like her -, there has been chat and buzz. We have a way to go, though one of the most heartening things is that, we all hope, the two surviving Beatles will see the films. Paul McCartney will see Paul Mescal play him, whilst Ringo Starr will have his views on Barry Keoghan. I admit a couple of the Beatles castings are clearly going for the acting strength rather than pure physical resemblance, but I think Sam Mendes will deliver these acclaimed and brilliant films. I write a lot about Kate Bush and note that, whilst she has not released an album since 2011, her influence is everywhere. Arguably one of the most influential artists in terms of today’s music, and yet so little is written about her! The Beatles broke up over fifty years ago, yet there are countless books and projects about them. Their peak period of influence may have been the 1990s and bands clearly indebted to them. Oasis obviously and unapologetically; Blur more subtly (or were they?!), and everyone from Shed Seven to Kula Shaker to Suede clearly taking bits of their music and weaving it into their own. I do love how there is constant talk around the band. McCartney and Starr, far from distancing themselves, celebrating it. I think that, if George Harrison and John Lennon had lived, they would be more distant. Pleased some films are approaching, through they would both possibly detached themselves in a way that Starr and McCartney won’t. A whole new generation are connecting with a band whose peak and regency was in the 1960s.

Even though they were not alive when Beatlemania swept the global, their parents or grandparents were (my parents in my case, as I am forty-three), and it is was like nothing we will ever see again. Taylor Swift has some of that hysteria behind her, but The Beatles changed popular culture so fast, and was this never-seen-before explosion! Their screaming fans, predominantly girls and young women, got a lot of bad press. Some were aggressive and took things too far, though there was a lot of misogyny around them. These are thew fans that made The Beatles. That provided this primal and world-shaking energy. If it was a bit draining for the quartet, the passion these screaming fans showed was something else. I feel we need to give them a lot more respect and credit! This takes me to my second-favourite film ever (my favourite is 2012’s Frances Ha): A Hard Day’s Night. The 1964 debut film featuring The Beatles, it is also their best outing. If 1965’s Help! had its moments and is good, I feel it is not up there with A Hard Day’s Night. I also like how their debut is in black-and-white and gives it this instant nostalgia (which is also why Frances Ha was shot in black-and-white by director, Noah Baumbach). We know that Ringo Starr is the best actor in it, yet George Harrison is the best dressed; I feel Paul McCartney is maybe the most charming, whereas John Lennon features in some of the best scenes (him in the bathtub and being like an overgrown child; on the stairwell where a woman thinks he has recognised him and Lennon says he is not himself, whereupon she takes a closer look and agrees!). We are blessed that A Hard Day’s Night’s director, Richard Lester, is still with us. He turns ninety-five in January, and I do hope that, a) he is still with us then and, b) A Hard Day’s Night is shown at smaller cinemas again to mark that. Its screenwriter, Alun Owen, died in 1994. I wonder if Lester will see the four Beatles films. What he help create in 1964 perfectly captured this growing hysteria around the band, but you also got to see the boys interact. Different sides to their personalities. George Harrison and him doing a bit of fashion modelling. Paul McCartney with his fictional grandfather, played by Wilfrid Brambell. John Lennon didn’t get a story arc quite as defined or interesting, I feel. Ringo Starr with a mudlark who rolls a tyre that knocks him off his feet. He was played by David Janson. He actually appeared at the final I Am the EggPod live event, that was held at London’s Holland Opera Park in 2024. That podcast was helmed by Chris Shaw, and I miss it dearly! That final live event was a mixture of sadness and great cheer and love.

This all takes me rather clumsily to Samira Ahmed. She featured on the podcast numerous times, including my favourite episode, where she was chatting about the band’s debut album, 1963’s Please Please Me, where she made some great observations. She, at the live podcast and on an earlier episode, chatted about A Hard Day’s Night. We both have in common the fact that A Hard Day’s Night is one of our favourite films. It may be her all-time favourite! I love that episode too, as we learned why the album and film was and is so important to her. I have been rewatching it and was overcome with the joy of seeing it! I love that chase scene where fans are racing after the band and there is this scramble and high-jinx. It is brilliantly written and all the band really commit. It is one of the earliest examples of a popular group featuring in a film about them or their work. Albeit, a slightly heighted or fictionalised version. Since then, everyone from Charli xcx to Spice Girls to Prince to Eminem have done their versions of A Hard Day’s Night. People might not see a connection, though I feel The Beatles did sort of start this (though Elvis Preseley was appearing in films before 1964). I did want to talk about Samira Ahmed, because she wrote a book about the film. It came out in April and it is a book that every Beatles fan should have on their shelf:

“How did a film made to capture a pop phenomenon become an enduring cinematic classic?
With warmth, wit and precision, Samira Ahmed reveals how the Beatles’ first film changed both the band themselves and pop music’s relationship with the screen.

In a vivid and personal exploration, she shows how this black-and-white gem, shot in a documentary style and brimming with youthful energy, captured Britain at a moment of social transformation, with a portrayal of celebrity, camaraderie and media frenzy that still resonates today. Drawing on her own experience of first discovering the film as a child and going on to work in the television industry, Ahmed shines a spotlight on the craft behind its enduring appeal. With insights from members of the cast and crew, including her own new interviews, Ahmed highlights A Hard Day’s Night’s class and sexual politics, and adds a delightfully original analysis of the women in the film.

In these pages you will be transported to a time when four young men from Liverpool, via the mass medium of television, changed the way Britain saw itself and the way the world saw Britain, revealing how, and why, A Hard Day’s Night has become a landmark of modern cinema”.

I will end with reviews around the 1964 masterpiece. It is a film a lot of non-Beatles fans (and who are those freaks?!) might not know about. It is understandable in a way, as it is sixty-two years old and is not spoken about in the same tone as the perceived greatest films of all time. I feel A Hard Day’s Night is among the most important films ever. Worthy of a book, for sure, which is why I wanted to highlight an interview with Samira Ahmed, where she discussed it. As I am thinking about The Beatles and there is always activity around them – the expanded and deluxe editions of Rubber Soul are out in October -, I did want to discuss the film. I can’t imagine whether Giles Marten has any more Beatles albums he will do the expanded treatment work to and give us demos, outtakes and the like. Is Help! (the 1965 album that preceded Rubber Soul) next, and is there much from the A Hard Day’s Night sessions to warrant a release?! I do genuinely think the film is among the best ever, and there is so much to discuss around it, which is why I hope it form part of Sam Mendes’s Beatles films – though he might be documenting the band a bit later on from that. Here, Samira Ahmed discussed her fabulous Beatles book:

“At the beginning of your book, you note, “With the huge growth in Beatles scholarship in recent years, I was wary of adding another book.” What compelled you to press on even though it feels like everything that there is to say about The Beatles has been said.

I was first introduced to The Beatles as a child via their films. My brother taped their movies off television in 1979 when I was 11. A Hard Day’s Night is a fascinating film because it captures them in the white heat of Beatlemania in Britain just before they go on The Ed Sullivan Show. I wanted to look at how this film captures Britain at that time. It’s not glamorized. You see ordinary trains and ordinary girls. There’s no sense of it being a fantasy. I didn’t think anybody had really looked at the social history side of this film.

At the beginning of the book, you argue that A Hard Day’s Night “was in fact a kind of cinematic Big Bang, shaping entire genre of screen entertainment: sitcoms, rock band films and spawning a new form—the pop video, for which in 1984 MTV gave Richard Lester a special Vanguard Award.” Let’s talk about this quote piece by piece. How did A Hard Day’s Night change sitcom television?

The most obvious impact is The Monkees, which is essentially a sitcom replica of A Hard Day’s Night. In his book Funny or Die, the comedy writer Joel Morris argues that the sitcom requires a patriarch, matriarch, craftsmen, and clown. A Hard Day’s Night has all of those things. John is the patriarch, Paul is the matriarch, George is the craftsman, and Ringo is the clown.

Comedy was also a big part of their lives. They wanted to work with director Richard Lester because they loved his film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film. The Beatles were also natural comedians, though. Many of the contemporary reviews note how funny they are.

I think the biggest reason that The Beatles have stood the test of time is that their music still sounds so fresh. But their personalities are a big reason too. Decades later, those personalities are quite compelling.

Absolutely. It’s also important that they had a legitimate sitcom star, Wilfrid Brambell, in A Hard Day’s Night. (He was in Steptoe and Son, which was remade in the US as Sanford and Son.) His presence was almost a statement that The Beatles had entered the world of adults. This wasn’t just for kids”.

I will end with some reviews and retrospectives. I am starting with Empire and their 2000 essay/review. A mere thirty-six years after the film came out, and following a decade where so many artists were influenced by The Beatles, they had some interesting perspectives in their four-star review (A Hard Day’s Night is definitely a five-star film, I reckon!):

“Now before you get antzy, this is a comedy — albeit a comedy with music. Think about it. What transformed The Beatles into the Fab Four? The music got the girls screaming and had academics making comparisons with Mahler, but it was their quick wit that made them the loveable Mop Tops. John Lennon asking those in the audience to rattle their jewellery at the Royal Command Performance charmed the Establishment. A Hard Day's Night seduced the parents.

Even before the watershed conquest of America, the screenwriter (playwright Alun Owen) had accompanied the Fabs on a flying visit to Paris to witness the insanity of Beatlemania first hand. Although, whether his day-in-the-life format predated the Maysles brothers' strategy for US Beatles' documentary Yeah Yeah Yeah remains open to conjecture.

What's indisputable, however, was that the band was dead against the idea of making an Elvis-Cliff style musical and had already nixed Brian Epstein's enthusiasm for The Yellow Teddy Bears, as they wouldn't have been allowed to write their own songs. Indeed, it was the music that persuaded United Artists to back the movie in the first place — as not only would they make a quick killing while the group's sure-to-be short-lived popularity lasted, but they would also secure exclusive rights to a new "soundtrack" album.

Ultimately, this was to be the only LP solely composed by Lennon and McCartney and remained at No. 1 in the UK for 23 weeks.

Ironically, the director that producer Walter Shenson attached to the project had a history of those pop musicals the Fabs so detested. But, Dick Lester's use of camera in It's Trad, D.ad (1961) and the fact he had steered the Goons through their transition from radio to television won the Beatles over. Indeed, Lester's genius for physical comedy, that had informed Spike Milligan's The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film (1959), would resurface in the manic playing-field shenanigans accompanying Can't Buy Me Love.

More importantly, Lester was something of a movie magpie. Just as John and Paul drew on R&B, rock'n'roll and showtune ballads for inspiration, so Lester borrowed liberally from Buster Keaton, Cinema Verite, documentary style Free Cinema, Fellini and the nouvelle vague for his unconventional approach to narrative and image-making. In the process, he became the godfather of MTV, as he sought ways of breaking from the lip sync and strum approach to filming pop. Even when he had no option, as in the final TV show sequence, he managed to use angle, lighting and rapid editing to fashion an anti-performance style,later followed by Ready, Steady, Go and Top Of The Pops.

His attempt to jettison traditional narrative altogether was less successful, however, as Ringo's runner and the Mack Sennettesque search for him definitely constitute a storyline. Moreover, it induces the only slackening in the breakneck pace, even though it did give Ringo a moment in the spotlight, similar to George's dismissal of the "grotty" trend-spotting media and John's mistaken identity encounter with Anna Quayle. Sadly, Paul's backstage showdown with a Shakespearean luvvie was cut.

Similarly, Wilfrid Brambell, as Paul's Irish grandfather, was given a few Steptoe-like set-pieces to cash in on his TV celebrity. But there was nothing sitcom about the rest of the film's humour. Whether scripted or ad-libbed, it managed to showcase the irreverent charm that had made the Mops the media's darlings, while also proving that, despite the fame, they were still just four likely lads from Liverpool.

Based on their now legendary performance at Kennedy Airport (which took place just weeks before shooting began), the press conference sequence is particularly revealing of their rapid-fire repartee. John later dismissed comparisons with the Marx Brothers. But there are definite similarities between their caustic combinations of sarcasm, puns, irony, insult and nonsensical deadpan, with the reporters almost becoming a collective Margaret Dumont (the stuffy comedy foil for the Marx brothers).

But Lester was keen to demonstrate both his and the group's catholic comedy influences. There's mild surrealism in the way the Fabs suddenly appear outside the train to taunt the snooty commuter and in John's unexplained disappearance from an emptying bath-tub. A hint of Chaplinesque pathos (or at least Norman Wisdom sentimentality) informs Ringo's riverside meanderings, while slapstick dominates the anarchic "playtime" sequence, which Lester makes all the more hilarious by his use of helicopter shots, unexpected angles and variegated film speeds.

With global takings of $11 million on a £200,000 outlay, A Hard Day's Night changed the visual presentation of pop forever. Moreover, it gave the Beatles a taste for movies. Following the singularly undistinguished Help!, John co-starred in Lester's How I Won The War. Ringo teamed with Peter Sellers for The Magic Christian. George formed HandMade and saved Monty Python's Life Of Brian. And Paul made Give My Regards To Broad Street — and they don't come much funnier than that.

Because Samira Ahmed’s excellent book is part of the BFI Film Classics series, it is worth bringing in the BFI’s sixtieth anniversary examination and tribute to one a film that was revolutionary. “Through the Fab Four to Take That, One Direction and Taylor Swift, the lines between public and private, star and fan, reality and fantasy have been blurry ever since”. Last month was the sixty-second anniversary of the film. Might anything happen in 2029 for its sixty-fifth anniversary? I don’t think A Hard Day’s Night will age or loses its magic, as it is seems more relevant now than it did in 1964:

“The French film critic and director Jacques Rivette once said that “every film is a documentary of its own making”. A Hard Day’s Night captures modern pop stardom as it was being invented. The film’s faux documentary style was partly dictated by necessity: black-and-white film was cheaper, and since the boys had no acting experience, director Richard Lester didn’t want to force them into a situation where they’d have to awkwardly deliver dialogue, or crowbar in excuses to perform songs. This was a situation that Elvis Presley found himself in constantly, and which was already starting to seem passé in 1964.

Screenwriter Alun Owen wrote the script after spending time on the road with the band, taking note of their distinctly Scouse humour, their intimacy and banter, and their individual parts in the group’s dynamic. He wrote a heightened version of each Beatle for them to play. Crucially, Owen was a working-class Welshman who’d grown up in Liverpool, so he understood the group’s vernacular and wrote scenarios and dialogue based on their real experiences, which they would be comfortable delivering.

And unlike Elvis, or Frank Sinatra, or any other pop star on film before, these guys live in a world where The Beatles exist. Their awareness of their fame places them at a distance from it — they’re as amused by it as the audience is.

The scene where John convinces a woman that he’s not, in fact, John Lennon, encapsulates how a person’s celebrity can become divorced from and unrecognisable to the real person.

A woman tells John: “You don’t look like him at all” and John says, to himself: “She looks more like him than I do.”

The film also distinguishes the ‘real’ Beatles by drawing attention to the way that their images are captured, copied and disseminated. Paul’s grandfather (an agent of chaos played by Steptoe and Son’s Wilfrid Bramble) repeatedly asks the boys to autograph a group photo, which he makes forgeries of and attempts to sell. In the press conference scene, George poses for a photographer whose snaps appear on screen as a contact sheet. In the ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ sequence, the slow motion shots of the band jumping references their already established iconography, particularly Fiona Adams’ photo of the band leaping behind Euston Station, which was used on the cover of the EP Twist and Shout. The band is seen through various TV monitors in the studio’s control room, and there’s a visual gag involving large beetles in the background while the band rehearses on stage. Through editing, mise-en-scene and blocking, the film distinguishes the flesh-and-blood Beatles at its centre, from the two-dimensional avatars most fans were used to seeing.

The level of fame The Beatles experienced during the making of the film was intense and new. Watching it with 60 years of hindsight, in the era of stan culture, phone chucking, and parasocial relationships, it’s striking to see the light-headedness with which the film portrays the intense fandom.

The fans presented a problem for production, and Owen observed how the band’s movements were restricted by the mania surrounding them. But the film’s purpose was to serve Beatlemania, so the feeling of constraint was expressed through surrealism and humour – for example, during ‘I Should Have Known Better’, literally placing the band in a cage while schoolgirls try to touch them like zoo animals.

This attitude seems to have been couched in reality. A documentary called The First US Visit, shot by the Maysles brothers just weeks before production on this film started, shows that, at this stage, The Beatles treated their fame with humour and bemusement. The darker, more dangerous side to fan behaviour had not yet reared its head.

More recent films about pop stars tend to walk a fine line between appreciating fandom – because without it, where would the star be? – and exploring the toll it takes on the artist. Of films about celebrities who have reached the levels of fame comparable to The Beatles, two stand out: One Direction’s This Is Us and Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana.

Both films feature their subjects interacting with fans, but they’re in much more controlled environments, like meet and greets (which are surreal in their own way). Modern celebrities know the double-edged sword of fame: they know that they need to connect with fans, but the implications for their personal safety are on a whole other level to what was considered when The Beatles were filming A Hard Day’s Night. They live in a world that, for better or worse, The Beatles helped usher in. This is all the more tragic when considering that 16 years after filming, John Lennon would be shot and killed by a fan whose warped justification for the act was that Lennon had become, in his unstable mind, “a phoney”.

But this would all happen later. For the time being, John, Paul, George and Ringo took Beatlemania in their stride, building their public personas on the fly. In fact, that carving out of four distinct personas for The Beatles was another invention of Alun Owen. According to Paul Du Noyer (writing in MOJO):

“Owen watched the four personalities and amplified them for effect. Though each of The Beatles would come to find their respective stereotypes stifling, it was an accidental stroke of marketing genius. At that time, the British and American publics had only the vaguest notion of individual Beatles. In fact their defining qualities, to most adult minds, were the identikit mop tops and peculiar accent. It was through A Hard Day’s Night that The Beatles first emerged as four distinct entities, immeasurably adding to the interest and complexity of the group.”

This set the template for the way in which musicians are marketed to this very day, from Take That to the Spice Girls, to BTS and TXT.

Yet the film also goes a long way to reinforce the idea that The Beatles are strongest when they are together as a unit. When Ringo decides to go AWOL, thanks to some meddling by Paul’s grandfather, he proves to be completely inept at navigating the world. He nearly gets into a fight, is rejected by women, and causes minor havoc at a pub. The scene is played for comedy, but it also shows us a glimpse of a world without The Beatles: drab, hostile, devoid of humour. It reinforces the idea that four Beatles are better than one, and the freedom they crave is better experienced as a group. Like Nowell-Smith said: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

A Hard Day’s Night is a bundle of contradictions: a scripted comedy that feels authentic, a celebration of image making that both critiques and revels in the process, a commercial product that’s genuinely artistic. Its lightning-in-a-bottle quality is proven by the fact that it didn’t set a formula: aspects of the film have permeated pop culture separately, but there’s no A Hard Day’s Night 2. That’s fine, because even though the film turns 60 this year, it never gets old”.

With there being talk around The Beatles appearing the biopic films, Rubber Soul getting the Giles Martin treatment, and just the fact that Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney are still massive fans of the band and can tell us first-hand what it was like, I have been thinking about A Hard Day’s Night and what it means to me. A near-perfect film featuring my favourite band, I think it was ahead of its time and had this brilliant script that was given to a brilliant director. How Richard Lester made this huge impact, and what A Hard Day’s Night means today. Anyone who has not seen it, I would implore them to do so. I can’t seem to find it on streaming platforms, but this YouTube video gives us the entire film. Go and get Samira Ahmed's book too, as it is not only a great companion; how she writes about the film is extraordinary and has received glowing reviews like this. I think that The Beatles’ 1964 debut film is one of the most extraordinary things…

EVER committed to film.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Rowlene

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Rowlene

__________

THERE are not a lot…

of interviews from this year with Rowlene. She has releases some incredible singles this year. Bittersweet is her latest, and it is magnificent. I did want to spotlight this South African queen. I want to start out with an interview from 2022. NOTION chatted with Rowlene around the release of her E.P., Frequency:

“The South African singer-songwriter was born and raised in Cape Town, finding a love for performance in various singing and dancing competitions as a child. Breaking a musical hiatus with singles “Only (feat. WurlD)” and “Would You Like That”, and now heading to LA and Europe, she’s proving an artist to get on your radar. We caught up with Rowlene to discuss her process, a collaboration with WurlD and career rollercoaster so far. Dive in!

Can you talk me through the process of putting together the EP?

It was such a majestic process, I found everything I wasn’t looking for and now I’m in a space where I feel understood and respected more than ever before.

Growing up in Cape Town and later moving to Johannesburg – do you think these have contributed as influences to your music?

Not really, I think it may have inspired me more than influenced. Everyone who I was surrounded by, their grind and hustles has been so inspiring to watch and learn from. Seeing people push the boundaries and showing up as the best versions of themselves and still staying true through the creation process it just gave me hope for my future.

With six platinum records and having performed multiple stages across the continent, do you have a particular venue you love or a favourable memory from a past live show?

Rocking the Daisies was definitely a crazy experience. Something I want to still do is perform at Afro Nation, Coachella, The O2 Arena London and Madison Square Garden”.

Rowlene is gearing up for the release of her new album, Some Strings Attached. I am writing this on 14th August. He album comes out on 21st August. It is a perfect time to connect with Rowlene. There are a couple of recent interviews. I do think that she has a growing fanbase here in the U.K., though she probably has a larger following in South Africa. I do hope that she plays here soon. It is clear that Some Strings Attached is a very personal album. Maybe her most revealing work to date. This Sahiphopmag feature gives us a little insight into Some Strings Attached:

“For Rowlene, the album represents years of emotion, reflection and rebuilding. Taking to Instagram, the Cape Town-born artist gave fans a glimpse into the deeply personal story behind the project, revealing just how much of herself went into creating it.

“I’ve held these songs close for a long time. Every lyric, every late night, every version of me that had to exist for this album to become what it is,” she shared.

The album digs into the complicated emotions that follow loss, particularly the process of finding your footing after relationships come to an end. Rowlene has previously explained that heartbreak does not define all of her  music, but this particular body of work required her to confront that part of her story.

Over the past few years, she has focused on learning how to rebuild and rediscover herself, with each song capturing a different point along that emotional road.

Even the album’s title speaks to those unresolved connections. Some Strings Attached explores the invisible ties that can remain long after a relationship or friendship has ended, making the project particularly relatable to anyone who has had to let go while still carrying pieces of what once was.

Fans will also have an opportunity to experience the album live shortly after its release. Rowlene is scheduled to host an album launch show at Hard Rock Café in Sandton, Johannesburg, on 22 August, one day after the album drops”.

The Guardian recently recommended Rowlene. They raved about her music and suggested that people connect with it. I am very new to her music, though I am instantly engrossed. She is such a phenomenal artist that I would love to see play in London. Such a powerful and compelling voice. Her songs might seem personal to her, yet they will be familiar and relatable to so many of her listeners:

“Rowlene Bosman learned to sing in a Cape Town school choir, and the discipline never left her: she is a precision vocalist in a scene that rewards volume. Most South Africans first heard her in 2018, delivering the hook on Nasty C’s SMA – she was the first signing to his Tall Racks label – and the featured artist circuit kept her busy for years. But while South African pop stampeded towards amapiano, Rowlene held her ground as a balladeer, writing slow, confessional R&B in which heartbreak is examined instead of danced away. Her 2020 debut album 11:11, a set of aching, close-quarters soul songs, brought a South African music award nomination for best pop album, and three of her originals – Cupid, Stay and the Nasty C collaboration I Need You – landed on the soundtrack of Netflix’s SA teen crime drama Blood & Water, carrying her voice far beyond home.

Hurts 2b Reminded, from her new album Some Strings Attached, is the best argument yet for that patience. Over spare, unhurried production with a faint Afropop pulse ticking underneath, she sings about the ambush of memory: the places and small details that resurrect someone you thought you had let go. The twist is who she is mourning: not the dead, nor an ex, but friends who are alive and well yet simply elsewhere, people whose lives moved on without her. Losing them, she has said, was the price of finding herself. After 10 years of stealing the show from other artists, she sounds ready to headline her own”.

I am not sure if NME or Rolling Stone UK will chat with Rowlene next week. So I am only going with the interviews that are out there. A look back to Glamour South Africa and their conversation from May. This was when Rowlene was still finishing her album and we did not know what we do now. I am excited to see what is next for her. I feel there will be a lot of international dates. One of the greatest artists of her generation:

“What creative process do you go through when writing your songs?

I basically just sit with my team and get in the zone. Throwing ideas around and getting inspiration from that. Sometimes it doesn't happen and I experience writer’s block, which is okay. We can try again tomorrow. Let’s get to know each other instead, maybe I’ll get inspired by that. I try not to overthink the process and just let it happen. Trust the process. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t and that’s okay.

What moment in your career would you say shaped you and who you are as an artist?

A moment in my career that I would say shaped me and who I am as an artist, I think would be losing friends along the way. In life we outgrow people and we all go our different ways. You make some, you lose some and I’m really grateful for the people I currently have around me.

Your voice is silky and soothing on your latest single, Sweet Escape and we can’t stop listening to it. What was the inspiration behind the song?

A lot of the time as female artists we create music and sing for fun, although that is all good and well, for this song I wanted to create something sexy, witty, and fun. I wanted to make women feel sexy and with doing that I’m also showing a different side of myself.

What advice would you give young women/girls who wish to pursue a career in music?

I’m going to tell them what I wish I was told, which is educate yourself as much as you can about whatever you want to pursue. Don’t rush to get signed. Invest in yourself. Experiment. Download beats if you have to. Get a feel for things, because you may find that you don’t actually like singing or performing, but rather enjoy writing songs. Understand yourself and push yourself to the best of your ability or you’ll just get twisted in other people’s narrative and get pushed around if you don’t stand up for yourself”.

Some Strings Attached is going to be one of this year’s best albums. The brilliant Rowlene should be on your radar. This South African artist is a phenomenal talent that has decades ahead. I have just connected with her music, but I know that she is going to be a major mainstream and world-straddling artist. As I have said before, I do hope that she comes and plays in the U.K...

VERY soon.

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Follow Rowlene

FEATURE: All Queens: Will We Get a Daisy Chain Fields Festival-Like Event in the U.K.?

FEATURE:

 

 

All Queens

 

Will We Get a Daisy Chain Fields Festival-Like Event in the U.K.?

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I will be interested…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Rodrigo/PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan McGinley for DAZED

to read the reviews for this one-day festival, as Daisy Chain Fields has been curated by Olivia Rodrigo and brings women to the front. It is a festival featuring women and female-fronted groups.  The line-up is brilliant. Not only is it this chance to see these incredible artists together at a wonderful location. 100% of net proceeds will go to charities and organisations dedicated to advancing and advocating for women and girls. That is so commendable and vital! At a time when major festivals struggle with gender and women are not booked as headliners as much as they should, festivals like Daisy Chain Fields is a necessity. Things in terms of U.S. festivals are bad regarding gender equality. Only this year did Download Festival book its first female headliner. Linkin Park’s Emily Armstrong the first female headliner. Shocking that such sexism has raged for years. Reading & Leeds has always been male-heavy for headliners, though this year has been a step forward. Though, again, how does it take this long?! A festival should not be congratulated for booking 50% female headliners! It should be the norm! It seems like the bare minimum! Women are dominating music, so why is 50% the best a major festival can do?! Things are even worse for non-male D.J.s. Women and non-binary D.J.s struggling to be included on bills. Primavera Sound 2025 had an all-female lead, and showed how it should be done. Though they took a slight step back this year regarding headliners, their commitment to gender equality continued. Last year was a bad one for women in music. Festivals largely ignoring them. Even if it is hard to predict headliners years in advance (as festivals need to these days), there are so many to choose from, there can be no excuses for disregarding women! This year, Bristol’s FORWARDS Festival has all female Saturday’s co-headliners including Little Simz, Self Esteem, Tems and Wet Leg. Hopefully, Daisy Chain Fields Festival is an annual event. I wonder if we will get a U.K. equivalent. Details have emerged regarding stage times. NME provide more information:

“Olivia Rodrigo has unveiled the stage times for her forthcoming all-female Daisy Chain Fields festival, with sets from Chappell Roan, Bikini Kill, Doechii, Garbage and more.

The single-day event will take place at Great Park in Irvine, California on August 29, bringing together a line-up of women and female-fronted artists across two stages, alongside non-profit and community-focused organisations.

Rodrigo will be performing at the festival, with the line-up also set to include Mitski, The Breeders, KATSEYE, Santigold, Rachel Chinouriri, Die Spitz, Eli, Not For Radio and Quiet Light. Special guests Karen O, Sarah McLachlan and Stevie Nicks are also on the bill.

The event will alternate performances between its Dandelion and Marigold stages throughout the day, meaning none of its 14 scheduled sets overlap. You can join the waitlist for tickets here, and check out the stage times below.

Daisy Chain Fields 2026 stage times are:

Dandelion Stage:
11:55 am -12:25 pm – Eli
1:05-1:35 pm – Santigold
2:15-2:45 pm – KATSEYE
3:40-4:20 pm – Mitski
5:20-6:00 pm – Doechii
7:00-7:40 pm – Chappell Roan
8:40-10:00 pm – Olivia Rodrigo & Special Guests

Marigold Stage
11:20-11:50 am – Quiet Light
12:30-1:00 pm – Rachel Chinouriri
1:40-2:10 pm – Die Spitz
2:50-3:30 pm – Bikini Kill
4:30-5:10 pm – The Breeders
6:10-6:50 pm – Garbage
7:50-8:30 pm – Not for Radio”.

A mix of newer artists and some legends on the bill, it is great that there is some British talent in the mix. Of course, people will see the line-up and ask why so-and-so wasn’t book. How come no Phoebe Bridgers? She is over in the U.K. at the moment in readiness for some intimate shows promoting her new album, Lost Weekend. What we get from the Daisy Chain Fields Festival is proof that women can carry festivals. There is still imbalance. When it comes to the biggest stages, headliners still tend to be men. Even with Glastonbury.

The Cut interviewed Olivia Rodrigo earlier in the year to discuss the anticipated Daisy Chain Fields Festival. It seems to have that mix of a modern bouquet festival and something from the 1960s or 1970s. Woodstock, perhaps. It will be a wonderful event that looks like it could run every year. That would be amazing:

“How did you determine the aesthetic for the items and the festival? And where did the name come from?

I wanted Daisy Chain to feel like it was separate from my album campaign and my album rollout, so we always wanted the aesthetic to be sort of a riot-grrrl-meets-flower-child vibe, and that was what we were going for in the collection too. When I thought of the festival, I pictured girls running around and making friendship bracelets, engaging in community, making new friends, and listening to music they love. Daisy Chain Fields sounds like what it felt like to me, and the imagery of a chain symbolizes how strong we can all be when we work together.

Do you want it to be an annual thing?

I really believe in the festival and what it stands for, so I want it to be an annual thing. I really wanted the charities that the festival benefits to reflect the world that we live in and have as much diversity and inclusion as possible. I was very intentional about it, and I’m learning a lot from all these organizations. I’m also excited that the patrons who are watching the shows can get a chance to learn about these charities — because they’re doing such incredible work — and to engage with them in a meaningful way. That’s one of my biggest hopes.

Have you thought about how you want fans to dress, and can you give some style clues for what you want that day to look like?

Whatever people feel comfortable rocking out in is what I think they should wear. I just want people to feel comfortable, confident, and happy. This festival is so much about trying to cultivate joy in the face of adversity, so as long as people are having a grand old time, I’m happy”.

I do think that we could benefit from having a festival like this in the U.K. I do know that there are smaller festivals that are all-female. That is brilliant, but one that can do something similar to Daisy Chain Fields, where we get slightly bigger or more established acts. There is no shortage of artists who could play. Olivia Dean seems like the first obvious name. Having an America artist or two in there. Having it as a one-day event and perhaps pushing it towards autumn – as the weather is less severe and it will be more manageable! -, it would ensure that queens are up front. I suspect that major festivals next year are going to be male=heavy regarding their headliners. Many festivals still are not gender-balanced across their line-up. We do not have anything like Daisy Chain Fields in the U.K. In terms of the calibre of the artists all sharing the bill. Though there are all-female festivals and events. In June, LOUD WOMEN highlighted their own event. Writing how women are shaping music:

“It’s a remarkable snapshot of where women in music are right now: established icons sharing space with newer artists who are redefining what success looks like for the next generation.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, our friend Lauren Estelle Jones has announced God Save The Queens, a historic celebration marking 50 years of she-punk. Taking place in Londonon 16 October, the event features LOUD WOMEN favourites Big Joanie alongside Essential Logic, Gina Birch and HotWax, bringing together artists whose influence can still be heard across punk and alternative music today.

What strikes me about these announcements is that they’re not simply celebrating women who are making music right now. They’re celebrating the entire lineage. The pioneers who kicked down doors. The artists carrying that legacy forward. And the musicians who are only just picking up their first instruments.

Here at LOUD WOMEN, we’re proud to be part of that story. We’ve already announced lineups for Bristol, Dublin and our biggest event of the year, LOUD WOMEN Fest London. Before that, we’ll be back at Rebellion Festival, where the LOUD WOMEN stage continues to introduce thousands of punk fans to artists from around the world. We’re also putting the finishing touches to festivals in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Toronto, Colorado, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

From California to Blackpool, from London to Tokyo, women and non-binary musicians are creating some of the most exciting music being made anywhere right now. More importantly, they’re creating spaces where the next generation can see themselves reflected”.

 I realise that smaller festivals struggle and many are disappearing, though there is definitely room for another all-female festival. If a major artist in the U.K. curated it and did something similar to Daisy Chain Fields Festival, it would give pause to a lot of major festivals who are not booking enough women and there are relatively few female headliners. Glastonbury might be the most gender-balanced, though they are terrible when it comes to putting women on the Pyramid Stage. I have no idea why that is, and I hope 2027 is a year when they have at least two female headliners – which has only occurred once since they started in the 1970s – and, God forbid, they have an all-female line-up! That has never happened at Glastonbury. Things do need to change, as women are shaping and pushing music forward. It would be amazing to join LOUD WOMEN and those already doing incredible work. A big one-day festival where it is all-female. Putting these queens onto the stage and…

WATCHING them slay!

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Diane Warren at Seventy

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Diane Warren at the 98th Academy Awards ion 15th March, 2026. She was nominated for Best Original Song for Dear Me, from the documentary, Diane Warren: Relentless/PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

 

Diane Warren at Seventy

__________

THIS biography might…

be a little out of date but, when Diane Warren was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, we got some biography about her. This is one of the most successful and talented songwriters ever. Ahead of her seventieth birthday on 7th September, I did want to spotlight this legend:

“Diane Warren is one of modern music’s most celebrated songwriters.  She has penned nine #1 and thirty-three Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and is tied for having written the most #1 songs as a sole writer in Billboard history.  Her distinguished catalogue features beloved songs including “Only Love Can Hurt Like This,” “Un-Break My Heart,” “If I Could Turn Back Time” and “Rhythm of the Night.”
She has received 15 Academy Award nominations, is a GRAMMY winner with 15 nominations, an Emmy winner, and a two-time Golden Globe winner whose songs have been featured in more than 150 films, including chart-topping hits “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” (Mannequin, 1987) “Because You Loved Me” (Up Close and Personal, 1996) “How Do I Live” (Con Air, 1997) “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” (Armageddon, 1998 ) and “Til It Happens To You” (The Hunting Ground, 2015). In November 2022, Warren became the first songwriter in history to receive an Honorary Oscar, as voted on by the Academy’s Board of Governors. Most recently, she wrote the original song “The Fire Inside,” performed by Becky G for the film Flamin’ Hot, directed by Eva Longoria, which marked her 15th Oscar nomination.

She is the sole owner of her publishing company Realsongs, the most successful female-owned and operated business in the music industry. Warren is a recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a nod to her legendary career, having worked with many of today’s most popular artists, including Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, H.E.R., Snoop Dogg, Paloma Faith, Jon Batiste, Maren Morris, John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Andra Day, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Hudson and Janelle Monáe, in addition to having written songs for iconic artists such as Whitney Houston, Cher, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, and many more”.

Diane Warren has been nominated for seventeen Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song but has never won. I think she had found the funny side, though it is scandalous that she has never won! In March, Diane Warren was interviewed by The Telegraph. She reflected on her career and missing out on an Oscar once more:

“I love proving people wrong. It’s my favourite thing to do,” grins Diane Warren. “I proved my mom wrong when she said I couldn’t make a living writing songs. Cos, I f---ing could!” This is an understatement. My 69-year-old Californian interviewee is one of the most successful songwriters of all time, with a self-owned back catalogue of songs worth an estimated half-a-billion dollars. “Although I won’t tell how much I’ve been offered for it – and I’d never sell, anyway,” she tells me. “My soul’s not for sale.”

Which means that, although you might not recognise the name Diane Warren, you’ll know a wind tunnel’s worth of her belt-em-out ballads. She’s the one-woman hit-maker behind nine US number-one songs and 33 top-10 hits including Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now (1987), Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time (1989), Toni Braxton’s Un-Break My Heart (1996), Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing (1998) and Paloma Faith’s Only Love Can Hurt Like This (2014).

Often at her best writing the kind of songs that swell the emotional sails of blockbuster movies, she’s got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She’s got a Grammy (for Because You Loved Me from the 1996 movie Up Close and Personal), two Golden Globe Awards (for You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me from 2010’s Burlesque and lo si (Seen) from 2020’s The Life Ahead) and a Primetime Emmy (for Til It Happens to You from 2015’s The Hunting Ground).

Despite an unprecedented 17 Academy Award nominations, however, she still hasn’t won the Oscar for Best Original Song written for a Motion Picture. And this really bugs her. Unlike most LA types who feign cool disinterest in shiny statues, Warren is campaigning hard for her latest song ahead of next week’s ceremony. “And this time”, she says, “it’s personal”, because her song, Dear Me, is the tender ballad she wrote for the documentary about her own life, Diane Warren: Relentless.

The docu-film offers raw insight into the eccentric existence of the scrappy workaholic who has been described as a “mogul-urchin” as well as, because of her reclusive nature, the “Emily Dickinson of pop”. She is known to relentlessly badger A-list singers until they listen to the demos she records using her “awful” nasal voice in her cave of an office, crammed with teetering stacks of cassettes. Relentless opens with Cher’s assertion that Warren is “nuts” (Warren pushed so hard for Cher to record If I Could Turn Back Time that she paid for a studio even though Cher said she “hated” the song), followed by streams of praise from artists such as Beyoncé and Steve Tyler.

Most fascinating, perhaps, is the revelation that though Warren has made her fortune writing love songs, she has never been in love. “A lot of people think I’m gay,” she shrugs on camera. “I’m not.” She just prefers to “sleep with my cat”, and finds some of the physical acts of affection she describes in her lyrics make her wince. Warren cringes when asked to unpack the lines she wrote for Aerosmith’s Oscar-nominated I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing (from Armageddon): “I don’t want anybody kissing my eyes. I don’t want anybody staying up all night to hear me breathe. What the f--- are you kissing my eyes for?”

The documentary’s director Bess Kargman drafts in one of Warren’s collaborators, Paul Stanley of Kiss, to play the role of psychiatrist, with Stanley suggesting that perhaps “it’s easier to write about heartbreak when you don’t have to live it, but you fear it.”

Talking today via Zoom from a tidy conference room at her LA office, Warren shrugs off Stanley’s theory. “I don’t think I’m fearful of [love],” she mulls. “I’m just not the most trusting person, you know? I just don’t want to wake up with someone or sleep with anybody, or answer to anybody.” The widescreen romance expressed in songs, she says, is the product of “a good imagination, y’know? When I’m writing, I can feel what that feels like. It’s like method acting”.

Viewers might suspect that Warren’s wariness of romance has its roots in a difficult upbringing. Dear Me is, after all, a song addressed to her childhood self. It is full of tender assurances that “[while] you feel like nobody understands… like the whole world’s against you… all of the pain is all gonna fade”. As she tells me today more bluntly: “Being a kid sucks.”

Running away from home

Born in 1956 to insurance salesman David, and hypercritical housewife Flora, who never showed her children any physical affection, Warren grew up in the lower-middle class Van Nuys community of Los Angeles. She was the youngest of three daughters and, while both her elder sisters conformed to parental expectations and worked hard in school, little Diane (who now identifies as autistic) was an “alienated” rebel and a loner from the get-go. “Mom used to say she got the wrong baby from the hospital,” she says.

While she was clearly clever, she had “no interest whatsoever in anything academic” and her social awkwardness saw her bullied by “mean kids”. An early passion for pop meant she turned to music for solace, but when her father took her to guitar lessons, her teacher sent her home after two tutorials – pronouncing she had “no future in music”. In retrospect, she thinks he did her a favour as “not learning music in a conventional way” allowed her to write more originally. She tells me: “I don’t know what rules I’m breaking!”

Childhood friends tell the documentary team that at teenage parties, where other girls went in search of boys and booze, Diane would hole up in bathrooms with her guitar to enjoy the echoey acoustics. She wrote her first song at 11, was sexually molested at 12 and ran away from home – sleeping on lawns and in “not nice” hotels – at the age of 14. The first time her picture appeared in the paper was not for her musical talent, but because she was a missing teen. “I ran away because I’d flipped off a teacher in school and I didn’t want my parents to find out I had been kicked out,” she tells me. “I must have had an angel watching over me, because I stayed with these very scary characters for a couple weeks.” She shudders. “Anything could have happened, really, anything. I was pretty innocent in a weird way.”

Relieved after she returned home, Warren’s father invested more time in supporting her songwriting ambitions; he bought her a 12-string guitar and a metal shed to write in. Her song Because You Loved Me (recorded by Celine Dion in 1996) was written for him. Today, she tells me she “always believed in myself” and she spent her teens and 20s plugging away at her songwriting, even getting a job as a courier for the music industry so she could slip her own demo cassettes into record executives’ in-trays.

“I’m a born hustler,” she says today. “I will still DM [direct message] artists I don’t know if I think I’ve written a song that would work for them. It all comes from wanting my songs to be heard. I know they’re good!” But it took a solid decade of hustling for Warren to really start getting those songs heard. She had her big breakthrough with Solitaire, a hit for Laura Branigan in 1983, and things really took off when she wrote DeBarge’s jaunty Rhythm of the Night (1985) – she’s been flying since.

Warren always writes alone and has no time for the kind of songwriting by committee that sees a string of credits attached to most modern pop songs. “I’m not into anything by committee. I’m a committee of one,” she says. British pop star Lewis Capaldi spoke out about the stress he felt working with the big Californian songwriting teams a few years ago and Warren has huge sympathy for him. “I would tell him not to listen to those f---ers,” she says. “I would tell him to listen to his own heart. Or come to me. I would love to work with him.”

Frustration at Oscar losses

The documentary makes much of Warren’s sweary defiance. She’s often filmed flipping off the crew and today she waves a silver bracelet reading “Relentless as F---” at the laptop camera. She says she doesn’t care about the critics – “what other people think of me is none of my business” – so I wonder why winning the Oscar means so much to her. “I think it’s because it’s an award that gets voted for by your peers, and for songwriters there’s just one award. Plus I always watched the Oscars on TV with my mom and dad, and now I have these ‘sleepless sleepover’ parties [on the night of the nominations]… it’s just special,” she shrugs. She rolls her eyes over the way her evident frustration at losing has been caught on camera over the years. “You can see me saying ‘F---!’” she winces.

Written for a documentary about sexual assault, Warren’s song Til It Happens to You (2015), performed by Lady Gaga, was expected to be a shoe-in for an Oscar and she was hugely disappointed when it lost out to Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes’s Bond-theme Writing’s on the Wall. It was another personal song for Warren, who had experienced “a couple of creepy things” in the music industry.

“One time”, she says, “I was playing a song for somebody and I, you know, opened my eyes and he was, you know, jerking off.” She shakes her head. “I left. But stuff like that is kind of gross. But I know other people have had worse kind of things, been in horrible positions. I don’t know why the music industry hasn’t had its MeToo moment.”

Warren believes that Gaga’s performance of the song at the 2016 Awards ceremony – during which she was backed by 52 male and female survivors of sexual assault – was “still a beautiful thing” regardless of whether it won her a gold statue. Warren did, however, get an honorary Oscar in 2022, which she promptly waved at the heavens telling her mother she “finally got a man” and now keeps on her piano.

Even though she’s got stiff competition – mainly the number-one hit Golden from Netflix’s record-breaking smash animation KPop Demon Hunters – Warren would really like another statue for Dear Me this year. “Even though it’s such a personal song, that I wrote for myself, it seems to have a universal appeal. It shows how many people feel the same about themselves as me.” She smiles and offers a cheery parting shot. “If you don’t fit in, stand out!”.

On 7th September, we mark the seventieth birthday of the wonderful Diane Warren. One of the most successful songwriters ever, I do hope that she wins a long overdue Oscar. To mark her birthday, I have complied a mixtape of songs that she has written for other artists. Showing the depth and range of her songwriting genius. This is a salute to…

A true colossus.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Goodbye to Summer…

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels

 

A Goodbye to Summer…

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I don’t think it is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Helena Lopes/Pexels

an exaggeration to say that most people are glad to see the end of summer. It has been a summer of droughts, heatwaves and uncomfortable days. I have never looked more forward to autumn ever. I hope that we are in for a cooler and wetter season. One where we get plenty of rain and the warmest days stays cool enough. In the Northern Hemisphere, 31st August is when meteorological summer ends,  while astronomical summer ends with the autumnal equinox on 23rd September. We have a little way to go, but I hope we look back in a month or two with plenty of rain and cooler days. Relief that we have got through summer! However, I wanted to put out a mixtape that is lie an end to summer. I will do another one with autumnal songs very soon. This one is the last gasp of summer. A mixture of summer chillout classics and tunes. As awful as this intense summer has been, we have had some days that have not been mega-hot and have been quite nice. Though the lack of significant rainfall the entire season is the result of the climate emergency. To end with a good note, the songs below are a range of classics and some songs you might not know. A stifling and sweaty season that we will all bid…

PHOTO CREDIT: Charl Durand/Pexels

A fond farewell to.

FEATURE: Spotlight: KatzPascale

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

KatzPascale

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THERE have been a fair few…

contenders for E.P. of the year so far, but KatzPascale’s ELEGY is up there with the best. How would you define the duo of Sammi Katzmann and Jenna Pascale? Many go with Chamber, or they could be Neo-Classical. However you categorise them, their music is extraordinary. ELEGY is a staggering listening experience. I will end with a review of it. KatzPascale is a stunning New York City-based Chamber/Neo-Classical, Anti-Pop duo formed by cellist Jenna Pascale and saxophonist Sammi Katzmann. They are known for looping their instruments and using vocals texturally; they blend classical training with immersive, unconventional live performances. In October, they come to the U.K. If you are able to go and see them perform live then please do, as I can only imagine how incredible and awe-inspiring their music sounds on the stage. Against a Pop landscape that can be samey and offers few surprises, the music of KatzPascale is a welcome breath of fresh air. I want to start out with some interviews. I don’t think that you can call their music Classical, because there is immediacy and flexibility rather than the more rigid structures of the genre. Sweeping and experimental at one point, it can then switch to something as immediate as Pop. I am going to start out with CLASH and their Next Wave feature from June:

“KatzPascale began two years ago, even though they had known each other for four years after meeting through playing in indie bands in New York. Both have a background in classical training and after promising to make music together for years, the chance came when Pascale wanted to switch up her indie project for a gig she was booked for. She asked Katzmann to join her.

“It was just us fucking around on our instruments playing ambient, vibey, ethereal stuff,” says Pascale. “Everyone was like ‘what the fuck is that?!’.”

“It was the most magical live experience we’ve felt,” reminisces Katzmann.

They have since built up many hours playing together to refine their sound that has culminated in their debut EP ‘ELEGY’ released this month on the SONIC GUCK label. They call it neo classical, post punk anti pop.

The pair stress their sound was never intentional but evolved from improvising live together. It’s akin to melancholic chamber pop, but more abstract and avant-garde. To recreate that magical energy from their first show, they held a residency at 66 Greene Street in Soho that helped them build a setlist.

“It was an ominous space, pretty foggy and you couldn’t really see anything. But it was free, the doors were open and the music played out onto the street,” says Katzmann.

It proved an ideal spot that birthed tracks from ‘ELEGY’ that move fluidly between soft, gushing harmonies into prickly, disconcerting textures. Drenched in layers of loops and fx, the core of the cello and saxophone hold together the expansive range of classical, ambient and jazz into experimental elegance.

KatzPascale are influenced as much by Brian Eno, Four Tet, Max Richter and Boards of Canada, to artists 2hollis, Addison Rae, Bjork and Imogen Heap. Another influence of what they’ve created came from a gig in an unusual venue.

“We went to see multireedist Colin Stetson in a graveyard,” says Pascale. “That was the first time I heard anything like that. We were like ‘aaarrrggghhh, this is crazy!’”

“That subconsciously plays a part in our sounds,” adds Katzmann. “We just wanted to make something different. That’s what happened with the first show. We had no direction; we just did it.”

Colin Stetson-inspired saxophone is present throughout ‘ELEGY’, with their cover of the Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel track ‘GBTC’ one of the best examples of how their sound can feel heavy, but hauntingly delicate too. The raspy saxophone warbles beautifully as the cello teeters on top of the percussion.

The meditative energy from the music even puts Katzmann into her own “flow state” when playing. “It’s so fun and nice to lock in with just one person. We look elusive and mysterious on stage, but Jenna will do something cool and I’m just smiling.”

“Sometimes I get the chills from something you do,” Pascale responds. “We get surprised by ourselves a lot while it’s happening. We came up with the track ‘MOTHER’ at the residency and both of us cried on stage because it was really touching.”

With a UK tour coming in the autumn, the pair is looking forward to collaborating with artists and releasing more music. But they want to go further with their live sets and put their fans in places they’re not expecting.

“We want to get weirder with it,” says Katzmann. “We’d play a show in a butchers, or an abandoned mall. The space we play is really important and we want to experiment in more unique spaces”.

I did want to bring in byline and their interview from this year. I like the questions they asked and how it is a bit different from other interviews. They spoke with a phenomenal duo who make “ambient, spell-like music for grief, catharsis, and whatever people need to feel”:

“Since this is for our Out of Body issue, I have some spiritual questions. Have you guys ever had an out-of-body experience?

JP: I feel like every time we play.

SK: When we saw Colin Stetson at Green-Wood Cemetery, that was out of body. That was before the band started, probably like two years ago. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Green-Wood Cemetery, but they throw concerts there, and we went with some of the indie rock people, which is ironic. Colin Stetson is a saxophonist, and he mics his body to give a percussive element to the music. It’s not just the saxophone, it’s also his voice. He did the Hereditary soundtrack.

JP: It was just him on stage with these massive speakers, so subby, and we were standing in front of them like, holy fuck, what is this?

SK: It’s a very unique feeling that I hadn’t felt from live music in a while. I feel like that’s only been replicated when we play.

JP: I also think it was when we accidentally wrote “Mother.” It was at one of these Soho shows I mentioned earlier, where we were just messing around in front of an audience on our instruments. We locked in over this drone that I looped on the cello, and we played the melody that’s in “Mother.” I was actually crying as it was coming out of me, and you were crying too. We had never played it before. We just locked in, in a moment, and made this melody, and it actually made me cry.

SK: And at that show, there were so many technical difficulties. Everything was not working, but we still randomly wrote that. It was so awesome.

JP: We took that melody and turned it into “Mother” way later.

Does making music bring you closer to your higher selves? And what have you found out about yourselves in writing these songs for the upcoming EP?

JP: 100%. Another realization I had in the past month was that the only thing that takes me out of anxiety or overthinking is music. That’s the only surefire way to reset my brain.

SK: Totally. It is the ultimate form of happiness too. Playing or making something is number one of all time, I think.

JP: Definitely. Part of it is that I feel like I’m doing something, like I’m being productive, which is a good feeling. But it’s also something else.

SK: There’s a lot in it. The ability to have it resonate with others positively is such a reward. Of course that’s a product of it, but creation is so fun.

PHOTO CREDIT: Zoe De Blasis

The songs you’ve released so far, and this upcoming EP, sound like they’re dealing with grief or getting through some kind of traumatic moment.

JP: Something someone said recently after one of the shows was that because there’s no clear storyline in our lyrics, it gives people space to project their own shit onto the music. I think maybe that’s part of the reason why it’s helpful for people when they’re going through something. What we want people to take away from the EP is that they can go in with their shit and be able to project their own things all over it, and hopefully come out the other side feeling lighter. Here’s the soundtrack. Go through the shit. It’s less lonely that way, because we’re there with you.

SK: Yeah, I completely agree. The EP is like the show. We play all the songs at the show, and it’s not about us. When people are watching us or listening to this EP, it’s totally not about us. It’s about how you react to it and how it makes you feel.

JP: We had a girl bring her dad and her mom to the show in Leeds, and after, the mom came up to us and was like, “I haven’t seen him cry since our wedding.”

SK: Twenty-five years ago.

JP: Then he came over and started saying, “I don’t know what about it…” and then he started crying again.

SK: That was such an awesome moment. This curmudgeon dad who hasn’t cried in 25 years is sobbing in this random little city in the UK. That’s what we want, if that’s what feels right. We want to be a safe space to feel any emotions. What the music means to Jenna or me or you is going to be different than anyone else in the crowd, and I think that’s a good thing.

JP: It’s kind of more like the way visual art is. I feel like that’s more common with visual art, where you look at it and everyone’s got their own thing. Songs aren’t always like that. They’re more like, here’s how I feel, I’m in a breakup, you had a breakup, the song’s about a breakup. But our music is more like, it could be about anything”.

KatzPascale are, in the words of NME, “rewriting the rules of live music and making you cry in the process”. An entrain live act, I can see their U.K. dates selling out pretty soon. NME spoke with KatzPascale earlier this month. They have had an extraordinary summer. In terms of their live sets, audiences often pour into the streets afterwards “heralding the experience as a catharsis, an awakening, perhaps even an exorcism”:

“In an age of detachment, terminal online-ness and AI, the gigs offer a sensation that feels increasingly hard to find. “You know when you’re a kid, and you’re lying awake at night, and you’re just seeing shit in your brain before you fall asleep? I feel like we don’t do that anymore because everyone is just putting a show on or scrolling,” Pascale ponders. “[The shows] are like putting you back to your child self and letting your imagination take over again.”

“Playing together is the ultimate distraction from all of the other distractions in the world” – Sammi Katzmann

It’s a notion carried into their debut EP ‘Elegy’, released earlier this year. The project is unique in that every song on it was played and perfected live for months before being recorded, with each gig in some way informing the way it exists today. It’s why pressing play feels like bearing witness to two musicians born to play together, their instruments circling each other in a dialogue that drifts from deeply harrowing and frantic to delicate, sombre and, for brief moments, even sweet.

Though unmistakably chamber music, the EP also contains elements of their eclectic range of influences, offering a sonic scrapbook that shifts from Ethiopian jazz in Katzmann’s saxophone playing to references to their shared childhood love of The Beatles in the way Pascale’s cello slides down in harmonic, repetitive overlapping on ‘An Elephant Never Forgets’ – a direct nod to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Another key inspiration was ‘Clube da Esquina’, a collaborative album from Brazilian musicians Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges, which deeply informed Katzmann and Pascale’s shared musical language. “We ultimately were very, very inspired by that album,” Katzmann says. “The melodic ideas are just so, so rich and so, so sticky, as we like to say.”

A creative relationship like theirs is rare – one that spawns art which somehow, without words, can depict the deepest human experiences. It’s a calling that cannot be ignored, which is why, they tell NME, new music is already on the way. “Playing together is the ultimate distraction from all of the other distractions in the world,” Katzmann smiles. “It’s like the reset button. When we play music, we can just be totally present and real in our own minds. And it’s amazing to be able to extend that to others who are witnessing it”.

I am going to end with a review of ELEGY from Pitchfork. There were not as many reviews of this E.P. as you’d hope. I think it might be the best E.P. of the year. I am new to the music of KatzPascale, and I am instantly stunned and seduced. I will have to see them live very soon, as it sounds like an unforgettable experience:

“At a recent performance at the Whitney Biennial, Sammi Katzmann played a run on saxophone while Jenna Pascale bore down on her cello with such weight and precision it seemed as if the bow were forged from titanium. They had been darting close and drifting apart for a while, then suddenly happened upon a perfect harmony. It sounded like beauty and it sounded like terror. The two musicians looked at one another and began to cry. They had communicated telepathically and for a moment became one: KatzPascale.

The duo formed two years ago, shortly after meeting while working as hired guns for bands across New York, from Porches to Sunflower Bean, as well as backing a live performance by Michael Imperioli and recording a couple of songs for the Terrifier 3 soundtrack. They bonded over a shared love of Olivier Messiaen, 2hollis, and Addison Rae. At the time, Pascale and Katzmann were trying to find their footing in New York City’s music scene while promoting themselves on TikTok with hashtags like #indieartist and #songofthesummer.

Both musicians came up through classical training from a young age. Katzmann began piano lessons at five, while Pascale, daughter of the director of the South Pasadena Strings Program, was just two when she started playing violin, five when she switched to cello. At six, she played Carnegie Hall. It’s been three years since she gave up classical cello for “absolutely any other genre.” KatzPascale’s entire modus operandi now is to liberate the process.

They refer to their music as “neo-classical-post-punk-anti-pop,” which sounds facetious, but there’s something in all those modifiers and adversatives. It’s ambient and experimental and a bit like a Nicholas Britell film score, but with an anti-institutional streak. Theirs is chamber music that is socially divorced from the classical music world.

Their debut EP, ELEGY, runs on the euphoria of quitting school, and does what any debut should: It gathers every idea and feeling they’ve ever had into a single work. It is ostensibly a record about memory and relief, and the whole of their lives sounds concentrated within it: childhood recitals, lonely practice rooms, post-college ennui, friendships, breakfasts, love. ELEGY transforms all of it into something emotionally direct and simply pleasure-inducing.

Pascale’s cello generally swoops and sustains while Katzmann’s saxophone jitters in search. Playing together, they are two lost wanderers shining torchlights down a tunnel, with no destination in mind other than back to each other. On “SINK WHERE YOU SLEEP,” their instruments zoom around each like frantic bugs trapped in an upturned glass. The saxophone sounds tangled in lament and inquisition before skronking what sounds like an emergency signal. It’s sexy and it’s scary and it keeps the Roadhouse’s red lights running.

Pascale’s vocals float in on “AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS,” operatic and glass-like, recalling her grandmother, who was also an opera singer. The closest recent comparison might be Maria BC. She sounds like she’s calling to Katzmann, flickering and throwing light around the swinging lampshade of the saxophone. Pascale’s playing is deeply measured, the years of classical training paying off, with not a hint of scratchiness to be heard. Together, they sound electrically activated, as though their nerves are starting to work for the first time.

The greatest moment on the EP is Katzmann’s all-timer of an ostinato on “SPILL YOUR TIME.” Katzmann plays it with a throaty voice, a little like Colin Stetson, the physicality irreducible. Pascale accompanies her with deceptively simple down-bows and up-bows, bearing the technical difficulty lightly, as though that’s just the shape and movements her hands happen to take.

During an immersive 30 minutes, ELEGY achieves something many postclassical records strive for but rarely attain. It is unmistakably chamber music in its concentration and instrumental discipline, yet its six pieces communicate with the immediacy of a song, particularly on “HOLD ME (SLOWLY),” with its simple guitar riff and clear vocals, which even lean towards pop. Together, Pascale and Katzmann dart after heart-sinking feelings, shooting their arrows and nailing life to the wall”.

It is a shame that more mainstream Pop will get a lot of attention and streams, whereas music which I deem to be deeper and much more affecting and good will struggle comparatively. However, KatzPascale have a growing fanbase and word-of-mouth is creating so much buzz and love. If you are new to them, I implore you to listen to ELEGY right now. It will definitely leave an impression and it will move you. I definitely have to catch Jenna Pascale and Sammi Katzmann when they visit the U.K…

IN October.

__________

Follow KatzPascale

FEATURE: The Ultimate Commitment: The Need and Dilemma Associated with a Kate Bush 33 1/3 Book

FEATURE:

 

 

The Ultimate Commitment

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed on 4th April, 1978 whilst promoting her debut album, The Kick Inside, in Holland

 

The Need and Dilemma Associated with a Kate Bush 33 1/3 Book

__________

I have been re-reading…

IN THIS PHOTO: Leah Kardos, journalist, author and senior lecturer in Music at Kingston University wrote a 2024-released book for Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love as part of the 33 1/3 series/PHOTO CREDIT: Madeline Randall

Leah Kardos’s fabulous Hounds of Love book for the 33 1/3 series. You can purchase it here. The series is a fabulous look inside albums. Every year, there is a pitch for submissions. One of the reasons I like the 33 1/3 series is because it focuses on an album, and yet we get this conversation around the artist and some biography. What I love about the Hounds of Love entry is that we get a bigger picture. Kardos talks about Bush’s work prior to Hounds of Love and we get some lead up, rather than jumping straight to 1985 or into the songs. There is a chapter called The First Woman, where we see the ways Kate Bush has been the first woman to achieve remarkable feats and break records. Here is some further information about a book every Kate Bush fan should own:

“This book charts the emergence of Kate Bush in the early-to-mid-1980s as a courageous experimentalist, a singularly expressive recording artist and a visionary music producer.
Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listener's point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bush's songwriting, production and sound design. It considers the vast impact and influence that Hounds Of Love has had on music cultures and creative practices through the years, underlining the artist's importance as a barrier-smashing, template-defying, business-smart, record-breaking, never-compromising role model for artists everywhere.
Hounds Of Love invites you to not only listen, but to cross the boundaries of sensory experience into realms of imagination and possibility. Poised and accessible, yet still experimental and complex, with Hounds Of Love Bush mastered the art of her studio-based songcraft, finally achieving full control of her creative process”.

It is shocking that this is the only book in the 33 1/3 series dedicated to Kate Bush. I understand The Dreaming (1982) was written or was going to published by there was an issue. I think every Kate Bush album should be written about, because you get so much background and the period between albums is fascinating.

Not every album is as good as Hounds of Love, and it may be harder to invest as many words about, say Lionheart (Kate Bush’s second studio album, released in 1978). I do feel there are at least five of her albums that should get the 33 1/3 treatment. I have written about this before, though I am approaching it from a different angle. Aerial (2005) is an album, a double album, a tonne can be written about. The Dreaming needs to be revived. Never for Ever (1980) could have a wonderful book written about it, as could The Sensual World (1989). Although Laura Shenton has written a book about this album – and The Dreaming, for that matter -, I do feel that there is more to be said about The Kick Inside. Laura Shenton’s in-depth book about The Kick Inside can be purchased here. Apart from, as Leah Kardos notes in her Hounds of Love book, was Kate Bush owed an entry into the esteemed series. It is perhaps her most influential album. Definitely her most popular. I will come to The Kick Inside, though this interview, gives us some insight into why Leah Kardos tackled Hounds of Love for a brilliant 33 1/3 book:

“How would you describe your book in one sentence?

My book analyses the music, ideas, creative methods and far-reaching influence of Kate Bush’s 1985 masterpiece Hounds Of Love, one of the most visionary albums of the twentieth century.

What drew you to this album?

When I was considering what to pitch for the open call back in 2022, Kate Bush was experiencing a bit of a miraculous year – the resurgence of ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)’ was setting records and had put her back at the top of the charts all over the world. I was also acutely aware that there hadn’t yet been a volume in the series about one of her albums. Bush is such a special artist in my world, and I have always felt an empathic connection with her music – its sensitivity, intelligence, generosity and magic. It just made perfect sense to choose her.

It turns out that Hounds Of Love is a gift to write about. There’s so much musical, sonic-cinematic and conceptual detail to consider. And this period of her creative life in the early-to-mid-1980s is fascinating for many reasons – her developing process and aesthetic, her hard-won autonomy, her uniquely expressive handling of the Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument). I feel like people often forget about her technical mastery, that she was (and still is) an elite producer of records. It’s wild that she had achieved all of this by the time she was in her mid-twenties.

What was it like writing the book?

Working on my last book, Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie (2021), was such an intense experience compared to this one, which was fun and hugely pleasurable. That book covered Bowie’s final three works so it was a treat to spend so much time and have so much space to sit with a single album. Once the book was done, I went through a period of feeling sad because I missed how it felt to work on it!
The tricky part was trying to strike a balance between writing something accessible for the newer, younger fans, who probably weren’t even born in the 20th century, and also making the book a worthwhile experience for the hardcore Love-hounds who already know everything. I also had to prioritise the story that I wanted to tell, which was about how Hounds Of Love marked Bush’s arrival as an artist and music producer of culture-changing influence.

Did you learn anything new about the album that you didn’t know going into the project?

I learned so much, even though I thought I knew the album well going in. Subtle connections and correspondences between sides A and B that I hadn’t noticed before emerged through the study. Thematic, conceptual, musical and sonic echoes that bounce between the worlds of day and night. I found it really instructive to observe how Bush engaged with the press during this period, how she seemed very energised to chat about her studio and the technical aspects of her creative process but was quite reticent to speak about meanings or pin her work down with definitive answers. It showed me an artist inspired by possibilities, who desired to keep those possibilities open. I tried to apply some of that world-building spirit to my writing about the music itself.

Are there any interesting stories or points that didn’t make it into the final book?

Yes, loads! Though, being an academic I wonder if other people would have found that stuff as interesting as I did? The tight 33,000 word count meant I had to jettison a lot of tangential research that I had accumulated along the way – stuff on Bert Lloyd and whaling shanties and witch trials, oceanic metaphors in literature, myth and psychoanalysis, Arthurian Avalon, etc. There were also some extended investigations into the Fairlight CMI and the technical ins and outs of designing sounds and sequencing song compositions with it. Being a music technologist myself, I was completely fascinated with how technology transformed Bush’s creative process. I ended up cutting most of this stuff but for a smattering of references. Hopefully readers will be able to pick up on the breadcrumbs and investigate further, should they so wish”.

I have always thought about pitching an idea. The Kick Inside is my first choice, as it is my favourite album ever. It turns fifty in 2028, so it would be a suitable second entry into the 33 1/3 series. Laura Shenton’s book is authoritative, though I would be interested to interview those involved making the album, some modern artists who have talked about it and its legacy now. Also, what is great about 33 1/3 and Leak Kardos’s book is that she is forensic about the music. In terms of the kit used and a real dig into the compositions. Laura Shenton does this a bit, but I feel I could take a different approach and still add something to this album without repeating what has come before. In reality, I feel authors like Tom Doyle and Graeme Thomson (who have written Kate Bush biographies) could do a 33 1/3 book. What is apparelling is that they are handy little books that are authoritative without being exhausting and too long-winded. 120-160 pages in a wonderful paperback, pocket-sized book (I mean, a large pocket in a raincoat!), that I see as an extensive form of linear notes. That dig inside an album and the recording. It is an ultimate show of passion and fandom writing a book. The time commitment is something that is an issue. I have to work a full-time job and, if I was lucky enough to write a 33 1/3 book, I suspect I would need to quit my job or reduce my hours – neither of which I can afford to do. You do not get paid to write the book, but you would get a share of the sales. I am not sure how much, but it is less about the money side of things and more about the love of that artist/album. I feel The Kick Inside is an album that people do not discuss and relatively little is known. It is compelling, as you can talk about the early years of Kate Bush and the lead-up to her recording the album in 1977. I feel it is more influential today than it ever has been. The associated success of its debut single, Wuthering Heights, after the film of the same name came out earlier this year. One of its stars, Margot Robbie, recreating Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights dance in a clip that was shared online. Artists like CMAT and Billie Eilish have nodded to the album or, in the case of the former, covered Wuthering Heights.

There are a lot of positives when it comes to a book for 33 1/3. In terms of how to approach an album like The Kick Inside. For me, it would be a case of leading in with Kate Bush’s upbringing and the seeds of her debut album and then ending with its relevance and impact. I am not a musicologist and am not a musician, so my approach to the songs would be some insight and personal analysis. As I say, interviewing musicians involved with the album would be great, and even speaking with producer Andrew Powell It is a shame only one Kate Bush album is in the 33 1/3 series, and so many more of her albums should be in there. There used to be a strict – or a bit looser – policy that only one album per artist could be in the series, to keep things broad and varied. So that there is not this repetition. However, given justification, a second album could be permitted. As has been the case with Radiohead (OK Computer and Kid A), The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds and Smile), David Bowie (Low and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), and The Rolling Stones (Exile on Main St. and Some Girls). I think that The Kick Inside is more important and better than Some Girls so, if The Rolling Stones can have a second book, why not Kate Bush?! One of the most influential artists today, her debut is one that deserves examination and closer inspection. The drawbacks would be the time commitments and maybe having to sacrifice work. If I could fit it around work and write it and still earn a wage, then the temptation is huge. As it turns fifty on 17th February, 2028, there is this need and huge desire for me, or someone else, to write about The Kick Inside. This year’s proposals have already been submitted, but you can look at the books in the series and the incredible range of wonderful albums. A pitch in 2027 for a publication in 2028 or late-2027? Perhaps a harder sell to get a second album for the same artist in the 33 1/3 series, I feel there is plenty of justification when it comes to the…

GENIUS Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Who Knows Who Wrote That Song of Summer: Has Any Other Artist Achieved This Kate Bush Feat?

FEATURE:

 

 

Who Knows Who Wrote That Song of Summer

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

 

Has Any Other Artist Achieved This Kate Bush Feat?

__________

THIS is something that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I think I have written about before, but it definitely warrants reinspection. In terms of songwriting, we think of the legends largely men. Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Prince. Women are not mentioned that often. I am not sure why Kaye Bush is not included among the heavyweights, as she is not only one of the most strikingly original and fascinating songwriters ever. Unlike those who are seen as the greatest songwriters ever, she seems to have written more of her own songs than these artists. If we think about the first ten albums any artist has released, is there a single songwriter who has achieved the same feat as Kate Bush? Only one song from her ten studio albums has been given a co-write. The lyrics to Flower of the Mountain, from 2011’s Director’s Cut, credits James Joyce. This song was essentially a reworking of The Sensual World. That appeared on the 1989 album of the same name. Bush wanted permission to use text from James Joyce’s Ulysses, but she was denied. When it came to Director’s Cut in 2011, she was granted permission. Of course, there have been songs where other musicians and producers like Andrew Powell have added something. Kate Bush is very generous when it comes to allowing musicians to add their own ideas to the songs. That happened more later in her career. So can we say that there are quite a few other songs that should have been co-writes? I don’t think so, as we can say this of any musician. It is not the case of someone like Paul Simon, whose 1986 album, Graceland, had a couple of songs where songwriting credits were not given. With Kate Bush, perhaps some compositional elements were pitched by other musicians and there was this collaboration. Ten albums into her career, and there is only one occasion of a co-write, Can any other artist claim this?!

People might give some obvious names, though I have checked, and none of them have this same golden run. Not Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Tori Amos, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen or any other name that would sound obvious. Prince among them. Of course, there are bands that have written all of their own songs, though these have songwriting partnerships, rather than one songwriter. I was searching for a long time to see if there was any artist whose first/only ten albums was entirely written by them. I think this is important, as many polls do not feature Kate Bush as the greatest songwriter ever. And she really is. Her songs and albums are so varied. Filled with incredible lyrics and layers, why is she omitted? Alos, in terms of the purity of her songs, in the sense that she writes the tracks and no one else is involved, there are none who have that same ten-album run. Bush has also produced most of her own albums and she is an accomplished musician. Something that very few other artists can claim. I do think that this ten-album feat is an impressive one that should and cannot be overlooked. I am quite surprised that a lot of the most acclaimed and successful songwriters ever have not penned all of their own songs. Or everything from their first ten albums. It is very rare today. Most of the biggest artists of today have co-writers. I might be forgetting a couple of names, though I have searched through dozens of artists and checked their credits (according to Wikipedia). It is no minor achievement to have had a career where you have released ten studio albums and pretty much written everything  115 album tracks and one co-write. That is some brilliant run!

Keen Kate Bush fans will note that there are some songs where others have helped arrange them, though they have not been credited as co-writers. They definitely helped on the tracks, though a smaller element. Kate Bush composed and wrote most of it. Night of the Swallow pipes and strings arrangements by Bill Whelan. Strings arrangements on Houdini by Dave Lawson and Andrew Powell. Those tracks appeared on The Dreaming. Can we say that these are genuine co-writes? I am not too sure. I am still saying that Kate Bush has had one co-write, though there are two other songs where there was some input from others. Some might ask what the big deal  is as to whether songwriters write their own stuff and why Kate Bush is so special. As I said, she is not often ranked alongside the best songwriters ever. In terms of any metric apart from sales, Bush really does need to be in the conversation. The fact that Kate Bush has produced solo seven of her ten studio albums and the compositions across those album have been so broad. Each album is extraordinary and district. It is important when we think about songwriting, how much of the artist is in the songs. Co-writing can be good, though it is an artist using someone else’s words and voice. For Kate Bush, Flower of the Mountain stands as the only song with a credited co-write. If we think of Night of the Swallow and Houdini as having some arrangement assistance. Arrangement takes something Kate Bush had in her head and translates it to the musicians. I feel that Bush had the music in her head and, like with Houdini, she needed some assistance to get that onto paper and make sense. So I am not counting that as co-writing. If we accept that, I don’t think there are any other major artists whose first ten studio albums has as much of the artist in there as Kate Bush.

Given Kate Bush’s influence now, I feel we do need to revise those polls and pieces. The same names keep popping up. What defines a great songwriter. This website says “Individuality: to be distinct and not generic Emotiveness: to conjure feelings in listeners”. A Reddit thread asked what makes a great songwriter, and this was one of the responses: “Good songwriters prioritize making a song emotional, moving, entertaining, etc. using a variety of musical elements, topics, characters, and points of view. They don't worry about their own struggles or navel-gazing (as much), and if they have something personal to say, they make damn sure that it's entertaining and interesting in a way that isn't average/boring everyday language”. Relatability is key, but can we associate Kate Bush as being relatable? She uses a lot of characters and there is some fantasy in there. This feature states that one of the elements of effective and brilliant songwriter is when an artist can “craft stories that feel real, vulnerable, and commonplace”. I think Kate Bush ticks a lot of these boxes. She has broken records and had this run of albums that have made it into the U.K. top ten. Her production is phenomenal, and the diversity and depth of her songwriter is up there with anyone. I feel she is more varied than a lot of the so-called ‘best’. That question comes back to mind regarding the ten-album run and the lack of other names credited as songwriters. That is so important. Today, most of the biggest artists in the Pop mainstream write with other people. Kate Bush is not done yet. When she releases her eleventh studio album, it is highly unlikely that there will be any co-writes. Or something like Flower of the Mountain, where Bush uses classic text. When it comes to Kate Bush, I don’t think that there is anyone that can match her…

INCREDIBLE songwriting feat.

FEATURE: I Knew You Were Trouble! The Ongoing Success and Brilliance of a Wonderful, Inclusive Club

FEATURE:

 

 

I Knew You Were Trouble!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kathryn Jezer-Morton will speak for The Trouble Club on Tuesday, 18th August at Century Club, London

 

The Ongoing Success and Brilliance of a Wonderful, Inclusive Club

__________

THERE is not a lot…

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

in this life that is inexpensive and reliably wonderful all of the time. Such is the nature of things, it is hard to find that sort of value, stability and warmth. I think that is where the likes of The Trouble Club  come in. I think clubs and members clubs might still be seen as elitist or something that is quite stuffy. That is the case with all-male clubs whose rules have been about exclusivity, largely at the expense of women. Some of those have, after so many years, changed, yet there are some that remain very much stuck in the past. I tend to find that there are members clubs that are very open and have a very eclectic calendar. Though few, if any, can boast the excellence of The Trouble Club. I am going to mention a couple of the upcoming events. However, this feature is very much about highlighting the inclusivity of The Trouble Club. There have been occasions where I have been the only man in the room. A couple of poetry events. The most recent being Emma-Louise Boynton. She was promoting her new book, Pleasure. That was on 28th May at the fabulous The Ministry. I suspected there would be few male faces there – the previous time she spoke for The Trouble Club, I was one of three men in the room (AllBright) -, but it was not alienating or weird being the only man there… at least I think I was; I tried not to look around too much and do a gender breakdown! It brings to mind a funny question that was asked of Caitlin Moran and Bryony Gordon when they recently appeared for The Trouble Club. A man – Moran exclaimed in mock horror/surprise that there was a man in the room (there were a few of us, mind) - who put his hand up brilliantly felt he was like that guy who worked for Southampton F.C. and was caught up in this espionage case (the club were conducting espionage against Middlesbrough and were charged with conducting espionage prior to regular season matches against Oxford United in December 2025 and against promotion rivals Ipswich Town in April 2026). Like this man spying and taking all he had learned, covertly, back to other men! In actuality, I do think that these are spaces where men needn’t feel awkward or outsiders, even when the subject matter deals with female pleasure and subjects which, traditionally, they feel are not for them, or directly only at women.

IN THIS PHOTO: Emma-Louise Boynton/PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Richardson for The Times Magazine

One of the bonuses of getting to hear people like Emma-Louise Boynton, Caitlin Moran, Bryony Gordon and so many others is multi-fold. You get to hear these passionate, incredible intelligent and fascinating women discussing books, a variety of subjects and their lives in such a compelling manner. Also, I always learn something. Rather than avoid events I think are more female-focused or there will be few/no men in attendance, I know that I am going to learn invaluable things. Whether about myself, women or anything else. I think the membership of The Trouble Club is about 98% women, though they are so welcoming of any men who want to join! That is perhaps the major theme of this feature: any men reading who is not a member, then there is no reason not to jump on board. Not only are the interviews incredible – most conducted by its brilliant CEO/owner Ellie Newton, but some by the brilliant Zea Stuttaford -, but there are social events and so much to get involved with. The Trouble Club have a summer picnic/get-together coming, and there are going to be some amazing events coming up. In the next couple of weeks alone Kathryn Jezer-Morton, and Ola Labib are guest speakers. A couple of recent standout events have seen the amazing Ashley James, and Zahra Joya speak There is a great network breakfast on 25th August, and that summer picnic on 5th September. The Trouble Club is also great value for money. It does sound like I am in their marketing team or doing a sales pitch, though I know a lot of members clubs charge more for membership and their events can be more expensive. And they stick with one or two locations, whereas The Trouble Club hosts incredible women across multiple locations throughout London. They also do events in Manchester too. It is this growing community that I love being part of. I always hate missing events because, no matter how crappy my working week is – and it is getting worse by the week -, I always look forward to being at a Trouble Club event! The warmth of everyone around you. I always end up meeting new faces. The sheer number of new members is also heartening. Those experiencing Trouble Club for the first time! Ellie Newton, earlier in the year, was also listed as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30. The most influential people under the age of thirty. That is no mean feat! She has put so much time and energy into building up The Trouble Club and making it one of the most rewarding, well-attended and diverse members clubs in London. And it is that inclusivity that makes it so wonderful. For those who have not become a member or have been once and are not sure if they will book other events, I would strongly urge them to come. And to men who feel the events are not for them. That is very much not the case! All gender catered for and embraced. Once you do join, I guarantee that you will find…

SO much to look forward to.

FEATURE: More Than Rumours… Is Kate Bush the Most Interesting Artist Ever?

FEATURE:

 

 

More Than Rumours…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart 

 

Is Kate Bush the Most Interesting Artist Ever?

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THAT may seem…

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

an impossible question to define let alone answer, as ‘interesting’, in the context of an artist, can be multi-layered and subjective. I am writing a series of features that probes these things. I am bringing in an article that Classical Music ran that provides some rare facts about Kate Bush. Things that people might not know. I knew about most of them, though there is one relating to John Lydon that passed me by! Put this together with everything I am every Kate Bush fan knows and you have someone who is more than quirky. That is a word that gets applied to her. Now, aged sixty-eight, Bush might feel she is boring. Doing gardening and pottering around the house, this is still someone that is so far from boring. There will be a new album soon enough. It is very much a question of when rather than if. I would love it if she collaborated with one/both of the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Just because you feel this is something on her wish list and it would be an amazing thing. McCartney for sure is a Kate Bush fan, so I would see no reason he’d refuse. That made me think about the collaborators on her albums. In terms of this ‘interesting’ question, Bush has worked with everyone from Lenny Henry, Prince, Elton John and the Trio Bulgarka. So many different genres, sounds, instruments and cultures fused into her music. As a composer and artist, Kate Bush’s catalogue is as diverse, rich and fascinating as most artists. I would say she is up there with David Bowie in terms of the breadth and depth of her compositions and how each of her albums is different. That may seem quite dry or unspectacular, though think of modern music and how many artists can take such leaps and shifts between albums and produce such spectacular work. Most of the biggest artists of today do not have quite the same sort of eclectic and compelling range as Kate Bush.

Her music is undoubtably interesting and nuanced. Each album is so rich with story and wonder. Whether being personal or using characters, Bush’s pen is one of the most imaginative and precise. She can craft these scenes and worlds that are fantastical. Though, when speaking about love, life, herself or something we can all relate to, it is as powerful and awe-inspiring as any in music. How she writes songs and what she writes about is one of the most interesting facets. I have spoken a lot about the various characters in her music. On her debut, she was writing about incest, taboo subjects, a classic novel where the heroine is a ghost, menstruation and getting high. Not only did few female solo artists in 1978 write their own materiel, fewer than you think do so now. And many play it safe and keep it vaguely commercial. Keep within the realms of the conventional and familiar. None of Kate Bush’s studio albums have suffered from being familiar or boring. Even albums that do not get a lot of love, like Lionheart (1978) and The Red Shoes (1993), the subject matter is far from disappointing. Songs and subjects that no other artist is discussing. You might say that so many artists share these qualities. I would agree in part, though think about the greatest and most successful artists ever. I feel there are very few, with one or two exceptions, that are as interesting. That word is crucial. Not ‘good’ or ‘successful’. You may laud a huge-selling artist and their amazing music. Though are you attracted to it because it is familiar and accomplished? Can you say it is endlessly interesting? That might be a tougher one to defend. Let’s go beyond music itself. If Bush now might feel she is unspectacular and a bit boring, her life has been anything but. Have a read here, where Bush has contributed articles, stories and interviews to the Kate Bush Club. Whether interviewing herself under a weird alias, recounting eventful times during her career or composing these incredible short stories, that all adds layers. You may feel it is eccentric. It is not. Kate Bush is grounded and normal. She is just incredibly interesting. I think the music press jumped on Bush at the start and saw her as this spoiled, weird or out of step artist. She was ridiculed and mocked. Though, aside from them being misogynists and titanic morons, they were seeing this very young and accomplished woman writing songs that were so separate from the New Wave and Punk sound. The themes she explored and the way she did it was so arresting and unconventional. To the smart-minded and trained ear, interesting; to the boorish and sexist critic, odd and stupid.

There are books about Kate Bush where we get anecdotal evidence that she is this truly exceptional human. To be interesting, I don’t think you have to be controversial or wild. It can be how you conduct and manage artists in the studio and how you add new and unexpected elements to your music. Bush used the studio in extraordinary ways and she utilised technology such as the Fairlight CMI to spellbinding effect. Few artists at the time (the early to mid-1980s) were using it. Though she could utilise technology of the day but mix that together with instruments from around the world to create this heady and original blend. Thoroughly interesting music that reveals layers to this day. In interview, she was always professional and patient. Though, even when asked mundane and routine questions about her work and private life, she would give such thoughtful answers. Incredible intelligent, you’d get all of these unexpected insights and wonderful turns of phrase. Or Bush would turn a boring question into something interesting. I think the cherry on the top is all of these facts and slightly unusual elements that really seals the deal. I am going to drop in a few from Classical Music before coming to other features that combines some facts. Consider the biggest artists today and how many of them can compete with what is in this article from Classical Music? This is just the tip of the iceberg, but let’s drop some in:

“James Bond producers asked her to sing the theme to Moonraker

The theme tune for Moonraker, the 11th film in the James Bond franchise, had a bumpy ride to the big screen. Firstly, Frank Sinatra was considered to sing it, before crooner Johnny Mathis signed up.

When Mathis became unhappy with the song, producers turned to Kate Bush – the hottest property in pop after the release of ‘Wuthering Heights’. But her record label said she was too busy to do the honours. Bond veteran Shirley Bassey eventually recorded it and the song became a Bond classic.

Fleetwood Mac asked her to support them on their 'Rumours' tour

From left, Fleetwood Mac's John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood, 1977 - Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

In 1978, Fleetwood Mac were the biggest act in the world, thanks to the runaway success of their 11th album, Rumours. They approached Bush and asked her to support them on their massive US tour in support of the album, but Kate declined, preferring to concentrate on developing her own shows.

In a 2011 interview with BBC Radio 2, Stevie Nicks picked the Hounds Of Love single ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’ as one of her own favourite songs, saying, "That song I really loved because, what a great writer she is, and 'Running Up That Hill' was one of those songs that, when I first heard it, I went, 'Oh I wanna record that song someday.'"

She once told her fans she'd seen a UFO in Scotland

Writing in the Christmas 1981 issue of the Kate Bush Club magazine, Kate described a recent trip to Loch Ness, where she believed she’d seen a UFO. "I noticed three lights in the sky, descending in a diagonal line. Then they formed a horizontal line and remained static just below a layer of cloud.

"There were huge circular orange lights; and we set off in the car in hot pursuit. We thought maybe they were some kind of stadium lights, but they were too near to the clouds; and we had never seen aircraft with such big lights, nor that colour."

She embarrassed herself in front of the Queen... and Prince Charles

In 2005, Bush told her son Bertie – who was roughly seven at the time – that she’d been invited to a music industry reception at Buckingham Palace and Queen Elizabeth II would be in attendance. When Bertie expressed disbelief, she decided she’d bring him back him proof of the evening.

"I made a complete arsehole of myself," Bush told Tom Doyle of MOJO later that year. "I’m ashamed to say that when I told Bertie that I was going to meet the Queen, he said, 'Mummy, no, you're not, you’ve got it wrong' and I said, 'But I am!' So rather stupidly I thought I’d get her to sign my programme. She was very sweet…

"The thing is I would do anything for Bertie and making an arsehole of myself in front of a whole roomful of people and the Queen, I mean...  I don’t have a very good track record with royalty. My dress fell off in front of Prince Charles at the Prince’s Trust, so I'm just living up to my reputation”.

Like to admit it or not, there are few that can match these kind of things! I didn’t even include how Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) wrote her a song about parrots, and how her first performance was at a furniture design school with her brother. Know it or not, here are a few more facts that show that, in addition to being hugely interesting, she is also pioneering:

“H IS FOR HEADSET

Believe it or not, microphone headsets, worn by everyone from Madonna to Britney Spears in order to free their hands during live shows, didn’t exist before Kate Bush’s Tour Of Life. Because of the aforementioned dedication to dancing, Bush was unhappy with lugging around a handheld microphone as she cascaded theatrically across the stage. And so her stage sound engineer, Martin Fisher, rigged a wireless headset out of a coat hanger. It was the very first of its kind.

N IS FOR NUMBER ONE

With her breakout single, “Wuthering Heights”, Bush became the first female artist to reach the top spot in the UK charts with a self-penned song. She also reached number one with her 1985 album, Hounds Of Love, a few months after the NME prematurely featured her in a “Where Are They Now?” article.  

U IS FOR UNINHIBITED

When Bush stepped out of her dressing room for a “Wuthering Heights” promotional photoshoot wearing a see-through pink leotard, neither she nor the photographer, Gered Mankowitz, foresaw how iconic, and controversial, the resulting photos would become. When they appeared on posters on London buses, many people (her brothers included) were shocked. “It didn’t occur to me at that time that would be a problem,” Mankowitz told The Big Issue. “I know that it was pretty edgy for the late 70s but it wasn’t sort of discussed or thought about a great deal. That was how she looked and I wasn’t going to say to her, ‘I think you should cover up’. She certainly knew what she was doing, that’s how she came out of the dressing room, looking like that, and there was no attempt by anybody to make her look like that”.

There is a lot more to Kate Bush then we give her credit for. If you told these stories and relayed these words to an ordinary person, you would say that they were one of the most interesting people you knew. With artists, the standard is higher, because we expect a certain degree of excess, wonder and, at times, crazy! In 2022, a selection of artists were asked by The Guardian to say why they love Kate Bush. Spaks’ Russell Mael perhaps said it best and most precisely:

“The first 10 things on my list of 2,178 things I love about Kate Bush:

Literate.

Sophisticated.

Not fitting in.

Musically challenging, yet not proclaiming that you are musically challenging.

Not being part of a movement. Creating your own movement.

Not part of a past musical model.

Establishing your own world. Staying true to that world.

Not writing material that sounds like you are desperate for a hit. But having hits nonetheless.

Establishing your own voice. Literally and figuratively.

Having integrity. At any cost”.

 If you read and listened to her interviews through the years, that very much starts you off. In terms of what she says, she is so compelling and interesting. Her videos and what is created with them. What she addresses through her songs and how that was radically when first released and still sounds like it now. All of these quirky and slightly unusual facts add yet more weight to the case. How she gained a whole new wave of popularity with Stranger Things in 2022 and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). How her music is used on TikTok videos and how many people across multiple fields of the arts and beyond have their own reasons for admiring Kate Bush. The records she has broken and some of the bold choices she has made. You can add other words besides ‘interesting’. Though my point is that she is up their with the most inspiring and interesting artists ever. And yet, I still think that people do not dig deeply enough. A lot of those in the media portray her the same way and do not know much. I hope my articles help in that regard, but I would put her above any modern artist in terms of how interesting she is. That word might not even be the correct one. If a lot of people do not explore her work too much, it is not jumping to conclusions to feel like they find her uninteresting or one-dimensional. If pretty much everyone who hears her music now knew the full extend of her wonderful and brilliant world, they would be engrossed. I find Bush more interesting and fascinating than any contemporary artist who has legions of followers – many of whom cite Kate Bush as an influence. It is a belief that I will hold…

TO my dying day.

FEATURE: The Wow Factor! Why Kate Bush’s Music, Especially Her Earliest Work, Provokes Filmic Ambitions

FEATURE:

 

 

The Wow Factor!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at The Plaza Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark on 26th April 1979 during The Tour of Life/PHOTO CREDIT: Jorgen Angel/Redferns

 

Why Kate Bush’s Music, Especially Her Earliest Work, Provokes Filmic Ambitions

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IN another feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at EMI’s offices in Manchester Square, London, 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Rasic/Getty Images

I have revisited the idea of bringing Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave (from 1985’s Hounds of Love) to the big screen. That is something that has not yet happened but would be incredible. There has not really been a big cinematic outing for Kate Bush’s work. A biopic is never going to happen, and it is not something fans would want to see necessarily. Even though there are actresses who could play Kate Bush, I don’t think she would allow it. Perhaps a little weird. Also, I think the most successful and memorable biopics balance drama with joy. A certain sense of controversy or something that provides edge. Kate Bush’s career perhaps lacking in necessary turbulence that would spark critics and fans. However, the music itself does naturally lend itself to the screen. Masny might feel her mid-career work would be best on the screen. In terms of the atmospheric and cinematic qualities. Kate Bush songs have appeared in films. From This Woman’s Work to Cloudbusting, her work has scored some incredible moments. Though I tend to find the same songs are repeated, and rarely do filmmakers use songs from her first few albums. I am not sure whether anything from The Kick Inside (1978) and Lionheart (1978) has found its way to the big screen. I am minded to bring up this subject because of a new film, Nimrods, that, as the title suggests, is influenced by Green Day and their early work. One of their best albums, Nimrod, was released in 1997. Here is a review from The Guardian:

“Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman and Ryan Foust star as 17-year-olds Tommy, Fred and Chad – two jokers and a nerd – who make music together as Analog Dogs in Tommy’s garage. When they are pranked into thinking their ageing idols have heard their demo cassette and want Analog Dogs to open for Green Day at the Hollywood Palladium on New Year’s Eve, the boys have mere days in which to beg, steal or borrow a way of getting there. Along the way, they encounter assorted oddballs and supportive adults, enter a battle of the bands contest, meet a cute girl who is also in a band, and learn a bit about the true meaning and importance of friendship.

The soundtrack – about 98% of which is by Green Day – is a bit one-note, but it’s got a lot of bounce. Likewise, the script is unsophisticated but enjoyably performed. The adult cast is spotted with comedy pros such as Fred Armisen and Bobby Lee, and there is a perfectly pitched turn as Tommy’s mom by Jenna Fischer from the US Office (and who is writer-director Lee Kirk’s wife). But it’s the teens who have to carry the weight of this film, and they are fun to hang out with for a couple of hours”.

A lot of things have to go via Kate Bush, so it is wholly possible a film has been pitched that includes Kate Bush’s music. She does allow filmmakers to use songs of hers in film and T.V., so I am not sure why something more extensive would be rejected. It all comes down to the tone and feel of the film. Stranger Things got a green light when they used Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) because Bush watched the show and she liked where the song appeared. There are golden songs from her first two or three albums that could form part of a film. Like Nimrods, there would be a story build around an artist’s music. I agree that Hounds of Love or The Sensual World, or even 2005’s Aerial, would compel something grand in a film. Something a little softer or less epic if w are taking music from The Kick Inside, Lionheart or Never for Ever. Though think about songs like Wuthering Heights ad Wow. I am not sure if either have ever been used in a film. There are multiple possibilities regarding stories and time periods  It is rare for artists’ work to form a soundtrack and have a film built around them. Green Day for Nimrods, however loosely. Even Madonna has not really had this treatment. It must be quite expensive getting clearance from a band or artist. How many thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars would it cost to be granted permission to dip into their catalogues? This all builds around legacy and Kate Bush’s modern influence, which is huge. If we did have a Kate Bush-themed film or one that uses her music, would it be set in the modern day or the 1980s? I feel a modern-day film would be best. A love story at its heart, or a group of friends bonded by Kate Bush.

One of the biggest issues I have, and something I have mentioned in another feature, is that the streaming figures for Kate Bush’s music is off. One song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has more streams alone than pretty much the rest of her back catalogue combined. Even if the obvious standouts from her first few albums – Wuthering Heights, The Man with the Child in His Eyes, Wow, Babooshka, Army Dreamers and Breathing, - are doing pretty well, they are dwarfed by the titanic and ongoing success of a song whose inclusion in a T.V. show a few years back saw its numbers explode. Since then, the odd occasion her music has been used in T.V. and film, though no song has had the same sort of success. A film would not be chance to repeat that thing we saw in 2022 with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). I see a U.S.-set film coming out. Based in New York. An Indie film but one with some incredible moments (I am thinking of interesting camera work and the sort of direction we would get from Michel Gondry) could perfectly fly if some of Kate Bush’s early work was on the soundtrack. Or the title of one of her songs could compel a story. In terms of her impact on various communities, Kate Bush is beloved and seen as an idol by the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. Making this part of the film. There are, as I saw, many possibilities. People would say that Bush has been approached by filmmakers wanting to do this and she has rejected it. Again, unless you are Kate Bush or personally know her, you cannot say this for sure, as it is not anything that has appeared in interviews. We have to assume, more likely, that she is open to the idea but the right script and story has not passed by her desk. In terms of a film coming along where Kate Bush’s music is at the core, I don’t think it is impossible that it will..

HAPPEN one day.

FEATURE: You See, I’m All Grown Up Now: The Beauty and Cinema of Kate Bush’s The Fog, and How It Ties to The Ninth Wave

FEATURE:

 

 

You See, I’m All Grown Up Now

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

 

The Beauty and Cinema of Kate Bush’s The Fog, and How It Ties to The Ninth Wave

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A song that…

appeared on Kate Bush’s sixth studio album, The Sensual World, The Fog is one of her most underrated. It is so cinematic. I have been playing this song more, because every time I listen, it creates these reactions. Arguably her most cinematic song ever, I did want to spend time with The Fog. I am picking up on a post that was shared on Twitter. How The Fog could have been included on Hounds of Love. In terms of the themes of the song and its connection to water. It is a track that briefly features Kate Bush’s father, Dr. Robert Bush. In first verse, he says these words: “Just put your feet down child/'Cause you're all grown up now”. The Ninth Wave is all about Kate Bush/the protagonist going overboard and being in the water. That quest for her to stay alive until she is rescued. You feel that The Fog could have slotted in the suite. Perhaps somewhere near the end, the track would have worked well. I don’t think Kate Bush was asked whether The Fog was conceived for The Ninth Wave but did not fit. There are the odd song or two I feel might have been considered for other albums. Moments of Pleasure is on 1993’s The Red Shoes, yet it sounds like a song that could have been on The Sensual World. Though, it is about people who have passed and Bush is remembering them, so that passing of time and the few extra years meant that she could feature the people that are in the lyrics. The Fog is an interesting case. Considering what Kate Bush said about The Fog, you do wonder how come this did not appear on The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love:

“Again, it’s quite a complex song, where it’s very watery. It’s meant to be the idea of a big expanse of water, and being in a relationship now and flashing back to being a child being taught how to swim, and using these two situations as the idea of learning to let go. When I was a child, my father used to take me out into the water, and he’d hold me by my hands and then let go and say “OK, now come on, you swim to me.” As he’d say this, he’d be walking backwards so the gap would be getting bigger and bigger, and then I’d go [Splutters]. I thought that was such an interesting situation where you’re scared because you think you’re going to drown, but you know you won’t because your father won’t let you drown, and the same for him, he’s kind of letting go, he’s letting the child be alone in this situation. Everyone’s learning and hopefully growing and the idea that the relationship is to be in this again, back there swimming and being taught to swim, but not by your father but by your partner, and the idea that it’s OK because you are grown up now so you don’t have to be frightened, because all you have to do is put your feet down and the bottom’s there, the water isn’t so deep that you’ll drown. You put your feet down, you can stand up and it’s only waist height. Look! What’s the problem, what are you worried about?

Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989

That started at the Fairlight. We got these big chords of strings, and put this line over the top, and then I got this idea of these words – slipping into the fog. I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to sort of really visualize that in a piece of music, with all these strings coming in that would actually be the fog. So I wrote a bit of music that went on the front of what I’d done, and extended it backwards with this bit on the front that was very simple and straightforward, but then went into the big orchestral bit, to get the sense of fog coming in.
Then we put a drummer on, and Nigel Kennedy, the violinist, came in and replaced the Fairlight violin, which changed the nature of it. He’s great to work with – such a great musician. The times we work together we sort of write together. I’ll say something like, “what about doing something a bit like Vaughan Williams?”, and he’ll know the whole repertoire, and he’ll pick something, and maybe I’ll change something. By doing that we came up with this different musical section that hadn’t been on the Fairlight.
So when I got all this down it seemed to make sense story-wise. This new section became like a flashback area. And then I got the lyrics together about slipping into the fog, and relationships, trying to let go of people.
It sounded great with the Fairlight holding it together, but it just didn’t have the sense of dimension I wanted. So we got hold of Michael Kamen, who orchestrated some of the last album, and we said we wanted this bit here with waves and flashbacks. He’s really into this because he’s always writing music for films, and he loves the idea of visual imagery. So we put his orchestra in on top of the Fairlight.
Again a very complicated process, and he was actually the last thing to go on. I don’t know how anything comes out as one song, because sometimes it’s such a bizarre process. It does seem to work together somehow.

Tony Horkins, ‘What Katie Did Next’. International Musician, December 1989”.

I always associate The Fairlight CMI with The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds of Love (1985). However, it did play a part in songs like The Fog. The Sensual World is an album that does get some love, though people do not talk about it enough. The Fog is one of the best songs Kate Bush ever recorded. That idea of water and fear of drowning but having a parent there that she could swim to. It does seem very logical that this would have been in the mind for Hounds of Love and The Ninth Wave. I listen to The Fog and it has the power and potency to easily fit in the suite. This song was never performed live. It would have been great to see this come to life on the stage. Bush had a fascination with water through her career and many of her songs are about it. Moments of Pleasure from The Red Shoes mentions her mother, Hannah. She featured in the video for The Dreaming’s Suspended in Gaffa. Moments of Pleasure is about loss and remembrance. A slightly sadder inclusion of her mother. Hannah Bush died in 1992, and she was ill sometime before that. It is great that we get to hear Robert Bush on The Fog. He was instrumental when it comes to encouraging his daughter’s music. He was a talented pianist and music fan. He would often sit and listen to Kate Bush play songs and give feedback. The Fog is this gorgeous and sweeping song that is underrated. Although it has been streamed over three million times on Spotify, it seems quite low. I have never heard it played on the radio. It is such a shame, as this is one of Bush’s very best songs. That idea of having to let go. That we all grow up and that is scary. The parent-child relationship explored on The Fog. I guess it works well on The Sensual World alongside This Woman’s Work. What is striking is how Bush talks about being picked up. Like a radio station or a face in the crowd, she will pick it up. Or pick this person out, lest they slip into the fog. I always think that The Fog is a metaphor for ageing or growing from a child to an adult. When The Sensual World was released, Bush was barely in her thirties. She had spent so much of her life around her family. A glorious Kate Bush track that I feel easily could have fitted on Hounds of Love, The Fog is…

A cinematic masterpiece.

FEATURE: With a Kiss, I'd Pass the Key: Are There Any Kate Bush Artefacts in the Vaults?

FEATURE:

 

 

With a Kiss, I'd Pass the Key

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a parking garage with her crocodile (not real) friend 1978/1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye

 

Are There Any Kate Bush Artefacts in the Vaults?

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THIS feature is inspired…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles at the press launch for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, held at Brian Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, London on 19th May, 1967/PHOTO CREDIT: John Downing/Getty Images 

by me currently (10th/11th August) being in Liverpool. Whilst here, I visited The Liverpool Beatles Museum. There is so much fascinating things in there. From a pair of glasses worn by John Lennon to chairs, coffee machines, programmes, clothing and such worn and used by The Beatles. The museum is split into time periods so, on the first floor, there are artefacts and archives from before they were The Beatles. Included is the programme from The Woolton Village on 6th July, 1957. The day Paul McCartney and John Lennon met. Nearly seventy years ago, this historic moment started everything. I was in awe of all of the different items in there. Of course, Liverpool has this proud love of The Beatles. There is a whole Cavern Quarter where there are themed bars, The Cavern Club and The Liverpool Beatles Museum. It got me thinking about Kate Bush and something I have raised before. We know there are a lot of photographs and there will be outtakes and rarities that the public have not seen. Of course, we will never see a Kate Bush museum or anything like that. I have suggested an exhibition, similar to the one David Bowie has in London. That is actually the David Bowie Centre. Kate Bush would not want something as exposing. She is a current artist and her career is not over, so anything like this would seem like she is retired or dead. She is a very private person and I know there are bits on auction sites.

A while ago, there were some sketches and designs around 1979’s The Tour of Life. The ultimate artefact, and the one item related to Kate Bush I would love to own, is the handwritten lyrics to The Man with the Child in His Eyes. A fan bought them at an auction but, in my view, this is something that should be in a collection. Something the public can see. Bush may feel uneasy if she was on display like this. Rather than anything too invasive or grand, it got me thinking where all these items are that Kate Bush wrote, touched or had in his possession. Think about The Tour of Life and all those outfits. Props and original memorabilia. 2014’s residency, Before the Dawn, has plenty of costumes and cool bits. These must be somewhere, and I find it hard to believe they have been destroyed or given away. You feel that they are locked away somewhere. Beyond that, there are microphones, pianos and pieces of technology Kate Bush has used. What about the Fairlight CMI that featured on albums like The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds of Love (1985). That entire home-built studio that was erected for Hounds of Love. Has everything about it been disposed of? Stuff from East Wickham Farm such as pianos and organs too? All her videos and these intriguing items that form her career. We talk about her music and things like that, but there has not really been much conversation around rare items and artefacts that would be amazing to see. I can appreciate Kate Bush does not want everything laid out. A lot of these things would have been disposed or are owned by someone else. Lots of the clothing. If she will not open the vaults and give us demos and unheard takes, how about other things?

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional imnage for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow

There is definite public appetite and curiosity. I was waking around The Liverpool Beatles Museum and connecting all these items to moments in their career. It broke down this globe-straddling band to very small things. How the seemingly mundane had this whole new life. Everything we know about Kate Bush is thorough her music, interviews and live performances. That extensive wardrobe alone is one of the most varied and iconic in all of music. Just thinking about the white and red dresses from the Wuthering Heights videos. I do wonder what became of them. Even clothing she wore for the promotional shots used for 50 Words for Snow. You’d think they were taken away, as Kate Bush does not have them stored in the attic or in her wardrobe! The key that we see on Kate Bush’s tongue on the cover of The Dreaming. I’d hate to think that was tossed away. There has to be little items like this being kept somewhere. I think we could get a richer and more tangible connection to music and career if some of these artefacts and rarities were shown. Kate Bush Collectables is an incredible resource where we get some of these rarer items. My favourite is this entry ticket for The Tour of Life gig at the London Palladium on 17th April, 1979. We get some cool memorabilia and there is some neat stuff there. Though there is so much more that is going to be somewhere in the world but has not been seen by the public. I would love to see these iconic outfits and know what happened to them. Maybe one day there will be some opening of the archives or some of this stuff will come to light, though I find it interesting that, aside from things fans have and bits auctioned, there has been no discussion or word on where Kate Bush’s outfits and artefacts are. I think knowing more about these things tells us…

THE whole story.

FEATURE: And for This Gift, I Feel Blessed: Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

And for This Gift, I Feel Blessed

  

Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit at Thirty-Five

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THIS is arguably…

IN THIS PHOTO: Nirvana (L-R: Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl) photographed in May 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Lavine

one of the greatest songs in music history. Also, one of those tracks that made a huge impact. The lead single from their second studio album, Nevermind, Smells Like Teen Spirit came out on 10th September, 1991. Few bands who had followed the U.S. trio reached this peak. 1989’s Bleach is a good album, but the leap from that to Nevermind was one of the biggest seen by any act. Smells Like Teen Spirit is an anthem that remains hugely played, loved and dissected. As it turns thirty-five soon, I wanted to spend time with it. There is so much written around the single, and I cannot realistically include everything. There are some select features that I do want to bring in, though. I will come to a feature that discusses the iconic video. Almost as beloved and discussed as the song. I do love the story behind Smells Like Teen Spirit. In their 2025 feature, uDiscover Music give us background regarding the title and the lyrics. A timeless anthem. If it was about the banality and artificial nature of the world around Kurt Cobain in 1991, these words are relevant now. Perhaps with a different meaning, one can still connect with the anger that is delivered. It relates to the modern age:

“The story of Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is one full of contradictions. Indeed, its very inception attested to the fervent dualities that tormented its author. In early 1991, as Nirvana prepared to work on their second album, Nevermind, guitarist and singer Kurt Cobain composed the song’s recurring riff, recognizing immediately its infectious qualities as befitting his intentions for this new batch of material.

Displeased with the oppressive, sludgy sound that had dominated their 1989 debut, Bleach, Kurt wanted to ensure that its follow-up would further expose the expressive moments that their debut harbored, allowing for songs with a stronger, more unabashed sense of melody than before. As well as being a champion of the uncompromising punk rock of Wipers and the primal power of Swans, Kurt was also a Beatles obsessive, and always sought to contrast his work’s prevailing darkness with an appreciable edge.

“[Kurt] had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation, but also this vulnerable pop sensibility,” said producer Butch Vig, who’d be drafted in for this album’s sessions.

“All in all,” Kurt himself would later confess, “I think we sound like The Knack and The Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath.”

His design for this particular song was far more ambitious than any nihilistic punk diatribe: he wanted to write “the ultimate pop song.” As he composed it, his mind was on the use of dynamics as employed by another influence, the Pixies, in particular their tendency of “being soft and quiet [in the verse] and then loud and hard [in the chorus],” Kurt would concede. “I connected with that band so heavily.”

Introducing it to his bandmates at rehearsal, it was deemed “ridiculous” by bassist Krist Novoselic, who despaired at being made to continuously play this “Louie Louie” rip-off for over an hour. Eventually, at Novoselic’s suggestion, the song’s pace was reduced, which allowed new drummer Dave Grohl (recently hired to replace Chad Channing) to throw in some “disco flams” inspired by funk drummer Tony Thompson. (This process is why it’s the only song on Nevermind in which all three band members are credited as writers.)

It was then crudely recorded onto cassette, which was sent to Butch Vig to notify him of this latest addition to the album’s pool. “It was so fucking distorted, I could barely hear anything,” Vig later recalled. “But underneath the fuzz, I could hear ‘Hello, Hello,’ melodies and chord structures. And even though the recording was terrible, I was super excited.”

The song’s lyrics

The lyrics on that recording were largely unfinished, and would only be completed once the band were in Vig’s studio. They’d got to Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, in May 1991, having stuck to their guns with the choice of producer, despite the objections of Geffen Records, the major label they’d just signed to after leaving the Seattle-based indie Sub Pop – a move spearheaded by Cobain that again pitched his ambitions against his punk rock ideologies.

Once complete, the lyrics seemed to corroborate the turmoil Kurt felt in dealing with his conflicting thoughts (“I’m worst at what I do best,” he sings), and while it infuriates him (“I feel stupid and contagious”), he resigns himself to his shortcomings (“Oh well, whatever, never mind”). He also famously included a relatively inscrutable line that has been misheard since its release. (“A mulatto, an albino / A mosquito, my libido.”)

Kurt’s words were seething with anger – aimed at himself and the world around him, which he viewed as banal and artificial. “I just didn’t get them the first time I read them,” Novoselic later said of the lyrics. “And then I started listening to it in the song format, and then I had an idea of what he was talking about. He was talking about kids, commercials, Generation X, the youth bandwagon, and how he’s really disappointed in it, and how he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

After recording just three takes of the song, the second was chosen as the master, then, emboldened by double-tracked guitars and multilayered vocals (which Kurt had to be convinced to do by Butch Vig, who cited John Lennon’s tendency to do the same), became indomitably forceful.

The song’s title

The song title, meanwhile, retains its own paradoxical context. Not mentioned within the lyrics, the phrase dates back to the previous year, when during a night of drinking at Kurt’s apartment in Olympia, Washington, his friend Kathleen Hanna penned the immortal line ‘Kurt smells like Teen Spirit’ on his wall. It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a can of deodorant spotted in the grocery store earlier by Hanna and her Bikini Kill bandmate Tobi Vail, an ex-girlfriend of Kurt’s. “I mean, who names a deodorant Teen Spirit?” Hanna said. “What does teen spirit smell like? Like a locker room? Like pot mixed with sweat? Like the smell when you throw up in your hair at a party?”

Despite its playful teasing, Kurt, who was unaware of the name’s origins, interpreted the graffiti another way. “I took that as a compliment,” he said, choosing it a year later to evoke the rebellious energy that fuelled his ode to the alienated.

“It has revolutionary themes, but I don’t really mean it in a militant [light],” Kurt would later say of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “The generation’s apathy is getting out of hand. [I’m] pleading to the kids, ‘Wake up!’”

Nirvana’s management didn’t identify with the song’s rallying cries, and therefore weren’t invested fully in its release as a single until it was delivered to college radio in August of 1991. Their expectations were soon to be confounded; “Smells Like Teen Spirit” went into heavy rotation, and then things got even bigger.

‘Teen Spirit’ definitely established that quiet/loud dynamic thing that we fell back on a lot of the time. It did become that one song that personifies the band,” Dave Grohl said. “But the video was probably the key element in that song becoming a hit”.

I am not sure if Nirvana knew what impact Smells Like Teen Spirit would have upon its release. In 2014, NME wrote an article that argued Smells Like Teen Spirit began a youth revolution. I was perhaps a little young to feel that in 1991. And I was living in the U.K., so perhaps there was not quite the same explosion here as the U.S. Even so, this incredibly powerful and perfect song holds immense weight with so many generations today. A new generation of young listeners hearing this track and connecting with it:

“Its release in September 1991 sparked a revolution. After all the ugly optimism of President Ronald Reagan’s 1980s America, with the era’s booming free markets and “greed is good” mantra, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ gave a voice to a new class of young people overcome by apathy. Generation X, the newspapers called them, as if apathy was something new. The truth was, that feeling had simply never been given a voice, never made socially acceptable, never been made tangible. Nirvana, with this snarling anthem, their messy misfit thrift store clothes and smirking sense of abandon, wisecracking through interviews and shrugging off the media outlets fawning over them, made it real. If the murky brown colours of the ‘Teen Spirit’ music video, set in a high school auditorium complete with slow motion ironic cheerleaders, reminds you of the filthy brine at the bottom of a blocked drain, that’s because that’s how Cobain saw himself and his generation.

One of the last tracks written for ‘Nevermind’, the trio’s second album, ‘Teen Spirit’ began as a taunt scrawled on Cobain’s bedroom wall apartment by Bikini Kill riot grrl Kathleen Hanna in August 1990. The pair had spent an afternoon drinking, leaving his rented apartment to drunkenly picket a right-wing pregnancy centre, on which Kurt sprayed “GOD IS GAY” in six-feet letters. Returning to Cobain’s apartment, they “got a little more drunk, and I threw up on someone’s leg,” recalls Hanna. “I passed out with a marker pen in my hand and I woke up with one of those hangovers where you think if you go into the next room there could be a dead body in there… Six months later, Kurt called me to say, ‘there’s this thing you wrote on my wall and it’s kind of cool. I want to use it as a lyric in one of my songs.’”

Taking a combustive four-chord riff to rehearsal in early 1991, drummer Dave Grohl instantly loved its energy but had “no idea” it would spawn the monstrous hit it did. A pop song wrapped in punk aggression (“Boston’s ’More Than A Feeling’ with the lyrics changed,” as former NME journalist and close friend to Cobain Everett True called it in 2008), it had a simple verse-chorus structure inspired by the Pixies and was the only cut on ‘Nevermind’ on which all three band members received a songwriting credit. And rightly so – what would ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ be without that drum fill that jolts the song into action like a chainsaw revving into life, or Krist Novoselic’s bass slurs, slinking seductively around Kurt’s verse vocals?

The song’s impact was swift and violent, crashing a demolition ball through pop culture. Danny Goldberg of management firm Gold Mountain admitted that no one at Sub Pop or in Nirvana’s management heard it as having the potential to be a mainstream smash – the hope was to “sell roughly half what Sonic Youth sold on their last album, if we’re lucky “ with ‘Come As You Are’ seen in the Sub Pop camp as the best chance of a crossover hit. However, US college radio latched onto the song and crowds of hundreds were soon gathering outside sold-out Nirvana shows without tickets, in the vain hope of crashing the party”.

Everything about Smells Like Teen Spirit is perfect. Its video is one of the most memorable and enduring of all time. This giant leap Nirvana took and how this was like lightning in a bottle. In 2021, for its thirtieth anniversary, Produce Like a Pro wrote how Smells Like Teen Spirit revolutionised Rock & Roll for a new generation. It was a seismic moment in music history. I still feel it is one of the greatest songs ever. In the sense that nobody else has come up with anything that sounds as important or anthemic. The sheer size and impact of Smells Like Teen Spirit:

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” is an interesting song in many ways. Cobain credits the song’s dynamic changes and sound to an attempt to imitate the Pixies. He was attempting  to write the “ultimate pop song.” With the newly recruited Grohl on drums, the band quickly found their groove writing and rehearsing the song together. They made a rough recording which they sent to Vig, who was continuing as their producer even through the label change.  Vig recalls hearing that first recording of the song, which also was the first time he heard Grohl play with the band on drums

“Kurt introduced it by saying, ‘Hey Butch, we got some new songs for you, and we also got  Dave Grohl – he’s the best drummer in the world!’ “Then they clicked into `Teen Spirit,’ with the scratchy guitar at the start. It was so fucking distorted, I could barely hear anything. …But underneath the fuzz, I could hear ‘Hello, Hello’, melodies and chord structures. And even though the recording was terrible, I was super excited.”

The guitar sound is definitely striking in its distortion and edginess. From the minute the guitar introduces the song, audiences realized this was a band that sounded completely different from the world around them. The way Cobain slides from chord to chord sounds raw and unrehearsed and yet it’s so perfectly executed.Novoselic’s bass provides the song’s underlying pulse – but there’s actually more to it than you might think when you hear it underneath the rest of the mix.  Isolated, you can hear his slides across the bass which definitely create that longing and pull that gives that song that contradictory sense of being pulled back simultaneously as it pushes forward. And of course when Grohl’s drums come in, it’s clear that Nirvana had found that harder sound they were looking for all along.

Perhaps the most striking part of the song, however, is Cobain’s haunting vocals which carry such amazing melodic content amid such a hard, aggressive sound. This is a huge element of what makes this song – and Nirvana – so amazing. The band takes the hard-rocking grunge sound, coming out of the Washington scene, and use it in conjunction with phenomenally captivating melodies. Cobain’s vocal melodies throughout the song are so different and creative against the straightforward chord progression.

The double tracking of the vocals creates both power and mystery in the track. Despite it being a common practice in recording by this time, Cobain was actually hesitant to double track his vocals.  Vig recalled: “I said, ‘Kurt, I want you to double-track the guitars and vocals, to really make this jump out of the speakers.’ He thought it was cheating, especially with his vocals. So I had him do multiple vocal takes, and he sang them so consistently I could run them at the same time as a double track, and it really made the song sound powerful.” It took Vig reminding Kurt that John Lennon had done it in his recordings to truly convince him to try the practice.  But when we hear Cobain’s thick vocal sound on the chorus, it’s clear that Vig was making the right choice.

The song’s music video also captures the angst and teen-inspired focus of the song. The video – directed by Samuel Bayer – features the band performing in a high school gym to anarchy-touting cheerleaders and apathetic teenage listeners.  As the performance continues, the teens erupt into a scene of chaos. The music video was the perfect complement to Nirvana’s take-over of the popular music landscape. It visually declared grunge’s dominance and highlighted the changing aesthetic of the new generation.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the rest of the Nevermind album was recorded at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, CA.  Vig, who had produced their first intended tracks for the second album in their Sub Pop days, continued with them after their contract was bought out by DGC Records.

Despite the raw, unpolished sound that was championed by Grunge bands like Nirvana in the early 90s, the group was actually very well rehearsed and prepared before they even entered the studio. “They were psyched…As I started talking to them, they told me they were ready. They had been rehearsing every day for three months. There was definitely not a slacker ethic in that band. I mean, they wanted to make a great record. And Kurt [Cobain] was very ambitious, you know. When they walked into the studio, they were ready to go.”

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” has remained an iconic track in the history of rock, even inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of “Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” in 1997 – only 6 years after its release! MTV and Rolling Stone listed it number 3 on their list of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs, and NME named in number 2 on their 100 Greatest Singles of All Time.  Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time named “Smells Like Teen Spirit” number 9.

It has been credited with transforming the 90s rock landscape, which had previously been dominated by hair bands and polished pop. It ushered in a new sound for rock and roll. A sound which was both revolutionary, and yet somehow still apathetic – paralleling the band’s signature contradictory sensibilities in their sound and songwriting”.

Perhaps a feeling that the 1980s was defined by excess and music was bland and lacked rawness and authenticity. Smells Like Teen Spirit and bands like Nirvana very much shaking things up. I am ending with a MOJO interview from last year. Even though it was a breakthrough hit for Nirvana, nobody thought it would be a success and do what it did. Thirty-five years later and this colossus of a track gathers pace. It has been streamed on Spotify over three billion times. Its video has surpassed two billion views. It is one of these tracks that will never die or fade in terms of its importance and how meaningful it is. Generations from now, people will be talking about Smells Like Teen Spirit:

“Speaking to MOJO, Dave Grohl recalls the group writing the song in a friend’s shed and their surprise when the track – in part propelled by its video featuring Kurt Cobain performing in a high school gymnasium – catapulted Kurt and Nirvana into rock’s big leagues, bringing them in front of a whole new audience. “We started to notice there were normal people at the gigs,” Grohl tells Paul Brannigan. “That guy looks like a jock, what the fuck is he doing here? And it was like, Oh, maybe that video is attracting some riff-raff…”

Dave Grohl: “We wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit in January or February of 1991. We’d been rehearsing in this shed behind someone’s house in Tacoma, Washington. The guy who owned it played in a covers band, a bar band, and he rented out this rehearsal space with a home-made 8-track studio and we rehearsed there for three or four months and that’s where a lot of Nevermind was written.

We’d always start rehearsals with a jam, an open, free-form jam, and a lot of the songs came from that: songs like Drain You and Teen Spirit. At the time we were experimenting with dynamics, with the quiet verse/loud chorus thing: a lot of it was derivative of Pixies and Sonic Youth, but you just knew when the chorus was supposed to get bigger, and you just knew the point of the song where, just when you think you can’t take it any higher, you do take it one step higher.

I didn’t really think much of Teen Spirit at first. I thought it was just another one of the jams that we were doing: we had so many jams like that, that we’d record onto a boombox tape and then lose the cassette and lose the song forever. But Teen Spirit was one we kept coming back to because the simple guitar lines were so memorable.

We played a show in Seattle [at the OK Hotel, on April 17, 1991] to get gas money to go down to Los Angeles to record the record. We set it up at the last minute, it was an afternoon gig and we played that song for the first time and the audience went nuts. I don’t know if it was the rhythm or the melody but people got caught on it pretty quick.

With Nevermind, I thought In Bloom was going to be the ‘smash hit’ off the record, or Lithium. I thought Smells Like Teen Spirit was just another album cut. We recorded it pretty quickly, and I think it was one of [producer] Butch Vig’s favourites, and it soon became pretty clear that it would be the special song on the record. But, of course, at that point we didn’t think anything was going to happen with the record.

I thought Teen Spirit might get on [MTV’s] 120 Minutes and allow us to tour with Sonic Youth, but no one thought it was a hit single because [that] was just unimaginable. I mean the funniest part was seeing the video on MTV. We were touring America just as the album came out in September of ’91, playing places that held maybe 200-300 people, and we’d go back to the hotel and turn on the TV and see our video and go, That’s so funny, we’re on TV, and we’ve just played [legendary ’DC hardcore venue] the 9:30 Club, or whatever! Then with the video came more people and the clubs got bigger and bigger.

The [proper] tour started in Toronto at the Opera House and it seemed like a fairly typical Nirvana gig: there were maybe 500 or 600 people there. To me, you have to remember that was like making it, going from the 32 people who would usually come to see [Grohl’s pre-Nirvana band] Scream in every city to, like, 500 people, I considered that to be the greatest success of my entire life! But the capacity of a lot of the gigs that we were playing on that tour were low – we played a place in Portland, Maine or maybe Vermont where the legal capacity was 67, a tiny little living room of a place, it was chaotic.

When the video hit MTV it made a big difference. That’s when you’d show up to a 500-capacity gig and there were 500 extra people there. We were still in our little bubble – we were in our van, the three of us, Krist’s wife Shelli, our monitor guy Miles, and Monty Lee Wilkes, our tour manager – and it didn’t seem like anything unusual was happening until we’d get to the gig and it was fucking chaos. And we started to notice there were normal people here, what are they doing here? That guy looks like a jock, what the fuck is he doing here? And it was like, Oh, maybe that video thing is attracting some… riff-raff! The only indication that our world was turning upside down would be when you’d get to the venue. Then it would be, Holy shit, these people are nuts!

Teen Spirit definitely established that quiet/loud dynamic thing that we fell back on a lot of the time. It did become that one song that personifies the band. But the video was probably the key element in that song becoming a hit. People heard the song on the radio and they thought, ‘This is great,’ but when kids saw the video on MTV they thought, ‘This is cool. These guys are kinda ugly and they’re tearing up their fucking high school!’ So I think that had a lot to do with what happened with the song. But do I think it’s the greatest single of all time? Of course not! I don’t even think it’s the greatest Nirvana single. And compared to Revolution by The Beatles or God Only Knows by The Beach Boys?! Give me a break! Smells Like Teen Spirit was a great moment in time… but there’s better”.

On 10th September, we mark thirty-five years of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Whereas so many songs from 1991 and that time have dated and are forgotten, this Nirvana track definitely has not! I first heard it in the 1990s but, every time I play it now, it still does something to me. One of those inspired works of genius. Kurt Cobain gifting the world with this timeless anthem. If Nirvana were seen as underground or a rising trio prior to 10th September, 1991, the almighty Smells Like Teen Spirit…

CHANGED everything.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Clara Amfo

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

 

Clara Amfo

__________

BECAUSE the sensational…

Clara Amfo recently guested on BBC Radio 2 (in for Trevor Nelson), it made me think of her and what an amazing broadcaster she is. I have written about her before but, as it has been a while since I explored her work, I wanted to revisit that. I will come to mentioning a podcast she hosts with the amazing Munroe Bergdorf. One of my favourite broadcasters ever, this is why I am including her in this Modern-Day Queen. This incredible voice, role model and multitalented woman, there are few as amazing as Clara Amfo. I am going to come to some interviews with her from throughout the years. None are too old but, as there are precious few from this year, I am dipping back into the archives a bit. So we get a clearer picture and can see what Amfo has said and been involved wit at various stages in her career. Though she is still a broadcaster, perhaps she does not see that as her primary role at the moment. She is so busy and has quite a few irons in the fire. She is a podcast host. She has her own Barbie doll. That is a major breakthrough, and something that I did not know! Looking at her Instagram, and you can see everything she has been involved in. From speaking with actors on the red carpet at the BAFTAs, to being V&A East Ambassador and discussing East London and her relationship to the green spaces in that part of the capital, I am in awe of Amfo! I did want to swerve things back to the podcasting and music side of things. So I do not divert too far from what I do and what my blog is about. However, I do feel that Amfo should get another permanent broadcasting gig. Might there be room, at BBC Radio 6 Music? I see that more of a home for her rather than BBC Radio 2. Not to be insulting to BBC Radio 2 but, in terms of Amfo’s music tastes and the freedom she would have, I see BBC Radio 6 Music as a better fit. Though she might have different ideas!

Prior to coming to 2026, there is an interview from 2024 and one from 2025 I want to source first. Clara Amfo started her broadcasting career as a marketing intern at Kiss FM. She joined BBC Radio 1Xtra and then BBC Radio 1 in 2015. She has also presented Top of the Pops and coverage of Glastonbury and the BRIT Awards. Since is a presenter on The One Show. I did want to lead off with an in-depth interview with Time Out from 2024. After a decade on the BBC airwaves – little did she know this would not be the end of her presenting on BBC radio – Clara Amfo was embarking on new projects. One of our most respected and talented people has this incredible background. I feel she is doing so much good, and everything she turns her hand to is pure gold:

“Growing up in Kingston upon Thames, Amfo was part of a large family with five siblings (four of them brothers). Both parents from Ghana, her dad was a microbiologist and her mum is a retired hospital cleaner. Her earliest memories of the Big Smoke come from tracking down Ghanaian goodies like Shito – a ‘very hot but essential’ condiment – as well as Maggi cubes, fish and crab with her mum. ‘Pretty much every weekend as kids was spent outside of Kingston, because my mum would drag us around Brixton market and Tooting Broadway market,’ Amfo says. ‘That’s where we would always go and get Ghanaian ingredients. They’ll always be sentimental places for me.’

Growing up, Amfo would listen to the radio in her bedroom and pretend to be a presenter – so it was only natural for her to be drawn to the capital’s thriving music scene. ‘Club culture changed my life,’ she says. ‘I remember the first time I went to fabric, I was just like: ‘‘yeah’’. I belong here.’ Other fond memories come from after-dark spots like Plastic People – the influential Shoreditch club that was an early adopter of dubstep – and 93 Feet East on Brick Lane. ‘All those spaces were so pivotal to me, [in terms of] the music I got into and meeting some of my best friends for life,’ she says. ‘Any chance I could get, I was on the train, on the bus. I just needed to be outside and in it. I've definitely fallen asleep on the night bus a few times – you haven’t lived until you’ve got the night bus.’

Some of Amfo’s best (and haziest) late-night memories come from Benji B’s legendary party Deviation at Shoreditch club The Gramaphone, circa 2010. ‘One of the first times I went to Deviation, honestly, I was like, great: I’ve found my people,’ she says. ‘And YoYo at Notting Hill Arts Club! Oh my God.’ Her eyes light up, suddenly remembering the bass and hip-hop party that ran at the west London club until 2012. ‘Everyone’s got a YoYo story, it was incredible. Artists would go there to just hang – people like Pharell, Mark Ronson. Lots of incredible artists would pass through.’

PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Hand

These days, she takes a quality over quantity approach to nights out. ‘Even though I’m quite a gregarious person, the pandemic made me go a bit more introverted,’ she says. But Amfo is very much still out and about. ‘It seems like this year more than ever, people are like, ‘‘okay, I’m up for it. Inject me into life. I want to have fun’’.’ As for her personal party rituals? ‘I’m definitely more about the afters rather than the pres,’ she says. ‘I’m not really a pregame girly. If the party’s good, I’ll stay out until three or four.’ (Her current favourite party spot is Moko in Tottenham).

Despite her excitement for 2024 festival season – she’s most looking forward to All Points East in London – Amfo acknowledges it’s not been an easy time for the music entertainment industry. ‘Anytime there is any sort of global issue or financial crisis, the irony is never lost on me that the first place cuts are made is in art spaces,’ she says. ‘I find that really jarring. These are the first places we run to when we need respite from all the shady things happening in the world.’

Since the pandemic, more than 3,000 clubs, gig venues and late night spaces have shut down in London. It’s not a happy sight for someone who made their name by going out and discovering new music. ‘Nightclubs and gig spaces are essential,’ says Amfo. ‘The government needs to take that more seriously. Going out is not a frivolous thing. There needs to be more done to support creative people, because they create the culture that elected officials want to show off about.’

In March, Amfo decided it was time to pass on the Future Sounds baton so she could focus on other interests (she’s bursting with them). Last month saw the launch of her new TV show, ITV Studio Sessions: a Top Of The Pops style programme with live performances and interviews with of-the-moment artists like Cat Burns, Becky Hill and Yungblud. ‘I still believe in music telly,’ Amfo grins. ‘I’m as addicted to TikTok as the next person, but I still love watching performance TV.’

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Hand

She’s also been cooking up a new BBC Sounds podcast, set to launch on June 25. ‘Make Me a Mixtape’ will see Amfo go head-to-head with her friend – the actor, presenter and former Rizzle Kicks member Jordan Stephens – to compete to make the perfect playlist under a theme chosen by the listeners. ‘I only like to work with people that I rate professionally and personally,’ Amfo says. ‘And Jordan is incredibly bright. He’s really funny.’

It’s Amfo’s love for storytelling – through clothes, music and radio call-ins – that has helped cement her as one of the best broadcasters around today. Much of her affability comes from her dedication to championing pop (her last played song on Spotify was the relentlessly catchy ‘Espresso’ by Sabrina Carpenter). To listen to Clara Amfo is to know that liking pop music is cool and scoffing at it will get you nowhere – and it’s perhaps why some of the biggest pop stars on the planet want to talk to her (Billie Eilish personally requested Amfo to interview her in her BBC documentary, for example).

‘I’ve always done my own thing,’ Amfo says, speaking with a self-assuredness but also a deep gratitude for getting to do a job she loves deeply. ‘There’s a very particular way of playing the game in my industry, but I’ve always chosen not not to do it. I could be a lot more bait if I wanted to.’ It’s not always been an easy road: she notes how she still has to deal with sexism and colourism in the industry on the regular. ‘That’s a constant, to be honest,’ she says. ‘I’ve always known where I belonged and I often think that I should be in this room because I earned it. But it’s been other people’s problem with me being in certain spaces that I’ve had to deal with. People have wanted me to feel like an impostor”.

It may seem unconnected to broadcasting or her work, but I did want to source The Times and their interview from last year. It revolves around money, but not in a shallow and empty way. If some of the questions seem quite direct or personal, we do get some insight. In terms of Amfo’s relationship with money. Her life now very different to what she experienced growing up. She can see how far she has come, but she has not sight of her roots and the importance of family:

“How much did you earn last year?

All you need to know is that I’m paying my tax on time. I pay my mortgage on time, and I’m feeling good. I’ve got quite a few strings to my bow, including broadcasting — I’m presenting The One Show, hosting premieres like the Wicked: For Good one this week, doing my podcast and commercial campaigns, including one with Google. So my income is split fairly evenly between all those. And although people might think I’d be happy to sit for free on the One Show sofa with Roman Kemp, Ronan Keating, Alex Jones, Vernon Kay and the whole gang, I am paid to be there. I think Brits are still quite sheepish about discussing exact salaries, but let’s just say I’m certainly earning more than in my first retail job, when I got about seven quid an hour.

Are you better off than your parents?

I’d say so, yes. My mum was a secretary in Ghana then a dinner lady and a cleaner in the UK, and my dad, who died ten years ago, was a microbiologist. I’ve been lucky enough to do some amazing things in my career but what’s given me most pleasure is paying off my parents’ mortgage. That’s one of my proudest achievements.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

I wouldn’t tell a damn person. I wouldn’t tell anybody. I would definitely give some to grassroots charity projects, then I’d get all my girls together and go on an amazing week-long, everything-covered retreat, vibe, party. I’d then build my house in Ghana and buy a brownstone in New York and throw a dinner party, and Dua Lipa would be the first name on the invite list. Out of all the people I’ve ever interviewed, that woman knows how to live. She is so much fun.

Do you support any charities?

Bloody Good Period is a charity I’m really passionate about supporting. There are people who are having to choose between heating their homes or buying period products and we need to address that inequality

What is the most important lesson you’ve learnt about money?

Save it wisely but enjoy it wisely too. Of course there will be rainy days, but if you are lucky enough to be in a position where you’ve got a little bit left over to enjoy, then really savour that. What’s the point in working if not to enjoy it”.

In terms of Clara Amfo doing so much good in different fields, it brings me to this interview from the start of this year from The i Paper. It coincided with her being “the face of a new campaign by Odeon cinemas, in support of the mental health charity Mind, arguing that the cinema can provide a little “Big Screen Therapy” to help take the edge off the midwinter funk”.

“When she quit Radio 1 last year (later beginning to host ITV’s Studio Sessions), media reports suggested that Amfo’s struggle with depression drove her departure. But today she tells me that isn’t really the case.

“I did an interview with my mate in July of last year,” she says, and a mention of depression “got blown up into a huge headline, which I found extremely frustrating, I can’t lie. It got completely sensationalised and that ground my gears”. She exhales. “Depression is something I have experienced and there is no shame in that. But it isn’t my defining thing. I have friends who have dealt with clinical depression in ways that I have not…” She wants to put her own “dark moments” in a context that is “respectful to them”.

One of five children born in London, to Ghanaian parents, Amfo says her favourite childhood films were Sister Act II and The Lion King. “The Lion King was a much harder watch for me after my dad died in 2015,” she says. But she also recalls how her dad – who “absolutely loved Denzel Washington, who was refined, measured, and principled like him” – would rent Sister Act II for her. Some of the appeal was “about representation”.

“Seeing Whoopi Goldberg and Lauryn Hill together on screen was really powerful,” she recalls. “Two beautiful, dark-skinned, black women. Colourism is still very prevalent in our society, within my community for sure. Seeing Whoopi and Lauryn lead that movie made me feel good about myself.” Having “met so many of my heroes in my job”, she expected to be able to keep things professional when she met Hill. “But when I met Lauryn I just sobbed on her: I told her I had seen everything she has done and how grateful I am and… wahhhh!” She pantomimes the tears for comic effect.

After studying media arts at St Mary’s University College, Amfo began her career as a marketing intern for Kiss FM before joining BBC Radio 1Xtra as host of the weekend breakfast show in 2013, and beginning to host MTV’s Official UK Top 40 the same year. Soon, she took over from Fearne Cotton hosting Radio 1’s mid-morning show and hit the headlines in 2020 for making a powerful speech on air about the murder of George Floyd, racism and the effect on her own mental health.

Living and processing her emotions so publicly meant Amfo has always enjoyed the privacy of the cinema. “I love the darkness of the cinema, and I do love the anonymity it offers. One of my favourite things is choosing where to sit,” she explains. “I’m definitely a last-three-rows type of girl. I usually go for a corner so I’m not stepping over people or having people step over me, but I guess that’s sort of inevitable, isn’t it?”

She loves “the feeling of everyone being together, submerged in darkness, with a quiet understanding of the rules: like, don’t talk too loudly, eat your food responsibly” – she’s a chocolate buttons and sweet’n’salty popcorn fan, but doesn’t care for fizzy sweets – “and react appropriately to the film”.

Amfo would urge anybody battling a low social battery to try going to the cinema alone. She notes that the “pressure” to enjoy ourselves in groups begins “the minute you start school. You come home and your mum asks: ‘Did you make any friends?’ Then you get a job and you want to be invited to after-work drinks…” she shakes her head. “But when you make that first adult decision: ‘You know what, I’m doing something by myself,’ it feels quite a nice milestone.”

When did Amfo first start going to the cinema alone? “Probably when I was about 26, 27,” she says. “I’m a super social person – I love to be in community. But I also really cherish my alone time. I’m also quite impatient and I don’t always want to co-ordinate all my friends. I’ve never regretted going to see a film alone. You’re watching with your own eyes, ears, biases. You’re not having to confer with somebody else. Then you might have that lovely little moment of interaction with a stranger on your way out. You might never see that person again but it’s a cute little exchange, a connection.”

Amfo also hymns the buzz you get during “culture-shifting” event films such as 2017 horror-mystery Get Out, in which a young black man discovers shocking secrets when he meets the family of his white girlfriend. “I remember walking out and the cinema was buzzing with debate,” she recalls. “People couldn’t wait to discuss it – they were laughing together, screaming together, shouting. In my circle of friends, people say things like, ‘That person’s in the Sunken Place now’, and everyone instantly knows what it means because they’ve watched Get Out”.

Even though Clara Amfo has not spent her entire life in London, it is clear that the city is so important to her. I did want to get a more precise interview regarding her favourite spots in London. In February, Broadsheet spent time with Amfo and we discover some of her London favourites. It once more gives us a window into her heart and soul. Her loves and passions. Or where she loves to hang out in London. All very important to who she is. A massive film fan, I can see her hosting the BAFTAs soon enough. Or presenting a film podcast, perhaps:

“Hi Clara. What’s your favourite cinema in London?

I do love an Everyman – the Broadgate and Belsize Park are my faves. I love the announcement staff do before every film. I always make sure to give them encouraging applause because it’s quite nerve-wracking!

What’s the essential play, TV show, song, book or film about London?

I will always have a soft spot for Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I’ve told her this a few times, she’s always so warm and polite, I’m sure she’s bored of me now!

If you want to impress someone, where would you take them?

The Royal Academy. It’s a beautiful space and is always filled with great conversation-starters.

Where do you go for coffee or tea?

Suba bakery: lovely pastries washed down with deliciously roasted coffee.

What are your favourite shops around London? Any good finds recently?

My current favourite shops for clothes in London are End and Nordic Poetry. I also love Sounds of the Universe record shop. I’m trying to limit my visits to Hummingbird Bakery; the red velvet cake has me in a chokehold”.

Two more interviews to get to before wrapping up. Marie Claire caught up with this infectious and hugely energetic person. Clara Amfo radiating this joy and positive energy. A reason, as they write, why she was tapped up to join her mate Jessie Ware “to show off the benefits of their loyalty programme, OVO Beyond, which rewards customers—like a spot at an intimate Jessie Ware gig—for making greener choices”:

“How have your music tastes developed and been shaped by the different cultures that you’ve been exposed to?

I’ve never been a person who said, “I don’t like this genre of music”. I don't believe in speaking in absolutes about genres of music because I truly believe you can find at least one song you like within a genre of music, even if you don’t like most of it. I have pretty eclectic taste, and I attribute a lot of that to my older brothers. I can’t imagine being one of those people who only listen to one type of music—that's sad for me. You're selling yourself short of some really great experiences.

What role do you think music plays in addressing social and cultural issues?

I’m going to paraphrase her terribly, so I hope she doesn’t roll in her grave too much, but Nina Simone says it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times—or something to that effect—and I believe that. I’m not saying every artist has to be an activist, and not every artist wants to be an activist—and that’s OK—but I do think there is a responsibility with having a platform.

What’s your favourite way to experience culture?

I love a trip to a gallery, ideally on my own or with one friend—never more than groups of two. I love the cinema—open-air cinemas where possible—I think it’s a really fun communal experience, even though people can be annoying cos I swear, I’m always sat by the people that get up 50,000 times or eat the loudest.

You worked with your mate Jessie Ware on OVO’s campaign to encourage people to be greener—how do you think music can inspire people to live more sustainably?

I think music can inspire people to be greener. We’re not trying to be sanctimonious out here, but small steps make big leaps. Everyone is trying to do their best, and there are some things people can’t avoid doing that aren’t the most green, so I think it’s about having an awareness; whether that’s switching your light bulbs or having a smart metre.

Are there any experiences you’ve had while travelling that have changed your perspective on a culture or a social issue?

As a West African person, it’s something I’ve always known, but I think I would always encourage people to not believe—or to not buy into—the perspective of a continent. One of my biggest pet peeves is people who describe Africa as a country, not a continent; there are lots of different countries in there.

I think through things that we’ve seen, even though the intentions can be good—like via certain charity things—people have got a very limited view of what the continent of Africa has to offer”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Clara Amfo and Jessie Ware at an exclusive gig for OVO Beyond customers/PHOTO CREDIT: Ron Timehin

I am going to end with ELLE and their interview from June. Clara Amfo and Munroe Bergdorf in conversation to discuss their friendship and their podcast, Clara & Munroe Are Into It:

“Clara Amfo: I feel like I first met you at a Pussy Palace club night. I have this distinct memory of you in a little pink two-piece with blonde braids.

Munroe Bergdorf: Yes. I remember meeting you. It was in that club on the strip in Dalston. I knew of you because of Radio 1. And we had this appreciation for what each other were doing.

Clara: Let’s see when we first followed each other on Instagram. March 2017.

Munroe: Oh my God. Nearly a decade.

Clara: Time flies. I always thought you were very fearless and very fun and very free. Obviously, knowing you how I know you now, there are levels to that, because yes, you were fun and fearless and free, but you also had to fight a lot. There wasn’t a week where you weren’t dealing with some bullshit, whether it was right-wing press, some hateful idiot on the internet, or people who were committed to misunderstanding you for ratings and clicks. Even talking about it is stressful, and that’s just as your mate. I remember being very impressed with your self-expression and the way you handled yourself in very public forms.

Munroe: Thank you. I feel the same about you, though obviously from a very different pathway into being who you are today. I’ve always been so impressed and inspired by you. You have a truth that you carry with yourself in a way that feels authentic. Every single room you go into, you carry Clara into it. That’s something I’ve always had to work at. I’ve always felt an unease about taking up space, and you really own every room you walk into. Whether it’s radio, hosting Glastonbury, hosting a red carpet in Leicester Square, or doing a brand job, you’re so versatile. But every thing you do, you bring your energy to it. I’ve often thought, maybe I should change myself to fit into this space. But seeing you refuse to do that over the years has been so inspiring to me.

Clara: Oh, babe. It’s so interesting how we perceive ourselves, isn’t it? Because I think you are always totally yourself.

Munroe: I think a big part of it comes from the fact that a lot of my medical transition was in the public eye. When your appearance is changing, people view that as so much more than appearance. They perceive you changing as a person. Holding on to that sense of self when people see you in a different way is difficult. Being around people who are firm in what they believe in, who they want to be and who they are, has been invaluable to me.

Clara: We’ve been planning this podcast for six months now... For me, I had podcast fatigue for a long time. I’ve always chatted, that’s what I do, but the podcast space got noisy. It felt like it had become the new brand extension. So I ducked out for a bit. But then I found myself listening to podcasts or talking to mates and thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got something to say about that.’ And I realised it was calling me back. And then I thought: who do I actually enjoy talking about this kind of stuff with? Munroe.

Munroe: What listeners can expect is a mixed bag, honestly. In the first episode, we’re unpacking the Kylie documentary on Netflix, and Clara has this interesting perspective because she hosted the premiere event with Kylie and the directors, and I attended it too. So, we go from the event to watching the whole thing and then unpacking it. We talk about Kylie’s impact on our lives, female sexuality, Olivia Rodrigo and the internet discourse around the babydoll dress, and how we consume the image of female pop stars. Every week, we also talk about what we’re into and what we’re over. It’s fun.

Clara: I think what makes it exciting is that we both have particular vantage points. There are times when things happen in pop culture, especially British pop culture, and I see the discourse online of people saying, ‘She blatantly did this’ and I think, ‘babes, you have no idea’.

Munroe: On a personal note, I’m really excited to do something that has absolutely nothing to do with identity. Identity is important, and it’s not something we’ll never speak about. What we care about and believe in will always be part of us. But it speaks volumes for me to be a trans person in this industry with an opportunity to do something that has nothing to do with my gender identity, especially at this time, when there really isn’t a trans person in the UK industry being able to do something that isn’t centered on being trans. That feels good to me.

Clara: I like that we’re balancing serious topics with joy. I remember at the start of the year, I was going through something and felt the need to get publicly chatty about it. You said to me, ‘You don’t have to be a martyr for everything. You can still do the work behind the scenes.’ That really stayed with me. I’m not afraid of serious topics in the slightest, but I also love frivolous fun. That’s the joy of life. It’s a privilege to be able to do fab, crazy, wild, joyous things, while also talking about the realities of existing in the UK across race, class, gender politics - all of it. That balance is vital, otherwise you would possibly lose the plot.

Munroe: For sure. There is just so much going on. It does feel privileged to say ‘choose your battles’, because there are places in the world where people don’t have that luxury. But spreading yourself thin across absolutely everything is like screaming at the sea. There is so much pain out there, and attention cannot be sustainably given to absolutely every single topic. With this project, we don’t want to shy away from the issues happening in the world, but we also want to offer joy. This is a chat between friends, with the occasional guest friend coming on as well. We want people to come in on it, continue the conversation in the comments, and not feel like they are apart from it”.

I did want to show my respect and affection for Clara Amfo. Such a wildly talented, passionate and inspiring woman, from podcasts to documentaries to charity work and broadcasting, she is one of the jewels in our cultural crown! I do think that she will go from strength to strength in terms of opportunities. Maybe a fuller role in broadcasting on a new station or hosting an award ceremony. Even more podcast work and new documentaries. Brand collaboration and, who knows, rolling out a series of listening bars around Africa. If you do not follow her already, then make sure that you connect with…

THIS incredible queen.

___________

Follow Clara Amfo

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Whole Story: A KBC Short Story, Issue 4 (Christmas 1979)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in December 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy

 

A KBC Short Story, Issue 4 (Christmas 1979)

__________

IT made me think about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in 1979 for her BBC Christmas television special, Kate/PHOTO CREDIT: TV Times/Future Publishing/Getty Images

The Beatles and how they would treat their fans to updates at Christmas. Even though we are not anywhere near Christmas, for this Kate Bush: The Whole Story, I did want to drop in a short story that Kate Bush submitted for the Kate Bush Club Issue 4. In 1979, Bush had released two studio albums – her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside, and the follow-up, Lionheart (also 1978) – and she had completed The Tour of Life. It was an exhausting couple of years. Looking ahead to the end of 1979, Bush was working on her third studio album, Never for Ever, and a chance perhaps of some rest. This might be the final visit to the published writings of Kate Bush, or I might dip in one more time. I like this particular one, as we get a short story from Kate Bush. Rather than a standard interview or memories from Bush and what she has been up to, it allowed her to be a bit more creative and write something non-musical. It must have been great for fans to read this in 1979. I wanted to comment on the story, as it is wonderful. It is titled A Could Be Story. You do not get much revelation from the title, and I wonder what inspired Bush to write it. What could have influenced the story is that Bush was working on her Christmas single, December Will Be Magic Again, and she recorded out of Abbey Road Studios. That sense of history and importance would definitely have influenced her. The fact that this fictional band Bush talks about were going into a big studio to record their third studio album makes me think of her going into Abbey Road Studios for Never for Ever:

“When the Shades went into Priory Street Studios to make their third album they were working on a very tight schedule. Their first album had made the top sixty but their second had hardly done anything at all, and now their third one had to be good or they would have difficulty in getting another recording contract. They felt they needed to find a Christmas single that would help them out of their troubles, but they only had until the end of November to get this together. Any later than that and the record company would be unable to bring a single out--even November was cutting it pretty fine! They had decided to try something different on the new album and had become interested again in the music that was around in the middle 50s.

They had come across a song that none of them had ever heard of before, and it could be the one they were looking for. The song was called I'm Riding With Santa Tonight, by someone called Billy Smith. They decided they would give it a very genuine Bill Haley treatment, with saxophones and lots of shoo-bops-doo-wah-woo-bops-di-wops.

They worked on the rhythm track the first day, putting onto tape the drums, bass guitar and some funky rock-and-roll piano, with a rough voice-track to keep it all together. Late that night they played the various takes they'd done, to choose the one they would keep. Half way through listening to the first take the recording engineer started to look worried and began pressing buttons and pulling down slide controls on his mixing desk where all the sounds were controlled. When he was asked what was the matter, he said he was starting to pick up interference on the track that certainly hadn't been put on there by any of the band during the day. This was the first time he had worked in Priory Street Studios, and he was not used to the equipment. He played back the bit that he thought was wrong, and there was quite clearly a whining sound breaking in on the track. It could have been a loose connection, or even one of the band's stomachs rumbling.

Right at the start when she reveals The Shades’ first album was fairly successful then the follow-up did nothing. Comparisons to The Kick Inside and Lionheart?! Of course, The Kick Inside was very successful and sold over a million copies, but Lionheart was rushed and was not as big-selling. Some of her regret over that. Not that she was to blame. EMI rushing Bush to follow up an acclaimed album without giving her time to write many new songs and develop as an artist. I am not sure whether Bush felt she was at risk of being dropped if her third studio album did nothing. December Will Be Magic Again released in 1980. She may have felt obliged to enter the Christmas market. If The Shades took influenced from the music of the mid-‘50s for their third album, what can we say of Never for Ever? In terms of decades, I don’t feel we could say it sounds like music from the 1960s or earlier. It feels of its time. That 1979/1980 sound. I would love to have seen this short story brought to life in an animation. I do like how The Shades, at the wonderfully-named Priory Street Studios (there is a Priory Street in London that is located in Tower Hamlets), are a little panicked. Technical issues in the studio or something supernatural. Because The Shades are not a real band and have no music, I am popping in Kate Bush songs from The Kick Inside and Lionheart (and a bit of The Beatles) to fill the gaps!

They listened to all the takes, but the interference was there on each one, and the engineer couldn't find a way of shifting it. This meant a whole day of studio time had been wasted, and feeling pretty disappointed with their first attempt at a comeback, the Shades slid back home in the early hours to get some sleep before starting again the following day.

At two o'clock the next afternoon they turned up at the studio and did the rhythm track once again. But on listening to it that evening, instead of the interference having been cleaned off, it was now even more noticeable, and the engineer could not understand what was happening. It put him in a difficult situation because the band were now talking about using other studios; but he'd been booked for the next two months to do the album, and he was determined that was what he was going to do. After a lot of arguing and shouting the Shades were sitting on one side of the studio and the recording engineer and his assistant on the other and they weren't talking.

At that point the roadie who looked after the Shades' equipment came bouncing into the studio hoping to get an earful of what had been going on for the last couple of days. When he saw the glum faces he knew something was up, and had great difficulty in persuading the engineer to let him hear the tape. Eventually he was persuaded, and the roadie sat back and listened with a critical ear. The Shades knew that he never missed spotting a potential hit single and they often used him as a test of their music.

I guess some of this trouble and waste in the studio was relevant to Kate Bush. Though The Kick Inside was recorded quite quickly and Lionheart was not too stressful, by the time of Never for Ever, there were longer sessions and more experimentation. Things took a bit longer and there would have been days when very little was produced. I think too of The Beatles and their frustration that we can see in the Get Back documentary. Trying to work on new songs in 1969. The band eventually playing their famous rooftop concert. Days when they were perhaps tense and they could not get things together. This idea of The Shades having a nightmare in the studio. You could read that some of this relates to Kate Bush not having control of her albums. More a cog in the machine rather than the architect. That would change for Never for Ever. I wonder if the roadie in this story is David Gilmour. In terms of him being Kate Bush’s mentor and him being able to spot a hit. Or producer Andrew Powell (who produced The Kick Inside and Lionheart). Things do take a lighter turn…

When the track came to the bit with the heavy interference the roadie began to brighten up, much to the surprise of everyone else in the room. When the track had finished, he said it was one of the best things he'd ever heard, and how on earth did they get the amazing effects? The engineer had to say that it was a mistake, and they'd been trying to get rid of it. The roadie said that that was ridiculous, and he managed to persuade everybody that if they pretended it wasn't interference but a very interesting form of synthesiser, it could be the hook needed on the record to make it sell. So it was agreed that the Shades would come back in the next day and put down some guitar work and talk about the vocals.

On the third day, at the end of the evening, they played back an almost completed track, apart from the lead vocals. Once again, the interference was there, and once again, if anything, it seemed to be a lot more dominant. But they had to agree with the roadie that it certainly did give the song a lot of crackle and bite. When the lead vocal was put on and the track finished and ready to go off to the record company for their approval--and hopefully then for release as a single--they all gathered for one final listen.

The odd thing was that the interference now seemed to have mellowed out, and was almost adding a very strange sort of harmony to the lead singer's voice. But everyone agreed that the track was good, and that it could work.

When I'm Riding With Santa Tonight eventually reached number ten on the hit parade, the Shades arrived at the Top of the Pops studio to appear for a Christmas edition and sing their hit single. While they were waiting in the canteen to be called up to perform, they talked with a producer friend and mentioned that they had recorded the single at Priory Street Studios. He nodded his head to show that he knew the studios, and then asked them if they'd had any trouble with the ghost.

That first paragraph. How a seeming accident or interference is actually a good effect and gives the music a unique flair. Perhaps Bush thinking about her experiences. When she was recording later albums like The Dreaming (1982), she was immersed more in technology of the day and there would be these happy accidents. How mistakes could lead to brilliant music. That interesting synthetiser that is talked about, I always feel is Bush nodding to the Fairlight CMI. She would use that for Never for Ever, but it was much more present on The Dreaming. Introduced to her by Peter Gabriel, the Fairlight CMI could produce sound effects and added new layers to Kate Bush’s work. This interference seems to be ghostly. Kate Bush believes in the supernatural and has this openness, so maybe a gremlin in the works. Did she encounter this when at Abbey Road Studios? No doubt there would have been some adaptation to the technology and grandeur of the space. Different to what she was used to at AIR Studios (The Kick Inside) and Super Bear Studios in France for Lionheart. If The Shades’ Christmas track was a chart suycecss, December Will Be Magic Again reached twenty-nine in the U.K. It was not a major success and got some mixed reviews. That ghost at Priory Street Studios. It is interesting that Abbey Road Studios was haunted, and has its own ghost story:

“The first and perhaps most famous studio to have a ghost is Abbey Road. Built as a desirable, private residence in 1831, the property was converted into studios by The Gramophone Company 100 years later but in the 1920s it was home to the notorious John Maundy Gregory. Gregory was in the business of selling 'honours' for sizable sums, that he allegedly split with Lloyd George's government. A knighthood or even a baronetcy could be purchased in this way. The well-known phrase, ‘Lloyd George knew my father', was the stock reply used by sons and daughters when asked about their father's newly acquired title.

IN THIS PHOTO: The deserted reception of Abbey Road Studios. It was in the early hours during one of his rounds that commissionaire, Smythe, got the fright of his life 

Gregory shared the house with Edith Rosse, a former music hall star, and together they masqueraded as husband and wife, until her suspicious death in the mid '20s. Under Gregory's orders, the body was buried at a Thames side graveyard that was particularly prone to flooding - a strange choice unless, of course, it was intended that the body should decompose quickly.

Foul play was eventually suspected and the body was exhumed to undergo one of the longest post mortems in police history. No firm evidence was found connecting Gregory with her death but, nevertheless, he left the country in great haste never to return again - fuelling the widespread belief that he had poisoned her.

The White Lady and Edith Rosse are thought to be one and the same. The story that is most often told of the ghost dates back to the early '60s, just pre-dating the first Beatles recordings. In those days the studio didn't work late and at night the building would be deserted apart from the commissionaire, whose duty it was to make periodical security checks. It was in the early hours during one of these rounds that the man, an ex-Hong Kong policeman called Smythe, got the fright of his life. The building has a number of long corridors intersected by the glass panelled swing doors; the commissionaire was on the ground floor when he noticed the door in front of him shudder - a sign that the door further down the corridor had opened and closed causing a vacuum. The same thing happened again. Peering through the glass into the dimly lit passageway, he could just make out the next set of doors opening; through it came a figure dressed entirely in white.

Transfixed, he stood back as the doors in from of him swung open, letting through a woman in a long flowing white dress; as she silently drifted past him, the temperature suddenly dropped, and as quickly as she'd appeared, the apparition vanished into the gloom. In the morning a very pale and shaky commisionaire handed in his resignation.

Although this is perhaps the best sighting of the White Lady, it is not the only one; other strange things have happened: doors opening and closing by themselves, rooms suddenly filling with a strong smell of perfume, and there is an alleged bloodstain that changes colour in one of the attic rooms.

Another unexplained event occurred a few years ago when technical engineer Brian Gibson was taking some night photographs of the front of the building. He noticed that a light had been left on in one of the upstairs offices and told the security man about it. The man immediately went up to investigate but when he unlocked the room the light was off. No one apart from the security man had access to keys, no one had been seen either going up or coming down, and the lights in the room were checked to be working perfectly normally. Gibson's photographs showed the light to be on”.

In the final stages of the short story, The Shades seeming lucky break and happy accident takes a more ghoulish and spectral twist. It is fascinating how Bush writes! I would love it if we got some more unearthed short stories. If they were collected into a volume…

The Shades looked at each other, and went whiter than the white make-up they wore on stage. The producer explained to them that Priory Street Studios had a reputation for its ghost, and that at one time the owners had thought of closing down the studio because of the electrical interference they kept getting on takes. They had gone as far as taking out all the equipment, having it thoroughly looked at and put back in again, but this had made no difference. In the early 70s the Studios had been completely re-modernised, and he'd assumed that the troubles were over, but he had heard that occasionally they still had problems.

The Shades didn't say anything, but after doing a strong appearance--though it was a rather shaky one--on the television, they went for a celebration party at a friend's house. They now had a good talk about the ghost story they'd heard, and they were all wondering whether it was the ghost that had made the single a success.

The following day they sent their roadie off to the publishing company where they'd found the song, with the job of looking through the catalogues and finding anything he could about the song and the songwriter. That evening he met them at the studio with some very interesting news. It seemed that Billy Smith, who had written I'm Riding With Santa Tonight, recorded his first and only album at Priory Street Studios. All the songs on the album were his own compositions--this was quite unusual in those days, as most of the early rock-and-roll singers in England sang other people's songs.

Unfortunately, just after the album had been completed he'd been electrocuted in the Studios when something had gone wrong with his electric guitar. The record company hadn't thought much of his album anyway, so it was shelved and eventually completely forgotten.

The Shades thought this was a pretty good reason for a ghost to hang about the studios and, wondering how they could best express their thanks to the dead rock singer, they decided to put a credit on the album--"Ghost Synthesiser by Billy Smith".

Apparently there has been no more trouble with interference at Priory Street Studios, which probably goes to show that a ghost is quite content when his music has eventually reached his public”.

Abbey Road Studios itself did not undergo renovations in the 1970s. Instead, it was defined by technical experimentation and analogue gear modification using existing spaces, alongside an official name change from EMI Studios to Abbey Road Studios in 1970. You can read their story here (the studios turns ninety-five in November). That “shaky one”, in reference to the T.V. performance. Kate Bush performing Wuthering Heights for the first time on Top of the Pops in 1978? She hated it because she could not play with her band. The Billy Smith character makes me think of perhaps Billy Preston. He played with The Beatles. Though how obviously did not get electrocuted and haunt The Beatles! It is very Kate Bush to have this musical ghost story. What could have been dark and demonic has a sweetness to it. Even if it is quite haunting and unusual. You know she had Abbey Road Studios in her mind. That unusual interference and electricity. Perhaps thinking of darker energies and forces around her. Some of her own fears and experiences in this story. A great Christmas story for fans in 1979, we see that she had a real flair for storytelling. Painting vivid pictures. It would be wonderful to see The Shades, Priority Street Studios, the roadie and Billy Smith animated and brought to life. Or a filmed version. Such a wonderful and engrossing short story from…

A true genius.