FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Goodbye to Summer…

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels

 

A Goodbye to Summer…

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I don’t think it is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Helena Lopes/Pexels

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

PHOTO CREDIT: Charl Durand/Pexels

A fond farewell to.

FEATURE: Spotlight: KatzPascale

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

KatzPascale

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THERE have been a fair few…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JP: I feel like every time we play.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHOTO CREDIT: Zoe De Blasis

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

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

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

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

SK: Twenty-five years ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN October.

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Follow KatzPascale

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

FEATURE:

 

 

The Ultimate Commitment

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

 

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

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I have been re-reading…

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

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

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

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

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

“How would you describe your book in one sentence?

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

What drew you to this album?

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

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

What was it like writing the book?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GENIUS Kate Bush.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

Who Knows Who Wrote That Song of Summer

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

 

Has Any Other Artist Achieved This Kate Bush Feat?

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THIS is something that…

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

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

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

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

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

INCREDIBLE songwriting feat.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

I Knew You Were Trouble!

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

 

The Ongoing Success and Brilliance of a Wonderful, Inclusive Club

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THERE is not a lot…

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

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

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

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

SO much to look forward to.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

More Than Rumours…

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

 

Is Kate Bush the Most Interesting Artist Ever?

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THAT may seem…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“H IS FOR HEADSET

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

N IS FOR NUMBER ONE

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

U IS FOR UNINHIBITED

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

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

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

Literate.

Sophisticated.

Not fitting in.

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

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

Not part of a past musical model.

Establishing your own world. Staying true to that world.

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

Establishing your own voice. Literally and figuratively.

Having integrity. At any cost”.

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

TO my dying day.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

The Wow Factor!

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

 

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

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IN another feature…

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

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

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

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

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

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

HAPPEN one day.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

You See, I’m All Grown Up Now

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

 

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

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A song that…

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

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

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

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

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

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

A cinematic masterpiece.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

With a Kiss, I'd Pass the Key

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

 

Are There Any Kate Bush Artefacts in the Vaults?

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THIS feature is inspired…

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

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

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

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

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

THE whole story.

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

FEATURE:

 

 

And for This Gift, I Feel Blessed

  

Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit at Thirty-Five

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THIS is arguably…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The song’s lyrics

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

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

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

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

The song’s title

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHANGED everything.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Clara Amfo

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

 

Clara Amfo

__________

BECAUSE the sensational…

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

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

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

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

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

PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Hand

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

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

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

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

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Hand

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

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

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

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

“How much did you earn last year?

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

Are you better off than your parents?

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

What would you do if you won the lottery?

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

Do you support any charities?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you go for coffee or tea?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s your favourite way to experience culture?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Munroe: Oh my God. Nearly a decade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THIS incredible queen.

___________

Follow Clara Amfo

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

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

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

 

A KBC Short Story, Issue 4 (Christmas 1979)

__________

IT made me think about…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A true genius.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Tiffany Day

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: First Last

 

Tiffany Day

__________

AN immense talent…

PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Feinzimer for Los Angeles Times

with a massive international following, the incredible Tiffany Day comes to the U.K. in December. The Los Angeles-born artist released her album, HALO, in April. This is someone that you need to hear, as he music is phenomenal. I will come to some interviews with her. I do want to start out with Los Angeles Times and their interview from April. I have included quite a bit of the chat in here, as I think that it gives us some context and background to this stunning artist. Although she is perhaps more popular in the U.S. than other nations, she has a huge fanbase around the world:

“For the majority of Day’s career, which began in her late teens, she drifted between the bedroom pop and R&B genres, occasionally grabbing at a more electronic sound — including through a DJ alter ego — but shying away from it on account of a deep-seated insecurity that followed her from Kansas to L.A.

As a “nerdy” Asian girl coming up in a majority-white school system, Day had the persistent thought: “I’ll never be a cool kid.”

“It weirdly translated into the artist world,” the singer-producer said in a recent interview at the Observatory in Santa Ana, where she would open Aries’ show a few hours later. While she spoke animatedly from a green room couch, Day’s bubblegum pink off-shoulder tee and baggy white pants repeatedly flounced out and then resettled in new shapes

“I fell in love with electronic music when I was, like, 10, but as I got older, I started making indie pop and then slowly moving into an electronic space,” says Tiffany Day.

In place of the populars, Day said she began measuring herself against her favorite electronic artists, whose style of performance she idolized but felt she could never approximate. That feeling peaked at a 2024 electroclash concert, which showcased a sound that fuses ‘80s synth pop, ‘90s techno and the brashness of punk. Day attended the show shortly after the release of her debut album “Lover Tofu Fruit.”

“It was this weird shattering of inspiration, but I also felt sick to my stomach, because, how could I ever be as cool as these people?” Day said. By the time she set off to tour her album, the artist said, “I was already so checked out.”

Day packed all of the angst of that period into “American Girl,” the second single off of “Halo.”

“All up in my head/ I’m an American girl/ I know I don’t look like you yet/ Wanna be part of your world,” she sings in the glitch pop confessional, which has become one of her favorite songs to play live.

With “American Girl” and her previous single, “Pretty4U,” Day started to hone her signature sound. But she also lost some engagement from her more indie-leaning listeners.

“They weren’t being well-received because it wasn’t necessarily made for her previous fan base,” said Day’s manager, Sammy Seaver. Even before a less-than-successful promotional push for “American Girl” led Day to make a distress call to her manager, “we both knew the conversation was coming,” he said.

Seaver likes to tell people that when he first met Day, she was doing pop sessions, but all she listened to was the dubstep music she’d fallen in love with as a kid.

While she hesitates to call it a rebrand, Day said her hard pivot in the hyperpop direction was nerve-racking at first. She feared being called a clone, or a try-hard who’d hopped on a trend.

“But I got over it pretty quick, because I’m in love with the songs I’ve been making,” she said, and that love “triumphs [over] all of my fears.”

For many of the tracks on “Halo,” Day would start off with a producing collaborator and finish on her own: “They’ll usually send me home with the Ableton file, then I get to freak it.”

Such was the case for “Start Over,” a dizzying homage to the rave music Day considers its own art form. The track starts relatively tame with a melodic synth sequence, and then sounds crash in one after another until it’s full electromania. Fittingly, Day made it in the witching hours after last year’s Niteharts Festival. She’d chugged a Red Bull, which she never did, and couldn’t fall asleep.

“So I sat up in the hotel bed with these s— $2 Target headphones and produced out the whole song,” Day said. “It was like that feeling of being a kid and staying up until 7 a.m. playing a video game.”

That night she spent producing “Start Over” was immensely cathartic, just like writing it had been. Composed as Day’s star rose in real time, the song was a receptacle for all of her conflicting feelings about her newfound attention.

“So I did it/ now I’m starting again/ at first no one gave a f—/ but now you’re hitting me up/ I guess I’m doing something right,” Day sings over a thrumming backing track early in the song. A few bars later, she professes, “Could give a f— ‘bout what the number says/ at least that’s what I tell my[self].”

The week “Start Over” was scheduled to drop, Day posted a quick pair of TikTok edits teasing the release.

Before she knew it, the first edit had blown up and people were begging for the song. When it came out, “Start Over” broke Day’s personal record for release day streams with 100,000 across Spotify, Apple and YouTube. It’s impossible to predict which songs will gain traction, Day said, but she was very proud that one did.

That pride radiated off of her in late March as she bounced around the Observatory stage like a lottery ball in an air blower. Her energy was contagious, seizing entire parties across the venue.

At times, Day said the inherent impermanence of the spotlight gets to her.

“I feel like I’m on shrooms when I think about this,” she said, “the whole idea of hype and how much time is left in this.”

But after feeling forgotten for most of her career, and forging ahead in spite of it, the idea of going back doesn’t scare her so much.

“Or maybe that’s what I tell myself,” she grinned”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Natalie Somekh

I move on to FADER and their recent conversation. They spotlighted a tremendous underground Pop artist who “combines a singer-songwriter’s angst with strobe-light euphoria”. I am really interested to see where Tiffany Day heads. There are so many artists int eh industry, so it can be hard to get a footing. Tiffany Day is definitely offering something different and distinct:

“In the past six months, Day has quickly transformed into underground pop’s ubiquitous new star. Clips of her performing have become embedded into the algorithm and view counts are rising — as is the discourse. Online, some commentators compare her to another Gen Z pop star: 2hollis, who also writes heartfelt pop songs in a language of 808s, side-chained synths, and vocal distortion.

“I love Hollis’s music,” she says. “[But] for people to call me a ‘trend hopper’ is pretty unfair. I grew up listening to EDM and attending raves. I was yearning for a way to bring that world to the pop realm of Tiffany Day. Hollis is definitely someone who helped me realize it’s all possible, but I’d like to think I’m making a lane for myself.”

Besides the tinge of misogyny in that comparison, it also minimizes the extent to which Day’s music is finding an audience because of her own skill. She is uniquely able to articulate the ache and euphoria of coming into adulthood, and she’s remarkably adept at crafting brain tingling melodies. All of that is on display in her new album HALO (released April 3 via Broke Records), the beginning of what is clearly a mainstream breakthrough

Day is not new to online attention. She first went viral in 2017 when she was still in high school, after a video of her singing “Hallelujah” into a reverb-ey well in Spoleto, Italy, while on a school trip with her choir took off on YouTube. “The freaking Ellen show was hitting me up,” she recalls. In the next half-decade, she forged a music career that inadvertently hit upon just about all of Gen Z’s cultural touchpoints: She began posting acoustic guitar covers on YouTube, then moved to Los Angeles as a college student/part-time pop star, and self-released four EPs, many of which featured a very late-2010s, bedroom R&B soundscape.

In 2024, after graduating college, she self-released an album, LOVER TOFU FRUIT, that combined her heartfelt singer-songwriter lyrics with dreamy digital production. She had a devoted fan base and toured, but the daily grind and fallow economics of independent artistry was a lot for a young girl who had aspirations of studying biomedical engineering before a music career fell on her lap. “Every day I thought about if I had chosen a different life, if I had worked a 9-to-5 with a steady routine and paycheck,” she remembers.

Her “last straw” happened on a beach in San Francisco in 2025, when she admitted to a friend that music no longer brought her joy. She struck up a deal with her managers: her next album would be her last, and she’d do the most for her final send-off.

Briefly giving up ended up marking a new beginning for Tiffany Day. She decided to try on the electronic dance music of her youth and the post-Crystal Castles pop that was finding a footing among Gen Z. “I was journaling about it for months,” she says. “I always wanted to belong to a niche and [electronic music] felt like it was calling to me, but it terrified me what [fans and musicians in this genre] would think of me and my music.”

Anxiety morphed into drive as she decided to take the reins on her production. She worked alongside her producers — Jeff Melvin, Niles Forester, and Jack Hallenbeck — but didn’t hesitate to “do rather than explain” her ideas. “It was a continuous journey of feeling like I didn't have the skills to [produce],” she says. “One day, I was just like, ‘I don’t need to keep telling myself that narrative.’ I just sent it.”

Whereas her music prior to HALO had a trying-this-out quality, the songs of her current era boast clear pop logic. Tracks like “SAME LA” and “START OVER” combine the adolescent angst of an Olivia Rodrigo ballad with the big-feeling sonics of EDM. Alongside the new sound, she adopted a more clearly defined look, part-skater, part-princess, and very online: slouching low-rise pants, an askew cap, over-ear headphones, and layers of colors and prints. She sparked some online attention via a viral On The Radar interview, where she performed with a big pink plushie backpack. “I just didn't want to lose myself when I moved into this [darker electronic] niche,” Day says. “I'm naturally a happy, fun person. Performing with my plushie backpack felt so real and so genuinely me. Your artist project should be who you are, times 30”.

I did want to include this interview from EDM.com, as they ask some interesting questions, and we get to learn more about the superb Tiffany Day. In their header they note how, “She has a dubstep alias, an inner compass pointing to the nearest rave, and a policy against writing indirect similes, which together paint a portrait of an artist profoundly uninterested in doing things the expected way”:

“EDM.com: Walk us through your introduction to electronic dance music. Which artists or tracks made you realize you were meant to go down this path?

One of the first tracks I ever heard that really hooked me into EDM was a flip that Whethan did back in 2015 called ‘Mssingno – XE3 (Whethan Turn).’ I remember sitting in my room with my headphones, trying to dissect what exactly I was hearing and why it made me feel so emotional and how the hell he made those noises. I was maybe his biggest fan back then, I convinced my parents and drove over 2 hours on a school night to go see him. That song pulled me into a lot of other artists in that similar world of future bass, like Flume, Lucian, and Vanic.

When I started making original music, I was really just writing pop because I had learned how to write music on a guitar and naturally, that was the evolution. In 2019, I met Jef, and I think he was the first producer who made a song with me that was a little more electronically influenced. It makes sense, because Jef also has an artist project called MELVV, and back then, he was doing all those same tours and festivals as Whethan and everyone else I looked up to.

EDM.com: The frenzied production of HALO soundtracked your anxieties about fame and self-worth. Before that, LOVER TOFU FRUIT was deeply informed by your struggles with nihilism and mortality after your grandfather’s passing. As your sound seems to more heavily embrace EDM, how are you translating these heavy existential themes into a genre inextricably linked with the concept of euphoria?

As much as EDM is linked to euphoria, I also think it can be linked to just feeling anything intensely. Certain songs can make you reminisce on a moment, or maybe realize something about yourself that you haven’t before. As an EDM enjoyer and rave-goer, in live settings, I want to feel euphoria. But when I’m all alone and high, I like to lay in my bed in the dark with my monitors at full blast and feel whatever the song is telling me about.

Sometimes it’s intense sadness, sometimes it’s like confetti cannons are shooting out of my ears and my smile is so wide that it feels like it’s ripping my face. I think a lot of these heavier concepts I write about pair well with whatever the production makes me feel.

I think personally for me, there’s also a simplicity to my lyrics. When you’re feeling a song, both production wise and lyric wise, I think you kinda just wanna feel it directly in the moment. I don’t wanna think about what a line means. If I’m heartbroken because someone left me, I’m going to say that, not write some indirect simile or abstract concept about it.

EDM.com: Mainstream dance music has always been about pure escapism, losing yourself in the drop to forget your reality, while hyperpop is more about confronting the anxieties behind that racing heart. In the next five years, do you think the broader EDM community will fully adopt hyperpop, or do you think it will remain a unique island of anxiety on the dancefloor?

Honestly, I’m just not sure. As someone who does go to raves and partakes in losing myself in a drop, it’s hard to say if hyperpop could really be adopted by rave culture. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there is a huge overlap between the two. It’s just hard to see PLUR culture blending with hyperpop. I think there are a lot of mainstream EDM fans who like hyperpop, but I don’t know if I could say the same thing the other way around.

But a lot of hyperpop fans are also fans of other genres that just feel so wildly different from mainstream dance music. In my perfect world, I think integrating the two would be super cool if done properly, because I am a lover of both worlds, but honestly, I just can’t see it happening anytime soon”.

Let’s end with Pitchfork and their review of HALO. One of the standout albums of this year, if you are new to Tiffany Day, then I would urge you to listen to her music and follow her on social media. It will be great when she heads to the U.K. at the end of this year:

“For all we wax poetic about youth, would any of us be brave enough to actually go back and relive it? Scroll through Snapchat memories or re-read teenage diaries and see if you could survive it again: breaking up with boyfriends because you thought you weren’t good enough for them; coughing up blunt smoke to impress older kids; awkwardly lingering at parties and watching everyone else to try to figure out who you were.

Such is the anti-nostalgia of Tiffany Day. In interviews, the 26-year-old electro-pop artist and producer has referenced growing up as one of few Asian teenagers in Wichita, Kansas, and feeling perpetually nerdy and uncool. As HALO, her second album, attests, maybe we never really leave high school; here, Day takes these growing pains and supercharges them with the sugary sounds of electroclash. “AMERICAN GIRL” lurches with quavering synths, shy as wallflowers, as Day confesses: “Now I’m so anxious at the function, getting fucked up on some shit/I never planned on even trying, I just wanted to fit in.” And while “DOIT4ME”, on first listen, sounds like a deep-fried ode to getting slizzard—all pulsating four-on-the-floor, obliterating walls of scuzzy supersaw synths, and tweaked-out cooing—it’s really meant for the girls hiding behind their phones at the party, nervously fiddling between the Find My and Settings apps (“It’s so funny I won’t look at my name/Lit up on my phone screen”).

In Day’s hands, electroclash hallmarks—crunchy McDonald’s Sprite electronica, chopped vocals, brain-tingling overstimulation—are beamed like a laser onto teen angst, frying up hormones into sizzling overdrive. The troubles she tackles on HALO are often small, but she cranks up the volume to magnify them—mirroring the emotional overload of growing up, where what matters is not the existential weight of these experiences but how overwhelming and real they feel. On “PRETTY4U,” Day’s voice is drenched in Auto-Tune fuzz as she promises she can be pretty too; it’s the sonic equivalent of aggressively FaceTuning your selfies while wondering if second puberty is actually a thing. “COPYCAT” finds Day idolizing the cool older girl—the one with the pretty braids, knocking back shots on a Sunday like it’s nothing—and contemplating what it’d be like to copy her. Yet right when Day is on the cusp of saying so—“I just wanna be your…”—her voice blitzes out into a cyclone of chiptune glitches. When you’re young, you can’t always express exactly what it is you want; all you know is that you want something.

Day first got her start as a bedroom-pop artist, and HALO marks a pivot into electronic music. The move has prompted a flurry of skepticism and controversy—including an accusation of plagiarism—in a scene wary of trend-hopping, post-Brat opportunists. Yet HALO feels both like a new exploration and an extension of Day’s perennial bedroom-pop sensibilities, and you can hear the DNA of earlier projects coursing through her new album’s coming-of-age confessionals. Day approaches medication, her struggles with OCD, messy breakups, and new therapists with a diaristic immediacy: This is Olivia Rodrigo for the kids vaping in the bathroom and crashing out on Instagram Reels comments sections. At times, the songwriting can veer into sounding juvenile, like the glacial trap-inflected “TELL ME WHAT I DID”, whose lyrics—“What a fucking switch/Kiss me on my lips/Then you fuck a bitch/I was on a trip, you were in her hips”—come off like the edgy finsta poetry of someone who’s just learned to curse.

Still, at its best, HALO wields electroclash’s chaos to capture the blown-out excesses of youth, where every emotion feels like you’re experiencing it for the first time. Album standout “SAME LA” opens with a cutesy ahem—functionally a teen pop-rock record-scratch of “You're probably wondering how I got here”—before Day eventually chants: “I’m scared to talk talk talk to you/’Cause my brain thinks everyone hates me.” Swirls of synths follow like a churning whirlpool of insecurity. Yet by the end, the song explodes into a crushing wall of sound, Day’s voice spawning in triples above a screeching electronica bed. You can’t talk through this; you can barely think. All you can do is feel everything while you slowly become who you’re meant to be”.

Such a remarkable and inspiring artist who is creating music that is pulsating, personal and yet resonates with a lot of people. Incredible music videos and great interviews, there is no denying Tiffany Day has a very long future ahead. This Los Angeles treasure should be on your radar, so make sure that you…

FOLLOW her now.

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Follow Tiffany Day

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Florence Welch at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Linda Brownlee/The Guardian

 

Florence Welch at Forty

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WHEN it comes to artists…

who define a generation or are consistently brilliant, Florence Welch springs to mind. The lead of Florence + The Machine, I wanted to celebrate her, as she turns forty on 28th August. She has had such a wonderful career. Her latest album with Florence + The Machine Everybody Scream, was shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize. The group’s debut album, Lungs, was released in 2009. Universally adored, Florence Welch is one of our most amazing artists. This Camberwell-born queen has so many years ahead in music. To mark her fortieth birthday, I will end with a mixtape of the best Florence + The Machine tracks. I want to come to some biography before then. Even though it does not take us all the way to 2026, we do get some interesting background about the stunning Florence Welch:

“Before Florence Welch made her mark in music as the lead singer and songwriter of the indie-rock band Florence + The Machine, she spent much of her time as a child singing in school assemblies and churches,  and skipping lessons to wander around the hallways and test the acoustics of stairwells. Growing up with a fascination for Camberwell's music scene, Florence successfully enrolled herself in an Art Foundation course at Camberwell College of Arts, a place she credits for giving her creative freedom to experiment with music and developing early ideas of Florence + The Machine, and briefly studied there before deciding to pursue a career in music.

Florence + The Machine started as a private joke, being an imaginary band founded in collaboration with Central Saint Martins graduate Isabella Summers. In 2009, they released their first album titled Lungs, which held the number 2 position for its first 5 weeks on the UK Albums Chart and sold over 100,000 copies in the UK. Still trending the charts the next year, the album had been in the top 40 in the United Kingdom for 65 consecutive weeks, making it one of the best-selling albums of 2009 and 2010. Since then, the band has won over 20 awards from over 100 nominations including Critics Choice Awards at The Brits in 2009, 6 Grammy nominations, 2 wins for Best Solo Artist at the NME Awards and 3 Q Award wins, among others.

Best known for her powerful vocals and theatrical stage presence, Florence made history at Glastonbury Festival in 2015, as the first British female headliner of the 21st century. Florence has said that for her, music is a mode of catharsis and of survival, through which she hopes to give people a space to experience their true emotions.

Her talent is not just confined to music as many of her admirers look up to her as a fashion icon. She has long been a collaborator of Gucci under Alessandro Michele and was named the brand ambassador for their jewellery and watch collections in 2015. Inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art since her childhood, her early interests are often visible in the band's album artworks. Florence’s portrait from the Ceremonials album is put on permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery and in 2018, she released a book titled Useless Magic, a collection of her lyrics and poems, along with illustrations”.

Because she turns forty on 28th August, it is only right that this is marked. Florence Welch is one of the greatest singers and songwriters ever. I am looking forward to seeing where Florence + The Machine head. With such an impressive collection of songs under their belt, we are going to see them release albums for years to come. Led by the astonishing Florence Welch, this queen is…

A national treasure.

FEATURE: Beyoncé at Forty-Five: An Ultimate, Career-Spanning Mixtape

FEATURE:

 

 

Beyoncé at Forty-Five

  

An Ultimate, Career-Spanning Mixtape

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THIS is the first…

of a couple of features around the legendary Beyoncé, as she turns forty-five on 4th September. She is one of the most successful decorated, influential and important artists in history. In terms of her career and what she has achieved, I have argued before that there should be a Beyoncé documentary. Something new that really spotlights her brilliance. Her latest album, 2024’s COWBOY CARTER, is hugely acclaimed. Throughout her career, she has released so many important albums. In the second feature, I may select the five best Beyoncé albums. To give people a chance to look inside these incredible works. Here, I am coming to a career-spanning mixtape that spans her solo work, rather than including her music with Destiny’s Child. Prior to getting there, I wanted to bring in the entirety of this biography from the National Women’s History Museum. They provide a detailed and passionate insight into an artist who I feel is peerless:

“Early Life

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born in Houston, Texas on September 4th, 1981, to mother Tina Knowles, a hairdresser and fashion designer, and father Mathew Knowles, an entertainment executive. Her parents, both entrepreneurs, worked hard to provide a comfortable upbringing for Beyoncé and her younger sister, Solange. Tina and Mathew both pushed and supported Beyoncé to follow her dreams and taught her that “nothing worth having comes easy” (Elle).

Beyoncé was enrolled in dance classes at around seven years old and began singing in local choirs and talent shows throughout the Houston area (Teach Rock). Her passion for performing launched her early career when she auditioned for a girls R&B group in 1992. The original group, which included Kelly Rowland and LaTavia Robinson, would eventually be known as Girls’ Tyme. Beyoncé’s father managed the group, booking performances around Houston and restructuring the group to include LeToya Luckett. Girls’ Tyme is an early step in Beyoncé’s lifetime of continuing Black musical traditions through her work. By performing in a Black girl group, she carried on the legacy of 1960s girl groups such as The Supremes and The Marvelettes.

Destiny’s Child

Girls’ Tyme became Destiny’s Child when the group signed onto Columbia Records in 1996. Destiny’s Child released their first album, Destiny’s Child, shortly followed by their second album, The Writing’s on the Wall. Both albums were major successes, and The Writing’s on the Wall became an 8x platinum record and spent 99 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart. However, internal tensions during the The Writing’s on the Wall era resulted in more restructuring of the group: Robinson and Luckett were replaced by Farrah Franklin and Michelle Williams. Within a year, Franklin was also dismissed from the group, leaving the iconic trio Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle.

As the lead vocalist, Beyoncé was placed front and center of Destiny’s Child. Some attribute this to favoritism from Beyoncé’s father as the group’s manager. Others, however, attribute Beyoncé’s role in Destiny’s Child to her undisputable talent, work ethic, and commitment to the group’s success. Her increased role in producing the Survivor album demonstrates this unmatched dedication.

Beyoncé the Solo Artist

Following the major success of Survivor, Beyoncé began to pursue solo opportunities in both music and acting. Between 2001 and 2003, Beyoncé starred in three films: Carmen: A Hip Hopera (2001), Austin Powers: Goldmember (2003), and The Fighting Temptations (2003). She also released her first solo studio album, Dangerously in Love, in June of 2003. This album included the hit “Crazy in Love,” featuring Beyoncé’s future husband, Jay Z. Beyoncé would go on to win five Grammy’s for the album—Beyoncé’s first solo Grammy awards—including Best Contemporary R&B Album (GRAMMY Awards). “Crazy in Love” was nominated for Record of the Year.

Even with the success of her solo career, Beyoncé was not quite finished with Destiny’s Child. The group released their final studio album, Destiny Fulfilled, in 2004 and embarked on their final world tour together in 2005. Destiny’s Child officially disbanded in 2006. Through her time in Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé set her stage for a lifetime of musical excellence and artistry. She laid the groundwork for a commitment to furthering Black musical traditions that would carry throughout her career. Beyoncé continues to acknowledge the importance that the group had on her early career and has reunited the group for one-off performances throughout her solo career.

After Destiny’s Child disbanded, Beyoncé continued with her legendary solo career. Her second solo album, B’Day, was released on Beyoncé’s 25th birthday in 2006. B’Day debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, received four GRAMMY nominations, and won one GRAMMY for Best Contemporary R&B Album.

In December of 2006, Beyoncé starred as Deena Jones in the drama film Dreamgirls, based loosely on The Supremes. Beyoncé's performance was partially inspired by her experience in Destiny’s Child. In addition, Beyoncé’s commitment to understanding Black music history guided her performance. Though she received numerous nominations for her performance, including two Golden Globe nominations, she herself did not win any.

Beyoncé’s third album I AM...SASHA FIERCE, released in 2008, was another hit. The album’s title refers to Beyoncé’s alter ego, Sasha Fierce, who Beyoncé created to“help her overcome challenges and give the best performances she can” (Oprah). The confident, stage-owning alter ego of Sasha Fierce differs from the shy Beyoncé, and the album provides a lens into both the persona and Beyoncé’s own vulnerability. It included ballads “Halo” and “If I Were a Boy,” as well as the iconic dance track “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” The album also debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, and Beyoncé won her third consecutive Best Contemporary R&B Album award at the 2010 GRAMMYs.

Beyoncé began building her business empire in 2010 when she established Parkwood Entertainment and moved much of her work in-house (Forbes). From producing music, documentaries, and concerts, Parkwood fronts the front-end production costs and reaps the back-end economic gains. Beyoncé cites Madonna as an inspiration to take control of her own work:

Parkwood has now expanded to include Beyoncé’s smaller endeavors, including Cecred, a hair care brand, Sir Davis Whiskey, a whiskey label, and Ivy Park, a now-discontinued clothing line. Despite this growth, Beyoncé continues to make the majority of her wealth from her music and tours (Forbes).

Beyoncé’s fourth album, appropriately named 4, was released in 2011. Beyoncé promoted the album through a performance at the 2011 VMAs, where she also announced her pregnancy with her first daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Beyoncé’s motherhood, though separate from her musical talents, would become a key element of Beyoncé’s artistry and legacy as a Black woman artist. As she has shared, “Something cracked open inside of me right after giving birth to my first daughter. From that point on, I truly understood my power, and motherhood has been my biggest inspiration.” (PopSugar).

Beyoncé credited Blue Ivy in the writing of “Brown Skin Girls,” a song celebrating young Black girls that would win Blue Ivy a GRAMMY at only 9 years old. Additionally, Beyoncé invited Blue Ivy to perform on both the Renaissance and Cowboy Carter World Tours, beginning at the age of 11. Beyoncé’s commitment to continuing Black legacies is seen in her own relationship to Blue Ivy and motherhood.

4 also included the song “Who Run The World (Girls),” an uplifting song speaking to the foundational role that women play in society and culture. Though the song was criticized by contemporary listeners for “proffering post-feminist falsehoods,” it is regarded today as a very important feminist anthem for the ways in which it seems to address how patriarchy “runs” on women’s reproductive and capitalist labor, care work, and accomplishments (James).

Beyoncé performed the national anthem at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, further uplifting Black excellence through her artistry. She also headlined the Superbowl XLVII halftime show in 2013. When Beyoncé surprise-released her self-titled album at the end of 2013, then, it is no shock that it was a massive commercial success.

Black Empowerment

2016 is often marked as a turning point in Beyoncé’s career. Her release of Lemonade, an album celebrating unapologetic Black womanhood, is attributed to a shift in Beyoncé’s artistic focus toward politics and her Black southern roots. Although this “shift” might be a useful way to frame Beyoncé’s art, Beyoncé’s career was built on a foundation of Black musical traditions and Black experiences. As explained, Destiny’s Child followed in the tradition of 1960s girl groups out of Motown. Beyoncé’s role in Dreamgirls required a historical appreciation of Black women’s contributions to music. Early songs in her career, including “Countdown,” make mention of her hometown, Houston, Texas. Beyoncé’s marriage to Jay-Z, one of the biggest hip-hop artists of the 21st century, marked one of the most important Black music cultural moments in modern history. Thus, while Lemonade as a product might mark a turning point, Beyoncé herself has been rooted in Black musical tradition since the start of her career. Lemonade has inspired countless articles and scholarship, including college courses, and is regarded as the number one album of the 21st Century so far by Rolling Stone. 

After giving birth to twins Rumi and Sir Carter in 2017, Beyoncé returned to the spotlight to headline Coachella in 2018, the first Black woman artist to do so. Her performance centered Historically Black College and University (HBCU) culture, featuring a live marching band and dance squad. The performance was turned into a film titled Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé, further drawing upon HBCU traditions, and released as a live album. Beyoncé also voiced Nala in the 2019 Disney live-action adaptation of The Lion King. She created an accompanying album for the film, The Lion King: The Gift, and visual album, Black is King, dedicated to her son Sir Carter. Both Coachella and Beyoncé’s involvement with The Lion King have demonstrated a heightened focus on Black culture, art, and history in Beyoncé’s career.

Following Coachella, Beyoncé took a short break. This was, at least in part, because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. As she articulated in an interview with Vogue, “I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on building my legacy and representing my culture the best way I know how. Now, I've decided to give myself permission to focus on my joy” (PopSugar). Beyoncé returned to music in 2022 with the release of RENAISSANCE, the first of three albums in her musical reclamation project. RENAISSANCE addresses how house music, originally created by Black and brown queer communities, has been lost to white artists and audiences. The album effectively shines a light on this loss and has led to conversations on the reclaiming of house music for its originators. RENAISSANCE was nominated for eight GRAMMYs and won four.

The second album in the trilogy, COWBOY CARTER, does similar work of musical reclamation for country music. Beyoncé features Linda Martell, the first commercially successful Black woman country artist. She was the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry (Linda Martell). Beyoncé also features rising Black country artists such as Tanner Adell, Reyna Roberts, Britney Spencer, Willie Jones, and Shaboozey. The album speaks to Black southern womanhood through vulnerability and empowerment, highlighting Beyoncé’s own experiences within the industry and how those relate to her personal identity. “16 CARRIAGES,” one of the lead singles from the album, directly addresses Beyoncé’s internal struggle between her ongoing pursuit of success at the cost of time with her family: “It’s been 38 summers, and I’m not in my bed/ on the back of the bus and a bunk with the band/ goin’ so hard, now I miss my kids/ overworked and overwhelmed” (Beyoncé). COWBOY CARTER was critically acclaimed, garnering 11 GRAMMY nominations and three wins. Notably, Beyoncé won her first Album of the Year award for COWBOY CARTER.

Beyoncé’s Legacy

Beyoncé is the most decorated and nominated artist in GRAMMY history, with 99 nominations and 35 wins. She has performed around the globe on her many world tours, headlined the Superbowl Halftime Show twice, headlined Coachella as the first Black woman to do so, sung at the 2013 Presidential Inauguration, and much more. She is an international musical phenomenon and true tour de force in the industry.

Beyoncé is not just a musical legend. She is also a wildly successful businesswoman. At the end of 2025, Beyoncé reached billionaire status, according to Forbes. She was the fifth musical artist to do so, behind Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and Rihanna (Forbes).

Though her career had humble beginnings performing in talent shows around Houston, Beyoncé is an example of the power and beauty behind one’s commitment to making authentic art, connecting with your roots, and never forgetting that you are flawless. As a Black woman artist, performer, businesswoman, and mother, Beyoncé’s story reminds us of the humanity behind our biggest stars that is complicated by a desire to overcome systems that otherwise might inhibit success”.

A salute to the one and only Beyoncé. I did want to mark her forty-fifth birthday, not as any random excuse to discuss her. It is an opportunity to showcase her brilliance and why she is such an influential figure. An artist who has many years ahead, I wonder what will come next in terms of albums. The divine Beyoncé is…

A music goddess.

FEATURE: And So I Want to Join In… Why a Kate Bush Tribute Album Is Hugely Relevant Today

FEATURE:

 

 

And So I Want to Join In…

IN THIS PHOTO: ‘Kabuki Kate’, from the Hounds of Love shoot, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari 

 

Why a Kate Bush Tribute Album Is Hugely Relevant Today

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PEOPLE try to speak…

IN THIS PHOTO: The award-winning, hugely acclaimed and prolific producer, the queen that is Catherine Marks/PHOTO CREDIT: Vintage King

for Kate Bush and assume she had made decisions about certain things. In the past, I have asked why she has not been made a Dame. People have said she has been offered and refused. There is no proof that ever happened. Same with directors or producers approaching her to make a cinematic version of Hounds of Love’s second side suite, The Ninth Wave. People will say she has been asked about a tribute album and whether that is okay. I see no reason why she would reject this. In the past, artists have covered Kate Bush. A  few recent attempts When it comes to collating artists on a tribute album, this has not happened. Not major artists. I don’t feel there would be huge interest for unknown artists or smaller acts. You would need to combine them. I think that a tribute album now would be timely. Kate Bush’s greatest hits album, The Whole Story, turns forty in November. Maybe waiting until 2028 for when Wuthering Heights and The Kick Inside turn fifty. Her debut single and album respectively, why has their not been a major project where artists combine and cover her songs?! I think that it is overdue. I feel it should all happen at Abbey Road Studios. I am not sure who would produce it, but Catherine Marks and Tony Visconti come to mind. The latter almost worked with Kate Bush. A possibility of him producing one of her albums. She politely refused. Catherine Marks is one of the greatest producers. Award-winning and with such an eclectic C.V., she is also Mercury Prize-nominated, as she worked on the Help(2) album. Raising funds for War Child, it would connect to Kate Bush. Little Shrew (Snowflake) was released in 2024. Bush releasing the single and video to raise donations for the charity. It would be an expensive project, though a fifteen-track double album recorded and mixed at Abbey Road I feel would be wonderful. It could raise funds for War Child.

A very cool vinyl, cassette and C.D. release, you could unite major artists with slightly smaller ones. Those who have either cited Kate Bush as an influence or you clearly can hear her music in theirs. I think the budget wouldn’t be a massive issue. I feel the most difficult issue is getting the list whittled down. So many artists you could choose. Maybe uniting some in duets. Having strings on some tracks, I would love to see heavyweights like Catherine Marks and Tony Visconti joins forces. Thinking about the cover of the album, a classic photo from someone like Gered Mankwoitz, John Carder Bush (Kate Bush’s brother) or Guido Harari. Maybe a new illustration or design. It would be fascinating. One of the reasons why I am thinking about a Kate Bush tribute album is because there is so much more awareness of her music. In terms of how it has spread since Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was featured on Stranger Things in 2022. Opening her work to a new generation. I do feel though that people have not dug deeply enough. Look at Spotify, and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) possibly has more streams than the rest of her back catalogue combined. I fear she is still defined by this song. Of course, it could feature in a tribute album. It does not mean that she is retired and people are remembering who she was. There will be a new album soon enough. I think that a Netflix Kate Bush documentary is being made. I feel a book that charts her influence would be beneficial, though you’d have to revise it multiple times because so many people are nodding to her work! For an album, you could also have narration. Tracks like Jig of Life (from Hounds of Love) has a spoken part. In 1985, that was by her brother, John Carder Bush. An actor like Jessie Buckley (who is a Kate Bush fan) could do that part now. A 2028 album release would be possible. Getting all these artists to Abbey Road could be pricey, though many will visit the U.K., so their parts could be recorded then. They would not need to all be in the studio at the same time. Kate Bush recorded out of Abbey Road Studios, so artists paying their respects in that hallowed space would be incredible.

That takes me to fans of her work and some major names. Which fifteen or so artists would make the cut? Paul McCartney was one of the famous names at her Before the Dawn residency in 2014. Bush is a massive fan of The Beatles and she and Paul McCartney have met. Which song could he tackle? I feel Aerial from the album of the same name. Perhaps an odd fit, I feel he could add something different. A great fit for him. A major reason for this album is Charli xcx. She might be tired of me mentioning her when it comes to Kate Bush (though she is not going to read this!), but her “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack track, House, loosely took inspiration from Kate Bush’s Get Out of My House. That song appeared on 1982’s The Dreaming. I would love for this to maybe be the single from the album, just so Charli xcx could cover the track and there being this incredible video. Sophie Muller directing. There could be two singles or choices. I feel Michel Gondry would be another amazing director who could bring to life a song like Mrs. Bartolozzi is another great song that was never a single, this Aerial track could have options when it comes to artists. Phoebe Bridgers and PinkPantheress come to mind. Very different to one another, they could take it in their own direction. Guest musicians on this album has plenty of options. Bush’s mentor and friend David Gilmour playing guitar. If we have Get Out of My House and Mrs. Bartolozzi on the album, then which thirteen other songs? Too many tempting options, it could be decided. I would think Billie Eilish tackling The Kick Inside’s title track. Björk is a big fan of Kate Bush and has mentioned The Dreaming as a favourite. She would add something unique to a song like Pull Out the Pin or All the Love. ROSALÍA would definitely need to be in the fold. I can see her doing something with epic with Jig of Life or a song from The Sensual World (1989) like Deeper Understanding. Maybe Kate Bush admirer Stevie Nicks could be included (as she and Lindsey Buckingham are apparently back in communication, could these two duet on a track?!).

The idea is not to go for obvious singles. Give light and new life to songs that are underrated or were minor successes. Though there is room for a take on a classic like Wuthering Heights. CMAT has covered the track before, and I would love to hear a studio version. Elton John playing piano on one track, as he is a big fan (and he and Bush collaborated on Snowed in at Wheeler Street, which was a track on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow). Florence Welch is someone compared to Kate Bush. She could take on Never for Ever’s Breathing or even add her own vibes to 50 Words for Snow’s Among Angels. I would like to see two artists combine on a song that only has Bush on vocals. I am thinking Florence Welch and Damon Albarn joining forces. Which other artists would be on the fantasy list? Solange, Tori Amos, Lily Allen, Big Boi, Olivia Rodrigo, Fiona Apple, Muse, London Grammar’s Hannah Reid and Madonna. Addison Rae, FKA twigs, Neil Hannon, Halsey, Caroline Polachek, Jessie Ware, Lorde, Chappell Roan, Peter Gabriel and RAYE. Blood Orange too. There would be a long list of potential inclusions. Producer Nigel Godrich is a fan. A potential engineer/producer choice? Radiohead too. They apparently have invited her into the studio. Bush has attended a gig of theirs in London. This is a fantasy and me being somewhat self-indulgent, though there is relevance. As we look ahead and are creeping near to the fiftieth anniversary of her debut single and album, a tribute album to celebrate her work. Who knows, she may well release a new album before then too, which will ignite people and lead to more artists discovering her work. Irish author and Kate Bush fan Sinéad Gleeson writing an album foreword or providing narration on a track.

The aim is two-fold: to celebrate this iconic and goddess-like artist whose influence is massive; to raise funds for War Child, sort of in the way Help(2) did, though this is specific to one artist, whereas that album saw multiple artist cover songs from a range of musicians. I seriously doubt Kate Bush has been approached about something like this and, if she has, no reason she would object. She has indulged in retrospection and revision. She realised the impact her work has and, if for a great cause and done affectionately, this could be a massive thing. It is rare that we get such a high-profile and, perhaps, expensive album for a single artist. Though Kate Bush is no ordinary or minor artist! Thinking back to a song(s) that could be a single from the album. Get Out of My House could feature high-profile actor fans of Kate Bush such as Florence Pugh, Ayo Edebiri and Margot Robbie. A director like Greta Gerwig. Actresses Laura Dern, Gemma Arterton and Sadie Sink. St. Vincent should be one of the musicians feature or a vocalist on a track. In-studio shots taken by Kate Bush collaborators such as Trevor Leighton or Guido Harari. Of course, all moot if Kate Bush puts a stop to it or, if money was too much an issue, those restraints. Given anniversaries approaching and the rising influence of this queen, why not do something like this?! I have not even mentioned Lady Gaga, The Last Dinner Party, Self Esteem, Suede, Kylie Minogue, and actors like Guy Pearce. I will stop. This is a project I would definitely love to see come to life, as it would earn money for War Child and combine artists and those throughout multiple disciplines. All showing their affection for Kate Bush. If the woman herself might feel bashful or like it is too much, its objectives should not give her hesitation. Bringing so many Kate Bush fans to Abbey Road Studios to provide their takes on her songs would be something Kate Bush fans (in their thousands and possibly millions) would…

FLOCK to buy!

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential September Release

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Beabadoobee/PHOTO CREDIT: Guen Fiore

 

Essential September Releases

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THE calendar is looking…

IN THIS PHOTO: Julia Jacklin/PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel

pretty busy when it comes to albums due next month. I am recommending a selection that you will want to pre-order. I am starting out with albums due on 4th September. The first album I want to highlight is Dexys Midnight Runners’ LOVE. It is so great that Kevin Rowland (the group’s lead) is still making music. If you have been a fan for decades or are new to them, then you will want to check out this amazing album. Go and pre-order LOVE:

“LOVE, Dexys Midnight Runners latest, possibly last ever album, is a luminous collection of scenes and reckonings. Stories of family and friends, tales from past and present. All drawn from Kevin Rowland’s life, each an individual jewel, threaded together with love. Songs begun three decades ago sit alongside those written in the last year. A vivid depiction of Rowland's Irish immigrant childhood [‘My Life in England Pt 1’]; a moving letter to his grandchildren [‘You’re Alright’]; a wistful moment at the start of a love affair [‘I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas’]; a pin-perfect portrait of time spent with a dying parent [‘Once A Man, Twice A Child’]; the difficulties of relationships when you're older [‘Old Love’]. All deeply personal, all true, all here; the full human span of relationships, family and intimate emotion.

The theme of this album - Kevin's ninth, Dexys' seventh - gradually emerged as the songs progressed. "I don’t remember when it happened, but I just thought, 'Hang on, these are all love songs, of different kinds',” he says. "I knew then: Call it LOVE." These are love songs, but not of the usual pop style. Not will-she-won't-she romance, but something more emotional and all-encompassing. Those small moments that illustrate a rollercoaster sweep. "Everyone came at this project with love," he says. To tell a lifetime of different loves. A love life.

LOVE is also their first album under the Dexys Midnight Runners name since 1985’s Don’t Stand Me Down. “We realised a couple of years ago that some young people know Dexys Midnight Runners from ‘Geno’ and ‘Come On Eileen,’ but some that we spoke to, were confused by the name, Dexys. And some, thought Dexys was a different outfit to Dexys Midnight Runners.,” says Kevin. “Since Dexys returned in 2012, we’ve always felt what we do is worthy of a young audience, so it was a no brainer to revert to Dexys Midnight Runners”.

Those familiar with Kevin’s wonderful autobiography, Bless Me Father, will recognise some of the people in these songs: his dad, his brother, his first love, more recent romances. But this is a Dexys Midnight Runners album, the group of players where Kevin began his music career, and where he works best. So his lyrics are explored and highlighted, lifted to greater heights by the songwriting and creativity of long-time collaborators Sean Read, Mike Timothy and Jim Paterson. There are strings, too, arranged by Brian Irving, originally from Belfast.

Fellow Belfast man, DJ and musician David Holmes, is the album's producer. Holmes had long wanted to work with Kevin and Dexys: “They were the first act I was ever truly obsessed with, the first I saw live”. David's older sister bought him a Walkman when he was 11, and his first cassette was Searching For the Young Soul Rebels. When Kevin sent him a demo of ‘Once A Man, Twice a Child’ (written with Sean soon after Dexys' triumphant 2024 Glastonbury appearance), David was captivated. "His song writing is so strong," he says”.

Another album I would recommend you pre-order is Ellie Goulding’s I Know Too Much. I have been a fan of Goulding for many years, and she is one of our greatest treasures. Her sixth studio album follows 2023’s Higher Than Heaven. I think that so many albums are let down by weak covers. Artists not thinking about the aesthetics. However, look at I Know Too Much and its striking cover. It is an album that really stands out for that reason. You can pre-order it here. There is not a great deal of detail out there regarding I Knew Too Much. I do want to include sections from a NYLON interview from earlier this year. In terms of changes in Goulding’s life since her previous albums, she has gone through a divorce. That ides whether I Know Too Much is impacted by that:

“Now that you’re on the other side: Are we getting what you would call a “divorce album”?

I asked my friends about this. I sent them a folder of the songs and was like, “What do you guys think?” I trust my friends, and they’re real music lovers. One person said, "Wow, this is the divorce album.” And then most of the others were like, "This just sounds like you’re a new woman. It sounds like growing and rediscovery. It doesn’t feel like divorce.” I don’t think that divorce has to have this negative connotation anymore. We’re lucky to be in a position where we don’t have to be married and we don’t have to necessarily rely on somebody. I really like that most of them clearly picked up in the writing that it’s about something else.

I think the term “divorce album” is also just at the tip of everyone’s tongues following West End Girl.

Yes. [Lily Allen and I], we came up at the same time. I actually saw Lily the other day randomly in the cinema. I always thought she was a poet, a lyricist. She’s got a really great voice, but I felt like her thing was to be a storyteller. I also like to think myself a storyteller, but I like seeing myself as a vocalist.

Are you feeling anything ahead of this new music that you haven’t in past albums?

Honestly, a complete lack of expectation, which is so liberating. I’m like, “I believe in this music. I believe in my voice. I believe in my writing.” If you don’t, people know. Fans know. Higher Than Heaven, I didn’t really believe in it. I released it in a kind of post-pandemic panic. It was just an album of nice songs. Everything around it was beautiful, dressed up real nice. But the actual album, it didn’t even land for me, so how did it land for my fans? Whereas this one, I was fully behind”.

The penultimate album from 4th September you should check out is Mykki Blanco’s CAFE PARADISO. Blanco is an artist I have a lot of time and respect for. I am looking forward to hearing what comes from CAFÉ PARADISO. If you want more details about this album, then Rough Trade provide some assistance:

“On Cafe Paradiso, Mykki Blanco is completely reborn, trading the persona- driven theatrics of his previous releases for something more interior and exacting The record draws from the diverse, banal and yet idiosyncratic contexts of the artist's life in transit. "Chameleonic" is one way to describe the artist known as Mykki Blanco, who has played many roles through his storied career: a rapper, a poet, a magazine editor, an advocate. Perhaps "fearless" better describes him; with high profile collaborations from the likes of Charli XCX, Teyana Taylor, Basement Jaxx, Blood Orange, Big Freedia, Kelsey Lu, Michael Stipe, Arca and Anhoni, Mykki has been recognised as a pioneer of queer- centric hip- hop who resonates across musicians of many genres and generations”.

I am really looking forward to Natalie Imbruglia's Algorithm. Even though it is not released until 4th September, there is already this acclaim and buzz. I have been a fan since her incredible debut album, 1997’s Left of the Middle. Hard to believe that the album is almost thirty years old! I hope there is a big anniversary tour next year. One of my favourite artists, you should pre-order declared Algorithm their Best New Album for September. Awarding it four-and-a-half stars. I am keen to interview Imbruglia at some point, as she has had this astonishing career! The Australian artist is based in the U.K., but I have never seen her perform live. I shall try and right this soon:

“Natalie Imbruglia is known to millions as the star behind the global hit ‘Torn’ which remains one of the defining songs of the nineties. It started a phenomenal run of success which has included two BRIT Awards, three Grammy nominations, a Silver Clef, eight ARIA Awards, seven million sales of her debut album Left of the Middle, and a #1 for Counting Down The Days. Recent times have seen her back in the spotlight, having performed alongside Olivia Rodrigo. It’s the perfect time for a new chapter, which starts with the news that she will release her new album Algorithm.

Algorithm finds Natalie Imbruglia in a new era: one of empowerment, freedom and creative fulfillment. The Australian-British pop icon’s first album in five years is a tour de force, a deeply personal record to remind us precisely why we fell in love with her in the first place. It comes as the cultural zeitgeist shifts and pop edges back towards the dancefloor, its direction feeling in tune with the sophisticated pop, disco and house leanings of Robyn.

Natalie says, “On this record I chose to work with collaborators who also co-produce so from start to finish we were all so invested in every song. I really hope that people get as much joy from listening to this record as we did making it. And that they dance their arses off.

This was by far the most fun I’ve ever had making a record. It also happened to coincide with the most challenging time I’ve had with my mental health. This is the beauty of music and artistic expression. You can take something dark and turn it into light.”

The single ‘Upside Down’ opens with a flourish of bright synths and energetic percussion, with Natalie’s distinctive lilt floating above. As she reaches the chorus, it grows brighter – kaleidoscopic, shimmering – and we hear her relinquishing control, and ultimately finding clarity in a song which came from a feeling of shame surrounding her mental health.

She explains, “The inability to control my emotions, wrestling with fight or flight mode, was awful, and I was reaching this critical point with it. In a way, the song is about how sheer willpower – trying to force your way out of something – doesn’t always work. You need tools, support. So that’s where the song was born from, that fight to maintain a semblance of what some might consider normality”.

There are some decent albums due on 11th September, though there is one I will spotlight. Not connected to music, but 11th September is going to be a sobering day for many Americans. Especially those in New York who were affected by the terrorist attacks twenty-five years ago. I digress! The album I want to recommend is Ibibio Sound Machine’s Chopping Mountain. Go and pre-order an album that is going to sit alongside the most essential of this year:

“Chopping Mountain, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine is the clearest rendering yet of the London collective’s longstanding mission to promote love, unity, and resistance through music. It is the band’s sixth full-length record, and the first to feature the band’s Max Grunhard as producer since 2019’s Doko Mien. Following their Hot Chip-produced breakthrough Electricity (2022) and the darker, clubbier inflection of the Ross Orton-produced Pull the Rope (2024), Chopping Mountain feels like it was pulled directly from the hearts and experiences of the Eno Williams and Grunhard-led band.

Williams, as always, is a siren — a once-in-a-generation frontwoman whose call, both to the dancefloor and for a better tomorrow, is impossible to resist. How she does it is a mystery. Take a song like “Return to Sender,” for instance. Inspired by a car accident in which she felt the steering wheel of her vehicle literally jump out of her hands — which she likened to “a spiritual attack by unseen forces” — the track is a sinewy, cathartic rager, a full-body workout and full-throated rejection of evil in multiple tongues, English and her native Ibibio.

She is, of course, hardly alone at the foot of Chopping Mountain. Ibibio Sound Machine — Grunhard (saxophone, keyboards), Alfred Bannerman (guitar), PK Ambrose (bass, keyboards),Joseph Amoako (drums), Afla Sackey (percussion), Scott Baylis (trumpet, keyboards), and Tony Hayden (trombone, synth) — are supernaturally tight, drawing on their roots and inspirations in highlife, disco, afrobeat, funk, post-punk, and electropop to build towering cathedrals of sound around her voice.

Continuing on the path they first charted on Pull the Rope, many of Chopping Mountain’s songs started out in jam sessions, locking in on a groove or an instrument or a lyric. “Give Me Peace,” featuring Dele Sosimi of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80, found its way to bliss once the chant-sung lyrics “Give me peace, give me freedom, give me love with a kiss” tumbled out of Williams’ consciousness. The dub-inflected, breakbeat heavy soul that stirs to life beneath them — an entirely new sound for a band that has mastered blending a seemingly endless array of sounds — came naturally. “It’s about finding calm in a world that is trying to tear us down,” Williams and Grunhard explain. “Once we established that direction, the song seemed to write itself.”

This is, at its core, the spirit of Chopping Mountain. Against the backdrop of a dispiriting world, Ibibio Sound Machine remain hopeful, seekers of consciousness and connection. On tracks like “Concept of Love,” they are direct and earnest, sculpting an Afro-disco song around Williams’ repeated question of “What is your concept of love?” They have their theory (“When you love someone / Let them love you back”) but the song passes the idea from member to member — a thrilling guitar solo from Bannerman, Baylis’ horn stings, vocoders, and precision drumfills — in a way that creates, almost paradoxically, a space in which one can meditate on the answer or move through it. Exploring the concept further on “Love,” they deliver an ethereal slice of highlife.

This heady brew of disparate styles and points of origin melds and pulls itself apart across the whole of Chopping Mountain, its songs united in that they are the sharpest tools Ibibio Sound Machine can bring to bear in the present moment. They present the struggle for freedom as a communal one, in which even the smallest movement contributes to the end game. As Williams sings in the title track, “When pebble disturbs the water / Ripples over yonder / Force of a sling shot hits you / Chopping mountain rock asunder.” The work of liberation is long and difficult, but it is not without joy — here is an album bursting with it”.

Five 18th September-due albums I want to put on your radar. The first is from the amazing beabadoobee. Pylon is shaping up to be an essential release. An artist is never quite given the exposure and celebration she deserves, I hope that her new album creates this space and new interest. Not a tonne of detail around this album, I will bring in a recent(ish) interview instead. Pre-order Pylon, as it is going to be a spectacular album! In March, NYLON spent time with one of our greatest artists:

“I can hear Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus, known to the world as beabadoobee, before I can see her. We’re meeting outside the Cat & Mutton pub, on Broadway Market in Hackney, for an afternoon stroll and tea. The sky is light grey, with the sun breaking through the clouds. It’s a welcome change from the dark, rainy skies of the last few days. Bea is laughing with her publicist as they reminisce about taking shots in Eastern Europe; they were in Lithuania last week filming the music video for her new single, “All I Did Was Dream of You”. The 25-year-old, sporting a white puffer and a brown beanie that covers her black-and-blonde mullet, brings out a spliff as she leads me around London Fields. She loves this park, she explains while smoking. She loves London. She loves her cats, Kimchi and Miso, and this other cat she found being chased by a fox the other day, now christened Moo. She loves her boyfriend and collaborator Jake Erland, her friends and family. “I’m loving life right now,” she says.

This wasn’t always the case for Bea, especially not when she began releasing music in 2017. Her first single, “Coffee”, got her signed to Dirty Hit Records and grabbed the attention of depressed and anxious teenagers everywhere (myself included) as she sang, “I promise that one day I’ll feel fine / And I promise that one day I’ll feel all right.” At 18, I would cry while listening to these lyrics, with the firm, melodramatic belief that I would not be able to keep the promises she sang so softly about. “I thought I was born sad,” she tells me as we wait for our drinks to arrive at Market Cafe. “I went to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and they were like, ‘You did so many drugs, you’re just permanently sad.’” She can laugh now, but at the time, she thought she had “fucked” herself up, that she was always going to be a sad person. “Not true,” she says with a grin. “Not true.”

Now the Filipina-British artist is a Brit Award nominee with three albums (Fake It Flowers, Beatopia and This Is How Tomorrow Moves) and six EPs under her belt. She has been the supporting act for some of the biggest artists on the planet, including Clairo, the 1975, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, and after a year without releasing any music, she’s dying to come back. Will we receive something more upbeat this time? “The next album is still pretty sad,” Bea laughs. “But it’s about accepting the sad times and understanding that you have to feel every single fucking feeling. Happiness, sadness, anger – all of it.”

Are you a forgive-and-forget type of person, then?

beabadoobee: Back in the day, I was definitely out for revenge. I was on my Blair Waldorf shit. Nowadays, I don’t have the time. I low-key wish I did. I forgive, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

When do you find yourself lying the most?

beabadoobee: When I was younger, I used to lie about being OK a lot. But not so much now. Also, honestly, it’s fun to lie sometimes. I once lied to my Uber driver that I was in a Nine Inch Nails cover band, ’cause why not?

What’s your advice for mending a broken heart?

beabadoobee: Alcohol! [laughs] No – don’t listen to sad songs. People say you should so you can get it all out, but I disagree. When I was going through my first heartbreak, which was intense, I only listened to happy music and I had the best time.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

beabadoobee: Epic.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

beabadoobee: For ages, I was always terrified of being alone, of being away from someone and missing them. It was a massive problem for me on tour. My greatest achievement is realising all of that is necessary. I am grateful I have someone to miss. I feel the most stable I’ve been right now, and all the things that I’ve had to do this year have led me to this point. I don’t feel the need for validation from social media or from other people; I’m completely and passionately focused on my art. I know that things can change and I might feel different tomorrow, but it’s the fact that I can right now accept that I feel OK. I’ve never had that acceptance before”.

The amazing and always-brilliant Beck releases Ride Lonesome on 18th September. I have been a fan since the 1990s, so I am definitely going to check out his new album. Though the vinyl is a little pricey, I think that it is good value, as Beck always delivers something special! You can pre-order Ride Lonesome here:

“Beck returns with Ride Lonesome, his first album of all-new material since the Grammy-winning Hyperspace. Harkening back to the rich, atmospheric sounds of Morning Phase and Sea Change, the album reunites Beck with musicians from those acclaimed releases. Produced by Beck and mixed by Nigel Godrich, Ride Lonesome marks a compelling return to the intimate, cinematic style that defines some of his most celebrated work”.

A few more from 18th September to get to. Carly Rae Jepsen’s Day and Night is a stunning double album that is also going to challenge for album of the year, I think. You can pre-order it here. In June, NME interviewed Carly Rae Jepsen. She discussed, among other things, her upcoming double album:

“For ‘Day And Night’, which is set for release on September 18, she worked closely with trusted collaborators including Noonie Bao, Patrik Berger, Tavish Crowe, Markus Krunegård and Pontus Winnberg. She also co-wrote songs with musician-producer Cole M.G.N., whom she married last October and welcomed a daughter with in March.

“At the time, he was just my boyfriend, and a lot of this album is really about that relationship: [us] falling in love and deciding to make a family together,” Jepsen said. “There’s nothing wilder than writing a love song about your husband, then showing it to him, and having him participate in it! It was honestly a really beautiful process.”

Check out the rest of the interview below, where Jepsen recalls how the ‘Day And Night’ concept took shape, outlines her future touring plans, and explains how her new single ‘On Wires’ reflects the tensions of pop star life.

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.'”

How do you see the project as a whole, now that it’s all finished and ready to go?

“As two full bodies of work that in my mind really belong together; it’s 12 songs for ‘Day’ and 12 songs for ‘Night’. They’re kind of the full spectrum of my musical tastes. I started to show up at sessions and be like, ‘Today I’m in a ‘Day’ mood, so let’s do something that feels Minnie Riperton-inspired.’ Or, ‘I just got back from London and saw ‘ABBA Voyage‘, so I really feel like we should do our version of ABBA, but with synths.’ But it wasn’t necessarily that LA thing of like, ‘Here’s the catchphrase [for the song], here’s the jingle.’ It was more like ‘I’m working with friends here, so let’s throw it all together and see what happens”.

I am a fan of Gia Ford, and this is an artis that more people need to discover. A Room Within a Room has this mysterious title that compels greater scrutiny. She is a singular talent who I want to turn people on to. You can pre-order A Room Within a Room here:

“This album is the manifestation of a desire to make something real, in a world and artistic landscape that increasingly favours convenience over craft.

My producer and I wanted each player to leave their mark on the album, to hear everyone's personality in their performance; hear the room we recorded in, and the evidence of life within it. I miss hearing that stuff in recordings. This is the antithesis of that hyper-clean, optimised sound that is so abundant now. It's almost optimisation in the opposite direction, making it clear that some people made this music together in a room somewhere.

A Room Within A Room is about the local atmospheres we own that hang around us. It's about the private rooms within us, the expansiveness of our experience, the force of our inner worlds and imaginations. It's also about the importance of process, and overall, the significance of human creation”.

Before ending with four albums from 25th September you need to know about, I will conclude the best of 18th September with Tove Lo’s Estrus. There is not much information again about this album, so I will just drop in a little bit from Rough Trade:

“Tove Lo’s sixth studio album Estrus, is an emo chic moment, leaning into the contradictions that have long defined her work — euphoria and melancholy, desire and doubt — without trying to resolve them. Balancing visceral, body-moving production with sharply observed writing, the LP captures the full spectrum of feeling in real time across 13 new tracks. Rather than offering answers, Lo stays inside the mess, continuing her core mission: making people feel everything all at once”.

The first of four albums out on 25th September I am mentioning is Blondshell’s Violins. Go and pre-order this album. This incredible American artist is another who I do not feel gets talked about as much as she deserves. It might be the case that Violins is a moment that sees her truly get the widespread conversation and love that her brilliant music warrants:

“Violins, the third album from Blondshell, finds Sabrina Teitelbaum digging in. Following her acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut and 2025's If You Asked For A Picture, the 11-track Violins trades the veil of bad romantic relationships for something braver, asking how we balance the world's violence with its beauty across songs about troubled friendships, religion, the body, and the long, unglamorous work of healing. It's an album of grandeur, drama, and tragedy, built on virtuoso hooks, swelling guitars, and big lead lines, pulling in fresh touchstones from Gang of Four, Teenage Fanclub, The Go-Betweens, and Sade, alongside lyrical nods to Leonard Cohen and Pavement. From the anthemic frenemy portrait of "Heart Has To Work So Hard" to the sunny, insomniac daydream of "Lucky" and the disarming closer "Fur Elise," Violins captures the sound of an artist who has stopped overexplaining and started rendering art on her own terms”.

I love everything that Julia Jacklin puts her name to! Another Australian queen, The Gem is an album I am looking forward to hearing. A songwriter that melt the heart, I think this is someone who will be making music for decades more. Go and pre-order her upcoming album here. I do want to highlight The Forty-Five and their recent interview with Jacklin:

“Releasing an album as a diaristic songwriter – giving people the full Julia Jacklin experience, as she admits to sometimes being aware of (and now actively trying to resist) – seems to necessitate that every expression on a record be completely true to its author’s feelings at the time. “But it’s a good song, so do I not put it out because I don’t feel that way now? I never said I was being honest,” she questions wryly.

“It’s funny, every time I’m making a record, I always worry that it’s not coherent. But I think about myself differently every day. I have a centre that follows me, but my sense of self is changing all the time based on where I am, or who I’m around. The thing about being a human being is sometimes you feel like the coolest, strongest person in the world and the next day you feel like the bigger loser on the planet. That’s what my experience of life is like. I think all of these things coexisting at the same time is more of a reflection on what it means to be alive than having a more coherent album.”

‘The Gem’ might range in outlook, from the willing supplicancy of ‘Walk On Me’ to the hard-won grit of ‘I Wish’, but there’s a confidence that emanates from both the record and the way that Jacklin speaks of it. We tell her that, on the singer’s Reddit channel, we posted a call out for fan questions and comments. The top voted response was a riff on the meme, ‘Did you kiss the brick before you threw it’ – a modern update on sweetening the pill before digging in the knife.

“Well I think that my greatest strength as a writer is not the devastating lyrics, guys!” she quips. “I think I do great melodies. Melody to me is way more important than the lyrics; I know for a fact that I would not be still doing this four albums later if I wasn’t a good melodist. That’s why my music is good. So be grateful that the sad lyrics are encased in those beautiful melodies and that’s the kiss!”

Her melodies might be a winning smooch, but you can imagine Jacklin’s lyrics inspiring the sort of devoted, intense fanbase that other similarly sucker-punch-inducing singers like Phoebe Bridgers or Mitski have earned in recent years. It’s a high-stakes level of fame that Jacklin, who performed her song ‘Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You’ on stage with Lana Del Rey back in 2019, has seen up close. But having a level of anonymity, and prioritising the other areas of her life alongside her career, is something she’s loath to give up. “I feel like that seems like a pretty traumatic experience. The way that Phoebe’s going about it now, she’s trying to rein that in surely with the no phones [at gigs policy]? Because it can get pretty out of hand…” she considers.

“It’s hard to talk about it because I don’t want to throw any fans under the bus. I understand that the music industry is so different to the way it was when I was growing up and I couldn’t even begin to understand what it’s like to be young now. But I think a lot of musicians would agree that a 500-capacity room is kind of the best, and once it gets bigger than that it becomes something different,” she says carefully. “And I think for me, I’m ambitious and I want people to hear my music, but I like being close to people and not feeling scared for my safety. And to me, it seems like [in some situations] you have to be scared for your safety as a woman and I don’t want to live my life like that”.

Leon Bridges’s Happiness Anytime is an album I have no hesitation in recommending. This incredible talent has one of the best voices in all of music, you can pre-order the album here. I have been a fan for a while now, so I am going to check out Happiness Anytime:

“Leon Bridges presents Happiness Anytime, his highly-anticipated fifth studio album produced by J. Lloyd and Lydia Kitto of Jungle. The album's title serves as both a mission statement and an invitation. It's music you can put on no matter how you're feeling and be immediately transported somewhere coastal and warm. In crafting the album, Leon Bridges focused on feeling, storytelling, and his vocal performance. Lydia Kitto brought melodic intuition and harmonic detail, and J. Lloyd shaped the production, arrangements, and sonic structure. The result is an album that feels unusually cohesive, like three musicians discovering a shared vision, drawing inspiration from Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, Brazilian music, soul, disco, and South American rhythms”.

I am going to finish off with Soft Cell’s Danceteria. It is bittersweet, as this is their final album. A group who have been releasing music for decades, it will be sad to see them come to an end! However, make sure you pre-order Danceteria. Rough Trade provide some information about an album that sounds like a perfect thing to own:

“The final album is both a love letter to early 80s New York and a tribute to the late, great Dave Ball.

Electronic music legends Soft Cell, aka singer and frontman Marc Almond and multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Ball, release Danceteria, their sixth and final studio album.

Danceteria the album is a big, classy and playful farewell to 47 years of Marc and Dave making music as Soft Cell and features career-defining performances from our electronic pop legends. Reminiscent of Sparks and Pet Shop Boys and with lyrics Lady Gaga would kill for, the album takes you on a vivid journey through a day in early 80s New York, bouncing round the clock from night to bleary daybreak and headlong back into the club”.

That is quite an extensive and detailed look at albums out next month I feel are well worth ordering. There are more to look at, but I can appreciate we need a cut-off point – and people’s budgets are limited! From the sublime Natalie Imbruglia to beabadoobee, Julia Jacklin and Soft Cell, there is an assortment. Something for anyone. September looking like it is going to deliver…

QUITE a few treats.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Freak Slug

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Freak Slug

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I am…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Palm

going to start out with an interview from 2025. Loud Women spoke with Freak Slug as she was on a U.K. tour. On 18th September, she releases her second studio album, Amulet. You can pre-order it here. Last year, she released I Blow Out Big Candles. Whilst many are aware of Freak Slug and love her work, there are some who may be new. This is a tremendous artist who I am fascinated by. She is absolutely wonderful:

“Xenya Genovese, better known as her stage name Freak Slug, caught up with LOUD WOMEN before her show at the Brudenell, Leeds.

From back-to-back tours to cinematic features, Freak Slug is only going from strength to strength in her career. She delves into what it was like growing up in Manchester’s vibrant music scene, and how the magic has been fading for new generations. Genovese’s way with words is not limited to her songwriting skills but extends to how she describes her experiences in the music scene as a woman.

I’d say you get this asked all the time, but where does your name come from?

Thank you very much. It just came from me not taking myself too seriously. I noticed a lot of the time that there were a lot of serious sounding names, and I didn’t particularly want to be that poetic or deep with the name. I wanted something stupid and eye catching.

Do you notice any difference in the reactions of the crowds? Not necessarily a negative difference, but just in how responsive they are?

I think American crowds are more responsive. I just think they’re louder and naturally by default in everything that they do. So naturally, it would bleed into the way that they are in the crowds. I think in England we are just known for being prudish and rigid, and it reflects in the crowd for sure. But I still think a good crowd, especially if people have bought tickets to see you, it’s not really going to go down that badly, is it? Do you know what I mean?

Were there artists for you, musicians like that, who changed your life?

I think the first artist that I discovered when I was in my really early teens they were called the radio department, and they’re a dreamy band somewhere from Europe. They’re not English or from London. But they were amazing. They touched me, and every single song is incredible, and I still love them. That was really me finding my own music and not showing anyone. I didn’t care, it was about me. Some people think they’re cool because they listen to music that’s sort of bollocks. For me, it’s just listening to music is soothing to me feeling emotions.

So you rereleased your latest album, ‘I blow out big candles’, but you made the extended edition, with Cherry on top. What was the thought process behind that? Were the additional songs ones that you’d been originally working on before, and then went back to, or were they a clean slate?

I had one of the songs written for so long, and it had to come out because we’ve been playing it in the live shows for so bloody long. And do you know what? It came out at the Perfect Time because it’s going to be on this movie that’s out in July called I Know What You Didlast Summer, and it’s the new rendition of that nineties fucking thing. And it’s just fresh out the fucking womb, this song that’s only been out not even a year. So it must have come out at the perfect time because it’s going to be in this film. But it must all be Divine timing. Killer is the song that I’m talking about, and it is literally about a psycho killer, and it’s a horror film, which was perfect because I wrote that song inspired by the Series YOU, and I was like, oh my God, I just wanted to write. I’m not into tense films, I don’t like the anxiety and things like that.

Have you got any musical influences when it comes to your writing, or do your influences match your writing style?

I think I am just inspired by the Manchester scene, so I am inspired at the moment by Oasis. I just really like the direct style of Liam Gallagher, and well, to be honest, it’s Noel’s writing, but I just really liked the Manchester sound and the nineties sound specifically or early two thousands as well. I just really like the two thousand nineties stuff. I always say this, but it’s just true. Nothing else really touches me like that music.

Just as you mentioned, do you find any kind of roadblocks being a woman in the scene or the music industry?

I think there are definitely. My manager was speaking to me, and there is still misogyny that exists in the music scene. I think the problem is that you have to try 10 times harder if you’re a woman to get respect from men, which is sad. And I think men need to do much less to get the same level of respect, which is a tough thing, but I try not to let it get to my head. I think being a woman’s fucking lit and I don’t give a shit, I wouldn’t trade it. I think we’re blessed. Periods included, I don’t care. We’re blessed. So if someone wants to be misogynistic at the end of the day, we’re winning. So I don’t really care. To be honest with you. Sounds sexist, but it’s just how I feel. Do you know what I mean?”.

This Manchester-born artist is someone who I feel is going to have a massive career. I have never seen Freak Slug live, though I am going to rectify that. Last month, Monster Children spoke with Freak Slug. There is a lot of new interest ahead of the release of Amulet:

“Is there a mood or a life event that you imagine this music would help others through?

I processed a lot of anger with this album. To put it very briefly, this whole album concept is about a past life. One that involved organised religion. My sister was killed instead of me when I ran away. We were both condemned but I got to realise music was a healer. And it channels a lot of the anger of a woman, especially those healing archetypes that are shamed but probably add the most value to society. It’s just that classic bullshit of how as women we are never being valued for how much we are worth.  So, that's what it's about. I was processing a lot of anger about that, like how the world still suffers from those beliefs. It also explores love and destiny and just generally about where we come from. It’s a very spiritual album but whether or not somebody is spiritual, I'd like to think that the energy travels to somebody who maybe doesn't understand it, but they can feel it. Or somebody else can interpret the lyrics on the level that they're at. It doesn’t matter, ultimately it will do whatever it needs to do for the people who hear it.

That's what the power of music and art is, right?

Exactly.

Even just hearing that response, but also within your lyrics, you are someone who expresses a lot about the extremities of yourself and the world around you. Is that how you have always been?

I've always been really direct. Sometimes it's gotten me into trouble, but now I just love myself more and I’ve accepted that sometimes I might appear as the villain by being honest. I don't mind playing the villain in somebody's life now. I explore being a villain in this album actually. We need to come to terms with the fact that we're all going to play villains and heroes in other people's lives. We are teachers to each other. Being a villain or someone being a villain serves us lessons.

I don’t know how to ask this in not in a corny way, but how did you love yourself more?

That’s a good question. I think by overcoming a lot of pain and realising that I was actually making the effort to change patterns. I think self love is self understanding and also forgiveness. If you have a willingness to move on and grow and you actually prove to yourself that you’re changing than you can have forgiveness for whatever parts of yourself you don’t love. If you can say oh two years ago I would’ve made a different choice in a situation than it proves you’re getting there.

I like that. Okay this is a bit off tangent here, but have you seen the recent rom com ‘Finding Emily?’

No, why?

Okay so it’s a film based in Manchester and the leading actor Spike Fearn did this interview the other day talking about how it’s really nice to see Manchester filmed with all this colour rather than the dreary way it is usually represented and it got me thinking about how with your early music you subdued your Northern accent because typically people have thought down on it. But with your recent music, it’s quite obvious the shift to your native accent. Why did you decide to do that?

I think it’s just be trying to be more authentic to who I am so naturally my accent has to come in. And to be quite frank I see all the men doing it. I see so many men doing it in all kinds of accents like Northern English, Irish, and I don't see as many women do it. And I was like well why? And I don’t mean to be rude, this is just how I have experienced my accent but I feel like people look down on a Northern accent and historically as common. Men tend to be able to get away with those gritty accents, but I don't think women can be because women are supposed to be soft and nice and feminine. Well fuck that. I’m going to do what the fuck I want because this is who I am. Not doing it feels like bowing down to the really subtle undercurrents of misogyny and the southern and northern divides. So fuck that”.

I am ending up with The Forty-Five and their recent interview with Freak Slug. She spoke about “Northern pride and embracing spirituality on album two”. If you have not yet heard this artist then you really do need to connect with her:

“The choice to become a musician may seem an unusual one for someone who hates to be looked at, but Genovese explains that music is a powerful tool towards healing, allowing her to be seen through her craft without those physical eyeballs on her.

“I can’t escape [being seen]. We have to choose to face up to these things in some incarnation, and Freak Slug is mine.”

Even in the modern day, public perceptions of spirituality are a bone of contention for Genovese. ‘Black Eyes,’ a track from the upcoming album, delves into the uncomfortable truth that dismissal is not only frustrating, but dangerous. While the lyrics could be understood to explore male violence against women in a way that feels relevant to the present, Genovese reveals this wasn’t the vision she had in mind.

“‘Black Eye’ is about my past life. It’s about anger towards a man who is so dismissive of a woman and her spirituality, and just has none of it. It pisses me off to see these men still lingering today, because back then they would’ve been a danger to society; men were scared of the female intuition, and because of that, they killed women. Some men, and women too, are still so unaware and unwilling to learn about these other worlds. That back then would have cost our fucking lives.

“I do encourage people to interpret the lyrics in their own way; wherever they’re at in their lives, as long as it’s helping them process something, that’s cool. The lyrics all across the album are so potent and deep, and will speak to anybody regardless of spiritual beliefs.”

Elsewhere on the record, lyrics explore the many facets that make up femininity. ‘Girl, Intentions,’ the first single, features an interpolation of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,’ while the title is a nod to seminal film Girl, Interrupted.

Genovese highlights the importance of meshing together these contrasting examples of womanhood, which led her to sing more prominently than ever in her Manchester accent.

“I have seen so many men singing in regional accents but I don’t see that on the female side. That’s a load of bollocks. Why isn’t it happening? I think I know why. Politically and historically in England, Northerners are seen as more common. Men are allowed to be boisterous, blunt, rough and ready, whereas women need to be soft and sweet. All the history and judgement live inside you on a subliminal level. So men can get away with expressing their Northern-ness, but as a woman, it’s like, woah. I just decided, fuck that, I’m going to sing how I speak. If not me, who? They have been doing it since the fucking ‘90s, that was 30 years ago, and [the double standard] is still never spoken about. It’s time for change; women are going to get away with it too. It’s what the world needs.

‘Amulet’ was recorded in London, then finished off in Los Angeles. Being in the overly-polished LA presented difficulties in maintaining the grit of the album’s sound.

“Going forward, I want to record in England. LA’s sunny vibes are really affecting. I’m mostly inspired by Manchester music — I love the attitude and charm — and it saddens me to think the world doesn’t know the extent of how sick English music is. Like, why are The Libertines not worldwide? I want to keep that grit and charm [in my own music], and its not easy when you’re affected by the everyday sun.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Palm

Despite bringing together such contrasting aspects of her identity, cohesion was never a concern for Genovese when making the album.

“I don’t ever want to make an album that sounds like one song 12 different ways. Albums need high moments of tension and then release; beauty and then ugly. Somebody criticised my previous album for not being cohesive. Fuck that, why should an album be anything? Why are we sticking to what albums were 50 years ago? It’s 2026, wake up. Albums should be whatever the fuck the artist wants them to be, and this is what I want.”

Letting go of traditional structure afforded her further sonic experimentation straying from the shoegaze path and veering into punk-edged guitar pop.

“I’ve always loved shoegaze and always will. It’s still a sick vibe to have on this album even, if it’s just in moments. But because the album is processing such deep anger, the grit and attitude and heaviness need to be there. There’s a juxtaposition of light and dark, as there always will be with me.”

The experimentation reached further heights on the track ‘Serpent:’ “Serpent was not meant to be an album song; it was like ‘Planet Caravan’ by Black Sabbath, we were just playing around with bongos. But I couldn’t let it go. We kept that psychedelic part, put autotune on my voice and I sang through a megaphone. I hate the word ‘psychedelic’ — it gives me the ick — but that’s what it is. We tuned it up and we saved it.”

Genovese is certain that being a musician is her destiny, but that doesn’t mean it comes without its challenges.

“Touring is really hard: being in a new place every day, tired, hungover, losing my voice, and still having to play a show. It’s debilitating for my health, which is hard for me as I love to take care of my body. But that’s the sacrifice; every job takes a toll in some way. It’s the nature of having a physical vessel and doing things that aren’t natural; the world today is not a natural world, so everything we do goes against our bodies.

“You just have to fucking keep going. The closer you get to a place you want to be, the more you want to give up. It’s not for everyone, though. A lot of people want to be a musician, but some do it for the wrong reasons — for ego or to look cool — and your spirit won’t reward you for that, because you are going against your own destiny. You have to follow what you think is right”.

On 29th August, Freak Slug plays Victorious Festival. That is going to be a huge gig. I might try and catch her when she plays London’s Rough Trade East on 20th September. I can see her playing Glastonbury next year. I feel Amulet will be an album worthy of Mercury nomination. This year they have been criticised by being too mainstream. No heavier music. Metal not represented. Lacking rising artists. They need to react to that, so I feel Freak Slug could be in with a shout next year. She absolutely is…

A titanic talent.

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FEATURE: Heirloom: Björk’s Vespertine at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Heirloom

  

Björk’s Vespertine at Twenty-Five

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OFTEN ranked…

IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in 2001/PHOTO CREDIT: David LaChapelle

alongside Björk’s best albums, Vespertine turns twenty-five on 27th August. I want to go inside this album for an anniversary feature. I shall end with some reviews. Hugely critically acclaimed, Drowned in Sound placed it first when deciding the best albums released between 2000 and 2005. Slant Magazine placed Vespertine third when ranking the 250 best albums of the 2000s. Quite an honour, but not that surprising. Björk is one of the moist consistent and brilliant artists in music history. Vespertine is one of her most astonishing releases. I am starting out with The Guardian and their 2001 interview. They chatted with Björk ahead of the release of a simply mesmeric album:

“We hook up in St John's Wood, where finishing touches are being put to some adverts for Björk's new album, Vespertine. When I get there, several people are musing over video images of Björk with some kind of sci-fi maggot slithering out of her nose and into her mouth. Björk sits before the screens, as quiet (natch) as her gorgeous stripy coat is loud. Her hair is longer, more rock'n'roll, than usual, tapering down her back in Ronnie Wood tendrils. When the time comes for us to retire upstairs and talk, she turns to smile 'Hello'. Not for the first time, her gothic prism of a face, with its up-turned nose and Slavic cheekbones, seems like something half-seen, half-sensed, lurking in the woods of a Grimm's fairy tale. If nothing else, Björk is the undisputed Blair witch of pop.

The maggot imagery in the video having been so repulsive, I can't help but wonder what Vespertine could possibly be about. I expect Björk to say 'death' or 'decay', something cheerful along those lines. However, she tells me that the new album is dedicated to 'worshipping the home, hibernation, finding paradise in your kitchen, magical moments on your own, that kind of thing'. Following this theme, Björk almost called the album Domestica but changed her mind. ('It was too much.') Then she found Vespertine in a dictionary. 'It means: "Things that come out of the night", like an owl or the northern lights,' she says. It's certainly gentler-sounding than previous material.

'Well, yes, my other albums, especially Homogenic, have been very extroverted, very bullet-proof. But that side of me has been captured so many times.' So is Vespertine the private Björk - Björk unmasked? She rubs her face nervously and considers. 'It is one side of me,' she says. 'A side of me that can't be captured by going out and being sociable. Something quite quiet and unexpected. Hidden things, just to do with the things that we dream about at night, the more Nijinksy sides of us.' Now Björk is warming to her theme, smiling sweetly. 'Sometimes they are subdued, but they are always there.'

If you're sitting at home reading this and thinking 'Crikey', then I can confirm that this is the way Björk speaks and thinks. Her private conversations with her friend Thom Yorke, from Radiohead, must be frightening to behold. On the other hand, it does lead to some interesting discussions that you just wouldn't have with Atomic Kitten.

Famously raised by her progressive hippy mother in a commune-style environment just outside Reykjavik (her estranged father, now a trade union activist, saw her almost on a daily basis), Björk was classically trained in music from the age of five, which stood her in good stead for later work with the likes of The Brodsky Quartet and percussionist Evelyn Glennie. At 11, Björk became a national child star after recording some traditional folk songs. Björk happily admits to banging on and on about Iceland in interviews as a mask for shyness, and denies that she is irritated by her homeland's current ultra-fashionable state. 'It is probably my fault. I've talked about it the most.' Like many young people in Iceland, as a teenager, Björk bounced for a few years between jobs to pay the rent and her creative pursuits. The early success of The Sugarcubes paved the way to a solo career, which is when Björk decided to move to London.

'When I moved to London in 1993, I was having the most happy life,' says Björk. 'I was regularly on tours with The Sugarcubes, seeing the world, but always having a safe nest to go home to. And that suited me, because I was so introvert. As a kid, I had this fantasy that I would end up living alone on an island, writing symphonies and just walking around in nature, tripping, singing at the top of my lungs in the blizzards, bumping into horses, whatever. But because I was so safe, there was a side to me, certain aspects of my character, that nobody had ever seen and nobody ever would. I knew I had to make a sacrifice, become more extrovert, push myself to the limit.'

Isn't sacrifice a big word? 'Not at all,' she says, surprised. 'To me, communication is all about making a sacrifice. A very beautiful sacrifice. That's the whole point. It's like love. For two people to synchronise so extremely, they both have to sacrifice their personal needs, they both have to celebrate each other's different sides, the different colours we have in all of us.' By now, it should be obvious what Goldie, one of Björk's exes, was going on about when he called her 'intense'. Mind you, in the same interview, Goldie gloated about the time he bedded Naomi Campbell, so Björk seems to be well out of that one.

If things are happier, less tortured, now, Björk prefers not to comment. 'I try not to talk about these things, I'm sorry,' she says, quietly, when I ask if she is currently in a relationship. The same intensity that evidently comes so naturally to Björk could account for her triumph as the blind mute Selma in Dancer in the Dark , not to mention the fraught relationship she had with von Trier. During the making of Dancer in the Dark , the on-set rows between director and star were legendary. What happened?

'I am used to the creative process,' says Björk. 'I work with a lot of people who are as strong, if not stronger than me. So I am used to disagreeing and working things out. But, with everybody except him, it would always stay creative and positive. Whereas with him, maybe it wasn't, it was quite destructive.' Is she saying that von Trier tried to destroy her? For the first time, Björk's face clouds over. 'I don't know,' she says wearily. 'It's, like, almost three years since I've been shooting this film, and I'm really bored talking about it, I'm sorry.'

There's the same muted, weary reaction when I ask about Ricardo Lopez, the obsessed fan (of whom Björk seems to have more than her fair share) who, in 1996, sent a letter bomb to her home, then filmed himself with a video blowing his brains out with a pistol. This upset Björk badly, prompting her to leave London, first to Spain to record Homogenic , then back to Iceland.

'It wasn't just the letter bomb,' she explains. 'Things were happening all around me, and I realised that I'd come to the end of the extrovert thing. I had to go home and search for myself again. My job is essentially about generosity and when I went to London, I had a lot to give, and it turned out I had given it all. If I'd tried to give any more, it would have become bad energy. So I left at just the right time. I'm not saying that I was responsible for the letter bomb, or that I saw it coming, but it didn't surprise me either, because something definitely wasn't right. I am much much happier now.'

And she seems it. As an artist and a person, Björk no longer seems inside out. As the world's leftfield chanteuse of choice, Björk's albums routinely sell a healthy few million internationally. Meanwhile, Björk the human being is at her happiest talking about Sindri, the son she adores. Back in 1997, she famously attacked a journalist at Bangkok airport for harassing him. 'I just flipped. She was pushing my boy, trying to get an emotional reaction out of him. I take the bullshit that comes with my job, but when it starts affecting the people I love, that's different.'

'Being famous is like 9 billion volts of electricity going through you,' she says earnestly. 'You feel it like that. That's what it feels like. There are people who are born to do it - the Lady Dianas and Mother Theresas of this world - who really have that level of communication, that talent to communicate 24 hours a day, and let all these people live through them. And it's actually a very positive, not a negative, thing - a self-sacrificial thing they are doing.' Hmmm, I say, carefully, maybe that is true sometimes. But what about the people who only want attention and glory? Björk shakes her head emphatically. 'Most people who have been in the limelight for a long time do it in a good way. They enjoy it and it's also a generous act, very self-sacrificial. I really believe that.'

This debate rages pointlessly on for a couple more minutes, until it finally dawns on me that Björk and I are just going to have to differ on the self-sacrificial qualities of modern celebrity. To be fair to Björk, it could be that she is thinking of Mother Theresa and I am thinking of Westlife. To be even fairer to her, fame never seemed to be the point for her anyway. 'You can't write a lot of songs when you've got to do all that,' she shrugs. 'And I guess if you were going to ask what I wanted to do with my life, a big question like that, I would say that I wanted to write songs, and keep writing songs until I die. I'm an explorer. I want to see how far I can go, and I what I can do.

'The very best thing about music,' she continues, her eyes gleaming, 'is that you can express all this kind of abstract stuff that everybody lives every day. So I think most of the time I would consider myself "happy", if that is the word. But I've always been happy, silly, sad, boring, furious, ecstatic, in love, the whole scale, all at the same time. So if I'm not happy all the time, it doesn't make me unhappy, if you see what I mean.' And now Björk touches her face for the last time. 'If I'm unhappy, it doesn't mean that something is wrong”.

I am going to come to Beats Per Minute and their assessment about Vespertine. In terms of when it was written, it was a slightly difficult period. Involved in a film that was not an especially happy experience, Vespertine was perhaps an escape. Or a chance for Björk to immerse herself in something different to a somewhat dark and traumatic film:

“In a way befitting of its creator, it was daring to release Vespertine in the dog days of summer. Released 20 years ago today, on August 27, 2001, Björk’s fourth full-length album took the icy exteriors of 1997’s Homogenic and went even further. She wanted to craft an album bound by domesticity, inspired by her newfound partnership with avant garde artist Matthew Barney, and delivered a record overflowing with wintry choirs and strings, icicle-delicate music box keyboards and beats. These tones and arrangements provided an idyllic backdrop to songs that mostly take place inside the home, wrapped up with a lover.

Conceived while filming Lars von Trier’s divisive musical, Dancer in the Dark, in which Björk starred and for which she wrote the film’s melancholy, whimsical soundtrack, Vespertine is a respite away from the business and chaos of the world. It may be a frosty record — the title literally means ‘relating to or occurring in the evening’, when the air is coolest and quietest — but it’s not alienating. There are moments here that may seem eerie or strange, but Vespertine also happens to be Björk’s most accessible and cohesive record in her sizeable catalogue. It has a welcoming character, feeling less like being stranded in the snow in subzero temperatures and more like pondering life from inside the warm cabin in the woods.

The album got a similar type of critical response as her prior records. Homogenic and Post in particular received the kind of critical adoration that artists can usually only dream of, but Björk continued her streak with Vespertine. From here, Björk would continue down her own various rabbit holes, experimenting with the human voice on the dense Medulla, creating obtuse pieces about the natural world on Biophilia. She got almost perversely personal on 2015’s abstract and winding Vulnicura, a heartbreaking sequel to Vespertine in that it found her constructing brutal orchestral pieces to background her processing her split from Barney and what it meant for her family. It was something she was still working through on her ninth album, 2017’s Arca-assisted Utopia.

Vespertine is, by some metric, the final album of hers that feels like a ‘pop album’ in any traditional sense. That it happens to be her strongest statement in a career of strong statements is testament to its timelessness – although that was achieved somewhat fortunately. Björk was aware that, in 2001, most people acquired their music on CDs or through illegal download platforms like Napster, and ultimately would listen to compressed files through computer speakers. She wanted to create an album using instruments she believed would be less compromised by these listening circumstances, and opted for minimalist beats beneath light, glistening, delicate sounds, created by harp, clavichord, and custom-made plexiglass music boxes (seen in the image above). Of course, Björk being Björk, they were recorded in pristine fashion, and still sound gorgeous, if not better, today in the age of audiophilia where this kind of instrumentation is much more commonplace in popular music.

In recent years, Björk has finally begun receiving her rightful recognition as a composer and producer of her own music. When Vespertine came out, her male contributors often got the majority of the credit. Electronic duo Matmos, for example, worked with her on the beats, but despite Björk laying claim to about 80% of them, she got almost none of the credit. In light of this, and simply because the record has aged beautifully, Vespertine’s 20th birthday is surely cause for celebration. Now go bundle up and luxuriate in its humane, tender, and emotionally resonant winter light”.

Albumism celebrated Vespertine’s twentieth anniversary in 2021. I would urge Anyone who has not heard the album to go and listen. In terms of its production and sound quality, it is such a transformative listen. The album was recorded at quite a few studios. Dividing her time between London, New York and Iceland, Vespertine does not sound disjointed. It is this magnificent and cohesive album:

“Vespertine was forged in the twin fires of a burgeoning new relationship (with artist Matthew Barney) and as an escape from the professional discomfort of working with Lars Von Trier on his film Dancer In The Dark (2000). Both influences can be sharply felt throughout, as she captures the intimacy and sexual frisson of a new relationship and produces music of an intensely personal nature as a reaction to the hours of grueling acceptance of the role she played out to award-winning effect.

Initial ideas were tentatively titled Domestika, as Björk sought to capture the homely and comforting existence of domestic life. This can be heard in the adoption of household sounds as the basis for some of the songs—the cracking of ice, the shuffling flick of playing cards. She had also tired of the big beats that dominated her previous work and opted instead for hushed, whispered snatches of vocals with electronic bleeps, whirs and pulses.

Furthermore, Björk had become acutely aware of the new technology associated with downloading music and used only instruments that would not be compromised in any way by the inevitable downloading that would unite listener and artist. So, she used harps, clavinets, strings and even used custom built music boxes—anything that would remain as it was recorded once the files were transferred for download.

Above all though, it was beautiful. All the ingredients that ensured the required homeliness resulted in an album that embraces and exhilarates at every turn.

And yet, I only listen to the album during four or five months of the year, and it seems ridiculous to be writing this anniversary piece during the summer (however typically British the summer may be), as I identify it so closely with the autumn and winter months. The album manages to be simultaneously cold and warm—the aural equivalent of plunging in the virgin snow and then recovering in front of a roaring log fire. It is a visceral and unique experience that is never lessened by repeated listens.

Vespertine is the very definition of an album with no skips—not just because every song is vital and filled with beauty, but also because it would just seem, well, rude to listen to any song in isolation or in the “wrong” order. It is (seemingly) built from a thousand different strands of sound and to tear the fabric of it by skipping or playing in a different order would be to denigrate the time and effort put into the artful construction of it.

Trying to distil the beauty into a tribute of this length is almost impossible, but “Hidden Place” that opens the album is emblematic of all the things that make it so special. The opening lyrics reveal that rush of new love: “Through the warmest cord of care / Your love was sent to me / I’m not sure what to do with it / Or where to put it / I’m so close to tears / And so close to / Simply calling you up / And simply suggesting / We go to that hidden place.”

As she sings those words, a ululating electronic bass throbs, percussion chirps, flickers and choral backing vocals swirl around to create a concoction of purest love. Love turns to physical intimacy on the charmingly explicit “Cocoon” before the closest thing we get to a big beat turns up on the opening to “It’s Not Up To You,” whose chorus is a dreamy delight with strings, harp and her uniquely surging vocals soaring skywards.

The same sense of upward trajectory is plotted on “Undo.” The final two-and-a-half minutes is a staggeringly wondrous piece of work, with magnificent choral voices and celestial strings ascending upwards for what feels like a weightless eternity. “Pagan Poetry” meanwhile revels in its pizzicato harp strings, as Björk’s voice runs wild and free like the wind, rising and falling in steep spirals of adoration while the backing vocals swoon dramatically.

The aforementioned music boxes turn up on the irrepressible elegant beauty of “Frosti” before my personal favorite (if I must choose one) “Aurora” takes center stage. The last remnants of the music boxes accompany another throbbing electronic bass line and plucked strings and the heavenly mélange of voices creates a magic carpet ride through the crisp arctic skies, bending every which way at will.

Elsewhere, there are wonders aplenty to imbibe. The lo-fi beat and lupine howl of Björk’s voice on “Heirloom,” the shiver-inducing strings at the conclusion of “Sun In My Mouth,” the eerie, foreboding feel of “An Echo A Stain” and the gradual climb to the restrained climax of “Harm Of Will.” The final act of the album is a jolly, even jaunty, celebration of unexpected love on “Unison,” as Björk reflects, “I thrive best hermit style / With a beard and a pipe / And a parrot on each side / But now I can’t do this without you / I never thought I would compromise.” As lyrics go, it is typically unique and somewhat unorthodox, but its power and wit are unmatched”.

Let’s finish off with Stereogum and their twentieth anniversary feature about Vespertine. Last year, Albumism asked its readers to decide on Björk’s best albums. Vespertine came second. In 2022, Rough Trade placed the album sixth. An artist who releases so many masterpieces, Vespertine stands up there with her very best work:

“In practice, you can still strap on some fancy headphones and lose yourself in Vespertine. In fact, Vespertine might be Björk's ultimate headphones record, if only because the whole thing is so soft and comforting. In outsourcing the remaining 20% of her beats, Björk called on the glitch wizards whose bugged-out beatscapes she admired: Matmos, Matthew Herbert, Opiate, Console. Vespertine sounds nothing like any of the music that any of those producers made on their own. Björk used them for texture, just as she used harps and clavichords and choirs. She even used her own voice that way. On Vespertine, Björk largely keeps her self to a murmur, never exploding and only bringing the passion where the songs truly demand it. The end result, an album of welcoming and reassuring pings and bloops and hums and twinkles, is closer to pure ASMR than to pop music.

Those blissful textures worked for Vespertine because it's an album about bliss-states -- and about one bliss-state in particular. Just as much as Let's Get It On, Vespertine is an album about fucking. Björk never hides that in allusion or innuendo. There's no symbolism in the imagery. Instead, she's talking about a boy entering her lightly, restoring her blisses: "He slides inside/ Half awake, half asleep/ We faint back into sleephood." The actual act of sex gets plenty of burn on Vespertine, and Björk never draws lines between physical and emotional connection. When Björk sings that she's close to calling this boy and simply suggesting that they go to a hidden place, she's talking about an imaginative zone of refuge, but she's also clear about what they're going to be doing in that hidden place.

All of Vespertine buzzes and ripples and plings beautifully, but it buzzes and ripples and plings most beautifully on "Pagan Poetry." Ostensibly, that's a song about how it's not easy to get close to Björk, about how she can be mysterious and difficult to interpret: "On the surface, simplicity/ But the darkest pit in me/ And it's pagan poetry." But she's not being a pagan poet when she stops the song and chants, simply and directly, that she loves him. That might be the most nakedly vulnerable musical moment in a career full of them.

Upon its release, Vespertine got awestruck reviews. Björk had entered the stage of her career where it was part of a music critic's job to properly explain how great her music was. Anecdotally, though, I remember a sort of muted confusion around Vespertine. The tracks on Homogenic had been weird, but they'd been weird in anthemic ways. Vespertine was inwardly, meditatively weird. It was Björk whispering about sex and flowers and glaciers over music boxes and soft jitter-bursts of programmed drums. You had to be in a particular zone to lock in with the album. You had to surrender to it.

Not everybody wanted to surrender to Vespertine. Björk's three previous albums all went gold or platinum, though it often took them years to sell that much. Vespertine never did, and neither did any of the Björk albums that followed. Even if Björk made Vespertine with Napster in mind, Napster wasn't the reason that Vespertine didn't become a dorm-room staple.Instead, Vespertine was a contradiction: an album of challenging serenity, an avant-garde meditation. That's exactly why Vespertine has kept its peculiar power. On Vespertine, Björk never bothered to sound futuristic. Instead, she built a beautiful bubble, a crystalline sanctuary, and that sanctuary remains pristine”.

Vespertine turns twenty-five on 27th August. I am curious if Björk will write anything about the album on its anniversary. How she sees it looking back. It is one of my favourite Björk albums. Every song on Vespertine is staggering and leaves an impression. It still sounds flawless…

ALL these years later.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Susanna Hoffs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times

 

Susanna Hoffs

__________

THERE are a couple of reasons…

to include Susanna Hoffs in this The Great American Songbook. One reason is that her band, The Bangles, formed forty-five years ago. Formed by Hoffs and sisters Vicki Peterson and Debbi Peterson, The Bangles began as part of the Paisley Underground scene, a Los Angeles music movement heavily influenced by 1960s Rock and Psychedelic music. On 1st September, it will be forty years since one of their best-loved singles, Walk Like An Egyptian, was released. The band’s last album together was 2011’s Sweetheart of the Sun. I do hope that they perform of perform together. However, Susanna Hoffs has released some brilliant albums. I want to bring in this new interview from Los Angeles Times. Hoffs has announced a new album, The List, which arrives on 18th September. You can ore-order it here. Casablanca is a single from the album and is absolutely gorgeous. I will end this feature with a twenty-song solo mix (including original songs alongside some covers) from one of the greatest ever songwriters. Someone I have admired since I was a child. I have edited some of the text out, as we jump between her upcoming solo album and words about The Bangles:

“Susanna Hoffs calls it “the list”: a faded piece of paper ripped from a Filofax day planner on which are scrawled the names of every guy she’s ever gone out with — some famous, some not, some “kind of douchey,” as she puts it with a what-can-you-do shrug.

“It was like a dating profile but pre-internet,” Hoffs says of the tally, which she composed sometime in the late 1980s as she was racking up hits — among them the chart-topping “Walk Like an Egyptian” and “Eternal Flame” — as the frontwoman of the Bangles. “I’m a nice Jewish girl,” she adds. “I was just keeping track, doing my homework.”

Today at the bottom of the list in all caps sits the name of Jay Roach, the movie director whom Hoffs met on a blind date in 1991. He’s the subject of a new song called “None of Them Were You,” in which the singer runs down some of Roach’s predecessors — “a very dapper Brit,” “a suave and handsome actor” — before musing on her deep connection with the man to whom she’s now been married for 33 years.

“I ended up with such a good guy,” she says. “It almost brings a tear to the eye.”

“None of Them Were You” isn’t the only tune with that potential on an album Hoffs is preparing to release next month. Due Sept. 18 from her Baroque Folk label, “The List” — Hoffs’ first set of original material in more than a decade — collects a dozen touching and witty songs based on tales from her life as an artist, wife, businessperson and mother. At 67, her winsome singing voice is remarkably unchanged from the era of big hair and dangly earrings. Yet the music reflects an emotional wisdom that had to be earned through experience, as in the folky “Time,” which ponders her and Roach’s relationships with their two adult sons.

“I see you dancing in the kitchen / I feel your tiny hand in mine,” she sings, “What if you fly back home this summer? / We could spend a little while.” (Beware, parents — this one will wreck you.)

A voluble presence with an easy laugh, Hoffs points out that she’s hardly been “hiding in a cave” since 2012’s “Someday.” In 2024, she put out a long-shelved solo record of songs she’d cut back in 1999; before that, she made a series of expertly curated covers albums, including three she recorded with the power-pop maestro Matthew Sweet. But publishing her first novel in 2023 — “This Bird Has Flown,” a charming bestseller about a one-hit wonder looking for a comeback — rejuvenated Hoffs’ devotion to songwriting.

“I never thought the book would sell, and I never thought it would get great reviews,” she says on a recent afternoon at her home in Brentwood. “That was a big turn career-wise.”

For “The List,” Hoffs teamed with CJ Camerieri, a musician and producer known for his work with Paul Simon and Bon Iver, among others; Camerieri in turn recruited an array of songwriters to collaborate with the two of them, including a couple of Grammy winners in Dan Wilson and Jesse Harris.

“Sue has built up decades and decades of goodwill in this town,” Camerieri says, seated next to Hoffs on a sofa, “so you call up somebody like Dan and you say, ‘Hey, you want to write a song with Susanna Hoffs?’ and he goes, ‘Great, yeah, I’m in.’”

The process was simple, the producer explains: “We’d start in Sue’s kitchen with coffee at 10 in the morning —”

“I’m really good at coffee,” Hoffs interjects. “I mean, I use Nespresso. But I’m good at being a hostess to all the lads.”

“So I’d give everybody a yellow legal pad and Sue would start telling stories,” Camerieri continues. “We’re all scribbling notes, and after about an hour, we’d go, ‘I think we got enough here,’ and we’d go write songs about what she’d told us.”

They recorded at Hoffs’ place — “We’d move this couch and the drums would go right here,” she says — beneath a vaulted ceiling that provided just the right ambience. First-call players like Greg Leisz and Wendy Melvoin stopped by to take part in the sessions; for harmony vocals in a country-ish ditty called “Bad Case of Loneliness,” they got Rufus Wainwright, with whom Hoffs had done a version of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” for Roach’s 2025 comedy “The Roses.”

The dreamy-rootsy arrangements are never less than handsome — and never prettier than in “Fool,” which Hoffs says was inspired by her love of the records Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach made together. Yet “The List” was built to showcase Hoffs’ rich storytelling.

The LP opens with “Casablanca,” in which she recounts a run-in with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir in New Orleans in the late ’80s. The Bangles were on tour opening for George Michael; the Dead had a gig at the University of New Orleans’ Lakefront Arena. After Hoffs and Weir ended up at a crawfish boil put on by the Neville Brothers, the two took a walk along Lake Pontchartrain — “He was very cute,” Hoffs says — then later strolled again through the French Quarter.

“At one point, I looked back and there was a sea of Deadheads who realized it was Bob Weir,” she says. “But I was with him. I got to be his pal, which I just couldn’t believe was happening. It was delicious.” (Between the two walks, the Bangles famously jumped onstage with the Dead to perform “Iko Iko.”)

After eight Top 40 singles and a triple-platinum LP, the Bangles split in 1989 amid differing ideas about the band’s creative direction and ambitions. The members pursued solo and other projects but reunited to record a song for 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” which Roach directed; two more Bangles albums followed in 2003 and 2011, the second minus Steele, whom Hoffs says she’s not in touch with at the moment.

Compared to the Go-Go’s, whose parallel career was detailed in a 2020 documentary and who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a year later, the Bangles haven’t quite cemented their legacy, though an authorized biography came out last year and a doc is currently in development.

Yet Hoffs doesn’t seem especially troubled by the possibility that the Bangles might be underappreciated, perhaps because she’s got plenty of her own stuff going on. Before “The List” comes out, she’ll play her old hits in a Sept. 5 gig at Largo at the Coronet and in a handful of dates opening for Billy Idol; after the new album drops, she’ll head east for a residency at New York’s Café Carlyle.

She and Camerieri are also at work on a musical adaptation of “This Bird Has Flown” for the stage or the screen. And just the other day she found a folder on her computer full of songs she wrote years ago with her friend Marvin Etzioni of Lone Justice.

“I don’t like using the word ‘bucket list,’ but all these things are labors of love,” Hoffs says.

What’s the trouble with “bucket list”?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, smiling. “It just seems, like, death-y”.

I am excited to hear The List. One of my favourite memories from childhood was seeing the video for The Bangles’ Eternal Flame. That single came out in 1989. It reached number one in multiple countries, including here in the U.K. As a solo artist, Susanna Hoffs has released some incredible work. Her eponymous album turns thirty on 24th September. Arguably her best album, this is a music icon who I hope releases music for years to come. That is why I wanted to show love…

FOR a true music queen.