FEATURE:
Saluting the Queens
PHOTO CREDIT: Bobbi Rich for The Forty-Five
The Forty-Five
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IN the final two Saluting the Queens features…
PHOTO CREDIT: Louise Mason for The Forty-Five
of 2023, I am going to dedicate some time to a great broadcaster, and a fantastic photographer who is doing some really incredible work. I am also going to spotlight journalist Hannah Ewens next year (she is offline until then it seems). It is an unusual situation when I am featuring someone/something who is not an artist or broadcaster. The reason is there are very few words from them in terms of interviews. In fact, rather than highlight a single person, I want to shout out a team. Well, a publication/website in fact! Comprised of some terrific female journalists who are highlighting amazing women in music, this Saluting the Queens is all about The Forty-Five. A terrific U.K.-based website. Rather than pull in interviews from those who write for The Forty-Five, I will instead drop in some of their recent features and interviews. I still feel we are in a situation where women in music journalism are not afforded the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Maybe not as respected. Things have changed from years previously, though there is still a way to go. The Forty-Five not only celebrates incredible female artists. There are some wonderful journalists working passionately and having their voices heard and seen. Before I come to some examples of their amazing work, Music Week spoke with The Forty-Five’s founder, Charlotte Gunn, in 2020.
“Charlotte Gunn has told Music Week that she hopes to change the landscape of music journalism with the launch of new online platform The Forty-Five.
In an exclusive interview, the former NME editor has opened up about the thinking behind her new publication, which will launch its first monthly digital cover story on June 17 and has an all-female base of contributors.
“The mission of The Forty-Five is to give female creatives a platform, tell untold music stories and to help connect fans with their new favourite artist,” said Gunn of the website, which will house interviews, reviews, opinion and playlists.
The site was developed by Gunn’s former NME colleague Jo Weakley, while journalists including Leonie Cooper, Rhian Daly and Jacqui Swift are among its contributing writers. Jenn Five – who recently photographed The 1975 for Music Week’s cover – is among the photographers.
“Long-term, I want it to be a trusted destination for music fans around the world, providing hyper-local coverage about the scenes they’re immersed in,” said Gunn. “But for now, I’m just excited for people to see what I've been working on.
The Forty-Five will focus on new music and in-depth editorial rather than music news, while Gunn has assembled a team of tastemakers to curate weekly playlists, and is running a podcast series called Trash In The Attic.
Here, Gunn opens up about her new project, reflects on her time at NME and looks ahead to the future…
“The percentage of women working in music journalism is still embarrassingly low and it stands to reason that if music has been critiqued from a predominantly male perspective for decades, it's played a part in creating the male-dominated artist landscape we see today”
What are the driving factors behind starting The Forty-Five?
“I’ve pulled together a network of talented female journalists and photographers who make up The Forty-Five. Its aim is to tell music stories, through a different lens. The percentage of women working in music journalism is still embarrassingly low and it stands to reason that if music has been critiqued from a predominantly male perspective for decades, it's played a part in creating the male-dominated artist landscape we see today. Things are changing for the better, but within my corner of music, it's still a boys’ club, with sexism, bullying and an under-appreciation of female voices being the norm. Battling that is exhausting – it exhausted me – and gets in the way of the creative output. I wanted to make a platform where young female writers can be heard, have opinions and speak freely without all that bullshit. I am proud of the success I’ve had despite these challenges. I want to see a new generation of female writers achieve even more without age-old sexism holding them back.”
What kind of music media landscape are you entering into?
“It's incredibly challenged with publications and jobs under threat every day. A lot of publications that were once solely music-focused have diversified into new areas to try and attract more readers. There are a lot of blogs and zines run by brilliantly talented individuals, but they are lacking the industry experience to take them to the next level. I think we've found a niche. We're an entirely independent youth publication, with a slick aesthetic and a focus on trying to rebalance the industry. We've also identified the best journalists in music media to write for us and the best tastemakers to curate our playlists. Although there's an important message behind what we're trying to do, music is supposed to be fun, so we don't take ourselves too seriously.”
Several music publications are under threat at the moment, can you bring some good news?
“I hope so. It's hard to see peers struggling and I really hope everyone gets through this. Music media needs a diversity of voices and opinions otherwise it's pointless. I can't pretend to have all the answers. Quality journalism needs funding and we are no different, paid-for content is likely something we'll be moving towards long-term. For now, we are interested in working with brands aligned with our vision.”
How do you want The Forty-Five to impact the music business?
“We’re open to working on new ideas and formats to tell artists' stories. First and foremost, we are fans too, and we want to celebrate musicians we like and showcase acts who are getting overlooked by traditional media. If you can offer us access, we can create unique and beautiful content with your artists that isn’t swamped by ads and clickbait links. I am not pretending this is the only outlet for women to write about music, but aside from the editorial output, I want to create a supportive environment for female creatives to learn from each other. I’m excited to see how the conversation and focus start to shift.”
What are your main goals going into the launch?
“It’s simple, really: to connect with music fans and create content that they enjoy. For the labels and artists, I hope The Forty-Five becomes an outlet they want to be a part of and support. And for my contributors, to provide some faith there are still some people who value your work.
Does music journalism need to change?
“Yes. It needs to put music discovery and fandom at the forefront of everything it does and be more adaptable. There’s also an obsession with print being the holy grail. I get it – I like seeing my words on a page as much as the next person and I understand that reading an article on your phone will never be the same as reading a magazine. I really do get it. But we do need to move past it because young music fans have. There is still a place for print media – and it's something I'm considering – but as so many titles are proving, great journalism is great journalism, whether printed or on screen. Being adaptable is key and, as boring as it sounds, so is living and dying by the data. What are people reading? What are they not reading and what can you do better next time? My challenge is to make the emerging artist I know is something special interesting to people skimming headlines on a page. It’s something that often takes a few tries but when I’m passionate about something, I keep trying”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Koto Bolofo
It is hard to include all of the best work produced by The Forty-Five. I am going to select a few examples from different journalists. Before that, go and follow them on Instagram and Twitter. Apologies for the length of this feature. It is just that The Forty-Five do such great work, I wanted to represent that with a selection of some of their incredible recent work. Every writer they have on staff is amazing – so apologies for any I have missed out. I am going to start off with an interview Lisa Wright and her amazing interview with Corinne Bailey Rae. Her latest album, Black Rainbows, is one of the most powerful and best of the year. A sound very different to what many would associate with Bailey Rae, it is extraordinary how there seems to be this element of freedom in her music. Not concerned anymore with writing radio-friendly hits and chart positions. An artist liberated:
“Across the game-changing record, Bailey Rae goes from futuristic robo-pop on ‘Earthlings’ to vitriolic rage on ‘Erasure’; the eight-and-a-half minute ‘Put It Down’, meanwhile, moves through transcendental neo-soul to a throbbing dance pulse. Throughout, the 44-year-old singer sounds enlivened and completely reborn. On aggregate site Album of the Year, it is the second highest rated from the whole of 2023 so far, with an average review score of 9.1 out of 10.
Undoubtedly, ‘Black Rainbows’ will live as the record that, 17 years after her debut, changed the Leeds singer’s career trajectory entirely. Which makes the fact that she initially deemed the album a commercially un-viable side project all the more telling.
“Having been on labels for a really long time, I’d definitely started to police my own ideas as I created,” Bailey Rae explains, Zooming in from a hotel room in Nashville, midway through tour. “I’d sit there and come up with something and I’d say, ‘Well there’s no point even finishing that because it’s not gonna be three minutes long, it doesn’t have a catchy chorus, it’s not gonna get played on the radio…’ I’d started to think like an A&R person.
“I think that [mainstream success] was definitely the expectation after the first record did so well – which was not what I imagined would happen because I saw it as an indie-soul record. And I was thrilled, and I got to fly in a private jet to Oprah and play at the GRAMMYs, and it opened the door. But it’s like that Coen Brothers film [The Ballad of Buster Scruggs] that’s about a musician in the ‘60s,” she continues. “He plays this beautiful ballad to a man for criticism, and it’s a magical moment, and then at the end the man just says: ‘I don’t hear money here’. And I got that response a few times where I’d have the beating heart of a song and they’d go, ‘Yeah it’s good but it’s not a single…’”
PHOTO CREDIT: Koto Bolofo
Bailey Rae recalls the process for 2016 third album ‘The Heart Speaks In Whispers’ being one where she “almost made several records and had a load of it rejected – either by the structure or by myself – before I’d even finished it”. An unsustainable path, when it came to starting her next work, she decided to think of it as something away from the constraints of what a Corinne Bailey Rae record ‘should’ be. “I think the side project [notion] was a good place to escape to because I thought, let me completely disregard all of those aims that I’ve been trying and failing to achieve and just MAKE,” she nods.
The catalyst for what would be made came when Bailey Rae discovered the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. A broad and deep encyclopaedia of Black history, the building and its contents were a revelation like no other. Over the past seven years, she would visit as often as possible and describes feeling like “all roads lead back [there]”; “I just felt like it was speaking to me,” she says.
The bank comprises more than 26,000 Black literature books on every aspect of history and society dating back more than two hundred years, as well as vast collections of items both celebratory and problematic. There’s an entire vinyl collection from house music godfather Frankie Knuckles, but then 16,000 “derogatory objects, anti-Black propaganda stuff” that forms the Ed Williams collection – an attempt to remove the items from public circulation whilst also highlighting the generational depth of the issue.
“I’d read all the Black books in my school library and a good amount of them in my University, and I had wider questions, but when I spoke to other people they’d say it’s kind of oral tradition so it wasn’t written down,” Bailey Rae remembers. “Or they’d say those stories weren’t documented, or people weren’t literate or the documents had been lost. So I had this thought that so many of the things I’m interested in were just lost to history, and then to walk into this bank and see the volume of literature on these subjects… that just blew my mind.”
A keen researcher, the discovery not only whet the musician’s appetite on an intellectual level, it also finally started to redress the balance of Black representation (or the lack thereof) that she had encountered her whole life. “I remember school history books where there’d be two or three photographs [of Black people] in the book, and one might be Martin Luther King but the other one – I distinctly remember it – was the charred body of a victim of racial violence; someone who’d been lynched and set fire to,” she recalls. “I was 13 or 14 and this was in the school textbook. And I understand why it was in the book, but there was no sensitivity to the fact that there were Black children in the class, and also there was no balance.
“I describe [what was presented then] like a circus mirror,” she continues. “It’s white-imagined Blackness. But at the same time, as a Black person, there was so little visibly reflected back in the culture that you would – one would, I would – stare in that circus mirror to try and see my reflection”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Gunn
I will stick with interviews and actually come to one from The Forty-Five’s founder, Charlotte Gunn. She chatted with the amazing Blondshell (Sabrina Teitelbaum) in October. Blondshell’s eponymous album was released earlier in the year. It is among the best of this year. A phenomenal work from an artist that everyone should know about! I do like the conversations and questions you get from an interview by The Forty-Five. Bringing something from artists that others have not:
“You finished up your first headline tour a little while ago. I know that you wrote much of the album alone. What was it like having these quite personal songs, sung back to you?
Surprising? I knew people were gonna go to the shows, because I was privy to ticket sales but then it’s a different thing when people actually show up. It’s one thing getting to talk to people on social media, which is still nice. But then it’s another thing to be in the room of people who have connected to the music. It’s really special.
The album touches on a lot of heavy themes. Do you manage to disassociate from the traumatic memories associated with them when you’re performing the songs live every night?
I don’t feel like I’m always singing about the thing that I wrote it about, right? So if I’m singing any of the songs on this album, more often, I’m singing about the stuff that happened that day, or whatever’s on my mind. I’m not thinking about that breakup, or that person or whatever it is – I think it would be difficult for me to try to conjure that up. Someone told me a long time ago that it’s easier to just put whatever you’re actually genuinely feeling now into the performance rather than trying to find an old emotion.
You’re about to release a deluxe version of the album including three new tracks – ‘Street Rat’, ‘It Wasn’t Love’, ‘Cartoon Earthquake’ – and two demos of ‘Kiss City’ and ‘Tarmac’. Where do these songs fit in the Blondshell story?
I wrote ‘Street Rat’ the day after we finished recording the album so I wanted to put it out because it’s very much part of the same world. There’s a version of ‘Tarmac’ on the deluxe version that’s coming out on the Deluxe that’s really gentle. That’s the one I’m most excited about because it shows a different side to the song.
‘It Wasn’t Love’ was later. I think the album feels like: ‘Isn’t this what love is? It’s painful and it’s really hard and yeah, it can be horrific’. But that song is about looking back and saying, ‘I thought that that was love but that’s not what that is.’ It can be a little painful, but it doesn’t have to be this twisted thing. That’s its own kind of heartbreak, in a sense, looking back at a relationship and realising you weren’t in love.
I loved your cover of ‘Charm You’ by Samia. It seems that a common theme in both your and Samia’s music is saying the ugly thoughts out loud – sharing things that others might be ashamed to say. I wondered if that was something you’d bonded over?
I don’t remember talking about that but something I do remember talking about with her recently is, when you’re someone who’s written about heartbreak so much, how do you continue to write songs when you’re in a stable relationship? She and I are both in relationships, but then I realised, well, [Wilco frontman] Jeff Tweedy has been married for so long. And they put out an album every year, so…
I think women get a harder time with that. People want you to fit into a Sad Girl box.
They don’t want you to be on a beach, loving life. But they also don’t want you to be devoid of any joy. It’s a hard balance. There’s not a lot of joy in the songs on my album because I was having a hard time when I made it. I could understand if someone felt like maybe there should be some more uplifting songs. That’s why I was so excited to cover ‘Charm You’. You it felt like such a fun opportunity. It felt like a joyful song. But the biggest thing for me, when I was writing this album was just that I had to take all these things seriously. I was allowed to feel really intensely”.
Prior to getting to some features, there is another interview worth spotlighting. The brilliant Olivia-Anne Cleary was in conversation with Sophie Ellis-Bextor in June. Chatting about her remarkable new album, Hana, and what comes next, it is a brilliant interview that you need to check out in full. I have included sections (of the interview) where Ellis-Bextor discusses family and music. The importance of that connection. It is interesting reading about her earlier years in music and some of those experiences:
“For now, however, Ellis-Bextor’s attention is firmly on the release of her seventh studio album entitled ‘Hana’, the Japanese word for “Blossom.” It’s her third and final offering with collaborator Ed Harcourt. The record holds a great deal of sentiment and purpose, documenting a journey of adventure, loss, and renewal. “For want of a better word, it’s quite a ‘sweet’ album. It’s melodic. It’s got quite a lot of synths, it’s quite foggy in places, a bit psychedelic. It’s a dream world I wanted to go into,” she explains. “Thematically, there’s a lot about sunshine… a bit of being gentle to yourself as you go into a new chapter. Then there’s a song about aliens, just for the hell of it [laughs].” Tracks such as ‘Lost In The Sunshine’ and ‘He’s A Dreamer’ certainly exude the warmth and dream-like qualities Ellis-Bextor envisioned during the creative process.
In early 2020, during the beginning stages of writing the album, Ellis-Bextor took a trip to Japan, which proved to be a transformative experience. “My eldest, Sonny, was supposed to go with my mum [TV presenter Janet Ellis] and my stepdad [John Leach], but my stepdad was being treated at the time for lung cancer, and when it came to it, he couldn’t travel. I was drafted in last minute,” she admits. “It was three generations, and there was an undercurrent of knowing it was a really special trip, with sadness around the edges, because of what was happening with my stepdad.” Shortly after the family returned to England, the world went into lockdown, and the trip became the epicentre of the album’s creation. “Japan was this rich, inspirational landscape to go to in our heads, which took on more significance when we suddenly couldn’t go anywhere.”
In July of that year, Ellis-Bextor lost her beloved stepdad, and the grief, along with a desire to celebrate John’s life, added a whole new layer of retrospection to the album. One album track entitled ‘Until The Wheels Fall Off’ includes lyrics taken from a letter John left behind. “He said to my mum that he had all his best adventures with her and how they had travelled, laughed, and loved until the wheels fell off. I just thought that was really gorgeous,” she recalls. “The song is a tribute to their marriage, because they were very happy together.”
When it comes to her own marriage, Ellis-Bextor works closely with her husband of 18 years. “It’s always Richard,” she tells me, when I ask who gets the first listen of her new tracks, “When I was younger, I’d play all my demos to my girlfriends. Now, I’ll bring the music home and play it to Richard and the kids. He’ll play stuff to me from his band, as well. We’re both really curious about what the other thinks.
Music is very much a family affair for Ellis-Bextor, who has her brother Jack as her drummer. The community aspect of having a band in the studio and on stage is a big draw for the singer. She credits this to her early days singing lead vocals in her band Theaudience. Despite enjoying success with their first record in 1998, they were dropped before a second album materialised. For Ellis-Bextor, the experience served as a reminder to enjoy her successes when they come. And she did just that when she featured on Spinner’s hit track ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’ in 2000. “That song lifted me out of feeling blue and gave me back a career. I was learning about this whole new world of pop music and I realised that I can do a bit of everything. I can have my indie roots and lean into dance. I’ll forever be grateful for that.”
Reflecting on those early years, Ellis-Bextor notes that the music industry wasn’t always the friendliest of spaces for female artists. “When I was writing my [2021] autobiography, I was looking back at old diaries and press cuttings, and I was like, ‘Oh, it wasn’t in my head. It actually was quite a toxic environment in lots of ways.’ After I spoke about it, I found that a lot of my peers had felt exactly the same way,” she reveals. The musician feels that people are now able to express themselves in a way artists previously were not. “I didn’t really have the language to articulate what wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t binary — being treated well or badly — it was those things in the middle,” Ellis-Bextor tells me. “We’ve got much better language now about what makes us feel good and what doesn’t. We’re encouraged to articulate those boundaries in lots of different ways.”
For Ellis-Bextor, social media has played a big part in helping her reclaim her voice. “It’s double-edged, but I like the fact that I can have a clear stream of communication between me and the world,” she explains. “When I started out, everything had to go through all the press teams. You might hope to get something [a message] out there in an interview, but it might be twisted or you could be misquoted”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Victoria Monét/PHOTO CREDIT: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Throwing it forward now to last month. The fabulous Jenessa Williams, like most of her colleagues who writes for The Forty-Five, also writes for other publications (including NME and DIY). She has written some great features this year (including this brilliant piece). I loved her piece about Victoria Monét scooping a load of GRAMMY nominations. How this is her moment in the spotlight. And how these nominations have come at the best time. Monét’s much-anticipated extraordinary debut album, Jaguar II, came out in August to huge critical acclaim. Take a look at this feature, as there are some brilliant perspectives and words that celebrates one of modern music’s queens:
“A day that gets everyone scrolling through aeons of tiny font and gnashing their teeth at the absence of their favourite, The 2024 Grammy nominations are out, in all their pomp, glory and categorical complexity. This year’s reveals were mostly business as usual, with both SZA and boygenius reigning high at the top of the leaderboard, as well as the ritualistic snubs of K-pop and regional pop that have become sadly familiar in recent years.
There was one triumph in particular though which felt like a real treat: R&B singer-songwriter Victoria Monét scoring seven nominations (tied for second-most overall), including Best New Artist, Record of the Year for ‘On My Mama’, Best R&B Performance for ‘How Does It Make You Feel’ and Best R&B Album, for ‘Jaguar II’.
Being close to Monét also appears to pay dividends: longtime collaborator and producer Dernst Emile II (known as D’Mile) has been nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year for the second year in a row, whilst Monét’s two-year-old daughter, the impossibly cute Hazel, has become the youngest ever Grammy nominee for her appearance on the song ‘Hollywood’, featuring both her mama and R&B legends Earth, Wind & Fire. Blue Ivy, it’s time to set up that protegé training scheme…
In many ways, this level of recognition for Victoria feels like true vindication, a sign that the mainstream can no longer ignore what those in the know have argued for years — a woman with the skills and catalogue to be remembered as one of the most influential players in our current R&B ecosystem. Though she has long has ambitions of being a front-and-centre star, her early success as a songwriter for other artists has seen her pen some of the most memorable recent hits of the genre — ‘7 Rings’ and ‘Thank U Next’ by Ariana Grande, ‘Do It’ by Chloe x Halle, and ‘Ice Cream’ by BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez.
When she finally did make a real solo go of it in 2020, The Forty-Five were right there with her, learning about how her experiences of being in girl bands and working with others all led to the quality and confidence of her debut E.P, ‘Jaguar’.
“Everything happens in the right time – a lot of the things I do in my artist career, I’ve learned from seeing other artists operate,” Monét said in an interview with us. “It’s been a long but necessary journey.… I didn’t feel comfortable to say what I really wanted to say for a long time…but I’m also trying to encourage other people to kind of skip over some of the hesitations that I originally had.”
When it comes to musical self-empowerment, Victoria Monét’s work shows none of that early uncertainty. Her best songs swing with a loose, carefree energy, the sonic equivalent of a friendly pick-me-up right. In a genre that often relies on simple metaphors to explore common tropes of love, loss, confidence or infidelity, her pen feels refreshingly playful, capturing a true sense of how millennials (particularly millennials borne of black culture) speak with each another. Whether it’s ‘On My Mama’s insistence that “I’m so deep in my bag/Like a grandma wit’ a peppermint”, or ‘West Coast’s observation that it “feel like a Thursday, how I’m throwing it back”, she reminds us that the best musical humble-brags are often silly as well as sexy, leaving room for personality to shine through”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Constantine Spence
A couple more reviews/features to include before I wrap things up. Holly Humberstone is one of my favourite artists. An amazing British talent whose debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, came out in October. Turning twenty-four on Sunday (17th December), it has been a big year for her. One where this anticipated album has come to light. Announcing her as one of our very best young artists. Rhian Daly shared her thoughts in a thoughtful and incredible review of an album that sits alongside the very best of 2023:
“Some things are worth the wait. When Holly Humberstone was named the recipient of the BRITs Rising Star award back in December 2021 – and then appeared on every ones-to-watch list going a month later – it seemed like things could be about to snowball for her. They have, but she’s also shown restraint and stayed true to who she is as an artist, waiting for her debut album to be just right rather than rush it out with undercooked songs that don’t represent her.
‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ arrives nearly two years after that victory and, largely, it is just right. It’s a cohesive statement of the Grantham-born singer-songwriter’s artistry – vivid, dark, almost made for sharing confessions under the safety of night – and full of brilliant, electronic-tinged pop songs.
Of course, having received such a groundswell of attention early on meant that Humberstone had to write these songs on the road and between seemingly never-ending tours. It’s a lifestyle that has fed into her creations, these songs allowing her space to process the extreme highs and lows of a life on tour and all the emptiness and guilt that comes with that. On ‘Ghost Me’, she begs her friends not to forget her, recalling “singing ‘Angels’ at karaoke on the most chaotic night” before throwing down her challenge: “And if you try to ghost me and quit being in my life / Don’t you dare.”
The soft acoustic strums of ‘Room Service’ offer a deal to those friends – when this whirlwind pauses, Humberstone will bring flowers and a calendar packed full of plans. ‘Elvis Impersonators’, minimal in layers and melancholy in tone, changes its target to one of the artist’s sisters, now living in Japan. “I can’t be without you,” she sighs longingly, depicting her sibling with “cherry blossom in your hair” in the early hours in Tokyo.
The 23-year-old is at her best when it feels like she’s fighting for something. On ‘Lauren’, that’s an old friendship to be revived, even if maybe that person shouldn’t have trusted “a girl who sleeps on a mattress on the floor / And has a thousand unread messages”. The sombre ‘Antichrist’ finds her fighting with herself, regretful over the way she treated an ex and wondering: “Am I the antichrist? / How do I sleep at night?”
Best of all, though, are ‘Flatlining’ and ‘Kissing In Swimming Pools’. Entirely opposite from each other, the former battles the spectre of an old lover over electronics collaged to mimic a heart monitor. The latter, meanwhile, fights for a more positive thing – to be able to spend as much time as possible with a new love. In it, Humberstone details those first rushes of romance in stunning, relatable, small detail: “I’ll steal a glance as you’re singing your heart out to something embarrassing / I wanna know if you think about me that way.”
The star’s lyricism is the crowning glory of ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’, her descriptions often supremely evocative. On ‘Into Your Room’, she projects herself standing outside someone’s window in the rain “with a freshly ripped human heart from my ribcage and a boombox”. One song later, on the brighter-sounding ‘Cocoon’, she likens her inability to get out of bed and tend to chores to becoming “a taxidermy version of myself”. At times, though, she does become repetitive – there are several references across the record to needing to be next to someone or wanting to fix them.
As debut albums go, Humberstone’s is a triumph – one that perfectly captures her sound and distils her experience of musician life in a way that doesn’t make you want to pull out a tiny violin. ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ is majestic and should serve as the first step in a very illustrious career”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant
There is one particular feature I want to finish off with. Written by the amazing Celia Almeida, it concerns, perhaps, the artist of the year: the sensational Taylor Swift. Almeida, like many, was sceptical when Swift announced in 2019 she would be re-recording her first six studio albums. These new ‘Versions’ releases are Taylor Swift making the albums she always wanted to. Free from the label, rights and any sort of control issues. An artist now in a position to have full say in what her albums sound like and how they are released. Ceilia Almeida shared her take in July. Someone who has not fully come around to the newly-reissued/recorded early albums from the legendary Taylor Swift:
“THE VAULT TRACKS
Calling these albums re-recordings doesn’t tell the whole story. Though most of the songs on the records have been familiar to fans for the better part of two decades, Swift’s decision to include unreleased tracks on Taylor’s Version albums was a mastermind move. Releasing new songs has elicited interest outside of Swift’s hardcore fanbase, and it’s added some worthy entries to the list of her best songs.
Swifties know she has a habit of relegating some of her best songs to deluxe versions of her albums (see evermore’s ‘Right Where You Left Me’ and 1989’s ‘New Romantics’). The Vault tracks showcase some of the finest work she left on the cutting room floor during previous eras. On one standout, ‘Nothing New,’ off of ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’, Swift recruits Phoebe Bridgers to elucidate her fears of fading relevance in an industry that prioritizes youth, particularly when it comes to women. “And someone else lights up the room,” Swift sings, lamenting, “People love an ingénue.”
Other fan favourites from the Vault include ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ track ‘Mr. Perfectly Fine’ and ‘I Can See You’ a paean to repressed adolescent desire and immediate standout on ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’.
FULL-FLEDGED ALBUM CYCLES FOR YOUNGER SWIFTIES (AND LATECOMERS)
Some of Swift’s younger fans weren’t yet born when she made her debut back in 2006. In fact, the youngest Gen Zers were born four albums into Swift’s career, during the ‘Red’ era. These fans have benefitted from her full-fledged re-recorded album rollouts, which include new album art, previously unreleased radio singles, and Vault track music videos—precisely the kinds of experiences that make the most impactful albums of our youth so indelible.
‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ was particularly fruitful in this regard: The twangy, Aaron Dessner-produced country kiss-off ‘I Bet You Think About Me’ was released as a single, with a music video directed by Blake Lively. But the highlight of the release was the short film for the 10-minute version of ‘All Too Well’, starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien as Her and Him, a couple doomed by an age gap and differing stages of maturity; and Swift as the older version of Her, an author who uses the experience as inspiration for her writing.
MATURING VOCALS
‘Mean’, the sixth track on ‘Speak Now’, was famously written in response to a critic (believed to be Bob Lefsetz) who disparaged Swift’s undeveloped singing voice. “At that time, it levelled me,” Swift writes of the critiques in the vinyl liner notes for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), adding she “underwent extensive vocal training” ahead of recording the original version of the album. For those for whom Swift’s teenage vocals were an impediment to digging deeper into her early songcraft, the ‘Taylor’s Version’ recordings are a welcome redux.
While there are charms to the impassioned, eager vocals of her early catalogue (and some idiosyncrasies that simply can’t be replicated, such as Swift’s bated breath on Speak Now’s ‘Last Kiss’), Fearless (Taylor’s Version) songs like ‘Change’ and sleeper bonus track ‘Superstar’ greatly benefit from Swift’s smoother, deepened vocals. The same can be said of Red (Taylor’s Version) highlights ‘State of Grace’ and ‘Treacherous’. With imperfect, immature vocals no longer an obstacle, Swift sceptics will appreciate lyrical gems like, “Nothing safe is worth the drive.”
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TAYLOR (ADOLESCENT VERSION) AND TAYLOR (ADULT VERSION)
Speaking about her All Too Well short film at a Tribeca Film Festival screening last year, Swift expounded on one of the major themes in her songwriting. “I really do write about girlhood a lot,” she explained at the time.
Indeed, one of the most thrilling aspects of Swift’s re-recordings has been listening to the interplay between the older, wiser Swift and her adolescent self, with ‘Fifteen’ being the clearest example of this dynamic. Swift was just 18 when she first released the cautionary tale about her friend Abigail, who “gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind.” It’s always been a heart-rending song, but her words carry even more weight on the re-recording when Swift, now in her 30s and at the apex of critical acclaim and popularity, sings, “I didn’t know who I was supposed to be at fifteen.”
‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ offers two poignant examples of Swift in conversation with her younger self, on ‘Dear John’ and ‘Innocent.’ Swift was 32 when she re-recorded the album—the same age Mayer was when he dated a 19-year-old Swift, and the same age Kanye West was when he famously interrupted her at the MTV Video Music Awards, prompting her to respond with ‘Innocent’.
Vault track ‘Castles Crumbling,’ about a public fall from grace, paints a more complete picture of the story of the album. Listening to it in conjunction with ‘Innocent’, it becomes clear that when Swift sings, “Wasn’t it beautiful when you believed in everything/And everybody believed in you?” she’s not just singing to her former nemeses—she could just as easily be singing to herself”.
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