FEATURE: On Top of the World: Kate Bush’s Cinematic and Divine Cloudbusting at Forty-One

FEATURE:

 

 

On Top of the World

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of the video for Cloudbusting in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s Cinematic and Divine Cloudbusting at Forty-One

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I recently…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

wrote a feature with Cloudbusting included. So I cannot really go over the same ground. I did want to focus on this song as arguably Kate Bush’s most cinematic video. Following Hounds of Love’s lead single, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting came out on 14th October, 1985. As it turns forty-one soon, I had to write about it once more. The song itself is phenomenal, though I feel the video, directed by Julian Doyle, is her most cinematic. Conceived by Kate Bush and Terry Gilliam as a short film, the video for Cloudbusting was actually shown in some U.K. cinemas as accompaniment to the main feature. I will explore this idea of Kate Bush’s videos being cinema. A couple of features I want to come to. I will start with some interview archive, where Bush discussed the inspiration behind Cloudbusting:

“This was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It’s about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child’s point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a ‘cloudbuster’; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy – as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then – and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn’t allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It’s a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo – how special it was – and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there’s nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it’s very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child’s eyes, but told by a sad adult.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985”.

Maybe there will be some details repeated, but American Songwriter wrote about one of Kate Bush’s most loved songs. I think one of the major reasons the song is so enduring is because of its video. The chemistry shared between Kate Bush and Donald Sutherland. I would loved to have seen a longer film of Cloudbusting. Dialogue between them. However, Sutherland was available for a short period, so it was amazing they managed to film as much as they did:

“Always inspired by theater and classical literature, in 1978, Kate Bush revisited the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic Wuthering Heights for her No. 1 UK hit of the same name. Nearly a decade later, Bush explored the relationship between Sigmund Freud’s disciple, the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, and his young son Peter in her music video for “Cloudbusting.”

The second single from Bush’s No. 1 album Hounds of Love in 1985, “Cloudbusting” peaked at No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart. In the video, the late Canadian actor Donald Sutherland stars as the elder Reich, while a boyish Bush, topped in a wig, plays young Peter.

No Working Visa

At the time, Sutherland—who was already a movie star in the U.S. starring as “Hawkeye” Pierce in Robert Altman’s 1970 film MASH and in the 1980 family drama Ordinary People alongside Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton—could not obtain a work visa under short notice and starred in the music video for free.  

Barry Richardson, a hairdresser on the set of Nic Roeg’s 1973 horror/mystery Don’t Look Now, which also starred Sutherland, asked the actor if he would star in Bush’s video. “I told him ‘No,’ and we went on to other conversations,” recalled Sutherland in 2015 on how he ended up in the video. “A couple of days later there was a knock on my door—I lived in the Savoy Hotel (in London). I opened it. There was no one there. I heard a voice saying ‘Hello,’ and I looked down. Standing down there was a very small Kate Bush. Barry had told her where I lived.”

Bush visited Sutherland to explain, in person, the concept of the “Cloudbusting” video. “She sat down [and] said some stuff. All I heard was ‘Wilhelm Reich.’ I’d taken an underground copy of his ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’ (1933) with me when I went to film [Bernardo] Bertolucci’s ‘Novecento’ in Parma, [Italy]. Reich’s work informed the psychological foundations of Attila Mellanchini, the character Bernardo had cast me to play. Everything about Reich echoed through me. He was there then and now he was here.”

Sutherland continued, “Sitting across from me in person [was] the very eloquent Kate Bush. Synchronicity. Perfect. She talked some more. I said ‘OK ‘and we made ‘Cloudbusting.’”

‘A Book of Dreams’

Conceived by Bush and director Terry Gilliam, directed by Julian Doyle, and filmed at Dragon Hill in Oxfordshire, England, the video centers on Reich and his son on the top of the hill getting ready to set off an enormous cloudbusting contraption. The cloudbuster was built to shoot at the clouds and make it rain. In the video, Reich leaves his son with the machine and returns to his lab, where he reminisces of times spent with his son on scientific experiments just as government officials barge in to arrest him and ransack his laboratory. The son sees his father driven off, then runs back up the hill and ignites the cloudbuster. While being driven away, the father smiles as rain pours down.

The cinematic vignette was not a fictional account but a real-life occurrence, which Peter shared in his 1973 book, A Book of Dreams. “​Sometime in 1985, a package arrived with a video cassette and an autographed album,” said Reich. “My wife and children, who were 5 and 2 at the time, listened, watched, and were entranced. Quite magically, this British musician [Bush] had tapped precisely into ​a unique and magical fulfillment of father-son devotion, emotion, and understanding. They had captured it all”.

You can say that Michael Jackson was the first artist who turned his music videos into short films. Many are quite cinematic. I wonder if there were many female artists before Kate Bush who were doing what she was doing. In terms of releasing these cinematic videos. Whilst you could say some of her videos prior to Cloudbusting were cinematic, I think this single is the moment when she hit that cinematic peak. Kate Bush always drawn to film and cinema. Seeing music videos in cinematic terms. You can argue that Madonna was a landmark artist who elevated music videos to cinema. The first female artist to do that. I feel Cloudbusting is arguably the first video from a female artist where you have a video that is filmic and took it to another level. People will argue against that I am sure! In a feature originally published in 2015, DAZED spoke with those key to the video. Including Donald Sutherland and director Julian Doyle. It sounds like it was a magical experience:

“Donald Sutherland: “Barry Richardson, who was the hairdresser on Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, asked me if I’d do a music video with Kate Bush. I told him no and we went on to other conversations. A couple of days later there was a knock on my door. I lived in the Savoy Hotel (in London). On the river. Suite 312. I loved it there. So cosseted. So private. Only the floor butler rang the door. I opened it. There was no one there. I heard a voice saying hello and I looked down. Standing down there was a very small Kate Bush. Barry had told her where I lived. What can you do? She wanted to explain what her video was about. I let her in. She sat down, said some stuff. All I heard was ‘Wilhelm Reich’. I’d taken an underground copy of his The Mass Psychology of Fascism with me when I went to film (Bernardo) Bertolucci’s Novecento in Parma. Reich’s work informed the psychological foundations of Attila Mellanchini, the character Bernardo had cast me to play. Everything about Reich echoed through me. He was there then and now he was here. Sitting across from me in the person of the very eloquent Kate Bush. Synchronicity. Perfect. She talked some more. I said OK and we made ‘Cloudbusting’. She’s wonderful, Kate Bush. Wonderful. I love that I did it. (What do I remember) about doing it? I remember being in the car and the hill and them taking me, taking Reich, away and looking back through the back window of the car and seeing her, seeing Reich’s son Peter, standing there. And I remember the first morning on set seeing her coming out of her trailer smoking a joint and I cautioned her, saying she shouldn’t smoke that, it’d affect her work, and she looked at me for a second and said she hadn’t been straight for nine years and I loved her.”

Julian Doyle: “I thought it should look like a real story – like a film, not a pop video. I wanted to point out the story was real, which is why I had Kate take out the book. I also wanted more time so I doubled up a section of the music. Kate lengthened it even more, then she wanted to change the edit.  I thought they were mistakes – so in bringing in Terry (Gilliam) it stopped her making bad changes to the edit as she accepted what Terry said. The editing process is very difficult – as it goes on for some time you have to be quite stubborn in character, keeping a balance in being open but not changing (things) because you are bored with them. Someone like Eric Idle, who is extremely smart and quick-witted, is a disaster in the cutting room, because he gets bored quickly and soon wants to cut out every joke.

“I was pleased we got up early to get the (shot with the) sun rising behind Kate falling down. I was also pleased with the track to close-up (on Donald Sutherland) where he changes from smiling to worried and then I pan into light flare. (When Donald had finished shooting his scenes) I said to him, ‘We have finished with you, thanks – but I just want you to walk away down the hill towards the sun.’ He looked great taking off his jacket. The very last shot of the shoot was the very last shot of Kate punching the air. There are only seven frames before I cut”.

Kate Bush performed Cloudbusting as part of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. I am not sure how it was staged. When we think about female artists who were the first to push music videos the level of cinema, Madonna is always named. In 1984, you could say a video such as Like a Virgin has that quality. 1985’s Material Girl (I would argue a video where Madonna recreated films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is not the same as making an authentically cinematic music video) and Into the Groove. Though I don’t think that these videos are especially cinematic in terms of their concept and impact. And their look and intent. I would argue it took until 1986 and a video like Papa Don’t Preach. I would say Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting is more cinematic than anything Madonna released by October 1985. Again, people may have their own views. For the Kate Bush Club Issue 20, interviewing herself under the guise of Auntie Hetty, this is what Bush said about her wanting to connect music videos to the world of cinema; not something more females themselves were consciously doing:

“I really wanted to try and make videos that looked like short films this time. I think I've always wanted to do this, but apart from one or two of the previous videos I have not achieved it. I started approaching film directors. I believed that video and film were two very different worlds, and that people who made videos would be less likely to make a pop "video" look like a piece of 35mm film.

Cloudbusting took eight to ten weeks, working with Julian Doyle, who has worked many times with Terry Gilliam. He is multi-talented, and covered many areas of the shoot, with Brian Helighy lighting for the first time--it's hard to believe that it is his first time at lighting”.

Bush can be said to be the first woman in music to release a visual album, as The Line, the Cross and the Curve accompanied 1993’s The Red Shoes. I would throw in that she was the first female artist to release a cinematic music video. That Cloudbusting was this landmark. Rather than being inspire by Pop peers like Prince, David Bowie and Michael Jackson, she was very much taking inspiration from cinema and literature. Not trying to top or equal others around her, this unique artist was doing something different. After forty-one years, you can see other artists who have been influenced by Kate Bush in terms of transforming Pop videos into something closer to short films. FKA twigs and Björk among them. Cloudbusting remains a benchmark for narrative-driven music videography. I feel Kate Bush sneaked Madonna when it came to this. Ahead of the Queen of Pop regarding her videos. Looking online and asking the question as to which Madonna videos are most akin to cinema and short films, the two that pop up top are from 1989: Like a Prayer and Express Yourself. Cloudbusting also features a legendary actor, so that adds to its cinematic quality and credentials. On 14th October, it will be forty-one years since that iconic video came out. Literally played in cinemas, very few other artists could claim that. Although Cloudbusting only reached twenty in the U.K., it has a larger and grander legacy. This feature from last year. It must have been astonishing seeing this song come together in the studio:

“Its modest chart position belies its greatness.

The song was light years away from the big hair power ballads and synth pop tunes that pervaded the charts at the time.

The composition and the production are timeless and it sounds as compelling and atmospheric as the day it was released.

Haydn Bendall has fond memories of the sessions for Cloudbusting in Studio 2 at Abbey Road and in particular Kate Bush’s vocal takes.

“Recording her voice on that was just fabulous” he told Uncut magazine in August 2014. “We’re used to effects in the studio and computer graphics in films, but when Kate stands in front of the microphone and sings it takes your breath away.

A masterpiece song with this incredible, cinematic video. A moment in Pop history where Kate Bush was on top of the world! As this genius producer and songwriter. Her music videos at this time transforming what a video could be. As I said, the first female artist who truly achieved this feat. Always groundbreaking and pioneering, Cloudbusting is one of my favourite videos. Every time I watch it I am emotional. A tip of the hat to the late Donald Sutherland for what he brought to that set forty-one years ago. Alongside Kate Bush, the two created…

A moment of timeless magic.

FEATURE: All I Want to Do Is Forget… Kate Bush’s Hammer Horror at Forty-Eight

FEATURE:

 

 

All I Want to Do Is Forget…

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

Kate Bush’s Hammer Horror at Forty-Eight

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I try to mark…

every Kate Bush single and album anniversary. I might miss a couple out, as I have already written about them for various features. However, I did want to celebrate forty-eight years of Hammer Horror. This is the first single from Kate Bush’s second studio album, Lionheart, it was released on 27th October, 1978. Although it is a remarkable song, it would have been more obvious releasing Wow as the lead single. Though Hammer Horror is one of the more notable departures from anything on The Kick Inside (her debut album which was released on 17th February, 1978). In terms of the energy and tone of the song, it may have felt a bigger swing. I will come to features where Bush’s singles are ranked. What people say about Hammer Horror. I am going to source I quote I have used before. Yet it is always useful getting words from Kate Bush when it comes to the inspiration behind her songs. I often think it is a companion to Wow. In that both songs deal with actors and productions. Even if their lyrics pull in different directions, interesting that two of Kate Bush’s singles from Lionheart are about acting. Here is what she said about Hammer Horror:

“The song is not about, as many think, Hammer Horror films. It is about an actor and his friend. His friend is playing the lead in a production ofThe Hunchback of Notre Dame,a part he’s been reading all his life, waiting for the chance to play it. He’s finally got the big break he’s always wanted, and he is the star. After many rehearsals he dies accidentally, and the friend is asked to take the role over, which, because his own career is at stake, he does. The dead man comes back to haunt him because he doesn’t want him to have the part, believing he’s taken away the only chance he ever wanted in life. And the actor is saying, “Leave me alone, because it wasn’t my fault – I have to take this part, but I’m wondering if it’s the right thing to do because the ghost is not going to leave me alone and is really freaking me out. Every time I look round a corner he’s there, he never disappears.”

The song was inspired by seeing James Cagney playing the part of Lon Chaney playing the hunchback – he was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather like Chinese boxes, and that’s what I was trying to create.

Kate Bush Club Newsletter, November 1979”.

As Hammer Horror is forty-eight on 27th October, four days before Hallowe’en, it is worth puling in articles and features that discuss this song. Again, Dreams of Orgonon is a site I utilise a lot. The analysis of Kate Bush’s songs is wonderful. I have sourced them in other Hammer Horror features, though as not many people have written about this incredible single, it is worth bringing in some detail. I am surprised it only reached forty-four in the U.K. After successful single releases from The Kick Inside, it might have given EMI a scare. Wow reached fourteen in the U.K. For Never for Ever (1980), the singles did well but there was not quite the same incredible success as she saw for The Kick Inside where Wuthering Heights reached number one and The Man with the Child in His Eyes hit number six in the U.K. Hammer Horror a relatively minor success:

“There’s also an element of musical gender play at work in “Hammer Horror.” Bush chooses a male story with a masculine narrator and tells it through a feminine perspective with dashes of camp. This is where her “actor in an actor” fascination comes in. She’s telling someone’s story and embellishing it in radical ways. If Mick Jagger sang this track, it’d be him spitting autobiographically at Keith Richards, who would reply with some vicious chords in open D. Bush plays the actor as a frightened damsel, terrified of the stranger in the dark. She begins the song with a trembling “yooooouuu stoooood,” moving down her vocal range for a more playful “they’ve got the stars for the gallant hearts” (the most innocent confession of pissing oneself ever put on record), howl-belting out “HAMMER HOR-ROR” for the chorus, and lapsing into a more classically Bushian “are we really sure about this” in the post-chorus. It’s the most daring Bush vocal we’ve heard on this blog so far. No male artist would go this far in 1978.

What else do those vocals point to? I don’t know, umm, how about the fact that this is the most camp thing ever? Bush maintains some reverence for her Gothic source material, but not without a tongue-in-cheek performance. Her vocal for “Hammer Horror” is full-blown melodrama, containing, as Goth scholar Andi Harriman puts it, the Goth subculture’s commitment to dramaticism, or “transforming yourself into a different form of beauty.” Bush’s vocal range swerves up and down, covering C#6, Bb5, and descending to the lows of F#5 and F5. The song is absurdly eclectic and committed to its shtick, containing a licking guitar and a full-blown string section tensely opening the song and carrying the chorus. Musically, it’s full-blown hedonism. Visually, it’s another story altogether.

I mean, look at that music video. Bush is dressed in black while dancing with a man (presumably dancer Stewart Avon-Arnold) and expressing nearly every note of the song with obsessive literalism. When she sings about a hand reaching out from the dark to grab her, sure enough she gurns at a mysterious hand. Indeed she gurns at everything in the music video — Bush will remain a world class gurner until she develops a more understated relationship with the camera (and thus many great GIFs were lost to the world). Until then, this is the standard for camp Bush videos. It is utterly absurd and completely delightful.

Now we’re discussing camp, we might as well discuss the real ghost haunting this essay: Goth rock. It’s uncontroversial to say that Kate Bush is not Goth. She’s too separate from the Goth subculture in terms of aesthetic, class, and musicality to claim to membership. However Bush is, as we noted earlier, not averse to engaging with the Gothic. She launched her career on it. Naturally there’s going to be some overlap with Goth rock.

One of the most surprising things about Bush is how she’ll often stumble on an aesthetic before anyone else and perform it in a way that sounds nothing like its more famous iterations. “Hammer Horror” was demoed in 1976 and released in 1978, when the Goth scene was beginning to cohere as a subculture. When it was released as a single in October, Joy Division had recently put out an EP, Siouxsie and the Banshees had cracked the Top Ten with “Hong Kong Garden,” The Cure had recorded but not yet released “Killing an Arab,” (yes much orientalism) and early iterations of Bauhaus were playing Northampton clubs. Goth wasn’t a salient cultural movement, but it was beginning to look like a separate scene from punk and even standard forms of post-punk (e.g. Gang of Four, Magazine). While this was going on, Bush had charted multiple times with three singles and two albums. She existed in a different sphere from Siouxsie and Peter Murphy. So why comment on the similarities at all?

Well, the Gothicness of “Hammer Horror” seems like enough of a starting point that the similarities are worth talking about. It’s a glam song in Gothic trappings: parts of it are in a major key and it has a wholesale commitment to excess. Goth is all about excess as well, although in a largely different fashion, one largely focused on underbellies, as Alex Reed puts it. Andi Harriman said of Goth that it embraced punk’s DIY ethos, “combined it with elements of Ziggy Stardust’s alien-like presence, and cloaked it in darkness.” Bush is less committed to the decrepit and alien. At its core, her aesthetic retains some English respectability. Her aversion to subcultures and living in a privileged space kept her from a total commitment to alternative culture. But the major overlaps in Bushian and Goth aesthetics are perhaps self-evident: looks, camp, femininity, and, well, Gothicness”.

There were some mixed reviews for Hammer Horror in the press. Many comparing Bush unfavourably to Joni Mitchell. In the sense they were both seen as having high-pitched voices, but Mitchell deeper and more substantial. However, there was a kinder and more affectionate review from Tony Parsons: “Ominous post ELO orchestration with the unrequited lust of a broken affair viewed as living dead love-bites-back as in classic 50’s British celluloid, a real nail biter, hypnotic and disconcerting”. He was writing for NME. At the end of 1978, Kate Bush has garnered a lot of attention because of her debut. Though she was still being mocked and seen as irrelevant. I think perception did shift not too long after Hammer Horror,  but the prospect of an artist dressed in black and appearing in this camp and theatrical video would not have been seen as cool by a lot of the press. Lionheart is a camp album. There are themes of fear, paranoia and anxiety throughout. Coffee Homeground and Fullhouse. As there is not a lot written about Hammer Horror, I will finish with singles rankings and what has been said about this track. Recently, MOJO ranked Kate Bush’s best fifty tracks. Hammer Horror came in forty-four. I am not sure if this was intentionally to match its U.K. single chart position: “Despite the title’s reference to the legendary British horror movie studio, Bush cited Universal’s 1957 film Man Of A Thousand Faces – where James Cagney played silent star Lon ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ Chaney – as inspiration. Bush took the idea of an actor playing an actor further, offering a complex narrative wherein a leading man dies and is replaced in the role by his best friend – the former returning to haunt the latter. Despite the track’s lyrical melodrama and playful musical charm, it missed the Top 40 when released as a single in October ’78”.

I did want to finish with this 1978 interview, as it sort of explains why Kate Bush wanted Hammer Horror to be the lead single from Lionheart. Concerned that she was being seen negatively and as light and romantic, this was more of a statement. A change of direction aimed to shift perception:

“Overall, Bush was concerned that the new album should differ quite radically from her first. Maybe I'm a bit too close to it at the moment, but I find it much more adventurous than the last one. I'm much happier with the songs and the arrangements and the backing tracks.

"I was getting a bit worried about labels from that last album: everything being soft, airy-fairy. That was great for the time, but it's not really what I want to do now, or what I want to do, say, in the next year. I guess I want to get basically heavier in the sound sense...and I think that's on the way, which makes me really happy.

"I don't really think that there are any songs on the album that are as close to Wuthering Heights as there were on the last one. I mean, there's lots of songs people could draw comparison with. I want the first single that comes out from this album to be reasonably up-tempo. <The first single was Hammer Horror .> That's the first thing I'm concerned with, because I want to break away from what has previously gone. I'm not pleased with being associated with such soft, romantic vibes, not for the first single anyway. If that happens again, that's what I will be to everyone."

She is acutely aware of the danger of being pigeon-holed, and is actively engaged in discouraging that.

"If you can get away with it and keep changing, great. I think it should be done because in that way you'll always have people chasing after you trying to find out what you're doing. And, anyway, if you know what's coming next, what's the point? If I really wanted to, I guess I could write a song that would be so similar to Wuthering Heights . But I don't. What's the point? I'd rather write a song that was really different, that I liked, although it might not get anywhere."

Have you heard her new single, Hammer Horror ? Now that's really different.

The major changes in the preparation for Lionheart was undoubtedly that Kate, over-burdened with promotional schemes for the first album, was for the first time left with the unsavoury prospect of meeting deadlines and (perhaps) having to rush her writing to do that. It was a problem she was having trouble coming to terms with at our last meeting, when she spoke in obvious admiration of bands like Queen--who came up with the goods on time every year, and still found time to conduct world tours.

But Kate insisted that she wasn't going to be rushed, and eventually the songs came along. In all, it took ten weeks to record the twelve tracks (ten are on the album), an indication of the meticulousness shown by Bush herself in exercising as much control as possible over every facet of the work. "I'm not always right, and I know I'm not," she says, "but it's important to know what's going on, even if I'm not controlling it."

I'll be interested to read the reviews of Lionheart . It'll be sad, I think, if the album is greeted with the same sort of insulting indifference that The Kick Inside met, when Kate Bush was pathetically underrated.

Lionheart is, as the artist desired, a heavier album than its predecessor, with Bush setting some pretty exacting tests for the listener. Kate's songwriting is that much more mature, and her vocal performance has an even more vigorous sense of drama.

Musically, the tracks on Lionheart are more carefully structured than before. There is, for instance, a distinct absence of straight songs, like the first album's Moving, Saxophone Song, The Man With the Child in His Eyes and The Kick Inside . Here, only Oh England, My Lionheart makes an immediate impression and I'm not sure that the move away from soft ballads (be it to secure a separate image) is such a wise one. As Bush proved on those songs on The Kick Inside, simplicity can also have its own sources of complication.

There is much about this album that is therapeutic, and often Kate Bush is the subject of her own course. Fullhouse is the most blatant example of that. <There is no evidence that this song is autobiographical.> On of the album's three unspectacular tracks musically (along with, in my opinion, In the Warm Room and Kashka From Baghdad ), it is still lyrically a fine example of ridding the brain of dangerous paranoias. The stabbing verse of "Imagination sets in,/Then all the voices begin,/Telling you things that aren't happening/(But the nig and they nag, 'til they're under your skin)" is set against the soothing chorus: "You've really got to/Remember yourself,/You've got a fullhouse in your head tonight,/Remember yourself,/Stand back and see emotion getting you uptight."

Even Fullhouse is mild, though, when compared to tracks like Symphony in Blue, In the Warm Room and Kashka From Baghdad, which exude an unashamed sensuality. Symphony in Blue, the opening track, is a hypnotic ballad with the same sort of explicit sexual uninhibitiveness as Feel It from the first album. "The more I think about sex,/The better it gets,/Here we have a purpose in life,/Good for the blood circulation,/Good for releasing the tension./The root of our reincarnation," sings Kate happily.

In Search of Peter Pan, Wow (running together on the first side) and Hammer Horror are are examples of Kate's strange ability to let the subconscious mind run amok in the studio. Wow is tantalisingly powerful and Hammer Horror (the single) is most impressive for the way it seems to tie in so many of the finer points of the first album and project them through one epic song”.

Hammer Horror turns forty-eight on 27th October, so I wanted to write about it. Although not seen as one of her very best songs, it is an important one. A rushed second album, Kate Bush was conscious of not repeating herself. If she has released Wow first or even Symphony in Blue or Kashka from Baghdad, she may have felt like she was in danger of being pigeon-holed and unable to shift perceptions those in the press had. It is a brave song and one of her better ones, though she would regain chart success with Wow. Rather than Hammer Horror being curio or an insignificant bump in the road, it is a fascinating song that Dreams of Orgonon dissected and revealed some strong points. A track that should get…

A lot more love.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Seven: Why Rework Some of Its Gems for Director’s Cut?

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Seven

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

Why Rework Some of Its Gems for Director’s Cut?

_________

I have written another feature…

about Kate Bush’s six studio album, The Sensual World. It was released on 16th October, 1989. I did want to bring in reviews of the album in 1989 and a more recent one. Although it is not praised as highly as 1985’s Hounds of Love, The Sensual World is one of Kate Bush’s best. I do love the production throughout the album. It does confuse me why Bush decided to rework tracks from the album for 2011’s Director’s Cut. You can understand why a few tracks from The Red Shoes (1993) were reworked. The production on that album not great. A bit edge or compacted. However, I feel that the production throughout The Sensual World is tremendous. You can hear that genius through The Fog, Heads We’re Dancing and This Woman’s Work particularly. Kate Bush one of the greatest producers ever. I will expand on that later. I do want to start out with an interview from Intentional Musician that was published in December 1989. An interesting discussion around the album:

“Sitting comfortably in the high tech surround of Abbey road studios, Kate Bush, that most English of English roses, is trying to define exactly what English music really is.

"I think lyrically there's a lot that defines English music, and I suppose a certain approach to sounds," she considers emotively. "There are very definite American approaches to sound - guitar sounds, approaches to songs, the Fender Rhodes; as soon as you hear that it's America. But to actually define African, or American."

Which may go some way to explain why her new album, The Sensual World, is so mixed in its influences and so far removed from anything we may immediately consider to be English. A swirling mass of eastern European rhythms, Bulgarian singing, Irish fiddling and that unique vocal and lyrical quality that belongs to Kate Bush. But then Kate Bush isn't the type to be influenced by day time radio; not for her hours spent tuned in to the inane ramblings of Gary Davies and co.

"I don't spend much time listening to radio, and when I do it tends to be Radio 4. I guess we spend so much time listening to music in a very sensitised way, in recreational terms, that you need relief for the ears. I tend to listen to more when I just finish an album, rather than during, which is stupid.

"A good example of this is that when I finished the last album, I heard this Bulgarian music. (Les Voix de Bulgare, the extraordinary close-harmony choir whose two Les Mystere albums were surprise hits for 4AD). I thought 'Shit, I wish I'd have heard this while I was working on the album.' I think it was good in one way because I had a lot of time to think about the possibility of doing something with them. The thing that would worry me a bit is that if you like something you are influenced by it, and I'd probably try and connect to other people's music of that time. it takes me such a long time to make an album that it would be drastically out of date."

This is, perhaps, something of an underestimate. It's been nearly four years since we had the opportunity to discuss her then current album, Hounds of Love. Surely she hasn't been working on The Sensual World since then?

"I was saying to Del (Palmer - boyfriend/ bass player/ programmer/ mixer) that I think my tapes wouldn't know what to do if they weren't left sitting around for years. I think they'd have a nervous breakdown - they go through a fermenting process. Like wine, or something. I don't do anything to the songs, I just sit and let the tapes mature.

"I think in real terms it's been about two and a half years, and it's been done in bits. We started and then took quite a few months off to do a few things at home, and also it was the only way I could cope with this album - to keep taking breaks. It's quite an intense process - especially Del and I working together so isolated. We had to take a lot of breaks to think about stuff. A lot of time with this album was spent thinking. Not actually doing, but just thinking."

Home is where the Art is

As with Hounds of Love, The Sensual World was recorded mainly in Kate's home studio, with orchestral parts added at Abbey Road, Irish extras in Windmill Lane, Dublin, and the Bulgarian women recorded at Angel studios. The result is as diverse as it is interesting, and on first listening much more complex than her other albums.

"Some of them are really bizarre - I worry about my sanity sometimes, really. All of the tracks have taken such completely different processes."

Including the opening track, also the first single, which didn't quite end up as Kate imagined it initially would.

"Now that was a really complicated process for a track to come together. It started off with a song - no words. I'd had this idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Blooms' speech at the end of Ulysses, which I think is the most superb piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del had done a Fairlight pattern, and I'd done a DX riff over the top of it, and I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely perfectly. I thought God this is just ridiculous, just how well it's come together.

"We then approached the relevant people for permission to use the lyrics, and they just would not let me use them. No way. I tried everything. So I thought if we're really getting nowhere with this, let's take a different approach to the song. I heard this piece of music which a fan sent in about two years earlier, and we put the tune in the choruses in place of what we had. So that went in, and all the lyrics I had to change.

"To try and keep the sense of the original words, but something that would be original, I came up with this idea of Molly Bloom stepping out of this speech into the real world. And in the book she's such a sensual woman - womanly, very physical, it just seemed that she would be completely taken by the fact that this 2D character could actually go around touching. So that's what it turned into. The fact that they didn't let me use the lyrics turned the song into something very different. It was such a complicated process, and really quite painful to actually let it go".

I am going to end by seeing where The Sensual World sits when critics rank her album. After Hounds of Love, there would have been this sense she would follow it with an album that was very similar. Instead, The Sensual World is very different. In terms of its lyrical themes and production sound. Let’s come to some 1989 reviews for The Sensual World:

“A strange and remarkable record which has very little to do with anything else musical, a fair bit to do with the real world of sex, love, and introversion, and everything to do with uniqueness. Kate Bush remains alone, ahead, and a genius.

David Quantick, NME, 1989

Bush’s strongest point has always been her ability to acutely sum up female sensuality without ever crossing the line between erotic and crass… this is some of the most intriguing ethereal music she has written.

Billboard (USA), 1989

Calm, expansive and serene, it’s a womanist record… acknowledging rather than challenging. She’s most effective when going deep inside to investigate something more focused pliant and tangible.

Lucy O’Brien, City Limits, 19 October 1989

With the lyrical ‘Sensual World’ Kate has created her most personal record yet. She has turned her back on the mainstream and created a very intimate album… the exciting thing about this record is the new sounds Kate brings into her very British universe… hypnotic and alluring.

Lars Schwandler, MM (Denmark), October/November 1989

A song cycle as rich and deep as this takes years to mature. Her original use of rhyme and metre, the wide frame of reference she draws on as a composer, and her inventive and fearless approach to singing fall into perfect sync on nearly every song.

Kristine McKenna, Musician (USA), December 1989”.

There is so much love and praise for The Sensual World. I am going to come to a 2022 piece. One that argues The Sensual World is Kate Bush’s greatest work. An album where she documented the highs and lows of passion. When promoting Director’s Cut in 2011, Kate Bush did say that the songs she selected from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes could benefit from having new life breathed into them. A sense of dissatisfaction with the albums. I listen to The Sensual World and cannot see any downsides or lack of life. It is one of the most alive and enduring Kate Bush albums. I think that Graeme Thomson wrote in his biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, how the songs burn at a lower heat than Hounds of Love. Everything a little bit tepid. I would disagree. Each song blossoms into life. Pitchfork used words ‘lush’ and ‘mature’ when reviewing it. It is a subtle and insular work, but one that is beautifully produced and arranged. I am interested in this Substack piece. It ends like this: “If there is a better observation of her spirited, blooming Romanticism than an investigation of the very feeling that spurs it, for all of its costs and rewards, I’ve yet to hear a work that reaches these soaring, magnificent heights”. It does make me wonder why Kate Bush felt unease or displeased with The Sensual World. Or at least some of its tracks:

“During the creation of The Sensual World, Kate Bush turned 30, reaching a milestone that inspired an evolving approach to her work. In 1989, she told NME that the album represented a newfound understanding of her own music, a shift away from the concentrated expressions of power that she associated with the “male energy” she sought to display in releases like The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. The Sensual World is comparatively more subdued than its predecessors, although definitely not without its own sense of bombast, but one that is allowed to launch forth after indulging in its own grounded spectacles, rather than existing solely to build upon itself. Her lyricism is much more centered, too—instead of yearning for an opportunity to run up that hill that is just out of reach, her poetry embraces intimacy and renders it equally as stirring as her more exclamatory aspirations.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the title track that opens the album, lead single “The Sensual World.” For this song, Kate Bush famously wanted permission to adapt James Joyce’s Ulysses, but she couldn’t acquire the rights, resolving to write her own lyrics that more so interpolate the original passage than outright quote it. The song contains several of her signature touches, drawing special attention to the natural details that appear throughout the album. Even then, these images take on a specifically evocative quality here, as Bush’s sultry murmurs imbue each reference to fruit and fauna with an especially florid, textured resplendence, making the song unapologetically sexy without ever fully giving away its hand. No doubt it’s intended to be a sex song: the continued incorporation of Bush purring “mmh, yes” only further immerses the listener into its narrator’s orgasmic state. Yet that state resembles more of a trance than raging fire, as exemplified by the temperance of the instrumental arrangement, which mirrors the lyrical references to “where the water and the earth caress” as a popping keyboard line, bass guitar, and even a whip provide the foundation over which a gorgeous line of Uilleann pipes (a form of bagpipes) glides.

That Bush managed to implement bagpipes into a song in a way that sounds genuinely erotic is in of itself a testament to her immense talent as a composer, but the role of the Uilleann pipes serves as an interesting component in the establishing the album as a whole. Whereas a song like the aforementioned “Jig of Life” from Hounds of Love was intended as pure tribute, calling back to her ancestry as a dare to keep moving forward, in “The Sensual World,” the pipes are woven into the mix, acting as the babbling brooks that glisten atop the greater arrangement’s various crevices. It’s a fitting choice for a song that is very clearly grounded in sex while also being about so much more: the chorus refrain of “stepping out of the page” catalyzes a sense of beginning that resembles the birth of its very own album, its instrumentation reaching back into the histories of the people who made Kate Bush who she is in order to forge her own conception with the tools she already has.

Indeed, on The Sensual World, nature is shown not only as a creative muse, but as a primeval force of will, too, two modes of being that feed into each other. “Reaching Out,” arguably the song that speaks in the broadest language, compares a sunflower stretching towards light to the image of a man extending himself for a romance he can never truly attain, quite literally establishing that humanity can never find itself proven superior to nature, but can only complicate its fundamental patterns. Yet Bush’s delivery isn’t apathetic or snide in its judgment; quite the opposite, in fact, as what the song lacks in detail it redeems in bombast, as Bush commands her words with an sustained belting that seems to voice the souls of her subjects themselves, even at their most archetypal.

The Sensual World compresses and expands its perspective to fit each individual narrative at hand, some of which are focused on one particular story, while some are more content to observe a pattern, and others to capture an essence of a relationship while leaving the contours to audience interpretation. Kate Bush intended this album’s structural component to resemble a collection of vignettes, and this serves the complete picture well; the songs are bound by a common sense of vigor rather than a linear narrative structure, which allows each individual track to crest and swell which as much grandeur as needed while never losing momentum. This choice is appropriate, as the impressionistic quality of the album means that the narrative structure becomes more fluid from song to song, relying on a common theme rather than a sense of escalation to bind these stories.

When people discuss the works of art with which they wish they could interact again for the first time, film and literature tend to be prioritized as the mediums of choice for such conversations. Albums tend to be so embedded within our psyches so much that they move with us as our lives grow and change, not in the least because they’re easily the shortest art form of the three I have just listed. Regardless, when I think of an album I would love to hear for the first time again, one of the few selections I could even seriously consider is The Sensual World. I remember what it felt like when I first heard the uproarious “Love and Anger” and realized that my affection for this album spanned far beyond the reaches of its title track. After having been somewhat disappointed in prior albums that had been acclaimed as hallmarks of Kate Bush’s catalog, hearing The Sensual World for the first time felt like an epiphany, one that was so special because it didn’t stop; its profundity was everlasting.

It’s that sustained desire to interact with this album with fresh eyes again, though, that makes me understand just how valuable it is that I have the privilege of returning to its charms again and again. I truly could have written so much more for this essay than I did; I have so many thoughts on each individual track that I had to limit myself to observations that accentuated the central points of my overall thesis. The very qualities that have made me adore this album are those that make me want to relive the serendipitous moment of discovery all over again, and yet make me ever so grateful that I reveal new details of its construction with each passing listen”.

I can appreciate Bush wanted to rework songs from albums where she was not happy with. I do feel that the new versions of the songs she took from The Sensual World are inferior to the originals. Flower of the Mountain is The Sensual World. Bush got permission from the James Joyce estate to use Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses. I do prefer her original lyrics and the production on the 1989 song. Deeper Understanding, about the grip and impact on computers and how, even in the 1980s, Bush could see how they would dominate people’s lives, is not as radical in 2011. Also, the version on The Sensual World is warmer and better. Never Be Mine is also superior on The Sensual World. Not that Director’s Cut took anything away from the 1989 album. It does appear odd that she would be unhappy with anything on it. I love The Sensual World, and it is up there with her best work. The production throughout is superb. Those who say that many of the songs are mainstream or conventional are incorrect. As Bush entered her thirties, on this album, we hear psychological growth and, as Classic Album Sundays wrote, “emotional maturity, acoustic textures, and grounded human storytelling”. They also say that, “As a whole, The Sensual World captured just how far Bush had come by detailing the momentous transition from her youthful 20s into the emotional maturity of her 30s – a process she herself described as a “mental puberty”. But the album proved that she didn’t need to sacrifice the wide-eyed excitability of her earlier material in order to explore the increasingly complex contours of her recording personality”.

I do want to end with this article from Rough Trade from 2023. When ranking Kate Bush’s albums, they placed The Sensual World third. I do hope that the album gets some new articles written about it as it approaches its thirty-seventh anniversary:

“On Kate’s sixth album, you’ll discover old friend David Gilmour shredding on the underrated Love And Anger, Michael Nyman arranging the (fantastic) Balanescu Quartet on Reaching Out, whilst the Bulgarian vocal ensemble, Trio Bulgarka, lend backing vocals to several tracks. The Fog features fiddler-for-hire Nigel Kennedy and Kate’s father’s dulcet tones, whilst her brother, Paddy, plays swishing fishing rod(!) on the title track. Heads We’re Dancing has Japan’s Mick Karn doing what he does best with a fretless bass, whilst Kate reflects on the fate of being asked to dance by Hitler, completely unaware of just how big a shit he is.

This Woman’s Work brings the album to a close, a song which contains an introduction so exquisitely heartfelt it could indeed produce blood from a stone. Written from a male point-of-view and specifically for the scene in John Hughes’ 1988 film, She’s Having A Baby, where Kevin Bacon’s character learns that the lives of his wife and their unborn child are in danger. The song still resonates with a timeless air and has been used countless times on other films, TV shows and adverts - a weapon to cut through any static, to simply deliver the cry of a woman, hurting. The hidden gem within is Never Be Mine a song besotted by the fine line of fate and inner turmoil to let go of it. “I want you as the dream, not the reality”, Kate reflects, knowing that fantasy will always arouse more than the truth, but never the twain shall meet. Much akin to a 13 year old penning The Man With The Child In His Eyes, it’s an astonishingly mature work for a 30 year old, produced sumptuously”.

All of this does make me think that the unhappiness Kate Bush felt about some of The Sensual World’s songs is misplaced. What could she have heard in Deeper Understanding or Never Be Mine that compelled her to rerecord them?! The album is a gem. It turns thirty-seven on 16th October, so I did want to publish another feature. I do really think that The Sensual World is…

A true masterpiece.

FEATURE: The Most Female, Life-Changing, Pioneering… Is It Ever Possible to Truly Encapsulate How Important Kate Bush Is?

FEATURE:

 

 

The Most Female, Life-Changing, Pioneering…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Is It Ever Possible to Truly Encapsulate How Important Kate Bush Is?

_________

I ask this question…

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

as I am listening back to interviews with and about Kate Bush. After checking out her 2022 interview with Emma Barnett for Woman’s Hour, I also listened to the 2024 interview. The former interview was when Stranger Things used Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and sort of gave it this remix. A darker edge to it. The track reached number one in the U.K. and, with it, Bush set a record as the oldest woman (sixty-three) to reach number one. I think she has since been bested by Brenda Lee, though that was in the U.S. chart, when Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree hit the top spot in 2023. In any case, proof that a song that good could defy age and modern trends. Kate Bush had not released new music in so many years. A track from 1985 going to the top of the singles chart here thirty-seven years later. After listening to that 2022 interview, there was one Emma Barnett conducted with Caitlin Moran. This was like a ‘warm-up’ interview to preface the Kate Bush chat. There was a lot to take from it. Apparently, after Caitlin Moran caught Bush during one of her dates for Before the Dawn in 2014, she wrote about it. I cannot find the article. She said how the concert was life-changing. Moran also observed how Kate Bush is perhaps the most female artist ever. Though not a conscious or overt feminist, there is no doubt Bush is a feminist icon. In terms of the ground she broke and how she took control of her career. I don’t think we discuss enough all the ways in which Kate Bush is brilliant and this goddess. Women dominate the industry now, but in 1978, that was not the case. That is the year Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, came out. Not that Bush is solely responsible for changing things, but so much of it can be linked to her. Moran said how Bush did not compete with the men and match their Post-Punk rage. That was what was seen as important in 1978. Someone like Kate Bush was almost the opposite of all that, yet she had this incredible strength and voice that was as powerful as any male artist. More distinct and enduring. So much of the music of 1978 has faded or means less now. Bush’s work sounds so much more fearless, astonishing and otherworldly. The bravery and confidence to come through and write in this very unabashed, female and uncompromising way. That femininity. Something that might not have been encouraged in the 1970s. Perhaps not encouraged as readily as it should be until recently.

Bush’s love of technology and bringing the Fairlight CMI into work also influenced other artists. Not many other women had access to technology like this. Bush built her own studio before Hounds of Love was released. That autonomy. Bush was authentic and had this pure vision. So many people look up to Bush because she had this vision and was determined to make work in her own way and not be lead. Men and women alike taking strength from that. Something that Emma Barnett mentioned. Labels attached to Bush such as ‘weird’, ‘magic’ or ‘reclusive’. I think these damaging terms needs to be replaced with more respectful and affectionate ones. Although it may have seemed like Kate Bush is this alien from another planet or creature from Narnia is, as Caitlin Moran rightly said, because she was in control of her career from the first day. People feel that might have been easier in 1978 than now. I don’t think so. Never any air of submissiveness. If Bush felt that the wrong song was being suggested as a single then she would say so. Although Bush has given a few interview since 2022, there is still a lot about her private life we do not know. She is not sharing everything on social media and revealing lots of personal stuff. All of this acclaim and legacy has been largely built from the music alone. Moran said how Bush’s story is largely free from sadness and tragedy. This is true. She has lost her parents and friends have died. Times she suffered exhaustion, critical panning and really bad times. Though not the same sort of trauma and tragedy that is reflected in the pages in memoirs from some of her female peers. I guess it is a privilege that she has escaped a lot of that darkness, though she has always remained so positive and real. Very few songs about anger and judgement. As I type this, Taylor Swift’s Encore addition The Life of a Showgirl is getting mixed reviews. A couple of its four songs slated because they are occasionally vindictive. This is the biggest artist in the world. Someone in such a position of influence, wealth and success, why write songs like this? It sort of tarnishes her legacy as this incredible songwriter. Bush has written some not-so-great songs, though there is little of that acidic or vindictive taste in her catalogue. She was and is resolutely positive and free from baggage and bile.

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: TAS Rights Management

Bush also was a pioneering in terms of live concerts. The wireless/head mic was from her. Invented for The Tour of Life in 1979. That transformed and revolutionised Pop concerts. Girl and boys connecting with Kate Bush through Stranger Things. Not solely because of that show and it popularity. Sure, the perfect match of visuals and songs means we have to give credit to the show’s creators, the Duffer brothers. Though, and as was told in the 2022 Caitlin Moran interview, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is magical and timeless. It is both personal and universal. Its production flawless and sublime. Its messages more relevant today than ever. If Bush embraced more masculine sounds and energies from a point in her career – 1982’s The Dreaming very much emphasised this -, her naked and extreme femininity in 1978 would and perhaps should not have resulted in instant success. That in itself was a gamble. Given the landscape in music at that time. That uniquely and uncompromising femininity – I am paraphrasing a bit – is something that might have been seen as a weakness or something to deride. How it was not traditionally male, cool, gutsy or whatever. We see women in music dominate for the last decade or so and we can trace a line to Kate Bush and how she broke barriers right away. A song like Mrs. Bartolozzi was met with criticism from some male critics. However, this domestic fantasia not only resonates because it is normal but under-discussed. Women’s lives and experiences, extraordinary or normal, rarely discussed in the same way by other female artists. There are books and documentaries to be made that analyses all of her songs and why they should be cherished. Caitlin Moran said how Bush is so alive. Bigger eyes and hearts than anyone else. Kate Bush almost this divine, religious figure.

Four years after that Woman’s Hour interview and what Caitlin Moran said, we can add so much to the discussion. Before the Dawn a concert and experience of what it is to be alive. A rebirth and almost this transcendental experience. A beguiling and almost theatrical and cinematic concert that no doubt influenced so many of the best concerts that followed. I have written about that recently. This 2014 article from The Guardian highlights how Bush was very much ensuring that everything was perfect and nothing was left to chance: “One source said Bush had been obsessing over every detail, down to the design of the ticket stubs. "Driving us mad," they sighed, not unkindly. It's classic Bush: tightly controlled, utterly idiosyncratic. In an age of full disclosure she has somehow managed to retain the trump cards of mystery and surprise”. Think about the high-concept or huge spectacles since 2014 and you know many of those artists are Kate Bush fans. They saw the impact of Before the Dawn and did that in their own way. How the live concert could be so much more. I am thinking about concerts prior to 2014 and if there was anything like Before the Dawn. How untraditional it was. More akin to this opera, ballet or something beyond the realms of popular music. There are books out there that touch on all of these things, yet I find there is still more to be done. In terms of writing and really going into extraordinary depth as to why Kate Bush is this unimpeachable and titanic force for good and brilliance. Podcasts that explore all the ways in which she has shaped and transformed music. Perhaps opportunities will come nearer to Bush’s seventieth birthday in 2028, as it would be a reason for people to do something like that. She changed and saved lives.

She speaks to those who feel voiceless and unseen. She has moulded and helped define modern music in terms of female dominance and how women can be unapologetically and uniquely them. How they can be extremely female or unusual or whatever they want to be. Everyone from Chappell Roan to Billie Eilish to Florence Welch very much embodying elements and energies of Kate Bush. In 2026, is it even possible to say why she means do much to so many people? Why she is so important? I try in my own way, as do journalists, authors and fans. Though I don’t think that we can ever get to the top or bottom of her genius. I think so many of the biggest and most admired artists in the world today owe a debt to Kate Bush. That includes Taylor Swift, even if she has not talked about Kate Bush as an idol. She clearly is and is a fan of her music. I can connect so many of the most popular artists of today with Kate Bush. Even if they have not acknowledged her influence, you know Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Arianna Grande, Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter and ROSALÍA look up to her. Even legends like Madonna and Stevie Nicks are fans. How uncompromising and fearless Kate Bush was. That resonated with them. Bush’s female self-empowerment and artistic control from her debut on. This is something so many women today look at and took strength from. In Aerial’s title track, Bush sings “Look at my beautiful wings!/My beautiful wings”. These wings are ones that Bush has passed down to generations of fellow female artists, and with that, given them full grace and space…

TO fly high and free.

FEATURE: A Book of Dreams: Why a Kate Bush Memoir Would Be Especially Insightful and Desired

FEATURE:

 

 

A Book of Dreams

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the British Rock and Pop Awards in February 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

Why a Kate Bush Memoir Would Be Especially Insightful and Desired

_________

MANY artists live their lives…

through their music and promotion. We get a sense of who they are and where they have come from via those archives. I think it is rarer for artists writing memoirs and autobiographies compared to actors, for example. It is probably an impossibility, but you do wonder whether Kate Bush has considered a memoir. I have raised this before in a feature. There was a planned memoir, Leaving My Tracks, that was shelved. This is one of the great music what-ifs: “Publishers Sidgwick & Jackson actually produced a dustjacket for the book, entitled Leaving My Tracks (pictured here). According to library data, the book was to run 144 pages plus 8 pages of photographs. The official fanclub even announced a release date somewhere in the autumn of 1981. In late 1983, the project was shelved indefinitely. No autobiography has ever been published. It isn’t even known if Kate ever wrote one or more chapters for the book”. I guess this was probably a record company demand. After 1982 when The Dreaming was released, there was this moment of exhaustion. Bush had pushed herself producing this album. It did well in the charts, though it was seen as a bit of a commercial let-down. The singles did not do especially well. Hounds of Love would reignite her career in 1985. I suppose there was this sense of gathering new momentum. A way of keeping this artist in the spotlight. The Dreaming is an exceptional album, though some critics were mixed towards it. An autobiography or memoir would be this project seen as more welcomed or universal. Shelved possibly because Bush was not committed or she was busy doing other things. The fact that the release pre-dates The Dreaming suggests that this might have been mooted after Never for Ever was released in 1980. It is understandable that Leaving My Tracks never made it, as Bush was barely allowed time off or a rest. By 1983, she was having a home studio built and the seeds of Hounds of Love were being planted.

Most major artists do not share their stories in a traditional format. Perhaps memoirs and autobiographies were more common years ago. I do find them very illuminating. People sharing things that they may not say in interviews. Other artists share some sides of themselves through lyric books. I am thinking of Paul McCartney. In terms of the memoirs and autobiographies you’d want to see, Madonna comes to mind. Maybe Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Dylan has written about himself. But there is surely this curiosity among fans. It might be something that died in the past. I think with interviews going forward, Kate Bush will only be asked about the new album or whatever she is promoting. There may be some nods to the past, though there are things from her life that might never be known. I bring this up because I feel she is an artist who has one of the most fascinating lives. We have biographies and articles. Interviews with Kate Bush. Though she has yet to tell her own story. I am not sure whether she has been asked in interviews whether she would ever write her story. I think interviews are useful to an extent, though you only get bits and pieces. If Bush does release a new album, she is unlikely really to reflect on her early life. I think that there is something to be said to learn more about her life. Rather than it being too exposing, there are artists and fans who are hugely influenced by her. They want to know about her life. Not every detail. We do not need to hear about anything too personal that she would not want to tell the world. Though this idea that artists can tell everything through interviews and music. Kate Bush may feel that she does not want to put herself out there. That she has said everything that she wants to. There was a period in the 1980s where she at least was preparing to write a memoir. Take the 2021 from Paul McCartney, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. We get lyrics and stories behind the songs. Kate Bush released her lyrics book, How to Be Invisible, originally in 2018. It was reissued in 2023 with a new introduction by author David Mitchell. There is little in the way of explanation when it comes to the songs.

That is her choice to present them without annotation. How much can we really honestly know about Kate Bush through interviews, which are often directed to a certain end. Many of them are quite unserious or insulting. Not always treated with respect. Kate Bush fans and authors and fans can fill in blanks and know a lot of the history. I do feel we are in a time when Kate Bush’s influence is bigger than it has ever been. I am not sure whether we will get any new biographies. People might not need to know about all the songs and the stories behind them. I am curious about periods between albums and the earliest years. Before she recorded The Kick Inside in 1977. A memoir is about a particular period of life, whereas an autobiography is the story of someone’s life. So we might ask, if there were a memoir, what period would it address? I write a lot about Kate Bush and can only really scratch the surface. There was a bit of a boom in memoirs in 2022 and 2023. Rock stars bringing out books. I think it has tapered off a bit since then. However, The Guardian wrote about this resurgence and what could be fuelling it: “But if music memoirs fill a gap, they also represent a reaction. We live in an era where streaming has almost completely decontextualised rock and pop music: Spotify et al make music more immediately available – pretty much everything ever recorded is yours to hear at the click of a button – but the music is the only thing they make available. Cover artwork is reduced to a tiny square in the corner of your screen; sleevenotes, credits, or indeed any sense of historical, artistic or social context are notable by their absence”. I wonder if Kate Bush feels her music being streamed decontextualises not just the songs but her as a person. Whether we can really get a sense of who she is and what she thinks by streaming. I think the raft of memoirs that did get published a few years back seemed to appeal to a more middle-aged audience. A certain generation being targeted.

It is not a case of Kate Bush writing about herself to demystify perceptions or to cash in on a rise in streaming and attention around her music. There is a genuine love for who she is and what she has done in her career. We can piece together the interviews and get a semblance of the ‘real’ Kate Bush. Thinking back to the 1980s when Leaving My Tracks was planned. I often wonder how far Bush got and what the plan was in terms of its narrative. Was it her discussing her songs to that point, or was it going to be a more traditional memoir? Too busy with music itself, the time needed to write a memoir would be incredible. She would have to put everything on hold. I am not sure Bush would ever commit to that. That is fair enough. But I can’t help thinking that there are things unsaid and unwritten that give us more insight into this icon. Things not mentioned in interviews. In 2015, Madonna said she might consider a autobiography. In 2013, Joni Mitchell revealed she wrote vignettes for an autobiography. These are artists who have said the songs themselves tell their life story, though they have considered writing a book. A Madonna biopic has been on the cards more than once but seems dead. A Joni Mitchell biopic is happening, and in the past Mitchell squashed a possible biopic idea. If Paul McCartney bypassed prose and told his story through lyrics, so many other huge artists have yet to do that. I suppose the most convincing argument is that they have told their life story and put it all out there through the songs. I am not sure that is the case with Kate Bush. She might want certain things private. In a future interview, it would be nice if some things were cleared up. Bush always wanted Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave to come to the screen. She staged it in 2014 for Before the Dawn, though does she still hope to see it on the big screen? Also, will she ever perform live again? Has she ever considered writing a memoir about her early life, or even something around particular albums? Even if I can guess the answers, I feel it is a share that there will always be unknowns and things we will never be told. Or perhaps that is how it should be. Whilst so many (me included) would love for Kate Bush to write a little about her life, other say her songs have already done that. That idea of Leaving My Tracks, alas, is left in the past. Fair enough. For fans who want to know more, there are archive and fan club letters where Kate Bush wrote about her experiences and what was happening at particular times. I find it hard to get over the idea of a memoir. It is something that so many people would…

LOVE to read.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Fifteen: Exploring the Album’s Best Three Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Fifteen

Exploring the Album’s Best Three Tracks

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ONE of the songs…

that I am highlighting in this feature does not have a lot written about it. However, I did want to explore the best tracks from Kate Bush’s most recent studio album, 50 Words for Snow. It turns fifteen on 21st November. The album has seven longer tracks. It was a bit of a departure from 2005’s Aerial. That was aa double album with a greater number of tracks shorter in length. The odd longer song. The second disc, A Sky of Honey, is a conceptual suite. In terms of a concept for 50 Words for Snow, I guess snow itself holds most of the tracks together, though there is not really an arc or concept like we find on Aerial. I love 50 Words for Snow, as longer tracks allow all this room and space. In terms of instrumentation, it is the sparsest Kate Bush album. Most songs having piano, drums, bass and guitar. That is not to say 50 Words for Snow lacks depth and texture. It does not get as much critical love and respect as some other Kate Bush albums. Perhaps people less patient regarding length of songs. I would advise people to spend time with the album. There are a few tracks particularly that are highlights. I wanted to mention them here. The first track that I wanted to spotlight is Misty. Before going into the song, here is some interview archives regarding this song:

“Well, I think in that particular song obviously there is a sexual encounter going on…

John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011

It’s a silly idea. But I hope that what has happened is that there’s almost a sense of tenderness. I think it’s quite a dark song. And so I hope that I’ve made it work. But in a lot of ways it shouldn’t because… It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, the idea of the snowman visiting this woman and climbing into bed with her.
But I took him as a purely symbolic snowman, it was about…
No John, he’s REAL (laughs).

BBC4 Radio, Front Row, 2011”.

There is a lot going on in Misty. I always associate this track with being Christmas-like. We connect snowmen more with that time of year. It is hard not to think of The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. That story came out in 1978. The idea of a snowman coming to life and then it melting by the morning. It is a bittersweet tale. That sad ending. Kate Bush perhaps not intentionally referencing this story when she wrote Misty. Though I don’t think any artist has ever brought to life a snowman and there being this sexual element. The Guardian references The Snowman when they reviewed 50 Words for Snow upon its release in 2011: “Had anyone else dared retell the story of Raymond Briggs's The Snowman as a sexual fantasy which finds "Misty" coming in through the window at night to seduce a willing underage girl, they would have been denounced as abominable by the tabloids. As it's the grand dame of British art-pop – influence on Florence Welch and countless others – we can discuss the themes of "Misty" – doomed love, virginity's end, soaking sheets and double entendres such as "I can feel him melting in my hand" – like grown-ups. (Well, almost.) At once absurd and elegant, passionate and glacial, "Misty" stands for the whole album, locating all kinds of love in cold climates”.

There is so much diversity on 50 Words for Snow. A lot of people assuming that it was very same-sounding. I think there is a lot of range throughout the album. You cannot really compare songs like Misty with others on 50 Words for Snow. Misty is the longest song on the album at over thirteen minutes. Up until this point, Bush had really not committed to a song as long as this. She does not repeat herself with albums, so the idea here was to tell a fuller story. She was at the point in her career where she did not need to write easy singles and be what is seen as traditionally commercial. There other two songs from 50 Words for Snow I want to write about are the ‘shortest’. Both are still over six minutes. Yet they are not as expansive as Misty or Lake Tahoe. Wild Man was released as the single from 50 Words for Snow. The inspirations behind the songs are fascinating. There is a lot of the mysterious and spectral. A snowman coming to life and melting. Lake Tahoe and this ghost of a woman that rises. Wild Man about this strange and maligned beast. It is a song that takes us to all these wonderful and far-off places. A song that could only really come from Kate Bush. Her curiosity for the unknown or mythologised. She has this mind that is very much open to the possibility of ghosts and spirits. Creatures and something beyond the human and ordinary. In 2011, Billboard provided their thoughts on Wild Man: “The weird and whimsical “Wild Man” serves as the first new single from British art-rock craftswoman Kate Bush in a whopping six years (not including the re-tooled tracks from this year’s “Director’s Cut”). A word of advice to first-time listeners: be sure to have an atlas and thesaurus handy. “From the Sherpas of Annapurna to the Rinpoche of Qinghai / Shepherds from Mount Kailash to Himachal Pradesh,” sings Bush in her breathy lisp, somehow sounding erotic while randomly referencing Indian provinces and Buddhist principles. For all of its impenetrable wordplay,”Wild Man” makes for a wicked headphone atmosphere, with Dan McIntosh’s expressionistic digital guitar curlicues wandering around a crisp Steve Gadd kit and John Giblin bass. As an announcement of Bush’s return, “Wild Man” is a tad off-kilter. But then again, when has the ever-singular Bush been anything but?”.

The final of three tracks from 50 Words for Snow I want to include is Among Angels. This is the shortest track on the album at 6:48. Not exactly a brief track, it is distinct because it is just Kate Bush and her piano. Not too many tracks in her catalogue where there is Bush and piano alone. You could say that her most affecting and memorable songs are where Kate Bush is on piano and there are not other sounds and layers. Mrs. Bartolozzi has this sadness and sense of loss. Under the Ivy quite devastating in its way. Among Angels one of her most emotional and touching songs. I think some Bush albums have a bit too much production gloss to them. 50 Words for Snow has a rawness so you can actually feel the heart and bones of each track. Almost like a live album, it is an album that brings different things to the surface each time you hear it. Among Angels ends 50 Words for Snow. It is the only song from the album that was included in Bush’s 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. As part of an encore that also included Cloudbusting, it seems like a tribute to her late father who died in 2008. There is family new and departed on the album. Bush’s son Bertie sings on Snowflake. He was very young when the album came out. Her father Robert died not long before she recorded 50 Words for Snow. Perhaps he was in her mind when she composed Among Angels. The lyrics are “Rest your weary world in their hands/Lay your broken laugh at their feet/I can see angels around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer” are ones that could perhaps relate to other people and their feelings. Words that will strike a chord. There is not a lot of discussion around the seven tracks on 50 Words for Snow. Reviews of the album, yet few articles dedicated to particular songs. Most reviews agree that Among Angels is a highlight. This article hares these words about Among Angels: “The final track, a lush piano ballad titled “Among Angels” is just solo Kate Bush at her most somber and bare. It simply tells of the connections between reality and the divine. It’s a gorgeous closer that could very well work as her final farewell to music”. On 21st November, 50 Words for Snow turns fifteen. It will probably not get a lot of new stuff written about it. I hope fans do mark it. Fifteen years since a new Kate Bush album has come out, will next year finally be the one where we get another album?! Let’s hope. If you are not familiar with 50 Words for Snow or have dipped in and out, go and hear it in full. I wanted to take three prime tracks from the album and spend some time with them. All different and brilliant in their own way. Beautiful and distinct compositions…

FROM the brilliant Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Janet Devlin

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Ciaran Christopher

Janet Devlin

_________

A magnificent…

artist who has released several wonderful singles this year, I am new to the wonders of Janet Devlin. Her debut album, Running with Scissors, was released in 2014. She has been on the scene a long time, but I do feel that there are some who are unaware of her music. That is why I am spotlighting Janet Devlin. Her album, Emotional Rodeo, came out in 2024. The Deluxe Not My First Emotional Rodeo was released in 2025. Born in Tyrone in Northern Ireland, Janet Devlin competed in the eighth series of The X Factor in 2011. There are a few interviews from this year that I want to cover off. The first interview I am coming to is from The Lunar Collective from June. They spoke with Janet Devlin around the release of her single, Working for the Man:

“LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your  music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?

JANET: My life and my experiences, really. I’m Irish so I love telling a good yarn and a wee joke. Sonically, I just love all the colors of the country genre, so it’s fun to put my own spin on it all.

Access Writing Tools

LUNA: “Working For The Man” has finally arrived more than a decade after it was written. What emotions came up for you hearing this song resurface after so many years?

JANET: It’s a little emotional honestly. I was so proud of the song after I wrote it and was so excited to put it out. For reasons out of my control, it never made it onto the first album. I still played it at shows and things because it was a fan favorite. When I recorded it again in Nashville, I was selfishly recording it solely for myself with no expectations of it making the album, so when asked if I’d like for  it to be the first single — because my teams loved it — I was taken aback. I don't think baby Jan would believe me if I told her.

LUNA: You’ve described the track as born from reflections on the “rat race.” What inspired the single and what themes or emotions did you feel compelled to explore?

JANET: It was inspired by growing up poor, really. I remember once my mother apologising to me because we couldn’t go on foreign holidays like a lot of my friends did. Though, I never once expected us to. It broke my heart because they did such a great job of making the most of what we had. They both worked full time jobs and everything but the recession hit us and everyone hard, except the banks, which confused and angered me as a kid. It still does. Also as a teen, my awareness of politics, capitalism, and social issues was coming into bloom, so naturally it poured into my writing.

LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new chapter in your career?

JANET: Honestly just my love of the game! It’s a blessing to live a creative existence so I never want to take it for granted. Also, you might only be one song away from a big hit so I’ll keep trying until I can’t anymore.

LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?

JANET: I’m feeling positive. I’m so so proud of this album to come and I genuinely can’t wait to get it out there. I’ve got a whole bunch of gigs/festivals coming up. I’m heading to Nashville in May to record some more and also to take my wee mummy on holidays too. More  music, more shows, more content!”.

Before coming to a new interview, I do want to head back to October last year. Janet Devlin spoke with Build Your Own Nashville about Not My First Emotional Rodeo. If you have not heard the music of Janet Devlin, then I would advise you to check her out. I do think that the next few years are going to be huge for her. In terms of tour dates and achievements. I wonder if she is playing any U.K. date soon:

“What can we know about it?

I spent the whole of February writing. The label was like “how do you feel about going back out to Nashville to record an album?” I was like “absolutely” and they were like “have you got enough songs?” and I was like “absolutely!” No I didn’t haha and they said “Is March ok?” and I said “Of course” and I hung up the phone and was like “I need to write an album in a month, let’s go!” so I just booked out my entire February, wrote and we did about another 22 songs out there! The last album we had 24 songs out in Nashville so we missed our target haha!

What kind of direction will this album go?

There’s quite a few up tempo, quite a few rock country and wordplay, I like to have fun and be a bit silly with my lyrics. I am a big emotional baby too so I still won’t be getting rid of that part of me, so there are ballads on it, sentimental songs, even one I wrote for my dad. Highs, Lows and in-betweens but a lot more grit in the uptempo tracks.

You have always been a country fan, who else has influenced you?

I started in country when I was doing open mics as a teen.

It’s very big in Ireland isn’t it?

Oh it’s the biggest genre in Ireland. It’s a real thing amongst farmers, country people and even small town folks. It makes sense. I was an equestrian, my parents weren’t but my family were farmers. We are surrounded by agriculture. All you look for in music is to hear your story said by someone. They talk about things that are present in your life and that’s why it’s the biggest genre because people gravitate to where they hear themselves. It has always been a part of my life. As a kid Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, I remember the first time I heard Coat of Many Colours. Hal Ketchum, Garth Brooks, Reba. Shania Twain, loved her energy and sass. As I have got older, I started listening to more modern country , which I got to like through Bluegrass. The soundtrack to O’ Brother Where Art Thou, that has had a massive impact on my life. Alison Krauss, The Steel Drivers I fell in love with. I once dated a guy who was like “oh have you ever heard of this guy Chris Stapleton?” and I was like “No” and then he sent me it over and I thought “this is unbelievable” and then I was like “oh if you like this then you might like The Steel Drivers” and he said “nah I don’t like them” the joke is obviously Chris Stapleton was the lead singer of The Steel Drivers. I didn’t know that until I started listening to him. The reason I sent him The Steel Drivers was because it sounded like the same man haha! Chris really got me back into the modern world of it all. I love The Cadillac Three, BlackJack Billy, I have always loved Brooks and Dunn. I am quite a silly person so I love that in country you can sing a ballad that is heart wrenching and then the next minute you can have a joke song produced to the nines. I love making people giggle so it’s nice to have those two worlds meet.

Tell us a bit about the deluxe version Not My First Emotional Rodeo

I did three Nashville trips as a road test to see if I liked the Nashville way as it is very different to the way I had worked the previous ten years. So I went out and did three songs and then I did twenty four songs. I was choosing the fourteen tracks for the album and you have to go with the journey from top to tail, what sounds good and it meant cutting out a few of my favourites. I was like “we’ll definitely do a deluxe won’t we?” and they said “absolutely” so I was like “good I don’t have to beg”. Naturally then, I released an extra 8 songs on to that, so I got to let them have their moment. Also, for the fans, there were a few songs that they remember from me touring years ago and they wanted to know what happened to them so they finally got to hear the songs that they loved”.

I am going to end with METAL. They spoke with Janet Devlin around the release of Move a Muscle. A taste of a future album, there is a lot of excitement around her right now. This album has taken her back to Nashville and, as they note, closer to the music she grew up listening to. Her music and personal history interlocking and connecting:

“Every artist approaches songwriting differently. What does your process look like?

I’ve a pretty odd way of writing and creating: I come up with a song title or a theme and make a note on my phone. Usually, words come to me as I’m out and about living life. Luckily, we have phones with notes apps, so I don’t have to carry a journal with me anymore. In the note, I’ll add a bunch of idioms, jokes, poetry and a glossary of words to do with the topic. Next, I’ll write a bunch of example lyrics with different rhyme schemes. I’ll also record a few example melodies into my voice notes. Then, when I arrive at the sessions, I’ll invite the producer into my notes.
Honestly, I love research, so it’s fun for me! Also, it saves time on googling in a session. If I don’t co-write, it’s the same process, but with just myself (laughs). When it comes to ballads, though, I mostly just create in the room. I’ll still have a song concept or lyric idea, just nothing too fleshed out. I like to just let the song write itself. The mood of the chords brings to the surface emotions and memories that I’ve often forgotten about.

Talk to us about reinvention. How do you conceptualise visuals for the music?

Because most of the music is gritty, raw and real, I wanted to show that visually. I always think of the track Fur Coat when it comes to visuals. The phrase “fur coat, no knickers” normally has such a negative connotation, but it doesn’t for me. I grew up poor, wearing my cousin’s beautiful hand-me-downs that my family would never have been able to afford. So, in a way, it sums up who I am even today. I sure as hell don’t make a lot of money, but visually, you wouldn’t know it.

Is your Irish heritage important to you, and how do you integrate it into your artistry?

It’s important to me. Being from the North, people try to eradicate or invalidate my nationality as a proud Irish woman. Which sucks for them because I’m a very loud and expressive person. I’m very lucky to be working with a creative director who knows the history and gets excited by the challenge of incorporating it into every visual aspect of the project. Not only doing so, but doing it in a way only they could, from knowing everything about me, my culture and my own personal past.
I wear my heritage proudly and without hesitation. I don’t soften my accent anymore. I don’t shy away from weaving my culture into my music, my clothing or my personality. There will always be people trying to rob me of my identity, but all they’re doing is pushing my work further. Leaving hateful comments only pushes me into my algorithms. So even hate benefits me (laughs)”.

Janet Devlin is a really exciting and talented artist. I am a bit new to her work, but I do feel that her best and most personal album lies just ahead. It is a perfect time to connect with her. Go and spend some time with the music of a tremendous songwriter who you cannot afford to miss out on. She is sensational. It is clear that Janet Devlin is going to be making music for years and decades. Someone whose passion is clear. It has been great shining a spotlight on…

A music queen.

___________

Follow Janet Devlin

Official:

https://www.janetdevlin.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/janetdevlinofficial

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/JanetJealousy

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/thejanetdevlin

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/janetdevlin

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2GDNbg4B7fHn1PqHlEdtd1?si=2M3-PVIuT5KI1MsqjAPSfQ

FEATURE: It’s Always Darkest… Why the Live Album of Kate Bush’s 2014 Residency, Before the Dawn, Is Especially Important to Me Now

FEATURE:

 

 

It’s Always Darkest…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during her Before the Dawn residency at the Eventim Apollo, London in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

Why the Live Album of Kate Bush’s 2014 Residency, Before the Dawn, Is Especially Important to Me Now

_________

I have another…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a publicity photo for Before the Dawn/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

feature scheduled to mark ten years of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn live album. It was released on 25th November, 2016. Not to place it in the savagery and bleakness of 2016, but it was a year when we lost more than a few music icons. Two of whom, David Bowie and Prince, Bush had either worked with (Prince) or was a massive fan of (she attended the final Ziggy Stardust gig in 1973 and was a massive Bowie fan). George Michael died on Christmas Day. It did seem to be this unrelenting year where we lost so many great artists. One brief flicker of light came in the form of one of the greatest live albums ever. I have said before how one of the biggest regrets of my life was not being at Before the Dawn in 2014. Twenty-two dates at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, this is a venue important to Kate Bush. Aside from witnessing that seismic Ziggy Stardust farewell in 1973, she also performed there several times during 1970 for The Tour of Life. It was obvious that this venue would be the place her residency would be held! Not wanting to tour, and conscious of the tire of travelling, she could easily access this venue, and there was not the upheaval of moving sets and people from venue to venue. Also, the Eventim Apollo is one of the best and most amazing venues in the country. For anyone who has been there, it is right opposite the Tube exit. You come out and across the road is this wonderful venue. I am not sure whether there is a word for it. The sensation of trauma that you get for missing out on this life-affirming event. Rather than it being P.T.S.D. (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), it is this hyper-mega F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out). I am not sure exactly why I did not get a ticket in 2014. I can blame the fact everything sold out within minutes and I would have had to have been late for work in order to get a ticket. The honest answer is that I don’t think my fandom was as huge in 2014 as it is now.

If it were repeated now, I would grab a couple of tickets and pay anything for them. I would get V.I.P. tickets, and I would be the first person to the venue. Hours before anyone else, I would be drinking it all in and ensure I was the first through the door. Whilst that may seem extreme, it is impossible to overstate how transformative these gigs were. Everyone who I know who was in one of the audiences says it was one of the greatest moments of their lives. I would gobble up all the merchandise and ensure that I had an armful of Before the Dawn swag! I would also be the final one out of the venue. Standing there agog and exhausted after what could only be a soul-enriching and unforgettable experience. I have the live album. It is great that there were some interviews around the release (such as this and this). The best is with Matt Everitt for BBC Radio 6 Music. I hope, when Kate Bush releases a new album – it is a case of when and not if now -, he gets to chat with her. It seems that between 2014 and 2016, Bush was so immersed in mixing and producing this album. One might assume she’d go to the soundboard and download/upload a set and mix it. Instead, there are performances from different dates. It was a tireless task getting it to come together and sound perfect. I can listen to the album and I do get a sense of what people felt in 2014. When I bought the vinyl edition of Before the Dawn, I had an empty house – my parents were out for the evening -,. and I put it on, lay on the carpet with my eyes closed, and I transported myself to the Eventim Apollo. Even if some reviews of the residency say there was the odd miss or imperfect moment – a couple of the between-song set-pieces, and the fact that there were some loose seams or slightly underwhelming bits here and there -, it was a seismic moment (this review of the live album is pretty insightful). This was the first major live undertaking for Kate Bush since 1979’s The Tour of Life. Following her 2011 album, 50 Words for Snow, fans would have wished for something live. Though this album is perhaps not one that instantly lends itself to the stage. Or a bigger production. I do feel, mind, when there is another album, Bush could fuse songs from that, 50 Words for Snow, and a few other albums and come up with something brilliant.

One of the questions people ask me when they discover I am a Kate Bush fan is whether I was at Before the Dawn. Almost like a fishing hook being removed from my testicles, there is this psychic pain that definitely stings! I think it hurts particularly because memories of that gig could sustain me today. Things were bad in 2014, though it was a time relatively calm compared to today. David Bowie was still alive. And Prince. Only three years after her most recent studio album, fans got to witness this incredible live experience! I have argued before the Dawn has influenced some of the biggest-budget and acclaimed tours of the modern day. In terms of mixing various forms of media and the scale of it. One of the main reasons for doing the residency – aside from her son Bertie giving his encouragement and push – was joining her two suites. The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love (1985), together with A Sky of Honey from 2005’s Aerial. The former about Bush/a woman who is out of sea after falling from a boat. It is about her experiences staying afloat and alive. Different visions and themes explored in the songs. She is eventually rescued, though those who were at Before the Dawn felt that the events playing out suggested Bush drowned and she not saved. Her original vision was that the woman made it to land and was saved, though people attest that the 2014 version has an unhappier outcome. A Sky of Honey is the course of a summer day. From the struggle and scares of the sea to the purity, scale and wonder of the sky, it is the underneath to the depths of the ocean, joining with the scope and wonder of what lies above us. In my head, I feel the woman who survived The Ninth Wave is the same who gets to witness and voyage through the summer’s day! In 2026, perhaps we have reached peak despair. This is how Caitlin Moran has categorised the here and now. Her new book, How to Be Hopeful, is extraordinary. I have heard her talk about it and say that we have probably reached the peak of how bad things will be.

I listen back to Before the Dawn because it offers this escape. Even though it was twelve years ago, it does seem like a different time. Twelve year ago today (24th September, 2014), Bush was readying herself for one of the last dates on the residency. She would perform four more dates after that, enduing on 1st October. I listen back to that Matt Everitt interview and get some insight from Bush about how she felt. Nervous every night, the best moments for her when things were over! Perhaps too distracted and anxious until then, you cannot feel any nerves listening to the performances. The live album is so astonishing because of that voice. Arguably at its peak, there is this rawness and power that sends shivers down the spine. For me, not only is Before the Dawn a chance to briefly block out the savagery of the current times. In personal terms, it is a particularly dark time. I am severely unhappy in my job and I have high anxiety, insomnia and depression. It is a very challenging time where I am struggling to find light. Not that Kate Bush alone can overturn that – my family are the ones who can do that -, but immersing myself in Before the Dawn and imagining I am in the audience provides some respite. Though that pain of not actually being there will stay with me forever. I am hopeful Bush will do something live again. A while ago, when David Gilmour was being interviewed, he was asked if he thought Bush would perform lived again. He said (rightly) how Kate Bush is the only one who can answer that. Emma Barnett interviewed Bush and repeated this answer, asking Bush when she would perform live again. Bush said, with a slight laugh, how she was not there yet. Not a refusal or closing the door. It makes me think that, after another album comes out, she will do something. Even if it is a single gig or something smaller-scale than Before the Dawn. Given the way her legacy has expanded and deepened since 2014, there are so many people who did not see he live back then who would die to do so. A reason why you cannot rule out Bush taking to the stage again.

One of the biggest losses is how the filmed gigs never made it to the public. The idea was that there would be a D.V.D.; though I feel Bush was unhappy. Maybe with her physical appearance, she may have felt too self-conscious and shelved the plan. Bush told Matt Everitt how she wanted people to listen to the album and that a filmed thing would be a distraction. I feel this is not the real reason why a D.V.D. will never be released. I saw the Oasis film, Don’t Look Back in Anger, yesterday. I instantly thought of Before the Dawn. The Oasis film/documentary takes us back to their reunion dates last year. We see the rehearsals and then go into the arena gigs. The sheer scale, size and noise of it all! Thousands of fans brought to tears and jubilant seeing the band back on the stage. Following a bust-up in 2009, the band split and there was a period of fifteen years when Liam and Noel Gallagher did not speak, few would imagine they’d reconcile. What we get from the film is that all that hostility is gone. They were so affectionate about one another. Silently forgiving one another, they are no longer competing! It is all about the music and not the drama. Living a more disciplined and cleaner life, that focus and passion shows in the performances. They are touring again next year and will be back at Knebworth. They played historic gigs there in 1996. The documentary/film is amazing. You get a real sense of why their reunion and return was such an important moment in music history. Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn is as epic and important in a different way. If the Oasis gigs was about people belting out to these 1990s bangers, that is not to say Before the Dawn is any less spectacular, iconic and important. Fans in floods of tears in 2014. I would love to have seen some rehearsal or interview with her band and crew. Build-up and shots of the audience outside the Eventim Apollo. Getting to see some of those gigs filmed and experience the wonder of it all. People reflecting on what it was like being there. In the same way I escaped into my memories of Oasis in the 1990s watching Don’t Look Back in Anger, I find a similar escape listening to Before the Dawn.

Hard to believe that the live album turns ten on 25th November. Kate Bush’s most recent album, 50 Words for Snow, turns fifteen on 21st November. I need that sort of escape right now. I am not sure when and if things will get better from me. It seems hopeless at the moment. Yet I can find some comfort and soothe listening to Before the Dawn. I do want to end with segments of Pete Paphides’s glowing review of witnessing Before the Dawn. The headline quote is a big reason why Before the Dawn will resonate and affect people years to come: “She may have propelled us to the essence of our connection with her music: the miraculous, ungraspable nature of human consciousness”. It is wonderful to read, though it also adds an extra layer of pain that I was not there:

“She smiles beatifically throughout Lily — the invocation to guardian angels which originally appeared on The Red Shoes and, in 2011, The Director’s Cut — apart from when attacking the top notes, which she does with the phlegm-rattling zeal of a seasoned soul singer. The love in the room is unlike anything I’ve seen at a live show. Given free rein, it would surely result in an instant surge to the stage, but it’s tempered by a deference which extends to uniform acceptance of Bush’s stated no-cameras request. As a consequence, the first three songs are bookended by a total of six standing ovations. Hounds Of Love is exactly what it should be given the passage of three decades: drummer Omar Hakim and perma-grining percussion talisman Mino Cinelu hold back the rhythmic landslide, creating space for a vocal pitched closer to resignation than combativeness. Eighteen months ago, when Bush’s son Bertie McIntosh (then 15) finally persuaded her to return to live performance, the first two people she pencilled in for the project were the lighting designer Mark Henderson and Hakim. Within the opening section, it isn’t hard to see why Bush wanted to assemble her band around Hakim. Running Up That Hill is every bit as unyielding and startling as it was the very first time you heard it: doubly so for the incoming storm whipped up from the back of the stage. On King Of The Mountain, he reprises the freestyling pyrotechnics of his turn on Daft Punk’s Giorgio By Moroder. Everything about King Of The Mountain, in fact, is astonishing. Bush navigates her way around the song’s rising sense of portent with a mixture of fear and fascination that puts you in mind of professional storm chasers. When they’re not singing, her backing vocalists dance as if goading some unholy denouement into action, before finally Cinelu steps into a misty spotlight. On the end of a rope which he demonically twirls ever faster is some sort of primitive wooden cyclone simulator.

Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush. We know what Nocturn sounds like on record, so a certain sense of expectation is unavoidable. On either side of the stage, we see arrows fired from bows into the firmament, where they turn into birds. For reasons I couldn’t honestly fathom, we see the painter’s model sacrificing a seagull to no discernible end. Over a rising funk that defies physical resistance, Bush makes a break for transcendence and effectively brings us with her: “We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic,” she sings, with arms aloft. Like the rest of the band, guitarist David Rhodes has donned bird mask. As Bush is presented with vast black wings, she and Rhodes circle elegantly around each other, before finally, briefly, she takes flight.

Just two songs by way of an encore — which, after what has preceded them, seems generous: Among Angels from 2011’s Fifty Words For Snow is performed solo at the piano, before the entire band return for Cloudbusting. Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it. But, like the beaming 56 year-old mother singing, “The sun’s coming out”, that too dissipates into memory. And, after another 19 performances, what will happen? In another 35 years, Kate Bush will be 91. Even if she’s still here, we might not be. Perhaps that’s why tonight, she gave us everything she had. And somehow, either in spite or because of that, we still didn’t want to let her go.

I will explore the live album again closer to its tenth anniversary. This is a bit of an interesting year for Kate Bush. There has been no big album anniversary or new audio interviews. She has posted updates to her website, yet it has been a little quieter compared to the last three or four years. I do feel next year will be a big one. Perhaps an album nanoelement. The Dreaming turns forty-five. 2028 even bigger when it comes to anniversaries, as both her debut single (Wuthering Heights) and album (The Kick Inside) are fifty. Though she will be tight-lipped around further live performances, you can never say never. Few felt Before the Dawn would ever happen, so there’s nothing to say that was the end of her live chapter. I hope she does perform live again. Not just so I can right a wrong and finally get to see her perform! It is a time when there are so many new fans. So many artists citing her as an idol. You can feel and hear Kate Bush’s D.N.A. through modern music. Following the triumphant and acclaimed Before the Dawn, there is that tantalising prospect of the Queen of Music coming to the stage…

ONE more time.

FEATURE: Be Here Now: Oasis Touring in 2027 and a Significant Album Anniversary

FEATURE:

 

 

Be Here Now

Oasis Touring in 2027 and a Significant Album Anniversary

_________

I recently…

saw the Oasis documentary/film, Don’t Look Back in Anger. It is about the band reuniting and performing a run of days last year. We see the rehearsal build-up and follow them across arenas around the world. How Noel and Liam Gallagher, who had a huge bust-up in 2009 and didn’t speak for fifteen years, are at ease and tight with one another. They tell how they sort of forgave each other silently. No drama. Fears that the brothers would fight during the reunion and let fans down. Unexpectedly, they were completely drama-free. They had those years when they were fighting and drinking. Now, they wanted to focus on the music and give the fans what they want. Rather than it being all about them, a lot of the focus was put on fans. How a new generation, who might not have experienced Oasis thirty years ago, were struck hard. Their parents grew up listening to Oasis and passed their music down. Noel and Liam blown away by how special that is. It is a sweary film, and Liam Gallagher especially is in top form as he unleashes expletives and is just being himself! I was never a massive fan of Oasis, though I grew up at the time they were huge. How important they were and how they transformed and reignited British music in the 1990s. Even if their regency was brief – maybe 1994 to 1997, before there was a decline -, the fact that they performed together was an impossibility as recent as a couple of years back. Nobody thought it would happen. The new film charts that preparation and ramp-up. To the incredible and sold-out gigs, they also reflect on how meaningful it was. Perhaps the most together they have been as a band. Given the popularity of those gigs, it was likely that they would want to extend things. Do some more gigs. I can’t say that they will release new music – and, let’s be honest, can it ever live up to expectations?! -, but the idea of them touring for a few more years is not absurd.

In fact, they have announced dates for next year. I am writing this on 24th September. Tomorrow, tickets go on sale for their Knebworth gigs. This is the site Oasis played in 1996. Record-breaking gigs there. If anything, the attendance for their shows next year will be even bigger. The last tour earned the band millions. That is fair enough. The demand was there, so it is only right they get paid for it. However, the ticket prices were steep. The band knew that hundreds of thousands of people would snap them up, so there could have been so leeway in terms of the pricing. The only criticism is that the prices once more are really high. A lot of major artists charge this type of price (or higher), but it does seem that Oasis could have helped bring the prices down, as they will not be accessible to a lot of their core. Working-class or struggling people who cannot afford the prices charged. Or they will spend that money and cut back elsewhere. At a time when money is not an issue and it is all about the music and bringing people together, why still expect fans to pay out a lot of money when they do not need to?! I don’t buy it is the promoters and venues that are strong-arming Oasis. The band can have a say about the prices. Time Out shared details of the dates confirmed. Those Knebworth slots that will be sold out within minutes. It will make the band even richer, though if people want to pay to see such an important gig, where is the harm?! I just hope, if they perform again in 2028, that there is a bit of a price reduction:

“Oasis have confirmed details of another reunion tour. While there are no shows at Wembley this time around (in summer 2025 the Gallaghers played seven shows in northwest London), Londoners won’t have to trek all the way up to Glasgow or Manchester to see the band next summer. The ‘Wonderwall’ legends are making a grand return to Knebworth, which is a very short distance from London – and, after the initial announcement, they’ve added more dates.

Knebworth has a special place in Oasis lore. In August 1996 the band headlined two days of music in the grounds of the Hertfordshire country estate. A whopping 125,000 people attended each night, with support from Charlatans, the Prodigy, Manic Street Preachers, the Chemical Brothers, Ocean Colour Scene and more.

In other words, while London isn’t getting Oasis tour dates next summer, Knebworth is a more than valid alternative. The band are in Hertfordshire for six dates, triple the number of their iconic 1996 run. Richard Ashcroft has been confirmed on support.

Oasis’ 2027 Knebworth gigs won’t just be special because of the location. The gigs will also mark the first time that Knebworth has had a ‘camping village’, while Great British Railways will provide late-night trains to London King’s Cross until 1.30am each night. Another first will see the introduction of grandstand hospitality seating and the venue’s biggest accessible viewing platform ever.

Keen to get tickets to see Oasis at Knebworth in September 2027? Here’s everything you need to know, from when tickets go on sale to transport arrangements.

Oasis Knebworth 2027 tour dates

The ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ icons are in Hertfordshire on the following dates:

• September 11 2027

• September 12 2027

• September 18 2027

• September 19 2027

• September 25 2027 (new date)

• September 26 2027 (new date)

It’s worth noting that there is no new registration process for the new dates. You’ll still need to have registered before the deadline last Thursday September 17.

When do Oasis Knebworth tickets go on sale?

Tickets for Oasis’ grand return to Knebworth go on sale at staggered times on the following dates:

• Friday September 25

• Saturday September 26

• Sunday September 27

Here are the time slots for buying tickets

• Friday September 25 – 9am to 12pm, 1pm-3pm, 5pm-8pm

• Saturday September 26 – 9am to 12pm, 1pm-3pm, 5pm-8pm

• Sunday September 27 – 9am to 12pm, 1pm-3pm, 5pm-8pm

Oasis Knebworth 2027 ticket prices

Here’s the pricing breakdown for the Knebworth dates:

• General admission – £170.50

• Front standing – £203.50

• Coach packages – £239.50, £249.50, £259.50, £272.50, £282.50 and £292.50

• VIP packages – £317.50, £508.50 and £513.50

All prices include booking fees”.

Next year is also a big one because there is an album anniversary. Be Here Now, the band’s third studio album, was released on 21st August, 1997. This was the album that followed 1995’s What’s the Story (Morning Glory)? Reviews in 1997 were largely positive. People queuing down the street to buy the album. Often seen as their ‘cocaine album’, Noel Gallagher’s songwriting becoming bigger and more anthemic. In the sense that most tracks indulged a bit in solos and histrionics. It was a band at their most confident. Stand By Me, one of the singles from Be Here Now, is a genuine classic. However, so many of the songs could lose a couple of minutes and be better. A 21016 reissue got mixed reviews. People seeing Be Here Now more honestly and away from the popularity around 1997. I do think that Be Here Now sounds more important and better now than a decades back. I do hope that some of its songs are played on tour next year. Whilst not as memorable and consistent as their first two albums, Be Here Now was a moment in time when Oasis were arguable at their peak of their powers. Britpop pretty much has died or was almost gone. The press still putting them against Blur. Whilst Blur’s 1997 eponymous album was more inspired by U.S. bands like Pavement and it is one of their most acclaimed works, Be Here Now fell short of expectations. Though I feel, after watching the Don’t Look Back in Anger film, it seems more relevant and powerful. The huge and epic proportions of the album matching the tone of the film. I suspect there will be another reissue or an expanded edition. Thirty years of Be Here Now is a major thing. It makes me wonder if Oasis will include any songs from that album in their set next year. It would be amazing to hear songs like Stand By Me and D'You Know What I Mean? blared to excited crowds in stadiums. It makes me curious about setlists too. Oasis probably not going to reprise the setlists from their tour last year. You would imagine the Knebworth gigs will have the classics in there. But I feel Be Here Now is an album that is loved by so many fans. They would love to see songs from it played live. It was awesome watching Don’t Look Back in Anger. The abiding message from it was that the tour was not about Oasis. It was the music. The relevance and power those songs have to people. So many young listeners moved to tears. Those who were not even alive in the 1990s. The Gallaghers said how there is this escape. How fans could forget everything in the world and be united in stadiums belting out these songs. No doubt a big reason why Oasis are doing more live dates. In spite of some slightly steep prices, the main thing is that a band people thought would never be reconciled seem to be in a position where they  will tour for a long time to come. I am not excited by any thought of new music but, if they are inspired and strike gold, the results are well worth checking out. A band whose reserve was bone dry, this reinvigorated and energised Oasis are…

BACK in full bloom.

FEATURE: And She Received Them with a Strange Delight: Is It Possible to Reach Kate Bush At All?

FEATURE:

 

 

And She Received Them with a Strange Delight

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

Is It Possible to Reach Kate Bush At All?

_________

HERE is something that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the German T.V. show, Rock Pop, on 13th September, 1980 performing Babooshka

I have raised before. I did need to come back to it. I know that it is possible to get through to Kate Bush. She is am artist that is approached by filmmakers. People that want to use her music in their films and T.V. shows. I am not sure if they write to her direct. Though the message does get through to her. Perhaps it was easier back in the 1970s and 1980s. When there was a fan club and Kate Bush actually responded to fans. Now, because there are millions around the world, it would be impossible for her to reply to people. She has social media channels, though she is not the one who updates them. She will post messages to her official website. There is a contact page there, but this is not monitored by Kate Bush. In terms of getting directly to her, it is a little tricky. I can appreciate why some artists would want to be guarded or not contacted by the public. Kate Bush seems especially hard to get hold of. She is represented by Murray Chalmers. They are a P.R. firm that looks after a lot of high-profile artists. They include Robbie Williams and Radiohead. You can email or call but, in my experience, getting a response is next to impossible. I have tried to call and people do not pick up. Aside from that, there is scant access to Kate Bush. This is fair enough. She is a private person, yet I wonder how anyone gets in touch. People have rewritten letters to her, so where are those being sent to?! Sending them directly to her home address would be an invasion of her privacy. What I feel is that they get through to her management, but you could try here I guess. I have tried writing to the postal address that is listed on Companies House. Yet, when I have sent a letter, there has been no response.

Kate Bush does post updates to her official website, so there is this form of interaction. When it comes to fans contacting Kate Bush, there is not the same ease that there was decades ago. This is not a random moan from me. What I do want to do is to reach out regarding a project in 2028. This is a way off, but it is one that relates to Kate Bush. Her incredible debut single and album. They are Wuthering Heights and The Kick Inside respectively. I am going to write more about it closer to the time. Though writing to Kate Bush about it is crucial. Rather than her being an active part of it , just letting her know it is happening is so important. Because I don’t know if she released the impact her debut single and album has. Whether she will do anything to mark it in January and February 2028. When we see these documentaries and programmes, the producers would have written to Kate Bush to ask permission to use her music. I wonder whether they are writing to her under the guise of ‘FISHPEOPLE LTD. She is listed as ‘Catherine Bush’ and Catherine McIntosh’ alternatively. In any case, there does seem to be this one address: First Floor, 14-15, Berners Street, London. I have written there and nothing has come from it. Not that I am more special than anyone else. But I do have a format and an idea that I want to get mounted. 2028 is going to be a big year. No doubt people will mark fifty years of Kate Bush’s debut. Her coming onto the music scene was a massive moment. Where everything began. Even if Bush is a bigger fan of her later work and might not thinking about her debut album, it has a legacy and there are a lot of fans of it. I am thinking ahead to that time, as there is a lot to prepare. A budget to figure out.

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

It is quite crucial to get some approval from Kate Bush. Being able to use her music and hoist an event about her. Though I find it so difficult to actually get a letter to her. You can send it to an address, though you never actually know whether it goes past their front door. In the modern age, so many artists are available through email or Instagram. Fans can contact them directly. I can totally respect Kate Bush’s privacy and selectivity. I have a very serious proposition, so it is justifiable that I reach out to Kate Bush. Someone might have a better idea of where I can get in touch with Kate Bush. As we sort of get nearer to 2028, I am exploring various avenues. All seem to be dead-ends at the moment. Decades ago, there was a different landscape. Lucky fans could get the opportunity to write to Kate Bush and maybe get a personal response. It is harder and harder for people to get hold of her. Though I do read stories where smaller productions have used Kate Bush’s music and must have written to her. It would be nice if there was a more direct route such as a phone number. I do worry that if I call someone and say I want to write to Kate Bush, there would be this refusal. Even if my intentions are pure. Someone might answer and say to send a letter and they can forward. That might be the best that I can hope for. I am always thinking about The Kick Inside. When it does turn fifty – 17th February, 2028 -, we do need to do something substantial to celebrate it. I would love to write a letter to Kate Bush outlining plans and outlining my praise and affection for her debut album. Why it means so much to me and so many other people around the world. I shall try and figure how to get a letter or email to Kate Bush. It does open this debate about some artists and access. Whether, for those who want to be private but still communicate with fans, whether there would be more open channels or ways for people to contact them. Or if privacy means selectivity. Certain letters will get to Kate Bush and others will not. It is a tough one. It would be an absolute dream to write to the divine Kate Bush…

BEFORE 2028.

FEATURE: An Urgent Issue: Will Music Ever Get Its #MeToo Reckoning?

FEATURE:

 

 

An Urgent Issue

PHOTO CREDIT: MART PRODUCTION/Pexels
 

Will Music Ever Get Its #MeToo Reckoning?

_________

I have written about this…

IN THIS PHOTO: R. Kelly/PHOTO CREDIT: E. Jason Wambsgans

a few times before, but I do wonder whether music will ever get its #MeToo movement. Hollywood did experience that, and there was change. You think about all the men accused of sexual assault and those who have been called out. So few of them brought to justice. However, it did feel that there was some progress in Hollywood. Music has never had that moment. I would say that it is as needed now than ever. Not many male artists imprisoned for their crimes. Diddy (Sean Combs) is currently in prison, as is R. Kelly. Think about all the other male artists who have been accused of rape, sexual assault and abuse, and there does not seem to be this reckoning. Where the industry has come together and we are seeing these figures face justice. I guess it is quite hard, as it relies on those in power to join that fight. It seems that women in music alone are calling for activism and action. There is relatively little allyship from men throughout the industry. It is also not a thing that has gone away. In terms of statistics and what women face, there is this continuing problem. That sounds too mild a word. From festivals to within the industry itself, artists and concert-goers are reporting cases of abuse and assault. Whilst the police can investigate individual cases, there is not this greater outcry and condemnation. Again, women in music are raising their voices. Yet there is not this modern #MeToo movement that is so needed. Throughout various sectors of music, there are reports of harassment and assault. In a study published this year that was led by the University of Glasgow, they highlighted the extent of sexual harassment and abuse through the Scottish Folk scene. The study noted that 78% of participating women experienced multiple incidents, with 72% identifying peers or colleagues as responsible. There are high-profile artists that bring the problem to the fore. So many other make artists who are accused and do not face imprisonment or justice.

It does seem that the problem has become more widespread and urgent. No sign of anything like #MeToo that tackles the rise in sexual assault and harassment. I do want to bring in an article from The Guardian, where Cheyenne Roundtree was interviewed. She is “an investigative reporter at Rolling Stone, was as shocked as anyone when allegations of rape and sexual abuse were made against the music mogul”. She was talking about Sean Combs. Cassie Ventura accused Combs of a decade of physical abuse, rape, and forced sex trafficking in a 2023 civil lawsuit and 2025 court testimony:

“Combs’s inner circle and Ventura’s testimony describe the control he had over every part of her life – her diary, clothes, hair, nails. Even her medical records went directly to Combs’s email and he tracked her menstrual cycle. Her career stalled. Though Ventura recorded hundreds of tracks, her boss – Combs – didn’t release them. “She was his ‘wife partner’ for 10 years publicly,” says Roundtree. “One of the most surprising things to see was that, behind the scenes, she never lived with him, she never spent Christmas with him.”

The relationship described by Ventura was dominated by “freak-offs” – coerced, multi-day-long, drug-fuelled sexual encounters with male sex workers, held in hotel rooms. Every aspect was micromanaged, choreographed, directed, watched and filmed by Combs. According to Ventura, she was 22 when Combs first raised the idea, and she “had no concept of how it would be a turn-on”. But she wanted to please him. After the first, she felt “dirty” but glad Combs was “happy” with her, that she “did something right”.

Hundreds more took place around the world with unvetted men she didn’t know. Ventura says she felt “disgusting”, “humiliated”. When she attempted to leave Combs, he threatened to share the videos. (In one exchange between them, she talks of showing the world photos of her beaten face and body. “Release the videos also,” Combs shoots back.) Her life became preparing for “freak-offs”, enduring them and recovering afterwards. (“That’s why nothing gets done,” she wrote in one message to Combs, in 2017, their final year together. “Always healing.”)

Ventura officially separated from Combs in 2018 and filed her lawsuit five years later. When federal investigators subsequently approached her to build a criminal case, she handed over phones, iPads, video material, the names of sex workers and other witnesses to help corroborate her claims.

The US has no federal laws around coercive control and offences such as rape and assault carry statutes of limitations – legal time limits after which prosecution is not possible. But Combs was charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution. “Those laws were developed to bring down the mafia, to dismantle criminal networks,” says Roundtree.

Combs’s 2025 trial lasted seven weeks, with the prosecution arguing that Combs used his business empire as a front for a criminal operation, relying on close associates to force and intimidate women into freak-offs and transport and supply drugs to keep them compliant. The defence argued successfully that what took place did not constitute a formal criminal enterprise. Ultimately, he was acquitted of most charges. “He was only found guilty of the clear examples where he paid for the male escorts to travel across a state line,” says Roundtree. “If they’d stayed within their states, they couldn’t have charged him with that.”

The music industry, says Roundtree, is yet to have its “#MeToo fallout”. “Hollywood had this reckoning; music never really has.” R Kelly is the only other high-profile musician now in prison because of abuse uncovered in the me-too fall out. Others have been untouched by swirling rumours and mounting accusations. “Maybe it’s because an artist is so singular,” says Roundtree. “Actors have this whole machine around them, procedures to go through, people to answer to. And we love our music. Those songs are our fondest memories, they take us right back to a place or a time or a person and it’s hard to give that up, to separate the art from the artist. Sean Combs was a producer. Do we give up every song he touched? So we can’t listen to Biggie any more? It’s not realistic”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Cassie Ventura/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Although it is unlikely and improbable that male artists like Combs will be cancelled and any music with their name attach will be deleted, you do worry that, as soon as he is out of prison, then he will resume his career. There does not seem to be this barrier. Men who are accused or found guilty of abuse can carry as though nothing has happened. So many men in music at the moment are enjoying a normal career when they are faced with allegations. I did want to end with an article from 2022. Writing for The Guardian, Tamanna Rahman spoke to multiple women across music and discovered that abuse was rife. However, speaking out was very difficult. Four years later, I guess many of the same issues and problems faced then apply now:

“So what is the answer? After all, if it is right that people are innocent until proven guilty, then it follows that a person cannot have their livelihood destroyed on the basis of one allegation. It’s certainly tricky for a record label to sack them on that basis.

The problem is that many record labels do not even seem to try. If you are making your way into the industry, the likelihood is that you’ll work for an independent record label. If you’re assaulted by the owner of that company, or the artist, then who can you go to to complain? There are often no HR structures in place, and even where they do exist, which HR person is going to scrutinise their boss, or the person upon whom a sizeable proportion of the business model relies? And it’s a small world. If you rock the boat, women have told me, you’re labelled a troublemaker, and you may even find yourself frozen out of jobs in other companies. This lack of internal recourse can leave women with only two options: calling out their abuser in public, with all the attached risks, or staying quiet.

The responsibility should be even greater for the major record labels and respected music bodies, where there are HR systems in place. But I’ve been told by dozens of women that when they have made complaints to HR staff, the response has ranged from being gaslit, ignored, threatened with lawsuits, required to sign NDAs or quietly let go. In one example, a junior member of staff told me she had revealed that she had been raped the night before by one of the bosses, and the response from her manager was brief sympathy, but nothing more. In another, an investigation was called after allegations of inappropriate touching. The man in question was quietly shuffled out of the building and given a glowing reference in the music press with best wishes for his future. The woman says she was forced to sign an NDA. And so the cycle continues.

It is worth highlighting that all seven of the women who came forward to make allegations about Tim Westwood are black. They allege he abused his position and power to prey upon them – in fact, the subtitle of the film is Abuse of Power. If a white woman feels a lack of support among her peers and seniors when making allegations of sexual misconduct, their testimony suggests the issue is compounded for black and brown women, who often have to work even harder to make it in the industry.

Music may not have had its #MeToo moment, but those in the industry are increasingly coming together to support one another. There are more female execs, more female-owned ventures, and greater awareness of what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour. Last month, former Atlantic A&R executive Dorothy Carvello launched her foundation, Face the Music Now, to provide a safe space for women to report their abuse and to help them find legal counsel. And it’s not just women. Many of the people I’ve spoken to are men fed up of seeing their colleagues experience abuse, only to then be minimised and dismissed.

The music industry has in its midst multiple artists, managers and execs who have been accused of sexual misconduct. It has the tools to investigate and take allegations seriously. It’s time to use them”.

Actually, whilst researching, I did come across the article below from Rolling Stone published earlier this year. If there was sign of a #MeToo fight, it seems to have ended or paused. In an open letter, they asked what happened. Why did this cause not take flight in the same way as it did in Hollywood? They have some interesting thoughts and answers:

“One of the biggest differences between the film industry and the music industry is organization. Hollywood has unions, guilds, and collective bodies that represent workers across the business. When the #MeToo movement began, those structures didn’t lead the charge, but they gave the movement somewhere to land and became vehicles for new codes of conduct, reporting systems, and protections. The music industry doesn’t have those same structures, but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless. It means we have to build differently. You don’t need a union to be unified. You don’t need to collectively bargain to have a collective consciousness. Keeping people safe in the rooms where music gets made is a human rights issue, and it should be something every company in this business can come to the table about.

The last few years have made this impossible to ignore. We have watched the federal prosecution and conviction of one of the most powerful figures in music history on charges tied to the exploitation of people inside his own organization. We have watched survivors come forward publicly, at tremendous personal cost, to tell stories that too many people in this business already knew.

And still, the question remains: what are the companies doing about it? Not the individuals. The companies. The record labels, music publishers, management firms, studios, and agencies. The institutions that fund the careers, expand the platforms, and decide what behavior gets addressed and what gets ignored.

As founder of The 100 Percenters, a nonprofit that aims to transform the standards of the music industry so that every working music creator can build a safe and sustainable career, I’ve watched this industry avoid its reckoning long enough. In response to that reality, The 100 Percenters created the Safe Music Business Pledge. A public commitment from companies across the music business to four straightforward principles: keep your people safe in the workplace and in studio sessions; report harassment and abuse when it happens and take action; refuse to tolerate inappropriate or abusive behavior; and create a safe space for those who don’t feel protected.

That’s it. Four commitments. None of them are controversial.

Organizations like the Recording Academy, BMI, SONA, LVRN, and others have already taken the pledge, and we welcome more support of this very important work. We are seeking record labels, publishers, and management firms with artists, songwriters, producers, and employees on their rosters. Companies that have the resources and the influence to set the standard for the entire industry.

IN THIS PHOTO: Protesters outside Harvey Weinstein's trial in New York in 2020/PHOTO CREDIT: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Not having signed the pledge doesn’t mean a company is unsafe, and signing it doesn’t automatically make a company safe. But taking the pledge signals something that matters. It tells your artists, your songwriters, your producers, and your staff that you see the problem and you’re willing to do something about it.

The laws are evolving, the culture is shifting, survivors are speaking, and the public is watching. The reckoning this industry has managed to avoid is coming. The question is whether you will be on the right side of it.

If your company hasn’t taken the Safe Music Business Pledge, please visit the100percenters.com and sign it this month. If you’re an artist, songwriter, or producer reading this, I’m asking you to share the pledge with the companies you work with and tell them why it matters to you. We’ve even prepared an outreach template on our site to make that as easy as possible”.

Although there have been steps forward and survivors are bravely speaking out, that long-awaited reckoning has not quite happened. It really needs to. More than any other industry, sexual assault, abuse and harassment is rife throughout music. So few men are brought to justice or face any real loss. The industry still very much set up to serve them. It is interesting how this article points out that when a male artist is accused of abuse or assault, there is not this public outrage and outcry. There is a “negotiation”. People trying almost to separate the art ands artist as they love their music and are very selective about what action they take. The statistics speak for themselves:
“A 2024 global study by MIDiA Research, TuneCore, and Believe surveyed more than 4,100 music creators and professionals across 133 countries and found that three in five women in the music industry have experienced sexual harassment, and one in five have experienced sexual assault. More than 70 percent of those women did not report it, citing fear of retaliation and a belief that nothing would change”. If there are organisations there providing outreach and support and laws are evolving, the responsibility still sits on companies and labels. In terms of effective action, they are still largely silent. And, in 2026, this is not good enough. They all really need to…

DO more.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Girl in the Year Above

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Girl in the Year Above

_________

THERE are a few interviews…

I want to get to when it comes to Girl in the Year Above. This is an amazing band fronted by Jennifer Ball. Even though they have only released a few singles so far, you can tell that they are going to be a massive international name very soon. If you want to catch the band live, then you can find their dates here. I have only just discovered the music of Girl in the Year Above. I am going to get to an interview where Jennifer Ball speaks about recording Massive Attack’s Teardrop. This Rolling Stone UK interview touches on that too:

“It’s been the most monumental year of my life,” says Girl in the Year Above singer Jennifer Ball. The hairdresser’s excitement, tinged with slight disbelief, is palpable. In the past 12 months, the Cornish/Irish quintet have gone from strength to strength, with a busy live schedule including a tour with The Kooks, and a standout cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ on the soundtrack of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. The cover garnered high praise from Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja himself, who called it the most “sublime” version he’d ever heard. Not bad for someone who originally put music to one side “because I needed money,” laughs Ball, who decided instead to pick up the scissors.

This romanticism shouldn’t be mistaken for surface-level explorations of just breakups and love, though. “I do write a bit about love, but not as much as maybe the next person,” says Ball. “I’d rather cover a multitude of different topics. A lot of that is just storytelling and things that have happened that are other human experiences, because there’s so many more than that, right?”

The band’s debut single ‘Mama, My Heart is Achin’’, released in March, is a powerful lament on the loss of Ball’s mother. Though it began life as something of a bitter response to people complaining about their own mothers or minor inconveniences in life, in true Girl in the Year Above fashion, the song’s characteristics changed with every live show and with every member, softening Ball’s view on grief.

“I’ve really had this whole turnaround in the last two years,” she says. “If I want her to be, she’s sat right there, which is so much more special than if someone is on Earth still.” Her newfound positivity is reflected in the record version of the song, making it less of a “big downer”. It’s a track which has already opened up space for con-nection and shared experience at the band’s live shows, as she explains. “I get loads of messages about people that have struggled with grief and how much it helped, or people that have lost their mum and how they connect with it, which is really special.”

Despite the band’s seemingly overnight success, the singer never expected this to happen. “I think it’s something I secretly wanted, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself,” she says. “Who doesn’t want to be a rock star?” With a busy year ahead and attracting over half a million listeners on two tracks in just a few months, 2026 is the year to live out that dream”.

If you are new to the band, then I would advise you to connect with them on social media. Their cover of Teardrop is extraordinary. However, I also really love their singles. Wet Paint is their latest. You wonder whether Girl in the Year Above will release an E.P. soon. At the moment, they are focusing on tour dates and looking ahead to that. I am going to move to an interview from Karma Magazine, as Jennifer Ball discusses recording Teardrop for the Peaky Blinders soundtrack:

“While Ball admits she wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer scale of the production, the band approached the opportunity with a clear sense of identity. Their cover of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” reshapes the original, weaving in their distinct Celtic storytelling style to create something newly intimate and haunting. When asked about the influences she brought to the track, Ball doesn’t hesitate. “My whole life is grief… and Teardrop has a lot of grief within it.”

It’s this emotional alignment that makes the cover feel so natural. The original song, known to be associated with the death of Jeff Buckley, is steeped in themes of loss, fragility, and longing. For Ball, those themes are a lived experience. She describes the track as “classic, timeless… it’s something everybody knows,” but her interpretation leans into its emotional weight, softening the trip hop edges of the original and grounding it in something more traditional and human.

That grounding comes from heritage. Ball, who is Cornish and Irish, draws heavily on Celtic musical traditions, something that defines the band’s sound.
“We incorporated the trills that my voice does naturally… that’s definitely a bit Celtic,” she explains. The arrangement reflects this instinct.

The opening is stripped back to a cappella, allowing the song to breathe before it builds. “It was a nice moment to emphasise how emotional the song is. It’s something you’d hear someone sing in an Irish pub.” That image speaks to something deeper than stylistic choice. Storytelling, in its most traditional sense, sits at the centre of Ball’s approach to music: “To storytell and sit around in a circle, to listen to another person… is so important. That’s why I like the pub, you get to talk and listen.”

This idea of shared space, of listening as much as speaking, becomes central to how she understands music’s role. Songs are a shared exchange. They hold grief, but they also offer a way of processing it collectively. In that sense, music becomes a form of community building. It’s a theme that aligns closely with Peaky Blinders itself. Set against the backdrop of political unrest, trauma, and working class struggle in early 20th century Britain, the story resonates beyond its time period. The anxieties that shape its characters feel familiar, even now. There’s a continuity to grief, to hardship, that cuts across generations.

For Ball, this is where art becomes powerful. Naming grief, giving it shape through sound is an active movement. It creates space for acknowledgement, for reflection, and sometimes even for change. Whether it’s in a cinema, through a song, or across a table in a crowded pub, those experiences can create a sense of connection that feels increasingly rare.

“We need to make sure we’re listening to each other,” she says, returning to the idea of attention and presence. Her songwriting process reflects that mindset. Inspiration comes from observation, from small, often fleeting moments. She says, “I love seeing someone on the street and writing a song about them… or seeing a piece of art… or hearing a story from someone else.” Even here, the emphasis remains outward, rooted in noticing, absorbing, and translating the world into something others can recognise themselves in. That same instinct carries through everything, even in the lighter moments”.

I am going to finish off with DORK and their recent interview. Even after a few releases, Girl in the Year Above are getting a lot of buzz and love. I do think that the group are going to be playing huge dates soon enough. As they release more singles, there will be that demand. Even in these early days, you can really tell that Girl in the Year Above are going to be playing and releasing music for many years. Jennifer Ball is this incredible lead:

“I‘m not being in a band and not getting absolutely massive,” says Jennifer Ball with a knowing grin. At this early point in their career, Girl In The Year Above have only released two original songs and contributed their cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ to the ‘Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man’ soundtrack, but they’ve already sold out one UK tour (with their next not far behind) and absolutely dominated festival season.

“I never expected it to happen this fast,” Jennifer tells Dork, shortly after packing out the second of two shows at The Great Escape. “But I’m not going to lie, I’m having a great time.” And while her current ambitions for Girl In The Year Above are to “play fucking massive shows”, the project started very differently.

Growing up, Jennifer was always fascinated by music, so she went to college to study it while writing her own acoustic tracks. She eventually hung up her guitar and started working as a hairdresser because she needed the money. “I just thought I was bad and I didn’t feel connected to what I was writing.” But while walking to the salon every day, she’d come up with scrappy song ideas and record them on her phone. That’s where grief-stricken ‘Mama, My Heart Is Achin’ and nostalgia folk of ‘Ode To The Glory Days’ first came from.

Around the same time, she connected with a group of musical mates down the local pub who would go on to join Girl In The Year Above – guitarists Nathan Coen, Shane Kennedy and his brother David, Mystery Jets’ drummer Kapil Trivedi and keys player Jeanie White. It wasn’t long before they were hanging out until the early hours of the morning, writing songs together. And everyone else they showed the music to was just as excited.

As well as a free-flowing approach to genre, Girl In The Year Above write about anything and everything. “I don’t just want songs about love and break-ups,” says Jennifer. Earlier this week, she and Jeanie made one track about sex work and another about a window cleaner. “I’m really attracted to the idea of writing songs about experiences that a lot of people have, but they don’t talk about, such as grief, sexuality, and being cancelled. I just want to cover as much ground as possible because storytelling is one of the most valuable things we have as humans”.

I am going to wrap up. The sensational Girl in the Year Above are a group that you need to follow. Even if Jennifer Ball fronts the interviews and much of the focus is on her, they are a fully-formed and fleshed band that have this tremendous sound. I don’t think that there is anyone else like them in music at the moment. Go and follow Girl in the Year Above and see them live if you can. It is only a matter of time before the group are conquering the world. The music that they have released so far shows…

HUGE promise.

___________

Follow Girl in the Year Above

Official:

https://girlintheyearabove.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/girlintheyearabove

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRerKoFsab8dDYq0GfBpByA

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1O7L4N5WMArmnOyDhuX5Y7?si=CqqUZ5bOTM2IzlK8qMvqVg

FEATURE: My Brother You Were Born: Marking the Upcoming Birthday of Paddy Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

My Brother You Were Born

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Marking the Upcoming Birthday of Paddy Bush

_________

THIS is a person…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate and Paddy Bush alongside Peter Gabriel in 1979 for her Christmas special/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

who I have written about before in relation to Kate Bush. The role of her brothers in her music is huge. Both made such an impact and helped shape her in their own way. I have included writing about John Carder Bush, her eldest brother, as his book, Kate: Inside the Rainbow, is one I am writing a feature about. A series. I am completing that soon. I have spoken about Paddy Bush a few times. Normally in the context of songs and albums he has played on. In terms of his involvement with Kate Bush’s career, he has been there since the very beginning. There have been interviews where he has talked about his sister. However, it would be fascinating if there was a new interview where he reflected on his time recording with Kate Bush. I do hope that their association is not over. Paddy Bush played on every Kate Bush studio album, bar her most recent, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. I have pondered before why this was. I guess there were fewer musicians in the pack and it was sparser in some ways. However, Paddy Bush is such a versatile musician. Someone whose gift for seeking out interesting and unusual sounds and putting them into Kate Bush’s music, and enhancing it, should have been utilised. There might have been other reasons for him not being on the album. When Kate Bush does release another studio album, I do hope that Paddy Bush is in there. Either on backing vocals or playing instruments. His involvement in Kate Bush’s career has been enormous. He has appeared in multiple videos. Performed live with her through the years. Paddy Bush turns seventy-four on 9th December. Whilst Kate Bush got a lot of birthday wishes on 30th July, and she responded to that recently, there will be a minority who will know it is Paddy Bush’s birthday.

I would say he is the most influential person to Kate Bush in terms of music and her career. Some may say her late parents. I would argue that Paddy Bush has been the biggest anchor and navigator. When they were children, the bond between the siblings ran deeper than blood and their four walls. Kate Bush obviously fascinated by music. They grew up at East Wickham Farm, and a lot of music was played. When Kate Bush was a teenager, she was discovering music and listening to the radio, though her brother would have exposed her to something less conventional. I do wonder whether Kate Bush’s love of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa came via her brother. It would be fascinating to hear from Paddy Bush now. In terms of what their early lives were like. People might have their own favourite Paddy Bush input on Kate Bush’s albums. Whether a vocal or instrument, what stands as the very best?! I would say his work throughout Never for Ever. That is Kate Bush’s third studio album that was released in 1980. You can see his credit here. He featured on almost every track. In terms of live performances and videos, there are some great choices. I love him in the video for The Red Shoes (the title track from her 1993 album of the same name). A brief glimpse of Paddy Bush as The Devil. I also love him in The Wedding List (a track featured on Never for Ever). That was not a single, though it was part of her 1979 Christmas special. Paddy Bush played a couple of roles. The video depicted a wife seeking revenge on the killer of her groom. Paddy was the vicar at the wedding (the groom shot after the marriage was made formal/legal) and also the bandit or killer. The scene of him smoking a cigar cockily as his sister totes a gun and then shoots him down. Also, Paddy Bush supporting her for international dates and being part of 1979’s The Tour of Life. That sibling love and connection would have been so crucial, especially during the earlier years.

There are some archives where Paddy Bush discussed his sister and her career. Gaffaweb provide this invaluable information. It is clear that, far from him being on her albums because he is talented and added something, he is also a massive fan. You can feel the affection and respect he has for her.

“On different album tracks you've featured not only irish musicians but also an array of other ethnic sounds. Does this betray a lot of your own listening? Are you listening to a lot of pretty far-out stuff, music for example of aboriginal, oriental, or comparable ethnic origin, and deliberately seeking to integrate that into your own music?

No, I don't think I am really. There was a period when I used to listen to certain ethnic music. But I don't think I was ever really an avid listener. Paddy is much more of an avid listener to ethnic stuff, he listens to it nearly all the time.

Paddy: Yes, I take ethnic music very seriously and collect the instruments and the music.

And is it then you who's responsible when you add one of those instruments to one of kate's tracks, is it you who's conceived of what is possible there?

Paddy: Normally, yes, when it comes to unusual or ethnic instruments. Because that is what I am interested in. I come in with the suggestion for such and such an instrument. Kate then listens to it in the context of the track and if she likes it, it stays; If she doesn't I try and find something different.

Paddy, maybe you'd give a quick sketch of your career as a musician prior to your involvement with your sister.

Paddy: Well, I suppose it all started off initially because there's always been so much music in our family. Our mother comes from a very musical family, all her brothers, I.e. Our uncles, played on accordians and fiddles and stuff. So music was something we were always exposed to as young kids and we were always hearing irish dance music, which has been very special to me ever since. But my initial involvement in music came when I used to play for an english morris dance team. I used to play the concertina, and the anglo-chromatic concertina. I did that for a very long time and worked for the english folk dance and song society. The society's image is one of lady dance-teachers sat at pianos with children prancing about. But, basically, at that time, it was the only source of broad-spectrum information concerning folk music. So I used to play for their morris dance team, not a very big nor a very popular team really, but that was where my earliest experience of performing came from. We used to work a lot in folk clubs and, at that particular time in the sixties, the folk revival was happening in england and out of it came several thousand lps that are almost all unavailable and forgotten by now, but some of the stuff was just incredible, and that was our source material until I started getting involved in irish dance music. It's crazy! I happened to go to school, here in england, with a guy called kevin burke, who's considered the best fiddler in ireland. I was just walking past this classroom one day, and there was this geezer in there doing this absolutely incredible sligo fiddle playing. I'd never heard anything like it, I mean, it was a delirious kind of music! And then, from all that, my interest in musical instruments just grew and grew to the point where I tried to seek an apprenticeship with a musical instrument maker, actually with a harp maker at that particular time, 'cause I was interested in learning how to play all the things. So I looked for an apprenticeship for nearly two years - that would have been when I was between about eighteen and twenty - but I couldn't find anybody at all interested in taking me on. But then eventually, towards the mid-1970s, I discovered a place in london that was offering a course in musical instrument technology, not just on one instrument, but on everything. I mean literally, piano tuning, violin making, harpsichord building, keyboards, ethnic musicology with jean jenkings, and so on. And it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So I went and studied at this college, the london college of furniture in shoreditch, for three years and became a musical instrument technologist specializing in mediaeval musical instruments.

And you were still playing around folk clubs during those years?

Paddy: Oh, yes, certainly. Folk music - it's very, very hard to give any sort of adequate description of what folk music can mean to you if you're not yourself completely involved in it. It's more like a way of life. It can't stop. It's like swimming, once you've learned the art you can't go and forget how to do it. You know, somebody goes ``dum-dee-diddle-dee-dum-dee-da'' (paddy breaks into an irish jig) and you're off! It instantly makes sense! If you're born into a tradition of playing some particular kind of music, you can branch out into all kinds of other music. But the tradition is something that's always there and just never, never falls apart. So, in my case, the folk tradition was constantly there. but my major interest in broad-spectrum musical instruments just grew and grew and grew. And being at that college was the perfect place to pursue it...

So then you came out of that into helping kate?

Paddy: Well, I struggled by myself for a time as an artist, an artist of weirdness. I had a couple of exhibitions of some things that I'd made during that time. You see, towards the end, my course in musical instrument making became very curious and strange, I started making instruments with arms and legs and out of very unorthodox materials; And instruments that didn't play and which demonstrated other sorts of principles. I had an exhibition at the whitechapel art gallery and sold a couple of things, there was a great deal of interest, but not much success! Then one day kate said, ``do you want to join the band?'' (1985, Musician)

Do you have a favorite kate bush song?

Paddy: For me. Yes, yes...it's `` get out of my house", really, was my favorite track. I think if alfred hitchcock ever made hit singles [Laughter from audience]... And I love it, I love the energy that it deals with. It's fantastic. And paul hardiman's vocals on the very beginning of it I think are, to me, one of the most fantastic things thats ever been recorded. I used to go into fits of extascy when we listened to the multi-track tapes of that and those opening ``eoyores'' .. I love that track. (1985, Romford Kate Bush Convention - Paddy and Jay interview)”.

Kate Bush has also said how her brother was crucial in bringing these unusual or unknown instruments and sounds to her. That sounds diminishing. Styles and instruments not featured in Pop music in the West. I feel Paddy Bush’s influence and importance runs wider and deeper. I do hope that he features on her music again. In his seventies, it would be wonderful to have these siblings credited together. I was thinking of their early life together. There are not many solo artists whose siblings were big parts of their career. Paddy and Kate Bush together on her albums. On the road and videos. Their early lives when they were forging that bond. Not to say that the influence was one way. Paddy Bush would definitely have changed his musical horizon and worldview because of his sister. If it were not for her, he would not have got to perform on these huge albums and performed around the world. I am so curious whether they have weekly calls and if there are family get-togethers. John and Paddy seeing their sister. Perhaps just at Christmas. In terms of music, it would be a shame if things ended in 2011. Director’s Cut arrived before 50 Words for Snow. He played instruments and did some backing vocals. Looking at 50 Words for Snow, things were very traditional. Perhaps the most traditional or sparse of Kate Bush’s career. Even The Kick Inside, her 1978 debut, featured saxophone and beer bottles! On her latest album, the most ‘unusual’ instrument was bells. The late Del Palmer played those. I would have thought the album’s single, Wild Man, would have room for Paddy Bush. Given lyrics like “The schoolmaster of Darjeeling said he saw you by the Tengboche Monastery/You were playing in the snow. You were banging on the doors”, you would imagine a Nepali Sarangi (a traditional carved wooden string instrument) and the Chyabrung (a traditional double-sided oblong drum used by the Rai and Limbu communities) could have been wielded by Paddy Bush. I am assuming he knows how to play every instrument thrown at him! So many traditional instruments from Nepal too. I would imagine Paddy providing some backing vocals (or playing the eponymous wild man) would have added something. Makes me wonder, again, why this is the only Kate Bush album where he does not feature.

That said, on Aerial, her 2005 double album, multiple opportunities for him to appear, and he only provided backing vocals on its lead track – and single -, King of the Mountain. So perhaps, as he gets older, he is less involved in music. Though fans would be desperate to him to feature on an upcoming Kate Bush album. Because Paddy Bush has literally been there since the start. A formative influence on his sister, Kate Bush’s career without him would be significantly affected. Rathe than him being this guy who brought weird and wonderful sounds in and was this eccentric and fringe influence, he has been a bedrock and constant support. On 9th December, he turns seventy-four. Kate Bush doesn’t really post birthday wishes to her family. She is grateful when people wish her a happy birthday, though family are kept out. As we, of the time of me writing this (22nd September) hold our breath for news of new music from Kate Bush, I have been thinking of Paddy Bush. Whereas now and whether music is still part of his life. Such has been his devotion and fascination with music, you have to imagine it is still part of his life. Though I think of him and can’t imagine he would be into streaming and digital music. Still someone who very much favours the aesthetic and tangibility of music, that is something I feel was directly passed to his sister from an early age. Even though Kate Bush’s albums are available on streaming services, she very much prefers people listen on physical formats. Vinyl particularly. That, at least in part, comes from Paddy Bush. I also feel like their bond and relationship is unique in music. There are siblings who have recorded together, though the history, dynamic and intricacies of Kate and Paddy Bush is wonderful. Let’s hope that these two work together at least once more. Paddy Bush might be done with music, though I suspect it will be with him to his dying day. His contributions on his sister’s albums are…

UTTERLY wonderful and substantial.

FEATURE: Spotlight: THERA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

THERA

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I want to get to…

a couple of recent interviews with the amazing THERA. I am quite new to her work, so I am discovering everything she has put out. If you are unfamiliar with her music, then go and follow her on social media. I will begin with some biography from THERA’s website. I do think that she is an artist that everyone needs to know about:

“At just 19 years old, Czech singer-songwriter THERA is quickly becoming one of Central Europe’s most magnetic dark-pop visionaries. Known for blending raw vulnerability with high-octane stage energy, she has racked up over 12 million streams across Spotify and TikTok. She first took the internet by storm with her viral sensation guardian angel, which landed on Spotify’s prestigious New Music Friday and EQUAL playlists, surpassing 1 million streams on its own. Her rapid rise earned her the title of EQUAL CZ & SK Ambassador alongside a historic milestone as the first-ever Czech EQUAL Global Ambassador, putting Czech pop on the global map.

In January 2026, THERA reached a career-defining moment when she joined global superstar Jason Derulo as a supporting act on his The Last Dance World Tour. In doing so, she made history as the first Czech artist to command major arenas alongside an international icon of his stature, captivating tens of thousands of fans night after night. This massive arena run built on her standout international debut in March 2025, where she opened for two-time Eurovision winner Loreen across Zurich, London, Manchester, and Dublin. Her performance at London’s iconic Eventim Apollo (Hammersmith Apollo) drew rave reviews, with critics hailing her as an unstoppable "Czech powerhouse" with "effortless 'I was born for this' confidence."

Now stepping into a cooler, darker, and bolder creative phase, THERA is seamlessly fusing high-energy dance elements with her signature hard-hitting vocals and atmospheric dark-pop production. Cinematic, intense, and effortlessly commanding, this next chapter will officially launch with the lead single off her highly anticipated sophomore album, heartless romance, co-produced by global hitmaker Jakke Erixson, solidifying THERA as a rising force in the international pop landscape”.

Prior to getting to an interview around the release of her new single, heartless romance. It is a taste of her second studio album (one that is as yet untitled). I will move to EUPHORIA. and their conversation from July. I am wondering of THERA is coming to the U.K. to perform at some point, as people here would love to see her:

“Can you tell us a little about your journey into music? When did you first realize you wanted to be a singer?

This is a bit of a complex question for me, because I only realized that quite recently. I have loved music since I was little, and I knew I definitely wanted to sing and make music, but it was more for fun and as a personal outlet. I also grew up in a household full of music, so it was natural to love music. Only after I put out my single ‘stain’ and from the reactions to it did I realize that my music could be helping people. That and touring and being able to meet my fans face to face made me realize I really wanna pursue this journey.

Where did you grow up, and how has your environment shaped your musical tastes?

I was born and raised in Prague, Czech Republic. I love my hometown for how calm and peaceful it is. However, it is difficult to say if the city itself has influenced my music, but it always has provided a place where I can create in peace. My musical tastes were mainly influenced by the radio and listening to music with my mum. We listened to a lot of Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and Rihanna growing up, so you could say that’s where my sound/early inspiration came from.

What do you hope listeners feel or take away when they hear your music?

Whatever they need in that moment. I think what’s most important to me is that my music makes them feel an emotion or helps them go through something that they needed. If they relate to the lyrics I write, I hope they feel a little less alone and it creates a safe space for them. Or (for my more dance tracks) to have a good time and a little fun.

What can fans expect from you in the near future? Have you been working on another project?

Yes! I’m currently putting together my sophomore album! Straight after successfully completing my final exams, I flew straight to Sweden to meet with my producer Jakke Erixson, and we have begun making music for this new era. Fans can expect a very new sound with a combination of dance pop and sad songs. I’ve been really pushing my boundaries of what I am capable of, and truly I cannot wait to share this new music. I’ve already begun leaking some on my socials, but a lot is coming very soon!”.

I am just coming to METAL and their post about heartless romance before coming to a final interview. They write in their sub-headline how “heartless romance arrives today as the first taste of Thera's upcoming second album, taking the Czech artist further into the darker side of pop. Seductive without losing the emotional pull of her earlier work, the single brings a new confidence to her sound and makes the dancefloor an increasingly important part of a universe that has been gradually shifting in this direction for some time”. I am very keen to interview THERA one day, as she is such a fascinating and compelling artist:

Working with producer Jakke Erixson, Thera moves through gliding synths and hip-hop-influenced beats before letting the track open into a much bigger chorus. Behind that energy sits a considerably messier story: being intensely wanted by someone who still refuses to choose you and keeps coming back whenever loneliness takes over. heartless romance captures that frustrating space between desire and commitment but turns it into something you can actually dance to.

We had already started to notice that change earlier this year with the KNWLSY remix of rewind, which pushed one of Thera's most personal tracks into darker, more club-ready territory. At the time, she was also preparing to support Jason Derulo across European arenas, and both things seemed to point towards a bigger and more physical approach to her music. A few months later, heartless romance makes that direction feel much more intentional.

Those months on the road have since become everywhere, all at once, a seven-track live EP capturing the energy of her first arena tour. Her rendition of Charli xcx's Break the Rules, which became a crowd favourite along the way, also feels particularly fitting now that Thera is allowing herself to play more freely with the pop influences surrounding her music.

With more than eleven million streams behind her, the next challenge is deciding what to do with all that momentum. Her second album is currently taking shape, and heartless romance gives us the first real clue”.

I will end with this interview that poses some really great questions. I am not sure when THERA’s second album is coming out, though heartless romance is a tantalising glimpse into it. One of the finest artists out there, go and follow her on social media. I do feel she is going to be in the industry for many years to come:

“You have your new single, heartless romance, coming out this week on the 18th September. What are you most looking forward to about the song’s release?

Honestly, I think the song in itself, like, I’m very excited to start off this new era, this sophomore album.

There’s a lot of dancing that comes with heartless romance, so I’m very excited for that because I feel like, starting off very young in the music industry, I knew where I wanted to go, but I also didn’t know where I wanted to go at the same time. And now I’ve finally broken my fear of properly dancing, so I’m really, really excited about that.

You supported Jason Derulo on an amazing run of arena shows in the UK and in Europe earlier this year. What was it like performing on such big and iconic stages?

Right now, it still feels like a fever dream because we’re in September and it only just happened in January, February, and March. It was amazing. I was surprised because when I was really, really small, I used to have stage fright and I hated performing in front of people and speaking in front of people, so I was scared that I might be nervous or overthinking, but I just kept on telling myself every night, go out there, and just enjoy it.

And I have the best band on planet earth. I love those guys to pieces, so we just kind of went out there and had fun every single night – and then got to listen to Jason’s set for free, which was like, amazing.

What a bonus! I saw on your Instagram, when you went to see Ariana Grande at The O2, you posted something like ‘I performed on this stage!’ That’s quite the flex. That’s really, really cool.

Yeah! I was walking into The O2 to see Ariana – and my goal when we were on tour was to walk through the front entrance, because that’s just such an iconic space to walk through, but I didn’t get to do that because we didn’t have time and we were rushing! I hated it because everyone kept on telling me that my name was like on the posters and stuff and I didn’t get to see it – but we were walking in to go see Ariana and, you know, walking through The O2, getting to our seats, I was like, six months ago I was on that stage. This time six months ago I was just getting ready. I know what it all looks like.

My photographer Athena actually was at a different Ariana Grande show, like four days later, and she texted me like ‘Girl, I know how to get backstage. I’m gonna walk there.’

Oh, it was really cool. I think that was the biggest, weirdest déjà vu moment I’ve ever had where I was like, wait I was here – on the other side – but I was here.

That’s so amazing. Now onto that, the new sound of this era sounds like it was meant to be performed live, like the tracks were made for the stage. Do you hope to get back out on tour soon?

Oh yeah. I mean, I would go tomorrow if they’d have me! I’m hoping to book some sort of supporting gig. I would love to support someone on tour again this year just before we get the album under wraps. And then I’m definitely going to do a couple more ‘angel meets’ because the fans loved them when we were back in the UK, and then hopefully official headline gigs next year. I’m very excited.

And who would you say is your dream artist to collaborate with?

Madison Beer.

I know, it’s such a boring answer because I’ve been saying the same thing for years, but it’s just the truth. I adore that girl to pieces, and she’s a very big reason why I started writing music as well. I saw her live on the locket tour in Madrid. I went to go see one of my friends and I went to the gig.

If you could describe heartless romance in three words, what would they be?

Chemistry, confidence & a-little-bit-of-fun.

My last question for you is, what do you hope to achieve as an artist in the coming months?

I have some personal goals that I would love to achieve, just because I would love to start headlining shows and do that whole thing, which I’m very excited for with the new album, but I think I would just love to continue doing what I’ve been doing.

I had quite a lot of pressure on myself to make sure that the second album was going to do what the first one did, which was to connect with people through the lyrics and through the things that I was saying, and it took me a little while to figure out where I wanted to go with it, because I kept on thinking I needed to have a crazy meaning or specific storytelling thing.

In the end I was like, no, I’m nineteen. I’m growing up. I’m learning these lessons, and it feels nicer and more vulnerable and real if I just write about life and the things that we go through, so I just hope that the fans love it. I hope that the music gives them what they need, if they need to dance, if they need to cry. Even though my fans keep on yelling at me that they’re crying too much often, hahaha.

I just hope it encourages people to just have fun, and I’m just really excited to see where it goes”.

Let’s end there. The remarkable THERA is someone that everyone needs to know. A treasure that needs to be on your radar, go and follow her. This is an artist that we will be discussing years from now. Someone who will collaborate with major artists – including Madison Beer – and will release a string of albums. THERA is ab absolutely…

WONDERFUL talent.

___________

Follow THERA

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Alexander

Official:

https://officialthera.com/about

TikTok:

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

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thetheraofficial

YouTube:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2e6l2oHiK9UszKm6jVT1AG

FEATURE: This Woman’s Work: A Pause: Should There Be a Cessation Regarding Using Kate Bush’s Music in Film and T.V.?

FEATURE:

 

 

This Woman’s Work: A Pause

 PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Should There Be a Cessation Regarding Using Kate Bush’s Music in Film and T.V.?

_________

THIS might also include…

PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

reissuing albums and that sort of thing. Not to say that the recent incorporations have been bad. However, one of the songs included on the Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story soundtrack is Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. There are a few problems around it. The subject matter of the show. Also, it is another inclusion of a Hounds of Love track. It seems like an obvious go-to for so many producers. It does seem jarring using this track. The Netflix series follows Lizzie Borden (Ella Beatty) through the grisly murder of her parents. It is a dark show, and I do wonder why Kate Bush signed off on it. I do also muse whether other requests have come her way and she has turned them down. There are Kate Bush songs that would seem to be a better fit for a show like this. However, there is this reliance on Hounds of Love or obvious songs. I am not sure whether Bush has seen episodes of the series or she is a fan. It is more likely that she was briefed about the general concept and then agreed they could use Hounds of Love. Not like Stranger Things where she was very specific about how Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was used. I think every misstep that involves a Kate Bush track dents the brilliance of it. I do hate The Futureheads’ cover of it. It is one of her best songs, and its use in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story does seem an error. Cynical almost that people have seen what happened after Stranger Things used a classic and it charted and had this new life. If you are going to use a Kate Bush song, why not go for something that is not from her best-known and successful studio album?!

Who knew a blood bath could be this sweet? 🩸 Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now playing! #MonsterTheLizzieBordenStory #EllaBeatty #VickyKrieps #Thriller pic.twitter.com/w4hK1mLZ50

— Netflix Philippines (@Netflix_PH) September 17, 2026

I do feel that big anniversaries should be marked. The forty-fifth anniversary of The Dreaming is next year. The Kick Inside’s fiftieth is 2028. Not that Bush will reissue the albums with extras. However, there will be magazine spreads and articles shared. This is important, as these albums are incredible and deserve love on their anniversaries. Though I think everything has been done when it comes to reissuing the original albums. People will say it is foolhardy to not have any other Kate Bush songs shared on shows and films. Though there does seem to be this imperfect quality control. For every Stranger Things, we do get a Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. Kate Bush is a horror fan, so perhaps her thinking was that it would be alright. Though the song is a serious mismatch and it does seem like the show shoehorning this incredible loved track that doesn’t really fit the tone and feel of the show. There is this moment when people are really looking for new material. We cannot say exactly when that will come, though there has been a lot of retrospection. Older songs being brought to the screen. I do feel it is crucial that Bush’s music is brought to as many people as possible, so the screen would be a way of doing that. Yet, there are occasions when it can backfire. It is a hard call. What we are getting is a lot of Kate Bush’s previous work being shared. It is definitely a perfect time to announce a new album, though you obviously cannot push her. I don’t think there will be another viral moment like the Stranger Things impact in 2022. Unless there are deeper cuts used to great effect in T.V. shows and films, it is a point now where there is this mixed bag. Some things work and other do not. I feel there will be this new explosion of interest and love when another album comes. The Monster: The Lizzie Bordin Story is a bit of a dent in my view. The wrong song being used in a series that I am not sure whether Kate Bush should be giving her music to. Though if they are placed in successful productions, she will continue to green light requests. I do hope that, instead of her songs being used in shows and films, we do get that joyous new music news…

VERY soon.

FEATURE: No One Lasts Forever: The Intensity of Touring and Expectations Placed on Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

No One Lasts Forever

The Intensity of Touring and Expectations Placed on Artists

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ONE of the most exhausting things…

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Stanley/Pexels

about being an artist is the touring schedule. I look at artists now and wonder how they can keep going. For major artists, they are often playing around the world and there are dozens of dates a year. Not only is it draining performing the dates themselves. There is also the traveling and the acclimatation. You may say that this is their job, but imagine yourself having to do this. You look at someone like Taylor Swift and how much she has toured. Also, the length of sets. Many artists keep their sets to under an hour, but there is now a tendency for major artists to do these very lengthy sets. Oasis are going to be touring next year. It is great bringing fans together around the world. As I have written before, there is this mental health toll on touring. I do worry about solo artists especially, as they are performing on their own. They have their crew and musicians, but it must also be solitary. There is a lot of pressure on them. They are very much under the spotlight, and that expectation must be quite daunting. What does annoy me is when fans criticise artists who cancel dates or do shorter tours because it is mentally and physically exhausting. Charli xcx posted a message to fans after announcing a limited run of tour dates. Some fans angry that there were very few dates and it is such a short tour. As Billboard posted to Instagram, she has explained her reasons:

“Charli xcx has responded after fans expressed their frustration with the limited number of dates on the upcoming UK and European leg of her Music, Fashion, Film tour.⁠
"I am really sorry if you feel disappointed, but I have to honor my truth as an artist: touring is really emotionally and physically hard for me,” she candidly shared in a note to fans. "I am not looking for sympathy and I have a huge amount of respect for artists who can handle it at an intense, lengthy and high-octane level, but I am just not one of those human beings and I never have been."⁠
The singer will head out on a six-show run across Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Amsterdam and Paris in 2027”.

Charli xcx is definitely not in the minority. There are a score of artists who do shorter tours or would like to do them. I feel that artists are caught between pleasing fans and fulfilling demand. Ensuring that thy can go far and wide and see as many people as they can. Charli xcx is sticking to the U.K. and Europe, but even then, it is going to be quite a gruelling trek. Going between cities and putting on these incredible shows. That honesty is also important and refreshing. We all know that there are physical demands put on artists. Performing sets is tiring and can take its toll. This idea that touring is glamorous, and seeing thousands of fans must be such a thrill for artists. It is for a while, but travelling and the slog of touring can have a really damaging impact. As NME report, the new The Pay It Forward Fund is being backed by some musical heavyweights:

“Radiohead‘s Philip Selway, Live Nation and more have backed a new mental health touring scheme.

Entitled the Pay It Forward Fund set up by the Music Industry Therapy Collective (MITC), the scheme aims to make specialist mental health support accessible for artists and crew on small and mid-scale tours.

With touring professionals at “an elevated risk of stress, anxiety and burnout, as well as clinical depression and suicidality”, a press release states “that a growing number of larger tours now provide welfare or pastoral support as part of the production”.

It added: “On smaller tours, those pressures can be compounded by tighter budgets, leaner teams and more challenging work and travel conditions. However, these teams rarely have the budget to offer people the same resources or opportunities to talk, reflect and reset.”

The new scheme offers confidential conversations with qualified mental health practitioners who understand the realities of music and touring available online around the clock in several languages.

Tour Check-Ins can also be used by any member of the touring team to decompress after a difficult day, think through a decision, talk about work or relationships, deal with tension in the team, reflect upon coping habits, or plan what comes next.

Also included is a 90 minute occupational health consultation with MITC’s Touring Welfare Officer Sascha Heeney (who supported Dua Lipa’s ‘Radical Optimism’ tour team), healthy touring workshops, resources to support performance, communication and collaboration, and access to MITC’s audiobook ‘Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual’.

Contributors to the fund include the likes of Selway, Live Nation, AEG International and Live Free 999 – the charity foundation set up by Carmela Wallace, mother of the late musician Juice WRLD. The rapper, real name Jarad Anthony Higgins, passed away in 2019 after an overdose.

“Over the years, I’ve found that the reality of touring can sometimes feel at odds with the dream of it. Yes, it can undoubtedly be full of excitement, wonder, camaraderie and tantalising rewards, but it can also be an unstable and overwhelming environment to live and work in,” Selway said.

“It’s one that can heighten a sense of emotional and geographical displacement, leading to exhaustion, isolation and self-destructive behaviours. On Radiohead’s European tour last autumn, we had a support network in place, offering confidential access to the
therapists of MITC. Even though we’re a cohesive, well-resourced and very experienced touring party, we knew that you can still never completely guard against the trip hazards of touring.”

He added: “Knowing that this support was there was hugely reassuring. I also know that the pressures and demands of touring can be more keenly felt by acts and set-ups which have fewer resources, so I’m delighted to be able to invest in Pay It Forward to ensure that this essential support can be offered more widely.”

Tamsin Embleton, founder of MITC, said that the Pay It Forward Fund is “about making specialist support accessible to tours working within tight budgets”.

She added: “It’s also about moving beyond the idea that support should only be sought when crisis hits. We want to help forward-thinking teams develop the skills to manage pressure, recognise when something is beginning to take a toll, and intervene effectively before things start to snowball”.

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I am not sure whether we are at a point when this kind of scheme is normal and overdue. Do fans and those outside of the industry understand the realities for touring artists? I do feel that others will follow Charli xcx in announcing shorter tours. At a time when major artists are performing residencies and multiple dates around the world, you do wonder how they keep going. Maybe it is a personality type or a particular kind of person who can do that and not let it affect them. However, there is an assumption that artists have this endless energy and, because they have toured for years, they should be able to keep that momentum. Expectation that, the more popular they get, the more dates they should perform. Year after year, being on the road, promoting your music and recording really does do damage. Artists are just like us and they are not necessarily more equipped to take on the huge mental and physical demands of touring. Many artists have cancelled gigs and tours because they need to rest. There is that risk of fan backlash. If they miss some dates, then they might lose trust. Fans might not want to see them and there is that financial loss. Still part of the expected artist cycle, that need to get music out regularly and tour it. You can empathise with Charli xcx and fellow artists who will choose to do a smaller run of dates because that is all they can do. Pushing beyond that can have some really damaging and long-lasting consequences. Most fans are quite understanding and patient, though some are disappointed. I do feel there needs to be more wider understanding and appreciation from fans. Of course, they are desperate to see these artists perform, though it is not possible in a lot of cases to see everyone. Doing dozens of dates and touring around the world. Putting their mental and physical health first is paramount. The impact of touring and how it can affect artists is being brought up more and more. The Pay It Forward Fund and that awareness and campaign is so timely and vital. Ensuring artists are not put at risk and are safe is…

THE most important thing.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Carly Rae Jepsen

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Griffin Champion

Carly Rae Jepsen

_________

I am writing this…

a few days before Carly Rae Jepsen releases her double album, Day and Night. I am writing this on 14th September, and the album comes out on 18th September. I am going to finish with a review for that album. There are a few interviews I am eager to spotlight before then. She is an artist who has been on the scene for many years, though she continues to push herself. You feel her best album is still ahead of her. Her debut, Tug of War, came out in 2008. Day and Night is her eight album. This Canadian queen is one of the best Pop artists of her generation. I want to go back to earlier in the summer when NME interviewed Jepsen:

“NME: Hi Carly! So, did the songs inform the album concept, or did the album concept inform the songs?

Carly Rae Jepsen: “You know, the honest truth is it was a little bit of both. I never want to have constraints on what the album is supposed to be until I allow myself to play a little bit and just reach for what I’m attracted to. Then there’s a point where I stop and look at it, usually with my close friend and collaborator, Tavish Crowe.

“I write a lot, so even in the beginning phases, I still had a pretty hefty body of work on my hands. So I flew Tavish to New York and said, ‘I’m really torn. I love this and I love this, but I don’t know how to make it go together.’ What I had was obviously the beginnings of ‘Day And Night’. The ‘Day’ songs were a bit more organic in nature, with more live instruments and a little hint of my roots in folk music. But then I also wanted to go in this darker, more experimental, synth-based direction, which is [what became] the ‘Night’ songs.

“The mix wasn’t making sense to me, but Tavish just said: ‘It’s like this amazing house party with an upstairs and a downstairs’. I was like, ‘That sounds a little like Downton Abbey, but I feel you’. And then later on, when I was back in LA, the idea of ‘Day And Night’ really got formed in my head. And we all got excited about the indulgence of not having to decide, and just getting to do everything that you want. I’ve released B-sides projects in the past, so I was like, ‘You know what, with intention, at age 40, let’s just do a double album.'”

Why is your new single ‘On Wires’ the right song to launch this era with?

“As an artist, you’re always searching for something that you haven’t quite done before, which feels powerful and exciting. This song is all of those things. It feels like a way for me to say: ‘Expect the unexpected with this album.'”

What’s the story behind the song?

“Well, it’s really funny to answer this question with the [added] perspective of the music video, because it’s brought a whole new meaning for me. When the song was born, it was more of a cut to the heart, ‘come hither’ kind of song. I pictured chasing this man through the streets of New York – just being unabashedly bold about it, like I almost can’t stand the pleasantries of flirting and dating. There’s something really exhilarating about being the pursuer like that.

“But then, by the time we shot the video – and I hope this isn’t too much of a giveaway – I was like, ‘How do I chase a man through the streets when I’m six months pregnant?’ It would look like I’m looking for child support! So my creative directors came up with this concept where there’s, like, this really beautiful tug-of-war between me and the microphone cable.

“And the more we talked about it, the more it became [a metaphor for] what was really going on in my life, which was me carving out space for my personal life within the business of music, while I’m in the middle of this pregnancy. So this tug-of-war I’m having with the microphone cable, it’s like the umbilical cord! No, that’s a little too far, a little too gross, let’s not go there. But in the video, I take the microphone out into the streets and you see it pulling me, then me pulling it back. And you kind of see who wins at the end”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Griffin Champion

There have been a fair few interviews this year with Carly Rae Jepsen. Day and Night is the first album since 2022’s The Loneliest Time and 2023’s The Loveliest Time. The Hollywood Reporter published an interview earlier in the month. They say how Carly Rae Jepsen could have been a one-hit wonder. Instead, she has developed into this far more interesting artist. Jepsen discusses “what she's learned since her breakout hit nearly 15 years ago: "Where I've landed now in my career is the sweet spot”.

“Since the release of her breakthrough album, Kiss, Jepsen has kept one foot in the door of mainstream pop success and another in a more avant-garde space. Jepsen’s latest release, Day and Night, is a feat of balance, a double album that reflects the yin-yang equilibrium she’s striven for throughout her post-“Maybe” career. It’s divided thematically into Day, filled with sun-soaked psychedelic pop anthems, and Night, dripping in synth-heavy electropop. Jepsen hadn’t set out to make a bifurcated album; as with many of her most ambitious projects, it grew organically out of a back-and-forth with Crowe. She was heading on a trip to New York and was planning to show him the music she’d been working on. “He and I share music kind of like brother and sister in a very deep way,” she explains.

Jepsen presented her friend one song from Day and one song from Night, and he suggested they think of them as contrasting material for a single project rather than two separate albums, as she’d originally imagined. She continued to mull the concept back home in L.A. until one day, driving around the city (once again with Crowe), the idea of Day and Night came to her.

“As we were listening to stuff, it just felt like a song would naturally slot itself into the Night section or the Day section,” Crowe says. “Even before they were fully produced, too, you could still tell.” In the beginning, there were many pushes to divide the songs into two albums, but Jepsen says she “passionately disagreed” with that idea. “I wanted them together. They felt like two sides of the same thing,” says Jepsen.

The duality of the album mirrored Jepsen’s own upbringing. “I grew up in two different houses because my parents divorced when I was quite young and remarried to incredible stepparents,” she says.

It was a “very modern idea of co-parenting,” where she and her brother would switch houses every two days, both within 10 minutes of each other in the town of Mission, British Columbia. Her parents, all four of them, would have monthly meetings to discuss rules for the children. But the houses were very different. Night and day, you might say.

“My mom’s a little bit more free spirit, hippie-ish, and my dad’s a little bit more the opposite of that,” she says. “I feel like musically there was a connection. They all love James Taylor, they all love Joni Mitchell, but they also had different flavors in terms of what my stepparents brought to the table with their musical tastes.”

That duality made its way into Jepsen’s live shows, a mix of hits old and new. She considers it a win that “Call Me Maybe” isn’t the focal point of her concerts anymore, slotted within the set instead of as the closer. “I don’t think it’s a place to sit and hold resentment — what a useless waste of energy,” she says of the obligation to play the song she’s best known for. “If it’s a calling card that makes a couple of people happy, it’s not really about me anymore.”

Perhaps the most significant collaboration on Day and Night has little to do with the music. The album was made against the backdrop of one of the most transitional times in Jepsen’s personal life. While making Day and Night, she was falling in love with the man who would become her husband, musician Cole M.G.N., one of her collaborators and a producer on the album. Later in the process, as the album was being mixed, she became pregnant with their son. When it’s suggested in our interview that the album has effectively served as a time capsule for this time in her life, she asks, “Can I steal that?”

“I don’t want to say that my album’s only sunshine and rainbows and happiness because if I’ve done my job right, there’s some depth to it,” she says. But she’s not going to lie about how she’s feeling: “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been”.

Before getting to a review of Day and Night, there is one more recent interview worth highlighting. The Guardian’s interview is particularly interesting. I don’t want to drop in whole interviews, so I hope that what I have included makes sense and is not too dislocated. Selecting segments of interviews without there being too much repetition:

“In virtually any other era, Jepsen might be filling stadiums. But changing tastes aside, the music scene has fragmented thanks to streaming and social media, and the charts can be topped by a song that many have never heard. The one-time “megastar” is now more likely to be described as an “indie darling”. How does she feel about her industry?

“There’s a little bit that I don’t totally know or understand, or stay checked into,” she says, “and I don’t know if that aloofness just comes from the fact that it’s not super interesting to me.” Maybe it’s a survival tactic, she adds, “but the reality is, long ago I became aware of what my strategy would be, and I’ve stuck to it. I knew around the time that I made Emotion that I was more excited about having a strong, small-but-mighty group, than I was about trying to be confused and feed the masses.”

Now she knows who she is and who her fans are, but that knowledge didn’t come overnight. “I needed to take a second to figure out what it was that I liked about pop music to begin with, and what it was that I thought I had to contribute to it,” she says. “That’s why I went and did Cinderella, which was a really weird left turn.”

In 2014, less than a year after winning three Canadian Juno awards for Call Me Maybe and Kiss, Jepsen made her Broadway debut in a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. “I think everyone in the industry around me at the time was like: ‘What is she doing?’,” she says. But ticket sales were good, her stint on Cinderella was extended (“I love theatre, so it was like getting my cake and eating it”), and the experience reconnected her to her craft: “It was more of an artistic choice than a strategy, I guess.”

“I think what I feel about pop music is not that I love all of it, but I have a really strong opinion about it,” Jepsen says. “I don’t know that I can define it, but I was excited about trying to figure out the thing that makes me feel like I did with Rufus, where you know a stranger.” “Rufus” is Rufus Wainwright, whose moody 2001 song Poses first inspired her to “take a run at this music thing”. That unknowability is what still excites her about pop: “The idea that comes across, hopefully, in this album, is that you can play with so many different genres as ingredients and it can still be the thing”.

I am going to end up with Riff Magazine and their review of Day and Night. A double album is always a risk, as it can have some filler and it seems a little over-ambitious. There is a bravery in doing this. I do feel that Day and Night is going to rank alongside the best albums of this year:

“Carly Rae Jepsen has spent over a decade writing infectious pop songs about the rush of wanting someone. She’s finally found that someone on her new double LP, Day and Night, and she’s now singing about what comes next — from waking up next to them to dancing together all night long.

The album’s first side, Day, leans into sunny pop made for these final days of summer with breezy psychedelic pop and the warm haze of new love. Night turns toward synths, disco and stranger dance-floor impulses. It remains cohesive as one long project, though its length results in occasional moments of fluff.

Double albums aren’t new for Jepsen, though the B-sides projects have typically come as separate albums. This time, the two sides are uniquely connected.

Day opens with one of its best: “After All” is also one of the album’s most carefree and catchy moments. It sounds like being on vacation, with its jazzy piano elements and danceable chorus.

“I want to be the owner/ I want to buy you flowers,” she sings with easy sensuality. “Why don’t you take your shirt off for me now?”

“Habits of Creatures” continues that honeymoon haze, stripping away some of Jepsen’s usual maximalism in preference of a lo-fi, intimate sound. “If you want to, we could sleep in for the third time this weekend,” she sings, her airy delivery matching the song.

“Versailles” is more immediately familiar. There’s something in the chorus — the sickly sweet melody, acoustic guitars and handclaps — that sounds like pop straight from 2015. It’s bright without sounding like an attempt to recreate her acclaimed 2010s record, EMOTION. Though perhaps some of this album could use a little more of the euphoric, catchy choruses that are all over that album.

The quieter approach can come across occasionally flat, like on “Lonely Side of the Bed.” The song has a low-key charm but is less emotionally or melodically distinctive than those around it.

Then Night starts, and Jepsen pulls you toward the dance floor. Though it consistently pulses, the side of the project is still relatively relaxed in comparison to the maximalist pop of earlier albums like 2022’s The Loneliest Time and 2019’s Dedicated. “Never Let a Good Thing Die” opens on a great grooving bass line, though its chorus feels too restrained, with bubbly synths where a bigger release might have landed harder.

“Amalfi Coast” also plays with disco, while “You Don’t Know How It Feels” finds a balance between dance  music and the album’s more relaxed mood. “All of my defenses never had a chance with you,” she sings in a near-whisper, over a track that has flashes of Robyn and ABBA but still feels distinctly casual and intimate.

That looseness carries through the rest of Night. “That’s Just Me” turns sadder and dreamier, while “No Labels, I Love You” snaps back into something flirtier.

Night’s standout track is single “Motivation,” which broadens the record beyond romantic love altogether and may just be Jepsen’s thesis statement for her career and life. The uniquely minimalist house-influenced track is the project’s most oddball moment, full of dry production and filtered vocals that become incredibly infectious.

“We go hard in this family/ We love hard in this family/ I’m in love with my family,” she sings about both the family she’s growing at home and her die-hard community of fans.

With its length, Day and Night is inevitably uneven. But the space also allows Jepsen room to try new things and let her songs breathe—like the feeling of being comfortable and relaxed with someone you love.

Closing track “Super Sage” ends the album in its most lush, otherworldly soundscape. A vocoder introduces the song before synths slowly build around Jepsen’s most vulnerable verses of the album, which lead up to a sigh of relief: “We’re still alive, man of my life.” Across 24 tracks, Jepsen’s love remains the focal point”.

I am curious what comes next for Carly Rae Jepsen. You feel like Day and Night is her most important album. How nervous she is putting it out into the world. Once all the reviews come in and people have heard it, what comes after that?! Rolling Stone said in their review, “ To her, there’s no shame in airing out your baggage and confessing your feelings in a single song. Night closer “Super Sage” starts with Jepsen nervously pacing, worried she’s driving her lover to the brink as synths pile and pan like spiraling anxieties. Then suddenly, ­“Super Sage” rockets to the psychedelic-pop cosmos. The tempo picks up, synths undulate like a sine wave, and it all mimics that rush of heat one feels when they’re about to confess everything. Despite the Edenic imagery painted throughout Day and Night, Jepsen’s repeated gasps of “I love you” make for the album’s most romantic and vulnerable moment, full of stark intensity. Seven years ago, on Dedicated‘s “Real Love,” Jepsen screamed to the clouds about wanting genuine connection. On Day and Night, it sounds like she’s found it”. Make sure you grab a copy of the latest album from…

THIS awesome artist.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Hayley Williams

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Gray for Alterantive Press

Hayley Williams

_________

I have featured…

Hayley Williams a few times before. She is one of my favourite artists. Whether leading Paramore, as a solo artist, or part of her new group, Power Snatch, she is one of the world’s great songwriters. For this The Great American Songbook, I am focusing on her solo material. I am going to end things with a twenty-song mix. However, I want to source a biography I have probably used before. AllMusic provide us insight into this incredible artist:

“Hayley Williams is a dynamic vocalist known for her work as the lead singer of Paramore as well as her own deeply emotive solo work. With her highly resonant voice, charismatic stage presence, and bold artistic energy, Williams functioned as a guiding light of the emo-centric pop-punk scene of the mid-2000s, helping Paramore earn four Top 20 Billboard 200 albums, as well as a Grammy for the 2012 single "Ain't It Fun." Over the years, Williams and the band expanded their sound, embracing an increasingly genre-crossing blend of '80s synth and dance-rock influences; a process that also found them paring down from a sometime-quintet to a trio for 2017's sophisticated After Laughter. Away from Paramore, she has collaborated on equally diverse projects with artists like B.o.B, Zedd, and Chvrches. In 2020, Williams embarked on a solo career with her debut album, Petals for Armor. The album debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and paved the way for her sophomore album, 2021's Flowers for Vases/descansos. She returned to Paramore for 2023's Grammy-winning This Is Why before collaborating on songs with Blood Orange and David Byrne. In 2025, Williams initially side-stepped an album, instead releasing 16 of her own singles including "Mirtazapine," before collecting them as her deeply introspective third album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party.

Born in 1988 in Meridian, Mississippi, Williams moved with her mother to Franklin, Tennessee, in 2002 following her parents' divorce. Largely home-schooled, she spent much of her free time singing, playing guitar, and writing in her journal. It was during this period that she befriended guitarist Josh Farro, his brother, drummer Zac Farro, and guitarist Taylor York. She also began seeking out local music opportunities, meeting bassist Jeremy Davis while auditioning for a local funk band. After she introduced the Farros to Davis, Williams and her bandmates began working on songs together as Paramore. Their work quickly bore fruit in the form of a contract with Atlantic Records and in 2005, they released their debut album, All We Know Is Falling, on the Atlantic subsidiary Fueled by Ramen.

Over the next few years, Paramore built a devoted following with their exuberant, richly emotive brand of rock. As the lead singer, co-songwriter, and main lyricist, Williams was the focus of much of the attention the band received. Her big voice and undeniable charisma drew comparisons to icons like Debbie Harry, helping the group stand out as they joined the roster on the Warped Tour, while propelling the band toward an international audience. Their subsequent albums, including 2007's Riot! and 2009's Brand New Eyes, cracked the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 and earned Williams a string of cameos as a featured artist on other albums. In 2009, she guested on the New Found Glory track "Tangled Up." Also appearing that year was her first solo recording, "Teenagers," which was included on the soundtrack to the horror film Jennifer's Body. The following year, Williams returned to the upper reaches of the charts with "Airplanes," a collaboration with hip-hop artist B.o.B. that peaked at number two in America and topped the charts in England.

Following a split with the Farro brothers, Williams and her remaining bandmates, guitarist York and bassist Davis, released 2012's eponymously titled Paramore. Produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen, the album found the group further expanding their sound, embracing a wider range of pop, post-punk, and funk influences. A breakthrough for the band, the album landed at number one on the Billboard 200 and earned them their first-ever Grammy Award for the hit single "Ain't It Fun." However, the success brought another split in the band, with Davis leaving amid a legal dispute over royalties.

Williams and York eventually moved forward musically after reconnecting with original drummer Zac Farro. In 2017, a rejuvenated Paramore released the Meldal-Johnsen-produced After Laughter, which featured an even more genre-open approach to songwriting along with Williams' hard-won lyrical maturity. The record also performed well, peaking at number six on the Billboard 200 and topping both the Alternative and Rock charts.

Following an extensive two-year tour, Paramore went on hiatus in 2019. Williams used the time off to begin work on a solo project, writing songs with York and Paramore's touring bassist Joey Howard. In January 2020, she debuted the tracks "Simmer" and "Leave It Alone," which featured a darker, more artistically minded tone than previous Paramore songs. The tracks were accompanied online by music videos directed by Warren Fu and paved the way for her first full-length solo album, 2020's Petals for Armor. Initially preceded by two EPs, Petals for Armor I and Petals for Armor II, the album debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200. Nine months later, in February 2021, she released her second full-length solo album, Flowers for Vases/descansos. Produced by Canon Blue's Daniel James, the album found Williams playing all the instruments herself.

Paramore eventually came back from hiatus and Williams, York, and Farro returned to the studio. In September 2022, they released "This Is Why" as the first single and title track off the group's sixth studio album. Produced by Carlos de la Garza, 2023's This Is Why found the group combining an angular post-punk guitar sound with songs that were both personal and rife with political anger. The set went on to win a pair of Grammy Awards in 2024.

As that album cycle wound down, Williams was featured on Taylor Swift's "Castles Crumbling" from her Speak Now (Taylor's Version) and later, in 2025, she teamed with Blood Orange and Turnstile on "Seein' Stars" and Moses Sumney on "I Like It I Like It." She also appeared on David Byrne's Who Is the Sky? and Jay Som's Belong.

In July 2025, she released her own solo single, the '90s alt-rock-infused "Mirtazapine," as a WNXP radio exclusive. A few days later, 16 additional tracks popped up on her website for fans with a special passcode. On August 1, the full set of tracks was issued across streaming platforms. Following several weeks that saw fans create their own playlists of the tracks, Williams eventually combined them for her third full-length solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. Produced with Canon Blue's Daniel James, the album found Williams in an introspective mood, touching upon themes of depression, heartbreak, and self-acceptance. In early 2026, Williams and James teamed up on another project which they dubbed Power Snatch. The three-track EP1 appeared on select digital feeds in February and featured shoegaze and trip-hop atmospherics”.

The brilliant Hayley Williams never stops. Such a versatile and consistently brilliant artist whose latest solo album, last year’s Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, is among the best of the decade, I hope there is a fourth solo album from her in the future. Selecting twenty tracks across her brilliant solo career, we can hear the genius of Hayley Williams. She is a modern great in a league of her own. I love everything that she touches. Long may we see this queen’s music shine…

FOR decades more.

FEATURE: Once Upon a Time, Not So Long Ago… Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Once Upon a Time, Not So Long Ago…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bon Jovi in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Harbon

Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer at Forty

_________

ONE of the defining tracks…

as the 1980s tunes forty on 31st October. Livin’ on a Prayer was the second single from their third studio album, Slippery When Wet. A number one smash and one of the most recognisable and memorable songs of its generation, I wanted to look inside this song as it approached a big anniversary. Slippery When Wet also contains You Give Love a Bad Name and Wanted Dead or Alive. Though nothing compares top Livin’ on a Prayer. One of those songs impossible not to sing along to! I do want to start off with Gold Radio and their feature around this working-class anthem. Livin’ on a Prayer was arguably the song that took them into the stratosphere. After this, they were on top of the world:

“Written with the backdrop of the second Ronald Reagan presidential term and the economic problems that brought the working class, 'Livin' on a Prayer' tells the story of a couple whose love pulls them through their financial hardship.

Tommy is a dockworker who isn't getting paid while his union's on strike ("he's down on his luck it's tough"), so the couple scrape to pay the bills with Gina's work as a waitress in a diner ("she brings home her pay for love").

Despite it all though, the couple have each other and take turns in supporting one another keeping their love and dreams alive ("She says, we've got to hold on to what we've got" / "When she cries in the night, Tommy whispers / Baby, it's okay, someday").

"It deals with the way that two kids – Tommy and Gina – face life's struggles, and how their love and ambitions get them through the hard times." Bon Jovi later said. "It's working class and it's real."

Are Tommy and Gina in 'Livin' on a Prayer' real people?

"Tommy and Gina aren't two specific people; they represent a lifestyle," Bon Jovi said, but maybe the reason for the pure emotional power of 'Livin' on a Prayer' was that Jon Bon Jovi and Desmond Child were absolutely writing from life experience.

Like Tommy, whose rockstar dreams were frustrated by the struggles of real-life ("Tommy's got his six-string in hock"), Jon had a pal who was a high school baseball star, but had to give up his dreams after he got his girlfriend pregnant, having to go and work in a factory.

As for Gina, when Desmond's girlfriend and fellow singer-songwriter Maria Vidal worked at the Once Upon A Stove diner, she got the nickname Gina because of how much she looked like Italian star Gina Lollobrigida.

And Tommy and Gina got another appearance in the massive 2000 comeback hit 'It's My Life' ("Yeah, this is for the ones who stood their ground / For Tommy and Gina, who never backed down").

How did 'Livin' on a Prayer' do in the charts?

After 'You Give Love A Bad Name' changed everything for Bon Jovi by going to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, the band had to follow it up with something big to prove it wasn't a fluke.

They did that and more with 'Livin' on a Prayer', which also topped the Mainstream Rock and Cash Box Charts.

It went to number four in the official UK chart, and topped the UK Rock and Metal Chart, too.

It's gone on to be triple platinum in the US and double platinum in the UK, as well as racking up 840 million YouTube views and 820 million Spotify listens (and counting)”.

There are a few other features I want to come to before I wrap thing up. Such an iconic song, no surprise there has been a lot written around it. Last year, uDiscovermusic explored this ageless classic. One that has been passed through the generations. One of these songs that will be played widely for decades to come. Whilst we all know this song and sing along, how many of us know the story behind it? I was interested to know more:

“A motivational anthem for the working class, “Livin’ On A Prayer” captured the economic hardship of the era. It focused on fictional couple Tommy and Gina who try to hold on to their faith as they struggle to make ends meet. While the song has become ubiquitous at festivals, karaoke nights, bars, and arenas worldwide for decades, it wasn’t initially favored by the band.

“I remember walking out of the room with Richie and I said, ‘Eh, it’s okay. Maybe we should just put it on a movie soundtrack,’” Bon Jovi told The Irish Times. “Richie looked at me and said, ‘You’re an idiot. It’s really good.’ I said, ‘I just don’t know where it’s going.’ But it didn’t have that boom-boom-boom bassline yet, so it sounded more like The Clash.” One listen to the demo, which was featured as a hidden track on the 2004 box set 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong, and you can hear what Bon Jovi means. The track is void of the pounding drums, ripping guitars, and that quintessential robotic talkbox effect.

“We had sort of written it like this spooky, moody, sensitive thing,” co-songwriter Desmond Child recalled on a podcast in 2019. Along with his work with the band, Child is behind Top 40 smashes like Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” Child continued: “Jon didn’t think it was going to be right for the direction that they were going into, which was like, hard rock, stadium rock. The song was so good that Richie Sambora and I literally got on our hands and knees, half-joking, half-serious, and begged him to record it.”

The final version of “Livin’ On A Prayer” was an instant smash. The video, directed by frequent collaborator Wayne Isham, was on constant MTV rotation. The song itself became their second consecutive No. 1 single following “You Give Love A Bad Name.” They were the first hard rock band to ever top the Hot 100 with back-to-back singles.

But the song has had an impact far beyond the charts. Following the September 11 attacks, Bon Jovi performed a celebrated acoustic version of “Livin’ On A Prayer” for the America: A Tribute to Heroes special. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, meanwhile, Jon Bon Jovi joined a city-wide Chicago singalong. The track has also inspired other artists. In 2010, Rihanna joined the band during a Madrid concert and later covered the song during her 2016 The Ellen DeGeneres Show appearance. And, in 2019, Michelle Williams covered it on The Masked Singer”.

Two more features to come to. In 2023, Produce Like a Pro hailed a Hair Metal epic. One of these songs that I remember being played a lot when I was a child. I was a huge fan right away and was captivated. It is a song I can play again and again and never really tire of. I am not a fan of Bon Jovi as such, but this track is among my favourites ever:

“One of the reasons this song is so powerful is the way it combines these meaningful lyrics with hard rockin’ instrumentals and Jon’s incredible vocals.  The bass player at the time was Alec John Such and is credited on the album, but it’s commonly accepted that Hugh McDonald wrote the bassline and played on the final version. Richie Sambora’s guitar stands out for its use of a Talkbox effect, and of course his polished and yet expressive guitar. Tico Torres brings a powerful drum and percussion part that perfectly matches the different elements of the song. The nuances of the percussion part (such as the chimes during Bryan’s keyboard intro) are one of the ways the song sounds so polished.  The way David Bryan’s keyboard is used in the song also helps it stand out from so much of the hair-metal of the time. We find a unique diversity of sound in the haunting synth strings, the way the rising bassline in the keyboard synth sets up the core tension of the song, and of course the pulsating chords throughout the song which has an underlying drive.  All of these elements paired with Jon Bon Jovi’s powerful and expressive vocals brings the song’s storytelling to life.  The melodic line contrasts between the verses and the chorus. The verses are characterized by descending melodies which require him to start in the tense sound of the upper register of his voice.  The falling melody brings out the tension and hard-times depicted in the song’s lyrics and are in contrast to the chorus which has the rising “whoas”. The chorus provides the uplifting response to the problems presented in the verses

At first Jon wasn’t sure the song was the right fit for the band. The original demo didn’t have the powerful, anthemic sound that ended up being released on Slippery When Wet. You can hear it as a hidden track on the 2004 box set 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t be Wrong. During the “Runaway to Paradise” fan cruise, Jon revealed the reasons for his hesitation during a fan Q&A:

“Ultimately, the song was so unique. It didn’t sound like anything. You know, ‘Runaway’ had eight notes, like a lot of songs on the radio at the time. Even ‘[You Give Love a] Bad Name’ was reminiscent of other songs that were on the radio.

“‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ didn’t sound like anything. So, I was sort of indifferent. I thought, Well, it’s different, but is it a rock song? Is it us?”

Desmond has stated in multiple interviews that he and Richie had to literally get down on their knees to beg him to give it a second chance: “That song had a majesty, a kind of upward lift that just exuded hope. And at that time, Jon was thinking about making a more hard rock record. So when we wrote the song, he was a little bit… the song a bit sentimental. It’s a bit soft, and he said “I was hoping we could rock harder”. And Richie and I literally got on our hands and knees and begged him to record it. I mean, half joking, but half for real. Just record it! See what happens…”

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see how the elements that made Jon wonder whether the song was the right fit for the band’s sound, are exactly the elements that made “Livin’ on a Prayer” stand out from the rest of hard-rock radio and transcend into a classic rock anthem for all time.  The revised version of the song (the one that made it onto the record) is polished and tight. All the iconic elements – the synth introduction, the talkbox guitar effect, the deep, powerful bassline – came into the picture as the band worked with the producer Bruce Fairbairn.

Before his untimely passing in 1999 at age 49, Fairbairn recalled the moment they came up with the talkbox idea for Richie’s guitar: “We were digging around in Richie’s guitar effects box…I grabbed hold of this old tube and up comes this talk box, and I thought, ‘Stick this in, I haven’t heard one of these since the (Peter) Frampton album.'” Fairbairn was referring, of course, to Framptom Comes Alive, the best-selling live album from 1976.

All of these effects came together to create a unique sound – polished and yet hard-hitting – giving “Livin’ on a Prayer” the perfect makings of a hard-rock stadium anthem. “Livin’ on a Prayer” was the type of song to get a whole stadium of fans singing together. It builds and gathers its listeners in before exploding into the chorus.

“Livin’ on a Prayer” and the entire Slippery When Wet album were produced at Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver in the first half of 1986. The album was released on August 18 that same year, and “Livin’ On a Prayer” came out as the album’s second single in October. On February 14, 1987, “Livin’ on a Prayer” gave the band their second consecutive number 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 – “You Give Love a Bad Name” had hit the milestone 3 months earlier. It was also an international hit, hitting the number 1 spot in Canada, New Zealand and Norway, and peaking in the top 5 in Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

“Livin’ on a Prayer” brought a down-to-earth, common-man attitude to the age of hard-rock and hair metal.  The December 13, 1986 Billboard review of the song declared: “metal muscle meets gritty reality in a tough, clanging rocker.” The song moved the sound of hard-rock away from the glittery glam metal of the sunset strip and to the roots-rock of Bruce Springsteen’s New Jersey. Much like Springsteen had a decade earlier, Bon Jovi was now addressing topics that mattered to people.

But more than just a hard-rocking track with lyrics that meant something….”Livin’ on a Prayer” became an anthem of hope. Further, it is an anthem that has transcended decades. In its excellent songwriting, it is also extremely adaptable – the song exists in different arrangements and formats that bring out different elements of its meaning and beauty.  In 1994, the band rearranged a completely different version for their Cross Road album – calling it “Prayer 94.”  In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, the band performed an emotional, acoustic version of the song for New York – famously televised in the benefit concert America: A Tribute to Heroes.

The harmonic colors, the melody, and the powerful lyrics allow “Livin’ on a Prayer” to reach audiences in a variety of arrangements, but the song has never lost its original meaning as a hard-rock anthem for the common man. It remains a staple of the band’s live shows and one of the 80’s most beloved and often-played songs – even four decades later”.

I may bring in the same information more than once. But I feel it is important to highlight Stereogum and their 2021 examination of Livin’ on a Prayer for their The Number Ones series. I do wonder whether Bon Jovi will do anything for the anniversary on 31st October. It is a big occasion. Streamed over two billions times on Spotify, the video on YouTube has been seen over 1.5 billion times. It is this colossus of a song. There are few songs ever that have this same weight and legacy:

“According to Bon Jovi, the trio wrote "Livin' On A Prayer" "on a day when none of us had any ideas." They got to talking about all their backgrounds. Bon Jovi and Sambora had both grown up working-class in New Jersey. Bon Jovi's high-school girlfriend had stayed with him as he tried to land a record contract. (They got married in 1989, and they're still together now.) Desmond Child had worked as a cabdriver in New York in the '70s, when he was dating Maria Vidal, one of the singers in his group Desmond Child & Rouge. Vidal worked in a diner, and her coworkers nicknamed her Gina because she looked like the actress Gina Lollobrigida. (Maria Vidal's highest-charting single, 1984's "Body Rock," peaked at #48.)

When Child first came up with the "Livin' On A Prayer" lyrics, the song told the story of a couple named Johnny, Child's birth name, and Gina. Bon Jovi knew that wouldn't work, since his name was Jon. The song had to be third-person. Child changed the guy's name to Tommy, which is a better name anyway. (When I was six, I made one of my worst decisions ever, insisting that I wanted to go by "Tom" instead of "Tommy." "Tommy" sounds so much cooler. Fuck.)

Even after that conversation with Richie Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi wasn't really into "Livin' On A Prayer." Producer Bruce Fairbairn pushed hard for the song to appear on Slippery When Wet. In that Irish Times interview, Jon Bon Jovi says that the song "didn’t have that boom-boom-boom bassline yet, so it sounded more like the Clash." The demo version of "Livin' On A Prayer" sounds absolutely nothing like the Clash, and I can't even imagine how Bon Jovi even got that into his head. But he's right that it didn't have that boom-boom-boom bassline. It didn't have a lot of things.

The band and Fairbairn kept working on "Livin' On A Prayer," layering on more and more ideas: The synth-drone intro, the blazing guitar leads, the whoa-whoa-whoa talkbox riff. Fairbairn and Sambora found that talkbox while digging around in Sambora's box of guitar effects. (From what I've read, the talkbox -- a device built on a clear plastic chord that goes from your mouth to the guitar -- really hurts to use. It makes your skull vibrate and your eyes feel like they're going to explode. I love that.) The sound that the weird machine conjures -- like a giant evil robot doing the bass voice in a street-corner doo-wop group -- gives the song a whole new cinematic dimension.

The finished version of "Livin' On A Prayer" is light-years beyond that demo. The song only really works if it's all drama, if it explodes out of the speaker. However long it took, the band turned "Livin' On A Prayer" into a perfect engine of drama. They shaped it into a true soul-shaking cheap-seats howler.

There are plenty of people who will tell you that "Livin' On A Prayer" is the dirt-stupid lowest-common-denominator cousin of what Bruce Springsteen was doing at the time. These people are entirely correct. Springsteen had written his name in the history books by turning down-and-out Jersey loser life into grand, swollen opera. Springsteen had done it with tenderness and brains and a sense of nuance. "Livin' On A Prayer" does the Springsteen thing at the most base and obvious level, with none of the poetic language or the lived-in warmth. But what these people don't seem to get is that the bone-simple dumbness of "Livin' On A Prayer" is what makes the song great.

When Bon Jovi wrote "Livin' On A Prayer," Springsteen himself had just dumbed down his own sound for the 1984 album Born In The USA, turning it into stadium-status synth-rock. In the process, Springsteen had the biggest success of his extremely successful career. With "Livin' On A Prayer," Bon Jovi took peak big-'80s Springsteen and made it dumber, which was the smart thing to do. On paper, those "Livin' On A Prayer" lyrics look almost like Springsteen parody -- all that hard-times romanticism stripped down to pure theatrical gesture. "Livin' On A Prayer" goes light on specifics and heavy on fist-pump hamminess. That's why it rules.

Tommy and Gina are pure archetype. Tommy used to work on the docks, but the union's been on strike, and he's down on his luck. It's tough. So tough. Tommy can't support himself and his girl, and he can't even express himself artistically, since he's got his six-string in hock. Gina works the diner all day, working for her man. She dreams of running away, but when she cries in the night, Tommy whispers, "Baby, it's OK." And then: "Someday." That "someday" is a mythical time when things won't be so hard. Tommy and Gina don't know whether this time will ever arrive, but they have to believe in it. They have to believe they're halfway there.

Bon Jovi himself has said that "Livin' On A Prayer" was a response to the Reagan era and the suffering that so many people were going through. Reagan certainly did everything in his power to cripple organized labor in America; maybe that's why Tommy's union was on strike. But the lyrical concerns of "Livin' On A Prayer" aren't tied to any particular moment in history. They're elementally simple, like an early-'60s girl-group song.

The music, on the other hand, is extremely of its moment. Even more than "You Give Love A Bad Name," "Livin' On A Prayer" is a terrifying display of supercharged '80s pop-metal that just goes for the car-stereo jugular. The production is so clean you could eat off of it. The synths and guitars glitter and gleam. The bassline and the simplistic drum-stomp are practically disco. Everything on the song works as a hook. The verses sound like choruses, and the choruses sound like suns exploding.

Jon Bon Jovi gets clowned for being a bad singer, and he's admittedly not Luther Vandross or whatever. But have you ever tried to sing "Livin' On A Prayer"? I did it once, in a crowded karaoke bar in Red Hook, and I learned some hard lessons real quick. (I should clarify that I could charitably be described as a dogshit-ass singer. The mere fact that I had a microphone in public is an indictment of the entire concept of karaoke.) The song started up, and people seemed amped to hear it. I got through that opening verse feeling good. And then the chorus showed up and I suddenly realized that I could not scream that high. It just wasn't in me. I struggled through, but then that key change came along and I was fucking done -- out of breath, squeaky, pathetic, humiliated. I walked into that bar thinking I could do the things that Jon Bon Jovi had done. I could not. My man did his thing on that song.

It's not just that Jon Bon Jovi hits the notes, though he does. It's that he sells those notes. He doesn't just convey the beaten-down seriousness of Tommy and Gina's plight. He also embodies all the hope that they're holding out. He throws himself into that chorus with total starry-eyed devotion”.

On 31st October, it will be forty years since one of the biggest and most popular songs ever was released. I still feel it is relevant to this day. One whose lyrics will be adopted and taken to heart by each subsequent generation. That idea of a working-class couple struggling to make ends meet. It is something so many can relate to. Anthemic, epic and blood-rushing, we are going to be talking about Livin’ on a Prayer forever. Such is it brilliance. Nearly forty years after it came out, this anthem has lost…

NONE of its incredible power.

FEATURE: Untouchable: Garbage’s beautifulgarbage at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Untouchable

Garbage’s beautifulgarbage at Twenty-Five

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THIS is a Garbage album…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rankin

that is right up there with their best. beautifulgarbage was released on 1st October, 2001. The follow-up to the acclaimed and commercially successful, Version 2.0 (1998), their third studio album was almost the end of the band. That is what lead Shirley Manson felt. As this article documents, in 2021, Manson looked back at beautifulgarbage and there was this fear:

“Garbage's Shirley Manson has said in a recent interview that at the time of its release, she and the band thought that their 2001 album Beautiful Garbage would mark the end of their careers. 
The follow-up to 1998's Version 2.0 was seen as a relative flop at the time, suffering from a lack of label-backed promotion while its lead single "Androgyny" failed to reach the chart positions of their previous singles.
In an interview with Classic Rock magazine, Manson describes the internal fallout that followed the album's release, saying: "I honestly thought that was the end of my career and that we were never going to recover. It took a long time for us as a band to regain our equilibrium and our confidence and our joy”.

I do feel that this is one of their more underrated albums. After following two big albums and then suffering some setbacks, the band did find their way back on course. They are still together today. That said, beautifulgarbage did reach number six in the U.K. and thirteen in the U.S. I feel that it has a couple of classics in there. I wanted to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary. I remember when the album came out. I was a Garbage fan, so I was very keen to hear it. Perhaps it is not as consistent as Version 2.0 or their 1995 eponymous debut. However, we should not dismiss or forget beautifulgarbage, as it is fantastic and worthy of investigation.

Albumism championed beautifulgarbage and urged people not to forget it. I am going to end with a couple of positive reviews. Even if the likes of NME were a little mixed, there was plenty of love for beautifulgarbage. I think that it warrants retrospection and new love ahead of its twenty-fifth anniverssary:

“The gristle-and-glam of Garbage’s “Why Do You Love Me?” was rock 'n' roll bold. The perfect Garbage single.

Shirley Manson (vocals), Butch Vig (drums, percussion), Duke Erickson (guitars, keyboards) and Steve Marker (lead guitar) were back on Bleed Like Me (2005), the album that “Why Do You Love Me?” calls home. But, the heat coming off of “Why Do You Love Me?” felt like a step backward from 2001’s beautifulgarbage, Garbage’s woefully misunderstood third effort.

It's a tale that’s been written and told. Leading rock act with an experimental pop heart is imprisoned by their genre. Said rock act sets themselves free to make music not beholden to where they originated from and suffers the consequences. However, beautifulgarbage did not start off as a self-liberating, creative coup d'état. Initially, the project was envisioned, on the sidelines of the Version 2.0 World Tour, as an assemblage of B-sides. Record label shuffling scuttled the idea, but it ended up as a glorious example of artistic serendipity for Garbage, as the band had recorded some new material at this time too. That music shared an affinity to the vibrancy of their smashing Bond theme “The World Is Not Enough” from October 1999 and pointed to a triumphant, semi-departure from the formula of their previous LPs.

beautifulgarbage still contains some of Garbage's familiar post-modern punk sneer―see “Shut Your Mouth” and “Silence is Golden”―but the album engages in “pop play” too, which opens up their adamantine alt-rock framework to new elements. These sonic variables include, but aren't limited to, electro-rock funk (“Androgyny,” “Til the Day I Die”), new wave (“Cherry Lips”) and vintage Brill Building balladry (“Can’t Cry These Tears”).

September 2001 saw “Androgyny,” accompanied with its scintillating Don Cameron directed video, attempt to hype the crowd for beautifulgarbage, which came closely behind its lead single. Though the record's critical reception was mostly positive, it didn't resonate commercially. “Cherry Lips,” “Breaking Up the Girl” and “Shut Your Mouth” bounded off the record to bolster its market value, fine singles all. Their chart landfall was modest.

Garbage retreated from what some perceived was a supposed creative miscalculation with Bleed Like Me and Not Your Kind of People (2012), albums that had the group sharpening their dependable hard-hitting sound. However, sonically speaking, those two LPs failed to excite the aural palate the way beautifulgarbage had. That all changed with 2016's Strange Little Birds, with its sound arc that cast an affectionate glance backward to the unsung adroitness of beautifulgarbage.

It's apparent now, outside of the glare of varying expectations Garbage was subject to at the height of their popularity, that beautifulgarbage is a Garbage album that is more than capable of pulling its own weight in their beloved canon. And it's most definitely worth a second spin”.

I will end with a couple of reviews. Those that saw the promise and brilliance in beautifulgarbage. I want to start off with Come to the Pedlar and their views on an album that deserves a lot more love than it gets. I wonder how Shirley Manson sees it now. I have written about beautifulgarnage and will always be a fan of it:

“Shirley Manson explores the higher range of her voice throughout the album, perhaps riffing on her own celebrity in her channelling of girl-group melodies and, on the brilliantly parodic ‘Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!), a playful, childlike persona, who sounds like she’s sucking on a lollipop between lines. The old-style computer game riff that opens the track is a lot of fun, and the song works both as a pop song proper and as parody of one, particularly as the heavier guitars chime in for the chorus.

Second single ‘Cherry Lips’ is possibly the most purely pop song on the album.

Pop isn’t just an aesthetic though, but a theme. The constructedness of pop allows Manson to explore other kinds of cultural construction, including most obviously in lead single ‘Androgyny’, which anticipated the current cultural war over gendered bathrooms presciently: ‘Boys in the girls’ room / Girls in the men’s room / You free your mind in your androgyny’. Elsewhere, the lyrics repeatedly return to questions of silencing, as in opening track ‘Shut Your Mouth’, in which a woman appears to be told to shut up after being told to be everything to everyone (‘They say you’re a saint / You’re a whore / You’re a sinner / That he had you / He made you / He can’t live without you’), and ‘Silence is Golden’, which builds a deafening wall of guitar even as Manson plaintively sings ‘Silence is golden / I have been broken / Safe in my own skin / So nobody wins’. The brilliant shift from 12/8 to 4/4 time towards the song’s climax shifts the focus from the wall of sound to Manson’s voice, suddenly bringing the lyrics to the fore. And ‘Untouchable’ is the most R&B of the songs, the production breaking the instruments and vocals down into staccato noise

The record, again mimicking the pop record, is entirely without flab, with every track a potential single. The standout for me is ‘Parade’, a full-on rock anthem with euphoric chorus ‘As far as I can tell it doesn’t matter who you are / If you can believe there’s something worth fighting for’. The song is the most explicit to refer to the pop culture it engages with: ‘Let’s bomb the factories / That make all the wannabees’. Meanwhile ‘Can’t Cry These Tears’ begins as a lighter-waving torch song, beginning with what would usually be a climax, before returning to more conventional verses. The continual upending of normative structures is a pleasure reflected in the gender-bending lyrics.

The quieter moments also work well. ‘Cup of Coffee’ brings in a theramin for a B-movie inflected dramatic ballad, Manson whispering over the synthesised backing music. ‘Drive You Home’ builds around a simple guitar riff and layered vocals to offer a perfect end-of-night tone, ‘I never said I was perfect / But I can drive you home’. And ‘So Like a Rose’ deliberately takes the slick sheen off the production, allowing fractured vocals and guitars to gently lead into a song that ends with a chorus of wordless vocals singing the album out like a choir of vocals. ‘Nobody Loves You’, meanwhile, responds to the band’s recent experience of producing a Bond theme, with John Barry-esque guitars introducing the album’s most avant-garde, atmospheric piece.

I’ve called Beautiful Garbage a pop record, but more than anything it’s distinctively Garbage. The band are still present and correct – Daniel Shulman’s bass in particular shines out on several tracks, Butch Vig’s drumming seamlessly merges with the loops and beats, and Duke Erikson and Steve Marker’s guitars insistently remind the listener of the band’s grungier roots. It’s a masterclass in production, and an album whose sheen has not tarnished almost two decades later”.

Let’s end with Drowned In Sound and their glowing review of Garbage’s third studio album. As I do with all album anniversary pieces, I would encourage people to see out beautifulgarbage. It was perhaps their most diverse and rawest album to that point. It is a shame that it received a bit of a rough ride and got some mixed reviews, because I feel it is much stronger than that:

“There’s a lot resting on the third album from Garbage. After the enormous success of their self titled debut and 1998’s follow up Version 2.0 Shirley, Butch, Steve, and Duke (don’t you just love rock names) have taken their time over number three. The sample and synth rock blueprint remains but there is a change in the air. Garbage are older.

Not that the four piece were ever that young of course. Shirley Manson was, after all, a world wise twenty eight year old when she accepted the invitation to front what was initially a studio project made up by men in their early fourties. This means that unlike other bands on their third album, such as Ash, the six years spent between studio and stage reflects a time period far removed from that of many of those who started at the same time. If the lyrics are anything to go by beautifulgarbage is about the 20/30 shift rather than teens to 20s.

The sound is still a well calculated mix of ear friendly industrial rock, dirty samples, and cooling synths. Track one, Shut Your Mouth, pretty much sums up the feeling of the album, more swearing than on the entirety of the first two combined and defiant lyrical lines including ..would you confess if we asked that you nurture the urge to declare that it’s time to settle down with a man of your own, you want a baby, a family, a piece of security..shut your mouth!..

From then on it’s stylistically quite mixed. Single, Androgeny, is classic Garbage in the style of * Stupid Girl, with it’s pop hooks and easy to sing along chorus. Although it goes a bit *Dubstar in the middle eight. Can’t Cry These Tears, like, Silence Is Golden and Drive You Home, is a larger than life swinging electro pop ballad. It’s got all the Garbage trademarks, looping drums and crackling samples etc, but it’s utterly pop. Anyone from Britney to Atomic Kitten would kill for one of these. Except they’d probably drop the lyrics by about 40 IQ points.

Til The Day I Day sounds like PJ Harvey circa Meet Ze Monster with it’s dirty fuzz guitar and Shirley’s low spitting intonation and shrill peeks. Although the guitar riff does echo I Think I’m Paranoid just a little too closely. Cup Of Coffee is a dramatic and awesome ballad of mature break up, thankfully just a little too self destructive and serious to be grabbed by a tv producer looking for dumping music for his professional women and their relationships sitcom. Perhaps it could have done without the b-movie flying saucer sound effect though. So Like A Rose completes the cd, a dreamy laid back affair without the usual two and a half gigabytes of samples cluttering the simplicity.

Although some might argue it’s merely a mechanical material upgrade for 2001 (notice how it’s released on 01/10/01 - all those zeros and ones, creepy) beautifulgarbage should be seen as a good album in it’s own right. It’s not for kids (see the lamentable chart position for the current single), it’s for adults who don’t want to listen to Dido quite yet. Essentially the sound of reality without the "authentic" reality sound of moping blokes and acoustic guitars”.

On 1st October, beautifulgarbage turns twenty-five. You may be a fan of Garbage and know the album well or are not too familiar with the band. There are many highlights to be found on beautifulgarbage. So many write it off, but I would compel people to…

EXPLORE it in more depth.