FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Classic Summer Blend

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels

A Classic Summer Blend

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THIS is a mixtape…

PHOTO CREDIT: KoolShooters/Pexels

that contains some classic summer songs. Or ones that summon visions of the season. In the Northern Hemisphere, the start of summer is Sunday, 21st June. Meteorological summer, used for climate tracking, begins on 1st June. Although the weather has not always been great this spring, there is hope that summer will be pleasant enough. A bit warm but not constantly hot. To summon some summer vibes, I have compiled a mixtape of amazing songs that will put you in the mood. A summer-ready mix that is guaranteed to put you in a better mood. If you need a bit of sunshine and heat, then I hope that the songs below help with that. As summer is almost here, I felt it is a good time to put together…

PHOTO CREDIT: Vika Glitter/Pexels

A classic summer cocktail.

FEATURE: An Essential Kate Bush Collaborator: Looking Ahead to the Eightieth Birthday of the Legendary Photographer, Gered Mankowitz

FEATURE:

 

 

An Essential Kate Bush Collaborator

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/ALL PHOTOS: Gered Mankowitz

Looking Ahead to the Eightieth Birthday of the Legendary Photographer, Gered Mankowitz

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I am a little premature…

in writing this, but I am looking to the eightieth birthday of one of Kate Bush’s most important early collaborators. Even though her brother, John Carder Bush, was the first person to photographer – and he did so through most of her career and right up to her most recent album, 50 Words for Snow -, perhaps the most notable and important photographer outside of the family who captured Kate Bush is Gered Mankowitz. Born in London on 3rd August, 1946, I wanted to mark the upcoming eightieth birthday of someone responsible for some of the most beautiful and astonishing photos of Kate Bush. Mankowitz has photographed huge artists like Jimi Hendrix, Free, Traffic, The Yardbirds, The Small Faces, Soft Machine, Slade, Suzi Quatro, Sweet, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Eurythmics, ABC, and Duran Duran. There were notable photographers who have worked with Kate Bush through her career. Ones who shot her once or not often such as Trevor Leighton, Anton Corbijn, Steve Rapport, Clive Arrowsmith, and Kevin Cummins. Although the brilliant Guido Harari had a longer working relationship with Kate Bush (1982-1993), Gered Mankowitz was charged with photographing Kate Bush between 1978 and 1979. From her debut album, The Kick Inside, through to her second album, Lionheart (1978) and the following year, he shot the cover for Lionheart and some wonderful promotional images that are so powerful. I have said how it would be great to have a photography exhibition where we see an array of photographs of Kate Bush through the years. In the 1978-1979 section, displaying those incredible Gered Mankowitz photographs. In terms of my favourite, perhaps the one I have included as the main image. The ‘Hollywood’ shot of 1979. I wrote a feature about that shot.

WOW! Kate Bush is now sold out, but it would be great if there was a new book from Gered Mankowitz. One that compiles his Kate Bush photographs. I will come to some interviews with him where he discussed working alongside Kate Bush. However, we get some background asnd chronology about his time shooting Kate Bush:

“Gered Mankowitz recalls: “The final few weeks of 1977 were very busy for me, with album covers for Bing Crosby, Cliff Richard, Shakin’ Stevens and the Rubettes amongst others. So when EMI asked me over to their Manchester Square offices in central London to discuss a new artist, I was actually a bit pushed to find the time. How glad I am that I did manage to free up my schedule, because at that meeting, they played me ‘Wuthering Heights’ and showed me the video they had produced of a then unknown singer called Kate Bush performing the song. Kate was not at this initial meeting, but from listening to the playback of the song and watching the video, I realised that she was an extraordinary artist and potentially a wonderful subject.”

January 1978 – The first session

“In those days I was working out of a studio in Great Windmill Street in the heart of London’s Soho.  For this first session with Kate I had decided to use a wonderful piece of distressed canvas as a background; it had once been used as the floor of a boxing ring in the gym below us, and its coarse texture seemed a perfect contrast to Kate’s youthful beauty.

I purchased some leotards, tights, leg-warmers and scarves, and placed them in our rather inadequate dressing room, which was actually a curtained-off corner in the studio. When Kate arrived, she disappeared behind the curtain with the make-up artists and stylist.

Kate emerged in the pink leotard.

She looked beautiful, and I knew that we were going to have a fantastic session. She settled in front of my Hasselblad camera without a care in the world. Kate did not have much experience of working with a professional photographer, and I felt that it was important to try and guide her through the process. She had a natural instinct and seemed to understand immediately how much the camera loved her.

After shooting several test Polaroids, I was happy with the lighting, and Kate was delighted with the look. We shot throughout the afternoon, with Kate in both the pink outfit and a green version. After about twenty rolls of film, the first shoot was over and I felt certain that we had achieved the objective and produced the portrait that would launch her.”

March 1978 – The second session

My second session with Kate was on 21 March 1978. By this time, both the ‘Wuthering Heights’ single and The Kick Inside album had been established as huge hits. Some countries did not want to use the original Kick Inside cover image, and one of my jobs for this second session was to come up with some alternative options for use on covers outside the UK. One of these turned out to be the classic ‘wooden box’ image which became the American cover for the album, and there were at least four different cover images in total. I always loved the ‘wooden box’ series because it was such a complete contrast to the original pink leotard shoot and showed a more playful side of Kate’s character. We had the box made by my set-builder so that it was completely square and would fill the shape of the album sleeve perfectly.

The other reason for the second session was to create a stock of several different portraits that showed different aspects of Kate’s theatrical persona. I remember this as a long and pretty tiring session, and we shot more than six different set-ups and over forty rolls of film. When I look back at this shoot, and see again the variations that we covered in one day – including the entire ‘Wuthering Heights’ video sequence in the Cathy dress, minus the smoke (which EMI had asked for because they could not take stills from the video itself) I am not surprised that it was such a shattering experience.

August 1978 – the third session

The next session in August 1978 was specifically for the Lionheart album cover.

We constructed the attic room in my Great Windmill Street studio. I found the Lion headpiece in a fancy dress shop near Olympia, but the costume was made to measure, and fitted Kate perfectly. I did not want the attic to be filled with the usual sort of junk you find in old attics, because I felt that it needed to be quite sparse in order to keep as much focus on Kate as possible. The same box from the earlier Kick Inside session came into play again, as well as a couple of little props and a great deal of spray-on theatrical cobweb. I had designed the set so as to have a large window through which to light the shot, and apart from a few reflectors, that was it.

I had agreed with EMI that the sleeve would be presented as a gatefold with both sides designed, as much as possible, as “front” covers. The inside spread would carry the lyrics and would include the title track hand-written by Kate. For the reverse “front” cover, I shot a series of very dynamic portraits with a dark background and a powerful orangey red back-light which I have always referred to as the ‘redhead’ series.

My fourth and final session with Kate was in February 1979. By this time, she was clearly established as one of Britain’s brightest stars. The outfit that Kate wore was made specifically for the shoot in a wonderful vivid red jersey material.  It was designed to be blown against her body by a powerful wind machine as she made a range of shapes to the camera. Kate responded to the concept with her usual zeal and enthusiasm and we shot a series of exciting and fabulous photographs, several of which remain some of my most favourite from this important period in my career.

The remainder of this final session was spent shooting an extensive range of full length animated, action dance portraits including a surreal series with Kate climbing out of a chrome drum, which was used on several EP sleeves including a rare Brazilian release. In fact this chrome drum was an old Kodak dryer drum which we had been using as the base for the studio coffee table”.

I think Gered Mankowitz is enormously important in terms of how Kate Bush was captured in that first year or two of her professional career. Shooting so many different sides to her, he very much photographed and portrayed her a dancer, which she very much was. Not trying to turn her into a traditional or fake Pop artist, we see this very personal and natural side. Of course, there are some shots like the ‘Hollywood’ one and the cover of Lionheart, though I do think that he created that blend of the most fantastical and the pure, unfiltered Kate Bush. Guido Harari did too. Kate Bush not wanting to be portrayed as something she was not. Or felt uncomfortable with. She clearly had a lot of trust in Gered Mankowitz and you can see she was relaxed around him, as the photos he took between 1978-1979 convey that. Speaking with Big Issue in August 2014 – when she took her residency, Before the Dawn, to Hammersmith – Mankowitz talked about working with Kate Bush:

“I was brought in to create the launch image for Wuthering Heights and I think what makes Kate brilliant is her unique talent, her extraordinary energy, her vision – everything she does has a tremendous vision.

I remember her to be somebody who worked very hard. She was very young, 19, when it came out and she was wonderful to work with. Very energetic, very frenetic, quite difficult to tie down sometimes, to get her to focus on making an idea work, she wasn’t very experienced in having her photograph taken at that time, which was part of the challenge. But her individuality shone through.

I don’t think I had to draw it out of her, it was there, it was bubbling out of her. When I first went to the record company to discuss the session she wasn’t there but they played the video of Wuthering Heights that they’d made. It was quite obvious that she was a unique and special talent, not just because the music was so extraordinary but because of her individual look, her beauty and movement and style.

She had a really special quality, which stood out instantly on record and visually. I knew that I had to be at the top of my game to produce an image that was going to complement and support this extraordinary talent, and that’s what I tried to do. I always try to break these things down so that they are as simple as possible.

I had to be at the top of my game to produce an image that was going to complement and support this extraordinary talent

I only had a very loose connection with the record company. They already had a cover for the album The Kick Inside, but they didn’t have an image of Kate, it was quite obscure and it wasn’t as up-front of Kate as they wanted it to be. But I sense that they weren’t quite sure where they were going with her.

What they seemed very certain of was here was a unique and special talent and that they had somebody who was pure gold, but they were being led by her and I think that they weren’t sure who they were getting.

I wouldn’t want to suggest that she was in control of our session, but she was very much in control of the way she looked when she stepped out of the dressing room and I saw her for the first time ready for the camera I was blown away and knew it was going to be something special.

We did the very famous leotard pictures. I chose the leotards to make visual link with dance, that was the point of choosing and selecting them, I wanted to keep it extremely simple, I hope that in the portrait there would be a visual connection with dance which was clearly very important to her.

During the same session we reproduced the image of Wuthering Heights that she’d recorded for the video because everybody wanted stills of that but in those days they just couldn’t take them from the film. She did the whole dance for me. [Big Issue: “Wow!” Gered: “Wow indeed!”]. The only thing I didn’t have was the dry ice she had in the video, but it was spectacular.

We did four big photo sessions together between January 1978 and March or April 1979 and dance was always very high up on the list and a lot of the pictures we did are her moving, her different leotards, leaping, spinning, dancing and expressing herself like that and that was so important and trying to capture that in a very graphic way.

She could just look at the camera you would melt. You sense that she was really special and felt Wuthering Heights was going to be a big hit and I know that EMI was going to really get behind it. What nobody knew was how huge she would be and how important.

I had worked with a lot of people who had become incredibly successful for one reason or another – The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, who had that same charisma and presence as Kate, as did Annie Lennox and Suzi Quattro. What you recognise is talent and charisma but that doesn’t necessarily turn into longevity.

We know you’re going to move from one single, one album to the next and hope that the artist and everything in their support structure around them is going to remain intact and supportive, and that the artist will build a fan base that is solid enough to support them.

The one thing that was very clear was here was a very individual and unique special artist. There’s always terrible pressure on people especially if your first record is a huge hit. I don’t think that any of her records have been as big as Wuthering Heights but she’s big enough, talented enough and clever enough not to be overwhelmed by the success.

She would appear to be completely in control of her career, and she’s managed to maintain her privacy. When she makes an appearance [in public] she’s thought about it, and considered it, and the response to it is always huge.

The one picture that in a way is inescapable is the pink leotard Wuthering Heights picture. It’s one of those pictures that become iconic and represents so much, and that doesn’t happen very often. It has a life of its own and it has energy. I think it’s a beautiful portrait of a very beautiful young woman.

The Big Issue: There has been discussion over the years whether her sexuality was being exploited – depending how it’s cropped, it’s quite graphic…

Gered: It didn’t occur to me at that time that [the nipples visible in the full-length shot] would be a problem. 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 looked absolutely gorgeous. I’m looking at a cropped version of it now and it still has all the power that it did then. Her breasts might have been titillating to a few young boys but her beauty and her serenity, her stillness are what really make this a special photograph.

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. That’s what she looked like and I don’t think it’s exploitative at all. I think it’s very, very beautiful.

I’m the photographer and I took that picture, and I don’t see how I could have exploited Kate Bush. She was in control of it.

But she used her sexuality throughout her performance – look at the Babooshka video or any of the records and promotional videos and stills, certainly in those first three or four years of her career she was a very sexual person and I think that came across in the way she moved, looked and the way she sang.

For me that makes any discussion or debate about whether the picture was ‘exploitative’ redundant. She wasn’t like Miley Cyrus trying to draw attention to herself through her sexuality. She’s a very strong woman and as a strong woman you know that she’s aware of everything that’s around her and I completely reject any possibility that the pictures were exploitative, it reflects her beauty and her power and serenity, and her comfortableness with it.

The Big Issue: It’s such a direct portrait, you feel like you know her, her face looks so open but she’s not giving anything away, it gives you chills still to look at it now.

Gered: It often is the case that in the beginning when an artist makes a really profound impact it’s often their first moments that are sort of welded into the public consciousness and that’s one of the most gratifying things. Going back to my favourite image, I’m incredibly proud and thrilled to have been associated with Kate Bush at this early stage. It’s fantastic to hear you say that [above] about it”.

Even though he shot some amazing black-and-white photos of Kate Bush – including promotional shots for Wuthering Heights -, it is interesting what he says in this 2025 interview. How he says A.I. is a nightmare for photography. However, it is when he mentioned Kate Bush looks better in colour than black-and-white. I never considered this: “Other artists simply demand colour. “Kate Bush, for instance… her image demanded colour, because of her hair, her skin, her lips. Colour was how she should be seen.” Perhaps most revealing is Mankowitz’s perspective on what makes for meaningful photographic encounters. Despite the prestige it might bring, he admits his “stomach would sink” at the prospect of photographing modern megastars like Taylor Swift – not due to any artistic reservation, but because of the barriers to genuine connection. “Photography is a very intimate thing for me,” Mankowitz explains .“A portrait of somebody is a very intimate thing. It’s really them and me and the camera”. It would be really cool is, on 3rd August, there was a new interview with Gered Mankowitz for the Kate Bush Fan Podcast. He was with them in 2023. I think his photos of Kate Bush in 1978 and 1979 are some of the best and most captivating. The looks and poses. What he drew from Kate Bush. Some truly remarkable and unforgettable shots. Her in the pink leotard and the expression on her face! Few others could elicit that. That is why I wanted to wish many happy returns to…

A genius photographer.

FEATURE: Spice Girls’ Wannabe at Thirty: One of the Most Important, Powerful and Memorable Debut Singles in Pop Histor

FEATURE:

 

 

Spice Girls’ Wannabe at Thirty

IN THIS PHOTO: Spice Girls clockwise, from front: Emma Bunton ('Baby Spice'), Victoria Beckham ('Posh Spice'), Melanie Chisholm ('Sporty Spice'), Geri Halliwell ('Ginger Spice') and Melanie Brown ('Scary Spice') photographed in Paris in September 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Roney/Getty Images

One of the Most Important, Powerful and Memorable Debut Singles in Pop History

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THIS anniversary feature…

does not have a single theme or point of focus. Instead, I wanted to discuss the sheer brilliance of Spice Girls’ debut single, Wannabe, and how it is so empowering and influential. Although the single was released in the U.K. on 8th July, 1996 in the U.K., it was released on 26th June in Japan. I am taking that June date as its thirtieth, as that is when the song was first released. There is this split between those who say it is this empowering feminist anthem, and people who think its messages are weak and that Girl Power was manufactured, hollow and gimmicky. I do think that Wannabe was a groundbreaking debut for a 1990s Pop act. In terms of what was around in 1996 and the songs released that brilliant summer, there was still a lot of male-dominated guitar music. The hangover of Britpop, the scene was still male-driven. Artists like Underworld, Beck, Manic Street Preachers, The Prodigy and Oasis at the forefront and releasing a lot of the most popular music of the year. The music press very geared still towards male artists and bands. Although there was not a huge backlash against Spice Girls, you could feel mockery and sexism in a lot of the press. This misogyny that felt their brand of feminism was hollow and rubbish. Many reviewers felt Wannabe was contrived and bubble-gum. However, Wannabe’s messages of emphasising female friendships over men was hugely inspiring and spoke to a generation of girls and women. They could have launched with a song that was standard boy-meets-girl. However, they debuted an infectious and incredible track that was very much about independence and empowerment. The legacy of which you can hear today and so many incredible women dominating and defining Pop. I do want to come to the BBC and their feature which marked twenty-five years of Spice Girls and Wannabe. Published on 8th July, 2021, we get some insight into a single that, in the years since 1996, is seen as one of the most important of the decade:

“It came out of nowhere. It changed the course of pop music. It was Wannabe - the scrappily brilliant debut single by The Spice Girls.

The record label had been worried. Wannabe was too weird, too anarchic. They hated the video. BBC Radio 1 was refusing to play it. Breakfast show DJ Chris Evans told the band to go back to kids' TV.

But the girls knew better. "It's not negotiable as far as we're concerned," they insisted. "Wannabe is our first single."

And "if they decided they wanted to do something, then that's what was going to happen," Wannabe's co-writer Richard "Biff" Stannard told the BBC.

History proved them right.

Released 25 years ago, on 8 July 1996, Wannabe spent seven weeks at number one in the UK and four in the US. In the process, it made five unknown girls - Victoria Caroline Adams, Melanie Janine Brown, Emma Lee Bunton, Melanie Jayne Chisholm and Geraldine Estelle Halliwell - global superstars”.

The original demo for Wannabe is being released to mark the song's 25th anniversary - and its very different experience to the final version, full of record scratches, clunky 1990s synths and a bizarre breakbeat outro.

The song was something of a Frankenstein's monster, co-writer Matt Rowe told David Sinclair for his 2004 Spice Girls biography.

"They made all these different bits up," Rowe said. "Not thinking in terms of chorus, bridge or what was going to go where - just coming up with all these sections of chanting and rapping and singing. And then we just sewed it together. Kind of a cut-and-paste method."

Virgin, noting the popularity of girl bands like Eternal and TLC, were keen to give the song an R&B makeover and sent it to US producer Dave Way to be remixed. The result, according to Halliwell, "was bloody awful".

Eventually, Mark "Spike" Stent - a producer who had worked with Massive Attack and Madonna - was called in to knock the song into shape.

"The problem was that the vocal balance hadn't been quite sussed," he told Sound On Sound magazine in 1999, external. "It's a very quirky pop record, and there's not a lot going on with it, and my work was all about getting the vocals to sound right. It was quite tough to do, even though it only took six hours."

Girl Power came in for a lot of stick - mostly from critics who weren't girls and didn't need any more power, music writer Tom Ewing observed, external.

Geri was the one who pushed the concept, and even developed a "power oath" to be recited when events demanded: "I, being of sound mind and new Wonderbra do solemnly promise to cheer and dance and zig-a-zig-ah. Ariba! Girl Power!"

But even if the parameters were a little hazy, the idea was potent. The Spice Girls stood for freedom, self-belief and disobedience - and they inspired generations to stick up for themselves.

In 2017, Geri reflected on the legacy of Girl Power in a BBC interview: "Twenty years ago, if you said the word feminism, you thought of those bra-burning, marching protestors. It was quite tough and harsh.

"For me, Girl Power was a much more punchy way of saying it. But actually, Girl Power embodies much more than a gender. It's about everybody. Everybody deserves the same treatment, whatever race you are, gender you are, age you are.

"It was just saying that in a very digestible way”.

If you don’t think that Wannabe is a genuinely deep feminist anthem like Beyoncé's Run the World (Girls), Aretha Franklin’s Respect, or Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman, then you can appreciate that the group – Geri Halliwell, Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton and Melanie Chisholm – were trying to inspire and empower girls and young women. In a landscape that was very much set up for male artists and there was huge misogyny, this was such an important and bold song. This 2019 article discussed the secret feminist history of Spice Girls’ Wannabe:

“The chorus reads like a direct address to the male gaze: “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” Like many female pop stars before them — and certainly all of them since — the Spice Girls’ biggest marketing tool was their sexuality. They didn’t apologise for it. In fact, Bunton scoffed at the idea that their fashion choices were for anyone but themselves when she told an interviewer in 1997, “Just because you've got a short skirt on and a pair of tits, you can still say what you want to say. We're still very strong.” They wore the short skirts, tight dresses, low-cut tops, and high heels, all customised to their personas — with leopard-print, pink pigtails, track suits, ultra platforms, and painted-on sheath dresses serving as extensions of their identities. And they did not apologise for them. Their larger message was more important: You can look at us, in fact, look at us! But we are more interested in our relationships with each other than with men. The concept of girl power was born with the writing of “Wannabe,” but the actual power — the activism, in fact — came from how the women fought for the song — and for themselves — every step of the way.

“Wannabe” is the biggest-selling single by a female group in the world, ever. But it almost didn’t make it to the radio. Everyone but the Spice Girls themselves seemed to hate the song. Their manager, Simon Fuller, sent it to a team of American producers, and it came back laced with hip-hop beats and an R & B vibe that Halliwell described as “bloody awful.” The members of the group staged a protest until it was remixed to their liking. When it came time for Virgin Records to choose the first single, execs wanted “Say You’ll Be There,” a sappy love-pop ballad that appeased the label’s mission of catering to a mainstream audience — and sending a flirty message to, presumably, men who would want to “be there” for (or with) the Spice Girls. Stannard, who co-wrote "Wannabe," lambasted its weirdness and agreed that it was too risky to use as a first single: “It’s quite anarchic,” Stannard said at the time. “There are a lot of critics who consider it a punk record because it’s quite wild, and the way it was recorded and written was like a punk song. It was in no way a contrived, crafted pop masterpiece that we sat down and specified.”

Fuller agreed, and pushed the Girls to acquiesce. Halliwell, speaking for the group as she often did — including the time she demanded each of them receive individual management contracts before signing with a label — told the men: “It's not negotiable as far as we're concerned. 'Wannabe' is our first single.”

Standing up to a powerful label and deeply vested managers hasn't always pan out for pop stars. Correction: It’s not a thing pop stars even did at the time. Ginger and the Girls made it clear that they were in control. The only risk was if the industry walked away; they’d be fine. One can imagine Kelly Clarkson channelling Halliwell when she fought the illustrious Clive Davis to the point of near-career suicide because she refused to be “bullied” into releasing another American Idol-like record instead of one that reflected her artistic vision.

“Wannabe” was not beloved by critics. And, in fact, it’s safe to say no one even knows what the song is really about. Its jumbled lyrics are a mix of in-jokes, made-up words (“zig-a-zig-ah”) and micro bios of each character spliced into the bridge. But it didn’t matter. “Wannabe” soared to the top of the charts in the U.K. and remained the No. 1 single for seven weeks. By March 1997, “Wannabe” had topped the charts in 37 countries. It didn’t matter if it was gibberish; the spirit of “Wannabe” resonated with the world and it remains one of the most recognisable pop songs of the last 50 years.

When five insta-friends huddled together 23 years ago to write a song about hanging out together, they didn’t have an agenda beyond expressing themselves in that moment. The song itself is not a feminist anthem. But the ways in which the Spice Girls demanded respect and took — didn’t ask for, but seized — control of their careers and the image they presented of girls to girls is a legacy worth celebrating. “Girl power” lives on, and as feminism is mainstreamed into our lives via Beyoncé, Shonda Rhimes, and even President Obama, the meaning of that once-vapid term grows ever more powerful”.

Published in 2016 to mark twenty years of Spice Girls’ Wannabe, Billboard highlighted how this historic debut single revitalised mainstream feminism. As they write, “In the early 1990s, few pop cultural figures embraced the term "feminist”. Wannabe warrants a lot of new appreciation and discussion thirty years after its release. Its messages and meaning perhaps as vital and urgent now as it was in 1996:

“In the early 1990s, the women’s movement seemed dead to the mainstream, as documented in Susan Faludi’s Backlash. Few pop cultural figures embraced the term “feminist.” The underground punk movement known as “Riot Grrrl” scared anyone outside of it (which was part of its point), while Alanis Morissette’s breakthrough single “You Oughta Know” scared everyone else even more.

Then, in the middle of the decade, the Spice Girls took all of that fear and made feminism — popularized as Girl Power — fun. Suddenly, regular girls far outside Women’s Studies classrooms had at least an inkling of what would be known in wonky circles as Third Wave Feminism — led by Generation Xers pushing for sexual freedom and respect for traditionally “girly” pursuits like makeup and fashion, among many other issues.

Preaching Girl Power to worldwide masses in the 1990s was no small thing. It was a commercialized message, to be sure, but alas, so is any message that permeates American consumer culture. Sure, the message came in the empty vessel of the most derivative of pop music, but no one ever said feminists have to be great artists. In fact, their accessibility was their superpower. As we celebrate the 20-year anniversary of their first single “Wannabe” this year, we can see how far women in pop music have come, to the point where the pop world is dominated not just by women, but by women who publicly identify as feminists, such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Girl Power, indeed.

From the very beginning with “Wannabe,” the Spice Girls were the original Sex and the City crew, with all the conflicting ideas about feminism and femininity that entails. Their clear identities allowed girls to choose a favorite with whom to identify: Were you a Scary, Sporty, Posh, Ginger, or Baby? These nicknames, of course, were the very definition of problematic: Scary went to the sole woman of color, while Posh, Ginger, and Baby were obvious stereotypes of femininity. At least Sporty was an option, right?

On the other hand, they demonstrated real, noncompetitive female friendship. “If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends,” they sang. “Make it last forever; friendship never ends.” Message-wise, this is leagues better than their spiritual descendants, the Pussycat Dolls, singing “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?” a decade later.

The refrain of “Wannabe” could be a war cry of liberation from good-girl syndrome: “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.” (A great 2011 feminist guide to sex by Jaclyn Friedman swiped this wholesale for its title: What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety.) The Girls even embraced the word “feminism” at a time when it was risky to do so. In their 1998 movie Spice World, Ginger gets rid of a guy who’s hitting on her by dropping the F-bomb, laughing as he runs away. Not only was feminism cool in Spice World, but guys who didn’t get it weren’t worth your time.

They also embraced their sexuality in songs such as “2 Become 1.” In Spice World, girls could want sex and want to look sexy — a major tenet of Third Wave Feminism. Baby Spice said it best in an interview: “Just because you’ve got a short skirt on and a pair of tits, you can still say what you want to say. We’re still very strong.”

These messages were going mega-global, thanks to the success of “Wannabe.” The song hit No. 1 in 37 countries, and led to the Girls eventually selling more than 80 million records worldwide. Affection for the Spice Girls hasn’t waned. They delighted fans with a reunion at the London 2012 Olympics. Recently, three of the Spice Girls — Geri Halliwell (Ginger), Emma Bunton (Baby), and Mel B (Scary) — announced they’d be reuniting as GEM (without international fashion icon/former Posh Spice Victoria Beckham or Sporty Spice Mel C., who’s said she’s still undecided about joining in).

It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to push pop feminism forward in 2016. Girl Power has evolved far beyond what the Spice Girls did in 1996, moving from the cheerleader chants of “Wannabe” to Beyoncé sampling a feminist speech by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and featuring poetry by Warsan Shire in her videos. But the Spice Girls’ legacy is real, as shown by the Global Gals campaign’s recent use of “Wannabe” to express an explicit feminist message. The group’s delightful, multicultural video has women dancing and lip-synching along to the classic song while explaining that what women really, really want is quality education, an end to child marriage, and equal pay. “Girl Power has come a long way,” says a message at the end. “Let’s take it further”.

I am going to end with The Times and their 2008 article. They proclaimed Wannabe as the best song of 1996. In a truly massive years where so many wonderful songs were released, it is not a stretch to say that Spice Girls’ Wannabe is the queen of them all:

“A No 1 hit in 31 countries, Wannabe is the bestselling single ever by a female group and propelled Sporty, Scary, Posh, Ginger and Baby Spice to a level of chart-conquering domination that, even now, seems extraordinary. Such statistics can make it easy to forget quite how ropey the five-piece seemed to many music fans, who saw the title of the band’s debut single not as an expression of female empowerment, but as an accurate description of five slightly desperate hoofers recruited from an ad in The Stage. The genius of the Spice Girls – or, rather, the team behind them – was to bulldoze their way through such perceptions with the aid of both precision-bomb marketing and, of course, Wannabe. The former still leaves a bad taste in the mouth: the true legacy of Girl Power is, arguably, a preteen clothing industry selling crop tops and other minimal garments to young girls, not a generation of independent, take-no-nonsense women. But the song remains the same two minutes and 53 seconds of pop perfection that it ever was.

Co-written by Richard Stannard, Matt Rowe and the band, Wannabe opens with immediately undislodgable piano notes, which act as stepping stones to the chorus. Over these, Mel Brown and Geri Halliwell holler the song’s key message of assertiveness: “Yo, I’ll tell you whatI want, what I really, really want.”

What they really, really wanted turned out to be to “zigazig ah”, a phrase open to all manner of interpretation. But its air of devil-may-care zaniness was of a piece with the song’s other message (reinforced by the storming-the-citadels video): we’re taking charge of our own destinies and having a riot at the same time, and so can you. The fact that the band were being manufactured and marketed by a male-dominated industry was an irony that only increased when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell’s equally cynical political packaging muscled in on the action with Cool Britannia the following year.

Musically, the song is amazingly deft, melding Motown with rap and never losing sight of the need to stay focused on getting its message across (no wonder new Labour got on board). Its success made the Spice Girls a global phenomenon of multiple sponsorship deals and spawned an unforgettably dire movie, Geri’s departure, Posh’s football wedding and, last year, the inevitable reunion. Much of what they sang, said and did now seems ridiculous. On Wannabe, however, the Spice Girls ruled the roost”.

I do think that Wannabe gets unjust stick and criticising. In 2012, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote for The Guardian, where said how Spice Girls’ messages of female solidarity, whilst it may seem manufactured or light in some respects, it was a gateway and accessible route for their fanbase. Girls and teens in 1996 were hardly going to be reading feminist texts: “Female columnists have not been kind to the group in retrospect; Caitlin Moran basically blamed "Girl Power" for the loss of interest in feminism, while Grace Dent went further by saying that "any student in 2012 who regurgitates this Spice Girls-helped-feminism baloney in a dissertation should have the whole thing shredded and be made to wear a dunce cone in graduation pics". Well, hand me the dunce cap Grace, because I must respectfully disagree. Were it not for their kitschy pop antics, I might not be the massive feminist I am today”. Wannabe changed the face of the mid-’90s Pop scene and it is an iconic Girl Power anthem. Thirty years later, it is this instantly lovable, recognisable and captivating single. Released in 26th June, 1996 in Japan and 8th July, 1996 in the U.K., Spice Girls released one of the greatest debut singles ever. It would not be long until…

THEY would dominate the globe.

FEATURE: White Heat: Madonna’s True Blue at Forty: From Pop Queen to a Global Icon

FEATURE:

 

 

White Heat: Madonna’s True Blue at Forty

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

From Pop Queen to a Global Icon

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I am starting out…

with this article from Rhino, who noted how Madonna ruled the music world in the summer of 1986. True Blue was released on 30th June, 1986. It turns forty very soon, so I wanted to publish another anniversary feature. In this one, I want to chart her rise from this revered artist to a global superstar. Her third studio album was her biggest leap to date in terms of her confidence, songwriting and look. Some of the most memorable and enduring images of Madonna shot in 1986. Although I love those taken in 1983 in NYC by Richard Corman. It is that transition in terms of her fame and accomplishments. It was not only Madonna’s music and touring that made her this global icon. Her film work, whilst not always brilliant, got her that exposure and visibility. True Blue was a definite peak. One where she was undoubtably the biggest Pop artist on the planet:

“Madonna was already a superstar after the success of her second album, Like a Virgin (1984). With third studio effort, True Blue, released June 30, 1986, she became a mega-star, elevating to one of the biggest and most popular artists in the world.

With the new album came a new Madonna, sporting a fresh, revitalized image: "After a while, I got sick of wearing tons of jewelry," the singer told New York Times that year. "I wanted to clean myself off. I see my new look as very innocent and feminine and unadorned. It makes me feel good. Growing up, I admired the kind of beautiful glamorous woman - from Bridget Bardot to Grace Kelly - who doesn't seem to be around much anymore. I think it's time for that kind of glamour to come back."

True Blue was the album that found Madonna stretching beyond the dance floor towards more adult-oriented genres and sounds. The first shot from the record arrived in the form of emotional movie theme "Live to Tell," which hit radio airwaves in March 1986. The surprising ballad was an instant hit, soaring to #1 on the Hot 100 over the week of July 7, 1986. The song was also Madge's first #1 over on Billboard's Adult Contemporary charts.

Madonna kept the chart-topping party going with second single, the controversial "Papa Don't Preach." Released in June '96 with a wildly popular music video, the track was another smash, climbing to the #1 spot on the Hot 100 for the week of August 16, 1986. It held the spot for two weeks in a row.

The fun and retro title track was served up as single #3 from True Blue, released in mid-September. The kicky tune was another radio and MTV hit, peaking at #3 on the Hot 100 for the week of November 15, 1986. The #1 song in America at the time: Boston's "Amanda."

With "True Blue" still rocking the charts, Madonna released "Open Your Heart" as the fourth single from the LP. The horn-blasted and upbeat track danced all the way to #1 on the Hot 100 over the week of February 7, 1987.

Four top 5 singles apparently wasn't enough, so Madonna went in for a fifth hit with "La Isla Bonita," released in February '87, and peaking at #4 for the week of May 2, 1987. The #1 song in the country that week: Cutting Crew's "(I Just) Died in Your Arms."

True Blue was a blockbuster LP, cruising to #1 on the Billboard 200 for the week of August 16, 1986. It held the top spot for a month, finally bested by the Top Gun soundtrack on September 19, 1986. When the smoke cleared, True Blue was the best-selling album in the entire world for the year 1986.

"The girls that dressed like me all got the joke - it was their parents who didn't. You didn't see those girls going off and doing awful things because they bought my records," Madonna insisted. "What I've learned from all the controversy is that you can't expect everyone to get your sense of humor. But I've also learned that people eventually do catch on to what they didn't get at first. It's a nice surprise in the end when they, go, 'Hey, well, you know... I like that”.

1984’s Like a Virgin did a lot to see her as this modern-day great who was an original and innovative Pop artist. However, True Blue was a more sophisticated and rounded work. I think it ages better than her first two albums, and Madonna’s voice has strengthened. In terms of the photography and images of her, this is an amazing woman in her late-twenties who was about to conquer the world. If you want to pinpoint the moment Madonna became a global sensation and was at the forefront of modern music, you could argue it happened with the release of True Blue. Standout singles such as La Isla Bonita and Papa Don’t Preach still seem fresh today. In terms of the diversity of sound and genes on the album, it is a big reason why it was so popular. A worldwide chart-topper, True Blue has never gained all the respect it deserves. Compared to an album such as Like a Prayer (1989), True Blue does not have as much written about it. However, it was a fascinating period in her career. Before moving on, I want to sourceWikipedia and part of their Legacy section on True Blue:

“In a similar note, Sal Cinquemani said that with True Blue, Madonna joined the ranks of Jackson and Prince and made the transition from "pop tart to consummate artist". According to Lucy O'Brien, "with its sophisticated sheen, [True Blue] took Madonna firmly out of the dance-diva category into a global pop market". Jack White from the Official Charts Company wrote: "True Blue, her third album, saw Madonna shoot into the realms of superstardom that her previous album Like A Virgin had cemented". To Matthew Rettenmund, author of Encyclopedia Madonnica, it was the first "solid proof" of her artistic and musical talents. Patrick Leonard himself explained: "The music got more serious, so I think she got taken more seriously [...] [Madonna] took some chances that I don't know most people would have. There were things [in True Blue] that weren't normal in pop music at the time".

Slant Magazine considered True Blue one of the best albums from the 1980s; Jonathan Keefe wrote that it marked the point where, "it became readily apparent that Madonna was more than just a flash-in-the-pan pop star. It's when she began manipulating her image —and her audience— with a real sense of clarity and purpose". Piatkowski wrote that it "set the stage for the exponential ascent of Madonna's brilliance", that began with 1989's Like a Prayer and reached its peak on 1998's Ray of Light. From music portal Albumism, Justin Chadwick concluded that, "[True Blue] solidified [Madonna's] blonde ambition, cemented her worldwide superstardom, and, once and for all, extinguished any remaining doubts about her potential career longevity”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

I do want to source Interview Magazine, and a conversation between Madonna biographer Mary Gabriel and Mel Ottenberg, and their thoughts and impressions on Madonna’s True Blue era. It was an album where Madonna has more control regarding which producers and collaborators to work with. By all accounts, 1986 was a very happy and contended one for her:

“OTTENBERG: I still remember when True Blue came out, she had this whole new look and the Madonna wannabe look was instantly obsolete.

GABRIEL: It’s funny because for her first album, the Madonna look was short hair, kind of “tough street kid.” Then, for her Like a Virgin album, she was saucy and sexy, but still tough, still very New York.

OTTENBERG: I feel like she loved the experience of doing Like a Virgin, but then she became more muscular in her powers with True Blue.

GABRIEL: True Blue was really the first Madonna album because that was the first one she did with Steve Bray and Pat Leonard. It was basically just three kids playing. The first one was with Reggie Lucas, he was a well-known producer. Second one, Nile Rodgers, mega-well known producer. The third one, Madonna could dictate her terms by that point and she said, “I’ll just do it with Pat Bray and Steve Leonard.”

OTTENBERG: It is by far the best Madonna album.

GABRIEL: It’s so up and so wonderful. There’s the kind of person that says, “You don’t need to know what’s happening in the artist’s life. You should only look at the product.” But I don’t believe that. I think you need to know what’s happening in the artist’s life because if you look at True Blue, she had just married Sean Penn.

OTTENBERG: Unbelievable.

GABRIEL: She is completely in love. Her life has come together in a way she could have never dreamed of. It’s a pure statement of joy. And yet, it happened at a moment when her world was falling apart because people she loved were dying of AIDS. Think about “Open Your Heart.” What does that video mean? It’s confusing. There’s that end shot with her running off with a little boy into the sunset and you find out that Martin Burgoyne, her best friend who she used to dress like that with, is dying. I mean, it changes everything. Or when she does the video “Cherish” with Herb Ritts, who’s just found out he’s HIV positive. Or when she does Like a Prayer, her marriage is falling apart. It’s this beautiful construction she’s made. Then you get to Blond Ambition— and I wonder if you agree with this. I quote Valerie Steele who said it was the moment when fashion and pop music were joined forever.

OTTENBERG: Madonna changed my life. I mean it in a really profound way. And going to the Blond Ambition World Tour and seeing the fashion, and seeing also how organized it was. Before I was at Interview, I was Rihanna’s stylist for seven years, and I was always like, “I would never put Madonna once on the mood board.” Because Madonna is god and I’m not going to copy god. But I’m going to always have that dedication to, “Could we do something different? We should remix it.” And all of those things come from Madonna moments”.

I wrote about Madonna’s 1986 for a feature last December. It is worth finishing off with Chronicles Beauty Queen, and their words about Madonna’s influence and dominance in 1986. Such an exciting and huge year she was very much ruling Pop but also she was appearing on the big screen. Her marriage to Sean Penn gaining a lot of press attention. Even though they divorced, and it was a short-lived marriage, you can hear her happiness and love for him in True Blue’s title track:

"By 1986, Madonna had already reshaped the landscape of pop music, fashion, and female empowerment. After dominating the charts with Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (released June 30, 1986), she had evolved from a New York City club sensation into a full-fledged global icon. The True Blue album, recorded in Los Angeles and produced alongside Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, featured hits like “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Live to Tell,” and “Open Your Heart”—all of which topped Billboard Hot 100 and sparked both admiration and controversy. The album’s release marked a turning point where Madonna transitioned from playful rebel to powerful storyteller, addressing themes of teenage pregnancy, Catholic guilt, and emotional vulnerability. It became the best-selling album of 1986 globally, and her image—platinum blonde hair, bold brows, lace gloves—was seen everywhere from Tokyo to Toronto.

"Madonna's influence in 1986 was not limited to music. She starred in Shanghai Surprise alongside her then-husband Sean Penn, and though the film struggled, it kept her constantly in the headlines. In fashion, she collaborated with designers like Jean-Paul Gaultier and Maripol, popularizing street style looks from downtown Manhattan—mesh tops, crucifix jewelry, layered skirts—that became iconic across youth cultures in London, Paris, and São Paulo. Her fan base expanded rapidly among LGBTQ+ communities, who saw her as a fearless voice in an era marked by rising conservatism and the AIDS crisis. Her appearance at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, dressed in a powder-blue corset and singing “Papa Don’t Preach,” was a visual statement of rebellion and glamour that rippled through pop culture.

"Madonna Louise Ciccone, born in Bay City, Michigan, and raised in Detroit, had arrived in New York City in 1978 with just $35 in her pocket. By 1986, she was a self-made multimillionaire, shaping the sounds, conversations, and aesthetics of a generation. She once said, 'I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want.' That grit was on full display in 1986, a year that solidified her as the undisputed Queen of Pop—not just for her music, but for her relentless reinvention, cultural impact, and fearless domination of both stage and screen”.

On 30th June, we celebrate forty years of True Blue. As I said previously, Madonna releases a new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II, on 3rd July. It will be a busy week or recalling memories of her 1986 album and then welcoming in this new one. Madonna’s aesthetic, sound and music from 1896 has influenced artists like Christina Aguilera, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, Spice Girls, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry. Containing some of her best songs and it set a record by becoming the first album to reach number one in twenty-eight  countries, and it spent a record thirty-four consecutive weeks at the top of the European Top 100 Albums chart. It was the best-selling album of 1986 and the best-selling album of the 1980s by a female artist, where it sold twenty-five millions copies. Also, all five singles released from the album (Live to Tell, Papa Don't Preach, True Blue, Open Your Heart, and La Isla Bonita) reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100, with three hitting number one. Such a monumental album from an artist who ascended to another level in 1986, it is a thrill to mark forty years of…

THE supreme True Blue.

FEATURE: I Put This Moment…Here: The Importance of Track Sequencing on Kate Bush Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

I Put This Moment…Here

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for NME on 13th October, 1982 in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn/Contour by Getty Images 

The Importance of Track Sequencing on Kate Bush Albums

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THIS is something not talked about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 1985’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), the lead single from her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

as much when we look at artists and their albums. We recognise the brilliance and endurance of the albums, though how often do we consider why that is? In terms of the track sequencing, I feel this is a very important reason why so many classic albums resonate and remain. Something as simple as getting the tracks in the wrong order affects the listening experience. It is such a crucial thing. When it comes to Kate Bush, this is an artist that definitely recognises how key it is to get the flow and order just so. The line at the top of this feature is from Hounds of Love’s Jig of Life. That song appears on the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave. As that was a concept suite, it was perhaps more intuitive and easier to get the track order right. The story had to run chronologically and there was a more obvious order. Even so, getting that first side right was a taller order. Because of its propulsive introduction and energy, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was an obvious first song. However, where do you go from there? Could Mother Stands for Comfort realistically follow? It is a colder and more skeletal track, so perhaps it would jar against the fuller and warmer opener. Though, if it finishes the first side, then it would perhaps create a downer or sap some momentum. Even so, you have to follow that song, so which one takes that honour? One reason why Hounds of Love is so brilliant is because that first side is perfectly balanced. Tracks two to five inclusive have Hounds of Love, The Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort leading to Cloudbusting. Some might argue ending that first side with The Big Sky. It has a rain/water theme, so it would then lead to the first track of The Ninth Wave, And Dream of Sheep. A suite that is about a woman being lost at sea after going overboard a ship. Though Cloudbusting is a brilliant end to that first side. The optimism of making it rain. A cloudbusting device that creates rain and bursts the clouds, there is something uplifting and hopeful. Clash that against the tyranny and fear of the ocean. That emotional and psychological clash. Also, in terms of quality of the songs, I feel there is a nice balance that means you get that blend. Even though Mother Stands for Comfort comes right after The Big Sky, it is not too extreme.

Kate Bush’s intuition as a producer. I don’t think there is a conceptual arc to the first side. It makes it harder to order the tracks. For the most parts, her studio albums are sublime regarding the sequencing. Aerial too. Its second disc, A Sky of Honey, is conceptual. More tracks on A Sky of Honey than The Ninth Wave (nine to seven), perhaps more difficult getting the order right, though, again, it had this chronology and sense of movement. A summer’s day going from the rising light and morning, and going through to the following morning. The Ninth Wave perhaps starting from evening and then taking us through to the following morning. Maybe The Red Shoes (1993) and Lionheart (1978) are the albums that stick out regarding the track order. Perhaps reasons why they are less regarded than other Kate Bush is because the songs are perhaps not in the right place. In the case of Lionheart, I feel it is a case of rejigging the final third. Kashka from Baghdad, Coffee Homeground and Hammer Horror are the final three songs. I always feel that the second five tracks of Lionheart should be In the Warm Room, Coffee Homeground, Hammer Horror, Fullhouse and finishing from Kashka from Baghdad, rather than Fullhosue, In the Warm Room, Kashka from Baghdad, Coffee Homeground and Hammer Horror. An odd choice for the final track. The Red Shoes is very top and middle heavy. The final third, too, is a bit of a mess. I feel the title track should be in there and end with Moments of Pleasure. As it is, the four-piece of Constellation of the Heart, Big Stripey Lie, Why Should I Love You? and You’re the One seem a bit mixed and anticlimactic. Those two are the only albums where I feel it was not quite 100%. I mention this subject as I was re-reading Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. In a chapter about 1982’a The Dreaming (Kate Bush’s fourth studio album), there are some interesting takeaways. Paul Hardiman, who was credited as recording engineer at Advision and Odyssey Studios, all mixes at Advision Studios and actually provided the Eeyore brays on the final track, Get Out of My House, said how hugely important it was sequencing sides A and B. Thomson notes how “The Dreaming starts with a brisk brio but slows to something close to a lament, the closing clatter of Get Out of My House notwithstanding”. He follows that by saying “The trio of songs at the centre of Side B formed the album’s deep emotional heart”. Tracks seven though to ten are Night of the Swallow, All the Love, Houdini and Get Out of My House. Brilliant sequencing when it came to emotional and sonic balance and this sense of resonance.

A case of the track sequencing being discussed in great detail. I have to wonder whether there is an album that has the best sequencing. You could argue that it is The Dreaming. At ten tracks, is it easier to get the sequencing right compared to a longer one such as Aerial or The Kick Inside? If I had to choose, it would be between The Dreaming and Never Ever (1980). At eleven tracks, I feel that everything is in its right place. A perfect opening two tracks of Babooshka and Delius (Song of Summer). The breaking glass sound that ends Babooshka leading into the second tracks. How The Wedding List is the middle track and is perfectly sandwiched by Egypt and Violin. Two tracks highlighted as weaker numbers, The Wedding List seen as one of the best. The final three tracks of Night Scented Stock, Army Dreamers and Breathing. Those final two tracks are more political and emotional, but sonically they are quite far apart. Army Dreamers more of a waltz and lighter musically. Breathing more Prog-like and heavier. Touches of Pink Floyd can be heard. Night Scented Stock was a rare occasion of Kate Bush creating this interlude. So many albums have interludes and skits. A way of breaking up tracks and adding more conversation, story and variation, Night Scented Stock has no lyrics and is this beautiful piece that layers Bush’s vocals and arrives after The Infant Kiss. Perhaps one of the darker or heavier songs in many ways, there is a bit of levity and light before we get to Army Dreamers. Some wonderful sequencing and consideration to the flow and emotional arc. No song but Babooshka could open the album. No song but Breathing could end it. Getting all the other tracks in place was probably quite demanding and there might have been some shifts and changes. We do not talk about album sequencing when we discuss classics. How that is a vital ingredient. I have never heard anyone discuss it when it comes to Kate Bush. Was she thinking of this when writing the songs and knew where she would place them? Or was it a case of her and the engineers talking and going through that process?

Going back to the title of this feature and that line from Jig of Life. Perhaps not completely instinctual how to arrange Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave. Unlike Aerial’s A Sky of Honey, which is about the course of a summer’s day and organising tracks in accordance with light levels and specific timeframes, there is no distinct time period on The Ninth Wave. How long the woman is caught at sea, even if we assume it is less than a day. The middle track on the suite is Watching You Without Me, and that leads to Jig of Life, which then goes into Hello Earth. From a song where a family waits for their daughter/loved one and Bush’s heroine is like a ghost in the room, this song of courage and determination. A need to stay alive. Maybe so she can get back home, or at least stay alive. Then, the camera pans above the water as we see the sea from far into the sky. Is it a moment when the woman dies and her spirit ascends, or, like a film, a key scene where we see the true scale and expanse of the ocean and how distant and lost the woman is?! Jig of Life is so spirited and lively, getting even an inch in the wrong spot could have damaged The Ninth Wave and its masterful brilliance. The Dreaming’s sides A and B perfect. I feel more people need to understand the thought that goes into track sequencing. Even if I have raised this subject before, it is worth revisiting. A reason why The Dreaming especially is so influential now is because of its running order. Not to overexaggerate, but if a couple of the tracks were in different places, I genuinely don’t think the impact would be the same. Bush sees her albums as something to be heard as a whole, vital that all the tracks are considered as a single piece. For the brilliance of the sequencing, we should give to Kate Bush…

ALL the love.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Nirvana

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: Nirvana (Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl) in New York on 11th January, 1992/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Lavine (via DAZED)

Nirvana

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IN September…

IN THIS PHOTO: Nirvana in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Weedon/Avalon - World Illustrated Inc

there are a couple of big anniversaries around Nirvana. Smells Like Teen Spirit turns thirty-five on 10th September. On 24th September, the album it is from, Nevermind, is thirty-five. I wanted to include Nirvana in this The Great American Songbook. Kurt Cobain one of the greatest songwriters of his generations. Songs that he left behind – Cobain died on 5th April, 1994 – are affecting people to this day. The legendary Seattle trio made an enormous impact in their relatively short career. Before ending with a twenty-song mixtape of their best work, I will start with biography from AllMusic:

“Nothing was ever quite the same after Nirvana. The band's second album, 1991's Nevermind, revolutionized popular music by bringing alternative rock above ground, introducing mainstream audiences to sounds and concepts that had previously existed only in shadowy record store corners and on low-frequency college radio airwaves. Nevermind's noisy, dissonant guitar rock, mumbled or howled surrealistic lyrics, and generally angsty punk attitudes were unlikely candidates for chart success, but the band undercut their grungy songs with enough pop melodicism to create a sound unlike anything average listeners had ever heard before, striking at the exact right moment to become an unprecedented success.

Since Nirvana were rooted in an indie aesthetic but loved pop music, they fought their stardom while courting it, becoming some of the most notorious anti-rock stars in history. They consciously attempted to shed their audience with 1993's abrasive, Steve Albini-produced third album In Utero, but vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Kurt Cobain's growing mental health and substance abuse issues led to his death by suicide in 1994. Though Nirvana's story was cut tragically short, their legacy stands as one of the most influential in rock & roll history.

Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar) met Chris Novoselic (born Krist Novoselic) (bass) in 1985 in Aberdeen, Washington, a small logging town 100 miles away from Seattle. While Novoselic came from a relatively stable background, Cobain's childhood had been thrown into turmoil when his parents divorced when he was eight. Following the divorce, he lived at the homes of various relatives, developing a love for the Beatles and then heavy metal in the process. Eventually, American hardcore punk worked its way into dominating his listening habits and he met the Melvins, an Olympia-based underground heavy punk band. Cobain began playing in punk bands like Fecal Matter, often with the Melvins' bassist Dale Crover. Through the Melvins' leader, Buzz Osborne, Cobain met Novoselic, who also had an intense interest in punk, which meant that he, like Cobain, felt alienated from the macho, redneck population of Aberdeen. The duo decided to form a band called the Stiff Woodies, with Cobain on drums, Novoselic on bass, and a rotating cast of guitarists and vocalists. The group went through name changes as quickly as guitarists, before deciding that Cobain would play guitar and sing. Renamed Skid Row, the new trio featured drummer Aaron Burkhart, who left the band by the end of 1986 and was replaced by Chad Channing. By 1987, the band was called Nirvana.

Nirvana began playing parties in Olympia, gaining a cult following. Around 1987, the band made ten demos with producer Jack Endino, who played the recordings to Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of the Seattle-based indie label Sub Pop. Poneman signed Nirvana, and in December of 1988, the band released its first single, a cover of Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz." Sub Pop orchestrated an effective marketing scheme, which painted the band as backwoods, logging-town hicks, which irritated Cobain and Novoselic. While "Love Buzz" was fairly well-received, the band's debut album, Bleach, was what got the ball rolling. Recorded for just over $600 and released in June 1989, Bleach slowly became a hit on college radio, due to the group's consistent touring. Though Jason Everman was credited as a second guitarist on the sleeve of Bleach, he didn't appear on the record; he only toured in support of the album before leaving the band at the end of the year to join Soundgarden and then Mindfunk. Bleach sold 35,000 copies and Nirvana became favorites of college radio, the British weekly music press, and Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and Dinosaur Jr., which was enough to attract the attention of major labels.

In July 1990, Nirvana recorded "Sliver"/"Dive" with Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters on drums and producer Butch Vig. The band also made a six-song demo with Vig, which was shopped to major labels, who soon began competing to sign the group. In August, they hit the road with Sonic Youth's Goo tour (including Crover on drums). That September, Dave Grohl, formerly of the D.C.-based hardcore band Scream, became Nirvana's drummer and the band signed with DGC for $287,000. Nirvana recorded their second album with Vig, completing the record in June of 1991. Nevermind was released in September, supported by a quick American tour. While DGC was expecting a moderately successful release, in the neighborhood of 100,000 copies, Nevermind immediately became a smash hit, quickly selling out its initial shipment of 50,000 copies and creating a shortage across America. What helped the record become a success was "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a blistering four-chord rocker that was accompanied by a video that shot into heavy MTV rotation. By the beginning of 1992, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had climbed into the American Top Ten and Nevermind bumped Michael Jackson's much-touted comeback album Dangerous off the top of the album charts; it reached the British Top Ten shortly afterward. By February, the album had been certified triple platinum.

Nirvana's success took the music industry by surprise, Nirvana included. From the moment Nirvana were met with mainstream visibility, Cobain used his newfound fame to relentlessly push his favorite independent artists as if their music was more important than his own. This took the form of bringing Japanese alt-pop trio Shonen Knife on tour, covering lesser-known but formative artists like the Wipers, the Vaselines, and Meat Puppets, or wearing a homemade Daniel Johnston t-shirt during television appearances and high-profile concerts. Cobain's enthusiastic fandom introduced untold numbers of Nirvana fans to artists they most likely wouldn't have known to seek out on their own, and in the process, energized those artists' careers.

It soon became apparent that Nirvana wasn't quite sure how to handle its success. Around the time of Nevermind's release, Cobain appeared on MTV's Headbangers Ball in drag; the group mocked the tradition of miming on the BBC's Top of the Pops, with Novoselic constantly throwing his bass into the air and Cobain singing his live vocals in the style of Ian Curtis; and their traditional live destruction of instruments was immortalized on a Saturday Night Live performance that ended with Novoselic and Grohl sharing a kiss. By early 1992, questions began to arise about the band's stability. Cobain married Courtney Love, the leader of the indie rock/foxcore band Hole, in February of 1992, announcing that the couple was expecting a child. A few months later, Nirvana canceled several concerts and refused to mount a full-scale American tour during the summer. Cobain complained that he was suffering from chronic stomach troubles, which seemed to be confirmed when he was admitted to a Belfast hospital after a June concert. While he went through these problems, DGC released the odds-and-ends compilation Incesticide late in 1992; the album reached number 39 U.S. and number 14 U.K.

As Nirvana prepared to make their third album, they released "Oh, the Guilt" as a split single with the Jesus Lizard on Touch & Go Records. Choosing Steve Albini (Pixies, the Breeders, Big Black, the Jesus Lizard) as their producer, they recorded In Utero, in two weeks during. Februrary 1993. Later in the year, reports, including an article in Newsweek, circulated that DGC was unhappy with the forthcoming album, and making accusations that Nirvana deliberately made an uncommercial record. Both the band and the label denied such allegations. Deciding that Albini's production was too flat, Nirvana decided to remaster the album with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt, who also remixed the singles "Heart Shaped Box" and "All Apologies." In Utero was released in September of 1993 to positive reviews and strong initial sales, debuting at the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts. Nirvana supported it with an American tour, hiring former Germs member Pat Smear as an auxiliary guitarist. While the album and the tour were both successful, sales weren't quite as strong as expected, with several shows not selling out until the week of the concert. As a result, the group agreed to play MTV's acoustic Unplugged show at the end of the year, and sales of In Utero picked up after its December airing.

After wrapping up their U.S. tour on January 8, 1994 with a show at Center Arena in Seattle, Nirvana embarked on a European tour in February. Following a concert in Munich on February 29, Cobain stayed in Rome to vacation with Love. On March 4, she awakened to find that Cobain had attempted suicide. When he returned to Seattle, his mental illness grew worse. Love and Nirvana's management organized an intervention program that resulted in Cobain's admission to the Exodus Recovery Center in L.A. on March 30, but he left the clinic on April 1, returning to Seattle. His mother filed a missing persons report on April 4. On April 5, Cobain died by suicide at his Seattle home.After his death, Kurt Cobain was quickly anointed as a spokesman for Generation X, as well as a symbol of its tortured angst.

Novoselic and Grohl planned to release a double-disc live album at the end of 1994, but sorting through the tapes proved to be too painful, so MTV Unplugged in New York appeared in its place. The album debuted at the top of the British and American charts, as a home video comprised of live performances and interviews from the band's Nevermind era, titled Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, was issued at the same time (the project began prior to Cobain's passing and was completed by surviving bandmembers). In 1996, MTV Unplugged in New York's electric counterpart, From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, was released, debuting at the top of the U.S. charts. Following Cobain's death, Grohl formed the Foo Fighters, releasing their self-titled debut album in 1995, followed by The Colour and the Shape in 1997 and There Is Nothing Left to Lose in 1999. Novoselic formed the trio Sweet 75, releasing their debut in the spring of 1997, and also appeared along with former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra and former Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil on the 2000 live set Live from the Battle in Seattle under the name the No W.T.O. Combo.

By the late '90s, Novoselic began research for a proposed box set of previously unreleased songs from throughout Nirvana's career. The project was supposed to surface in the fall of 2001 (to coincide with the tenth anniversary release of Nevermind), but legal issues delayed its release. Finally, the Nirvana LLC partnership -- which included Grohl, Novoselic, and Love -- came to an agreement and the album-length compilation Nirvana was released in October of 2002. Although that release included only one unreleased song, the long-awaited box set, titled With the Lights Out, appeared in late 2004, including three discs of rare and unreleased material plus a live DVD that featured material filmed as early as 1988. The band's 1992 set at the Reading Festival was released in 2009 as Live at Reading. The same year, Sub Pop began a Nirvana studio album reissue campaign with Bleach; special 20th-anniversary editions of Nevermind and In Utero followed in 2011 and 2013, respectively. In 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe. Cobain's place in the induction performance was taken by several vocalists, including Joan Jett and Kim Gordon”.

For anyone who is not that familiar with Nirvana, I hope that this mixtape provides some impetus to check out their catalogue. In spite of the fact that we tragically lost Kurt Cobain in 1994, what he and Nirvana left behind will remain forever. The music’s legacy will continue to spread and grow. Nirvana are one of the greatest bands…

WE will ever see.

FEATURE: I See the People Working: Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

I See the People Working

Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap at Forty-Five

__________

THERE is no denying that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Denis O’Regan

this single was a big turning point for Kate Bush. I have written another anniversary feature for this track. On 21st June, 1981, Sat in Your Lap was released. It was the first single from The Dreaming. This offering that arrived over a year before the album came out. It must have been strange for fans to get this single and then wait so long for an album. However, Sat in Your Lap definitely marked a real moment of growth and evolution. There is something I want to raise first. It is fascinating looking at all the different promotion Kate Bush did for her music. Today, there are a few T.V. shows, though most promotion is done online or radio. Back in 1981, when Kate Bush released Sat in Your Lap, T.V. was still a very powerful and important source of promotion. However, how do you market Kate Bush in terms of the shows she appears on? One of the great events around Sat in Your Lap is when Kate Bush appeared on Razzmatazz. This was a Pop show for children, and it was produced at Tyne Tees. This article recalls when Bush appeared on the shoe on 14th July, 1981. It was a brilliant and unusual experience:

“For the Sat In Your Lap promo spot, Kate was interviewed by Razzmatazz’s Lyn Spencer, and took questions from the young school age audience, even letting the miscreants try on props for the single’s video – and gave an early insight into her artistic prowess. Spencer recalls how “the male members of the crew were particularly excited at the prospect of Kate Bush appearing on the show – they had seen her racy stage costumes!”

“When I met Kate she was absolutely adorable, and quite shy. I decided to mic her up myself rather than have the sound department boys drooling over her, so I wasn’t Ms Popularity on that day as they were probably fighting for pole position. I remember the interview well, as we played in snippets of her very popular promotional videos, and she talked about the making of these, showed props from them and took questions from the young audience.”

“Smile, Kate, you’re on rancid camera.”

“It was such a great feature that the producers decided to extend the piece, which was originally scheduled to be edited to three minutes. The final piece ran for seven minutes, which is a large chunk of time for a show that fills a half-hour slot. However, Kate was very hot at the time and the feature was very well received. My lasting impression of her was that she was very sweet, charming, softly spoken, but obviously hugely talented as well as being a beautiful young lady.”

Kate told Razzmatazz: “The song really dictates what you have to do with it. Some songs are very simple and other songs become almost little epics where you have to section lots of little things together. It really is a lot of fun. For me it is like making a film. I think of it as something very special.” Bush then showed a storyboard for her Army Dreamers single from the previous year, and went on to say:

“That’s the wonderful thing about art, like music and dancing, everything you do can then become your work. If you’re cleaning up one night you might suddenly realise what a great routine it would make. It’s keeping your mind open to all these things. It’s really fun, life becomes work. Music and dance are meant to go together, they are very close arts. I went to see an incredible performance by someone called Lindsay Kemp, and I suddenly realised that this was what I was looking for, this movement combined with music”.

There is a great interview from 1981 that I want to come to. I wanted to lead with that article about Razzmatazz. The promotion around the single. It was quite an unusual one in terms of Pop music. Not necessarily that commercial or familiar to what children and teens were listening to in 1981. Quite a gamble going on this kid’s show and talking about a song that must have seemed quite complex and strange in terms of its inspirations. There were periods in Kate Bush’s career where she was burnt out and depressed. Working so hard on an album and then going into another one. That happened after Never for Ever came out. Whereas maybe piano was the inspiration and starting point for most of her songs before Sat in Your Lap, that then changed. This Dreams of Orgonon article that I soured for the other forty-fifth anniversary feature reveals why Sat in Your Lap was a turning point. Also, how Bush suffered this burn out and had this hard period after the 1980 album came out:

“The aftermath of Never for Ever was a period of burnout for Bush. Prone to depressive burnouts after the completion of projects, she found herself drifting into a nadir of fruitless ennui, which she deemed “the anti-climax after all the work.” Completing Never for Ever in May 1980, Bush, not for the last time, put significant space between herself and the public, taking a holiday after an exhausting several months of recording. By the time Never for Ever was released in September, Bush was only just recovering from her creative inertia. Her timing was auspicious, as Never for Ever not only became her first #1 LP in the UK but the country’s first ever #1 studio album by a female solo artist ever. Never for Ever’s success was accompanied by heaps of promotion by Bush, including the usual run of performing songs on talk shows as well as signing albums for hundreds of fans at a time. Now she had more creative agency than she had previously, touting Never for Ever as “the first [album] [she] could hand to people with a smile.” Kate Bush the prodigy who sang “Wuthering Heights” was already a distant memory, transforming into Kate Bush the great 1980s British songwriter.

Yet Bush’s listlessness and struggle to write songs persisted for some time. It’s not hard to see why — the stress of Never for Ever’s production and the attention of the British public would be enough to put a damper on anyone’s creative output. It took seeing other musicians at work to get her motivated again. In September, Bush and her boyfriend Del Palmer attended a Stevie Wonder concert at Wembley Arena. Wonder was in a period of creative renewal himself. Having recently turned out a rare Motown flop in the distinctively titled Journey Through “the Secret Life of Plants”, he’d rebuilt confidence with his delightful Hotter than July LP. The concert broke Bush out of her writer’s block — “inspired by the feeling of his music,” as she later wrote, Bush got back to work on her songs, and forged a path towards her next album.

Bush’s work to date was largely harmonic, built around what notes went together interestingly on the piano. Rhythm was secondary for her: it’s hard to think of a rhythmically powerful song on Bush’s first three albums. Her preparations for Kate Bush IV had thus far consisted of little bits of melody, but without a focal center. After the Wonder concert, she realized she needed to start her songwriting from the rhythm track upwards. At home, she programmed a rhythm into her Roland drum machine (according to my friend Marlo, the Roland on her demo from the period sounds like a CR-78, and woe to anyone who disagrees with Marlo on drum machines), and “worked in [a] piano riff to the hi-hat and snare.” A demo resulted: “Sat In Your Lap,” Kate Bush’s first solo production, was in its nascency.

“Sat In Your Lap” wasn’t always Bush’s first self-produced song. For a time, she entertained bringing in experienced producers, including long-standing David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, going so far as to spend a day in the studio with him. The collaboration went nowhere, and Visconti has grossly remarked “all I can remember is the Bush bum.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bush decided to take on the producer role herself, with the intensive collaboration of a series of engineers. The first set of sessions for the album that would be The Dreaming were staged at Townhouse Studios in May 1981. Her collaborating engineer was Hugh Padgham, a producer for Phil Collins and XTC known for the “gated drum” sound that would define 80s pop (compress the drums, use a recording console’s “gate” to remove their reverb, resulting in a kind of sound vacuum. See Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”). Bush and Padgham’s time in Townhouse was productive yet short-lived. Padgham is rare among Bush collaborators in having negative feelings about working with her, grumbling about her tendency to overpack a mix and experiment rather than having a concrete, straightforward vision. After laying backing tracks for three songs, Padgham moved on, dissatisfied with his latest gig but having indelibly marked the sound of The Dreaming.

Bush’s ad-libs, piano riffs, and rhythm track came together quickly in the studio, quicker than any other song on The Dreaming. Having a drum-centric engineer like Padgham was incredibly useful for her, as the early recording of Bush’s rhythm track showed. “Sat In Your Lap” is heavily percussive, built around its drum sound and brass section (initially synthesized on a Yamaha CS-80). The partially syncopated drumbeat (“dum-DUM-dum-DUM”) is Preston Heyman’s most memorable to date, a fine translation of the demo. The frantic, almost pharyngeal rhythm track has a kick drum so guttural and suppressed (though not apparently gated) that it can easily be mistaken for one of Bush’s vocal onomatopoeias. The track’s sonic menagerie (Bush’s recurring motif of musical instruments as bodily extensions lives to a maniacal extent), a veritable ensemble of screams, tinny horns on the Fairlight CMI, swishing bamboo sticks (thanks to Paddy Bush and Preston Heyman) childlike whispers, “HO-HO-HO’s,” and bellows of “JUST when I think I’m king!”

What better to bring Bush out of a period of creative stagnation than a missive to psychological stagnation? Or even better, a tremendously loud, busy, and clamorous one. Amidst the song’s sheer volume is a narrative of inertia and stillness. Bush deploys a childlike whisper in the verses, a canny juxtaposition with the rhythm track’s masculine percussiveness, indicating juvenile trepidation as she watches adults go about their lives: “I see the people working/I see it working for them/and so I want to join them/but then I find it hurts me.” The verses are terse observations from an unmoving figure, grounded in a desire to catch up and have a powerful mind: “I see the people happy/so can it happen for me?,” “I want to be a lawyer/I want to be a scholar/but I really can’t be bothered,” “I want the answers quickly/but I don’t have no energy”.

katebushnews.com · Kate Bush Fan Podcast Episode 43 - Preston Heyman Interview Exclusive - Sat In Your Lap Special!

I do want to finish with an interview from 1981. The point of this piece, not only is to mark forty-five year of one of Kate Bush’s best and most important singles. Looking at the promotion around the single and some background. How she went from Never for Ever and the period after that and into the first single from an album that would also cause burn out. It is hard to read that Bush took so much out of herself. That promotion did that too. Going from one album and needing to rest and feeling overwhelmed or worn out. Then this happening with her very next one. I do want to include again this interview from Record Mirror of September 1981. A few months after Sat in Your Lap was released, it is clear that Sat in Your Lap and 1981 was a change. In terms of her sound and maybe how the press perceived her: “No longer the little girl, wide-eyed, fey and whimsical, so beloved of award-show presenters with her squeaky string of "amazings" and "fantastic”:

“It's been two years now since what Kate calls her "Tour of Life", a massive circus of a tour that won't, repeat won't take place again until next year at the earliest. Again, it's been six months since the last single and Sat In Your Lap, as much as anything she's done, is the start of a new era, another "cosmic cycle" that will see the release of a new album later this year.

And now that all those ideas in the past--a theatrical tour that was a combination of the innovative and the unexpected, an album last year that surpassed all that went before it--have become reality, she's a powerful personality. SHe makes points where she used to make only comments, argues from experience now as much as from excitement, pushes herself as an artist ("one of us", she says, referring to the type) much more than a surprised, precocious talent.

Yet she's still infectious [huh?], vulnerable at times, as open to ideas as ever. Richness and fame don't embarass her; slowness in honing her creativity probably does, just a little.

Her favourite expression on this meeting wasn't one of wonderment, astonishment (ah, the cliche!); rather a dismissive pout of "Pah!" -- almost French, knowledgeable, and nearly coquettish.

"Pah! Let them think that! Pah! That's wrong!" she seems to imply, ready to underline her ideas. Call it a change, call it maturity, call it confidence in her art, for it almost certainly is. Take money:

"I've changed. I don't pretend it's not there any more, which I used to do," she says. "I'm not worried about being rich, I just didn't think of taking advantage of it. Now I buy things that I can use, things that will help me, like synthesisers and drum machines.

"My life has never been into money, more into emotional desires; like being an incredible singer or an incredible dancer; and if I can buy something that can help me, I will now. But I wouldn't buy something that I couldn't live with, like a country house which I don't need. [Actually, about two years after giving this interview, Kate bought--a country house.] I'd rather buy a huge synthesiser that I could live with all day."

She emphasises and explains, thinks out the question, returns to her theme. The easy answers have gone over the years. Take her career...

Kate maintains that there hasn't really been a gap, even though she admits that Sat In Your Lap only surfaced after her longest break to date.

"My slowness at doing things surprises me," she says, "but i have been doing things continuously. It's a battle to keep up with all the things I want to do, and obviously things like dancing are going to suffer. I couldn't spend twelve hours a day in a studio like I'm doing at the moment, and dance, as well."

Again the emphasis on her way of working--the only way. The ups and downs are of her own making, they don't follow rules. And Kate only bows to her own pressures.

"The last album was the first one that I would actually hand over to people with a smile," she says, almost seeming to imply that it was the first one she was actually pleased with, "and that was followed by a greater period of non-creativity, when I just couldn't write properly at all.

"It happened before, when the tour was over, and then I felt I'd just given so much out that I was like a drained battery, very physically and tired and also a bit depressed.

"This time it was worse; a sort of terrible introverted depression. The anti-climax after all the work really set in in a bad way, and that can be very damaging to an artist. I could sit down at the piano and want to write, and nothing would happen. It was like complete introspection time.

"I suppose I had about two months out earlier this year...and that was a break I really needed. It gave me time to see friends, do things I hadn't been able to do for three years.

"It wasn't really as if I was missing out on normality," she laughs. "I'd rather hang on to madness than normality anyway, so it was more like recharging."

But something more came out of it than just a rest?

"Oh yes!" The smile returns. "I felt as if my writing needed some kind of shock, and I think I've found one for myself. The single is the start, and I'm trying to be brave about the rest of it. It's almost as if I'm going for commercial-type "hits" for the whole album.

[I have always been struck by this statement. It seems to me to indicate that Kate really doesn't have a very sound notion of what is "commercial"--which is all to the good, of course. For if she felt that The Dreaming had a commercial sound, then some listeners's criticism that she seemed to have developed a calculatedly commercial sound for the next album, Hounds of Love, loses credence, since her mental image of "commercial" sound is so different from the sound of Hounds of Love.]

"I want it to be experimental and quite cinematic, if that doesn't sound too arrogant. Never For Ever was slightly cinematic, so I'll just have to go all the way."

The shock that Kate refers to, eyes almost ablaze as she uses the word, came months ago...after she started to work with a rhythm machine while she was writing.

"I'm sure lots of things that I'm trying to do won't work," she says, "but I found that the main problem was the rhythm section. The piano, which is what I was used to writing with, is so far removed from the drums. So I tried writing with the rhythm rather than the tune."

Sat In Your Lap, naturally, is the first fruit of the new approach--original (in that it could only be Kate Bush) marriage of pounding drum sounds and two layers of voice. There is a theme, but it's the rhythm that hits you first, blasting right through to the synthesised end--a step that she knows is likely to continue the critical division.

"I was really frightened about the single for a while," she admits. "I mixed the song and played it to people, and there was complete silence afterwards, or else people would say they liked it to me and perhaps go away and say what they really thought.

"Of course it's really worrying, because there's an assumption that if you're one of us, an artist, you don't need feedback at all, when in fact you need it as much as ever, if not more. I really appreciate feedback, and I'm lucky that the people closest to me, my friends and family, are used to me and realise that I've got my own 'bowl of feedback' to rely on."

And that's more important than the public reaction, or do you worry?

"There will always be some who are irritated by me. I seem to irritate a lot of people," she smiles, "and in a way that's quite a good thing."

Nor will the change stop there. Drums, Kate enthuses, are as wide a concept as music itself, and she's determined to go further than "a lazy acceptance of a drum kit." Add that to the news that she'll be working with other musicians on the new album--"the best around"--and it seems likely that "Kate Bush 4" will be one of the big surprises of the year.

As a preview she plays me one track that's currently being worked on: a wild soaring collusion with Irish group Planxty entitled Night of the Swallow, which also features one of the Chieftains. Again the sound is unmistakable, but this time it's Kate Bush married to the heartbeat of traditional Irish folk.

Discussing the project brings Kate Bush into larger-than-life focus once more. The burning enthusiasm returns, along with the string of "amazings", "incredibles" and "fantastics". She'd been up all night in the studio the previous night in Dublin, and her reactions are genuine, real and hard to resist.

"I'm still really up from the experience," she says. "In fact, I'm still reeling from it. I asked them if they'd be interested, and the whole thing was so relaxed, it was wonderful. I badly want to work with them again. I'm so excited about the fusion.

"And I think that there's so much of the Irish in my mother that it all suddenly came back to me--it was fate rearing its head at just the right time!"

So that's two surprises already, and although Kate has been making demo tracks since March, and Abbey Road is now her second home, the rest will have to wait until summer completion...if all goes according to plan.

What about the book you're planning to write, though? Again, she sighs (a marginal sigh) and repeats her line: "There's so many things I want to do, and it's so hard to fit them all in..."

But yes, a book is on the cards, hopefully before the end of the year, and she says: "I'd like to write it myself. Without saying anything about the other books, which I don't want to, I feel almost pressured to speak, otherwise there's this huge misrepresented area.

"In one way it's ridiculous--I feel it's much too early to write a book, I've hardly done anything yet. But I really want people to be aware of reality--subjective reality, obviously”.

That notion that an autobiography would be released by Kate Bush. To be called Leaving My Tracks. This is worth highlighting, as I feel one reason why she would have wanted to do this was put the record straight. So many misconceptions around her, his would have provided some truth and clarity from Kate Bush. However, as we read, the project was scrapped in 1983: “For some time in the first half of the Eighties, Kate Bush considered writing an autobiography. She was asked to write a book probably as early as 1980. At first Kate decided not to write an autobiography, but in the course of about a year the idea morphed into a book about her experiences and views, like an exploration of her work. There may even have been a proof text. Publishers Sidgwick & Jackson actually produced a dustjacket for the book, entitled Leaving My Tracks (pictured here). According to library data, the book was to run 144 pages plus 8 pages of photographs. The official fanclub even announced a release date somewhere in the autumn of 1981. In late 1983, the project was shelved indefinitely. No autobiography has ever been published. It isn’t even known if Kate ever wrote one or more chapters for the book”. On 21st June, we mark forty-five years of Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap. I hope this feature provided an idea of the background and lead-up to Sat in Your Lap. How it did cause a bit of a rumble, as this was like nothing we had heard from Kate Bush. It signalled a new direction. Also, “Two versions of Sat In Your Lap were released: the single version and the album version. Kate Bush stated in an early interview that the single version was remixed slightly for inclusion on The Dreaming. The vocals were raised higher and the backing track altered to fit in better with the overall feel of the album”. I was keen to include that to end up. Also, that the single reached number eleven in the U.K. It was the most successful single from The Dreaming. It is a shame that the song was not performed as part of a larger tour. It would have been amazing to see how it fitted in. However, there is no denying the fact Sat in Your Lap is a masterpiece. After suffering burn out and fatigue, there was this new spark and confidence. That struggle to write song and period of inactivity did probably affect the release date of The Dreaming. If people expected an album late in 1981, they had to wait until September 1982 until her fourth album came out. Forty-five years after its release and Sat in Your Lap remains…

THIS brilliant single.

FEATURE: I Give Them What They Want to Hear: Just How Far and Deep Does Kate Bush’s Influence Extend?

FEATURE:

 

 

I Give Them What They Want to Hear

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthony Freeman/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Just How Far and Deep Does Kate Bush’s Influence Extend?

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I often write about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé

Kate Bush’s influence and how she is so revered by artists new and established. Last year was one where so many incredible albums were released. I have said how so many of these albums were from artists who were influenced by Kate Bush or count her as a favourite. You can either hear it directly in their music or the artist in question is a fan. And not only artists who are inspired by one of her albums or this narrow time period. There are a lot of rising artists who are Kate Bush fans. There are a couple of huge artists who have not spoken about their love of Kate Bush or confirmed whether they are a fan. It always intrigues me, as I have this theory that Kate Bush has influenced and is admired by the majority of the very best artists. Some of the most impressive and acclaimed live tours too. Even if ROSALÍA’s LUX TOUR is very much bigger and perhaps more impactful than Kate Bush’s 2014 residency, Before the Dawn, ROSALÍA is a fan of Kate Bush, and I feel her pushing the boundaries and possibilities of what live music can be is, in part, because of Kate Bush. LUX, one of the best albums of this century, definitely has elements of Bush’s music in it. Beyoncé is one of those huge artists who I am not sure has spoken about Kate Bush, though you know, if asked, she would show love for her. These sort of gaps and blanks where you want to fill. Beyoncé has some big anniversaries this year. Lemonade turned ten on 23rd April. B’Day turns twenty on 1st September. Beyoncé turns forty-five three days later. At the time of writing this feature (9th May), there are rumours from the Beehive (the name for Beyoncé’s fans and their community) that a new album or material will drop. By the time you read this, I wonder whether something will be out. Looking at her evolution and sonic shifts, it does put me in mind of Kate Bush. Someone who I hope shouts out her music at some point.

IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish photographed for ELLE, April 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Willy Vanderperre

Another reason for re-raising this topic is to take it wider. It is pleasing that, last month, Billie Eilish shouted out Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Among the albums she is vibing to at the moment, Eilish also said how she was listening to the weirder and odder Kate Bush music. In 2019, this article proclaimed how Billie Eilish is the Kate Bush we need right now. In fact, it was when  Amy Poehler interviewed Eilish. The American artist talked about her love of Wuthering Heights and Army Dreamers (from 1980’s Never for Ever). An artist of such stature and brilliance this confirmed Kate Bush fan. Eilish also heard snippets of Don’t Give Up, her 1986 duet with Peter Gabriel, for the first time, and cheekily asked if she and Gabriel were ‘close’, let’s say, at the time! I know that there will be artists who are not Kate Bush fans. Though it is amazing that Bush’s influence is so wide and rich. And that artists like Billie Eiilsuh are digging the spookier or darker songs. There was a period when mostly Hounds and Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) were mentioned and heard. After that Stranger Things inclusion in 2022. Now, many artists are looking further. Not only Bush’s recorded material. Her interviews, causes she stands up for and her live work. Incorporation that and taking it in new and interesting personal directions. I published a feature recently where I tried to manifest a commission from The New Yorker, where I get to speak with a range of people who are fans of Kate Bush. Published in February 2028 to mark fifty years of her debut album, The Kick Inside, speaking with Billie Eilish would be incredible.

I am looking beyond music. As I am a music journalist, my main focus is artists and music. However, I have mentioned how director Greta Gerwig and actress Margot Robbie have love for Kate Bush. There is a whole book or series to be made where we think about all the people who have their own reasons for loving Kate Bush. In terms of great writers, directors, actors, comics, politicians and broadcasters, is it even possible to calculate and represent the scale and scope of her influence?! Maybe not. We know Guy Pearce (especially fervently) and Winona Ryder are Kate Bush devotees. I return to this subject again, because we talk about Kate Bush’s influence and impact mostly in music terms. How so much of the modern landscape and music from the past forty-or-so years has been affected by her. But consider wider culture. From films and productions through to works of literature. Broadcasters who are impacted by her and that feeds into their work in different ways. I suppose there will be think-pieces around this subject in 2028, as it is a big anniversary year and it would be a good time. I have not seen many (if any) articles the past few years that explore Bush’s cultural impact and how so much of the best music being made can be traced back to her. I have referenced a Brianna Holt feature from COMPLEX published in 2020 that has now been removed. It is sad that there is so little written and discussed when it comes to Bush’s importance. There is this 2018 feature that discusses Kate Bush’s ongoing incandescence and influence. This from 2021 about Hounds of Love (1985) and how it changed and transformed Electronic music. In 2022, the BBC discussed Kate Bush’s influence and why she is unique;

“Her influence, however, has been constant, with disciples including Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Lady Gaga, Bat for Lashes, Goldfrapp, Florence Welch, Joanna Newsom, Tricky and Outkast. Some artists open the door to a new room in the house of music; Bush is one of a handful whose imagination revealed the existence of a whole new wing. For her, anything can be the germ of a song (inspirations on Aerial include laundry, bird song and the number Pi) and any perspective is legitimate: a child, a foetus, a cockney bank robber, a Himalayan explorer, a man watching his wife give birth, a ghost. She is an adventurer and an alchemist; a perfectionist and a dreamer.

For a genius, Bush is unusually nice, with no reputation for tormented or difficult behaviour. The closest she has ever sailed to controversy is when she praised Theresa May, as a female prime minister, in 2016. From Joni and Aretha to Adele and Mary J Blige, great female artists are often associated with the expression of emotional pain – heartbreak is their engine – but Bush has a rare talent for joy, empathy and wonder.

In interviews she is lovely, if deftly evasive, unable or unwilling to put into words why and how she makes music of such magical intensity. The more that she denies that there is any mystery to unravel, the more fascinating she becomes. She told me that she loves it when listeners mishear or misread her songs as long as they take something positive from the experience: "Whether you've understood what the artist felt is basically irrelevant. It's how it makes you feel”.

I would say there needs to be more written about her in general. Something, ironically, I have written about a fair few times. Each time we get an artist mentioning Kate Bush or we feel her influence beyond music, it does make me wonder whether more can be done. Articles and entire books written about other artists and their legacy and how they have inspired countless people across culture and throughout the world. What started with acknowledging a Billie Eilish Kate Bush shout-out has made me examine Bush’s deeper influence. I am not sure if I have even gone as deep as I should. Without waiting for a new album or words from Kate Bush, where are the writers and podcasters who could be using the time to truly explore and dissect her brilliance and growing and widening influence. If there was to be this wave of new consideration and representation, it would be absolutely…

GREAT to see.

FEATURE: In the Stars: Why The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues Is Such an Exciting and Important Album

FEATURE:

 

 

In the Stars

Why The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues Is Such an Exciting and Important Album

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I guess a band…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, and Keith Richards joined Conan O’Brien during the exclusive launch event of their new album, Foreign Tongues, at Weylin on 5th May, 2026 in Brooklyn, NY/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for UMG

like The Rolling Stones can command a pretty impressive guestlist when it comes to a new album. Before getting there, I want to touch on something that I raised when writing about Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Two Beatles legends in their eighties releasing albums so close to one another. How we are so privileged to live in a time when this is happening. Both artists might not release too many other albums, which makes their latest albums – Ringo Starr’s Long Long Road and Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane -, so important. How they are still so close and Starr appears on a track from the McCartney album. We also have the honour of seeing Paul Simon take to the stage and still in heart-stopping form. Perhaps this will be the final album from The Rolling Stones and they may tour this one and then wind down. However, you hope that they make more music, as anything we get from these music legends is a real blessing. Foreign Tongues will be out on 10th July. As exciting as it is to see Paul McCartney host an intimate evening at Abbey Road Studios, and his genius still out there in the world, the endurance of The Rolling Stones is a real mind-blowing thing. How they have been playing together over sixty years and they are still together. Band members have left or sadly passed on, yet the focal point of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards remains. Foreign Tongues, when reading that title, seems like it will react to anti-immigration sentiment or it will have a political edge. I am really excited to see what comes from it. I feel their twenty-fifth studio album will be hugely well received. 2023 ‘s Hackney Diamonds got a lot of four-star reviews, it won the award for Best Rock Album at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, and it was an album that saw collaborations with Lady Gaga and Elton John (among others). One of the collaborators, Paul McCartney, also features on Foreign Tongues.

Although the band are on a great run and seem so excited for their new album, you get the feeling that it may be a full stop or one of their last offerings. On Angry, we see actress Sydney Sweeny in the video. She hit back at claims she was objectified. I feel it was the band hiring this amazingly cool and compelling person to add something vivacious, free and mesmeric. Rather than anything lurid. I believe the music video for In the Stars will feature actress Odessa A'zion. I am excited to see that. As great as it is to welcome and support new artists and those who have been around for a few years, there is something extra special regarding legacy artists and those who have played for decades. Not only because of how long their careers have lasted, but because they adapt and succeed at a very different time. One that is perhaps very strange compared to what it was like when they started. It is not easy to appeal to the existing fanbase and also connected with a newer, younger generation. Artists like The Rolling Stones do. I will move on, though I want to drop in this NME featured, where the band joined Conan O’Brien on stage in N.Y.C. to talk about Foreign Tongues and people they worked with on the album:

“The Rolling Stones rang in their new album era at the historic Weylin in Brooklyn, New York City, to open up about their new record ‘Foreign Tongues’ at a rollicking album launch event last night (Tuesday May 5).

Just a few hours after announcing their latest LP ‘Foreign Tongues‘, set for release on July 10, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood spoke with host, comedian Conan O’Brien to discuss collaborating with The Cure‘s Robert Smith and The Beatles legend Paul McCartney, their late drummer Charlie Watts being featured on the album, and how they continue to push their musicality after more than 60 years.

O’Brien introduced the band to the audience of media members and VIPs after a quick quip on the follow-up to 2023’s ‘Hackney Diamonds‘ being the album that would finally “kick them into high gear after years of toiling and obscurity”.

The former Late Night host and longtime Stones fan applauded the band for their “spectacular” and “brilliant” album, before asking Jagger how his voice seemed to have gotten better over the years, to which he cracked back: “I was taking a lot of drugs back in 1968 I wasn’t taking this album.”

The band discussed the diversity of sound on their new album and a country track called ‘Ringing Hollow’. “Keith and I, when we were really young, we both liked country music a lot,” Jagger shared. “We would play it, we’d always liked Hank Williams. You can’t really imitate those people, but we absorbed that style. ‘Ringing Hollow’, which is a love song to America, I didn’t want to express it in a rock way. I thought it was better that we did it in a country way.”

O’Brien also talked to the band about how their approach to pushing their creativity and ambition has changed over the last six decades. “You guys are the greatest rock band in the history of the world. When you listen to these tracks, you’re playing like you have something to prove. There’s an urgency to it, an immediacy to it, an energy to it that’s really stunning,” O’Brien said.

“I love a challenge. That’s the whole album, the challenge of raising the bar. We’ve always been ambitious,” Jagger responded. “The thing about this record that I find interesting. And you say, ‘You’ve got nothing to prove,’ but The Stones is a rock band, but The Stones also has the ability to do ballads and country music and dance music, they run in the gamut of all these styles. We’re not stuck in one particular style; over the years, we’ve loved all kinds of music. So, we express that in the way we record and what songs we write.”

Richards added: “It’s quite possible that there’s more in there. And that’s what we’re looking for.”

They recorded all of the new songs for ‘Foreign Tongues’ in less than a month at Metropolis Studios in West London. Grammy-award-winning producer Andrew Watt, who worked with them on their previous album and who Richards described as their “referee”, was once again tapped for his modern meets classic rock approach.

‘Foreign Tongues,’ also features a legendary list of guests, including Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, Robert Smith, and Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ drummer Chad Smith.

“We did a session with Paul on the last album, and this is a track from those sessions,” Jagger said, noting that the LP is made up of 10 new tracks recorded in London and four from previous sessions. When O’Brien asked if there were collaborators who felt intimidated to work with The Stones, Jagger replied: “With Paul, he really wanted to jump in there. He was next door in the studio.”

Wood joined in, joking, “There was no intimidation with Paul. He just wanted to play with the band; he wanted to tick that box. He was like, ‘Finally, I can say I played with The Rolling Stones’.”

Jagger also shared an anecdote on working with Robert Smith. “He was standing there with his back to me and this long gown on and when he turned around, he was covered in lipstick. And I said, I never met him before, ‘You’re Robert Smith of The Cure’. And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve never met’. And I said, ‘While you’re here, you better go and do something’. That’s how collaborations work sometimes,” he smiled.

This comes after Smith said that he tried to book McCartney and The Stones for his curated Meltdown Festival at London’s Southbank in 2018, but they were unavailable.

Wood praised Winwood’s contribution to the album, before the band acknowledged an unreleased track, ‘Hit Me In The Head’, which features Watts drumming during one of his final recording sessions before passing in 2021. “We did that in Los Angeles with Charlie, and it’s real fast, like a punk rocker,” Jagger said of the track. “It’s a super fast song.”

O’Brien also asked the band if, at this stage in their career, they still see the album-making process as fun. “Yes, we’re having fun most of the time. A lot of times, you have to concentrate and make those five minutes really count. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of concentration,” Jagger said. “We did have a lot of fun. It’s not a long, drawn-out process. Four weeks is four weeks. We used to spend months and months in the studio and never leave.”

The Rolling Stones also shared the new single ‘In The Stars’ yesterday, before closing the moderated portion of the NYC event with a preview of the music video – featuring a younger version of the band and actress Odessa A’zion, who was in attendance and danced along as the track played.

Nathaniel Mary Quin, the New York artist who painted the album’s artwork, was also in attendance and spoke about bringing the piece to life. The band also played the previously shared ‘Rough And Twisted’ (released on vinyl only as The Cockroaches) along with unreleased songs ‘Mr. Charm’ and ‘Jealous Lover’”.

Even if you think new singles, In the Stars, and Rough and Twisted are perhaps not to the standard of Hackney Diamonds of The Rolling Stones’ best, I do feel like they have a lot of the edge, energy and brilliance they always have. Foreign Tongues is going to be one of the albums of the summer. Not only because it will be brilliant and you can tell the band still love recording together. I also feel like it may be a final chapter. Or a moment where they pause. After tour dates for Foreign Tongues, where do The Rolling Stones go? It seems inconceivable they will retire. I feel like they will keep playing until they drop. But what about recording more music? I do really hope there is more from them. This incredible year when a few truly iconic artists who have been performing and recording since the 1960s – or the 1950s in the case of Paul McCartney – are releasing new music and Also collaborating with one another. It is this incredible joy! Will we see it again in 2027? I feel this year might be unique in that sense. Madonna releasing a new album too. It is quite emotional hearing The Rolling Stones now. I grew up listening to them and could not conceive they would be recording music in 2026! Who knows what the near future holds for The Rolling Stones. If their twenty-fifth studio album will be their final one. If it is, then it is a really amazing way…

TO sign off.

FEATURE: Revolutionising the Possibilities of Live Music: ROSALÍA’s Phenomenal and Transformative LUX TOUR

FEATURE:

 

 

Revolutionising the Possibilities of Live Music

IN THIS PHOTO: ROSALÍA live at London’s 02 during her LUX TOUR/PHOTO CREDIT: Samir Hussein

ROSALÍA’s Phenomenal and Transformative LUX TOUR

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I know someone who…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Samir Hussein

saw ROSALÍA in London last week. She is on her LUX TOUR at the moment. We have seen some recent tours that have changed what live music is. Taken it to new levels. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have mounted these stunning and hugely ambitious sets. Beyoncé especially has always been an innovator and groundbreaking artist. It seems that every year, phenomenal artists expand what live music is and where it can go. However, we may be witnessing one of the greatest tours that has ever been produced. I want to bring in a few reviews for ROSALÍA’s awe-inspiring tour. Even if many artists do not have the same sort of budget and opportunity as her, it is easy to think big or try and take a live show somewhere different and fail. One could argue that the greatest tours of all time have happened. Madonna and the Blond Ambition World Tour of 1990 as one. However, in terms of scale, concept and its impact, one could argue that ROSALÍA’s LUX TOUR has surpassed anything that has come before. I don’t think it is an overexaggerating to say that LUX is one of the greatest albums of the past few decades. The Spanish-born artist is revolutionising music. Even though there was criticism from some when she introduced Opera into her music, it is so different to everything around. Berghain is a masterpiece. Even if many recent Pop tours have been an incredible spectacle, ROSALÍA has created something with the impact and genius of an Opera production or an incredible piece of theatre. This is what The Guardian observed when they caught her at London’s 02:

“It’s a remarkably visceral experience, partly down to the fact that the disruptive electronic elements of the songs’ arrangements bombard the audience at astonishing volume – you can literally feel them in your ribcage – but mostly down to Rosalía’s voice. It’s not so much her way with an operatic flourish or ability to hit a high B flat, impressive though that is, but how emotionally powerful her vocals are: all the virtuosity in the world can’t account for her ability to break your heart with the fragility of Divinize or to send it soaring with the climax of Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti.

With its references to 10th-century saints and 20th century philosopher Simone Weil, Lux was an album that invited people to take it very seriously indeed – critics were only too happy to oblige – but the show itself is far wittier and more entertaining than you might expect, given the furrowed-brow reception it provoked. Between songs, Rosalía cuts a noticeably funnier and more raucous figure than the woman earnestly quoting Roland Barthes to interviewers: she demands the crowd stop being so reverential, guzzles a glass of wine before Sauvignon Blanc, attempts a British accent, and dances when she shifts into songs from 2022’s reggaeton-fuelled Motomami.. Lola Young makes a guest appearance, not to sing, but to appear in a mock-confessional, telling Rosalía an extended story about sleeping with a man she subsequently discovered was married with a child (“what a piece of shit,” nods Rosalía sympathetically); there’s a section where cameras alight on audience members, who are then encouraged to pose in the style of a succession of celebrated paintings (you’ll have to take my word for it that seeing someone attempt to imitate the posture of the model in Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix is a lot funnier in real life than it looks on paper).

Funny, intelligent, musically adventurous, visually stunning, emotionally impactful: Rosalia’s live show is a triomf, as they say back in Barcelona. It’s also incredibly heartening that it’s playing the world’s arenas: evidence both that pop fans are nowhere near as dumb as they’re frequently taken for, and that the woman at its centre is a pop star entirely unlike anyone else”.

There are a couple of other reviews I want to cover off. Five-star raves about a live experience, the likes of which we may never witness again! Rolling Stone UK attended a transformative and triumphant live show. One that must have been so affecting to everyone who was in attendance. We are witnessing an artist who an icon. We will be talking about ROSALÍA for decades more:

“The beauty of the show’s opening is then punctured by brawn in a beefed up second act. Rosalía changes outfit from white to black and sings the frenzied ‘Berghain’ (complete with a thumping techno outro) and highlights from 2022’s pop-leaning MOTOMAMI album while a swirling mass of dancers sway with her.

In the final section, a speaker billows smoke as it pendulums back and forth like incense at church, all to the chaotic soundtrack of ‘CUUUUuuuuuute’. To end the show, Rosalía ascends to heaven at the climax of final song ‘Magnolias’, then falling backwards to meet her end.

It all sounds – and is – pretty weighty stuff, high on drama and concept. What makes the show remarkable, though, is how inclusive she makes it. Every lyric is translated into English for the big screen, along with a note of which language she is singing in, adding context and weight to her consistently beautiful lyrics. “It’s a talent I was born with / I am the queen of chaos,” she sings in Japanese on ‘Porcelana’. “Because that’s what God decided.”

She is also disarmingly funny throughout, bringing levity and lightness to a show that could otherwise crumble under its own weight. After ‘Divinize’, in which she covers a portion of Dido’s ‘Thank You’, she threatens to throw water over the front rows before cackling at the idea. To feel like you’re laughing away with a friend seconds after she was setting fire to the earth with a world-beating performance is a triumph in itself.

Elsewhere, she tries to improve her English with help from the crowd, instead hilariously getting useless advice from an Italian fan, while a between acts video sees her backing dancers overdramatically mocking the performance of ‘Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti’ she just made. Later, she sings inside a picture frame while tourists gawp at her for a rendition of Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’.

Before ‘La Perla’ – her unlikely hit that sees her eviscerating a “walking red flag” of an ex – she welcomes surprise guest Lola Young to the stage to share a secret in a confession booth. Young reveals that she slept with a married man, and innocently introduces Rosalía to the phrase “doing the deed”.

To exist in both of these modes across a show like this explains why Rosalía skipped the Royal Albert Hall and found her place in arenas. “I chose this path long ago, when I didn’t even know what the fuck it means,” she says of her career towards the start of the show. “I had no idea what I was getting into.” The “nomadic life” she has chosen “can be too chaotic, and even a little discouraging,” she says, “but I chose this, and I’ll choose it again and again and again.” That choice is our continued gift”.

NME were also in attendance when ROSALÍA played in London. Noting that it was a breathtaking masterpiece and this museum piece, I wish I was there! I think that ROSALÍA will keep releasing these phenomenal albums and continue to raise the bar when it comes to her shows. Though I think that we have just seen one of the most compelling and extraordinary live shows ever:

“This is a breathtaking show through and through. An orchestra guides the songs from the centre of the arena floor, but that doesn’t stop the intense bass and beats on songs like ‘Divinize’ from thumping through your chest. Each track is given the treatment it needs to really land – ‘Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti’ has Rosalía on stage alone, shrouded in a white robe, the diamond tears she sings of twinkling in her eyes; ‘Berghain’ begins with her in a pile of bodies, moving as one, before an industrial dance break outro turns this faux-museum into a club. A cover of Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ seems slightly random on Setlist.fm, but the 33-year-old uses it to position herself as the art, standing in a picture frame to perform it as a group of “tourists” gawps.

As poignant and powerful as this performance is, there is also plenty of levity. Before ‘Sauvignon Blanc’, Rosalía sits on top of a grand piano and asks the audience to teach her how to do an English accent. When she accidentally chooses a fan from Rome who wants to teach her Italian instead, she rolls with it, then downs the contents of a large wine glass. Moments earlier, she invites Lola Young on stage to join her in a confession booth. When the British musician dishes about finding out the man she was sleeping with was married with kids, Rosalía’s reactions are gold – shocked facial expressions delivered to camera as if she’s in her own episode of The Office.

Although tonight is largely focused on ‘Lux’, a few songs from the rest of Rosalía’s discography sneak into the setlist too, to make this a slightly broader retrospective. The Spanish guitars of ‘Los Angeles’’ ‘El redentor’ get a rocky makeover, its creator’s vocals storming over the top. ‘CUUUUuuuuuute’ closes out a section where she performs from among the orchestra, a speaker adorned with flashing lights and billowing with smoke swinging over her head as the experimental, club-ready song takes the set into brasher territory.

The final two-song act takes the beauty of the night, if possible, even higher. In ‘Focu ‘Ranni’, she matches lyrics about maintaining your freedom (“I will not be your other half / Never your property”) with dashing dancers, liberated and uncontrolled. As it reaches its end, she climbs to the top of a block of stairs, and still wearing white angel wings, falls off the back into nothingness. Moments later, she reappears for a gorgeous, concluding ‘Magnolias’, backing into a bright white light that adds a holy touch. A true masterpiece”.

Even if you are not familiar with ROSALÍA’s work or have seen her live, you can appreciate that the LUX TOUR is rightfully being hailed as a work of art. Not that there is anything wrong with a straight concert or somewhat that is quite basic. However, ROSALÍA has just changed the game and is on a tour that will go down in the history books. So fortunate that we have an artist in our midst as talented and visionary as her. By all accounts, it seems that the LUX TOUR is…

A mesmeric experience.

FEATURE: The First Taste: Fiona Apple’s Tidal at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

The First Taste

 Fiona Apple’s Tidal at Thirty

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IT is inarguable…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fiona Apple in Gramercy Park, N.Y.C. in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: David Corio

that Tidal is one of the greatest debut albums of the 1990s. Fiona Apple one of the most extraordinary and distinct artists there has ever been. Even if some prefer later work, I think that Tidal is her peak. That phenomenal right from the start! The first taste of her genius, Tidal was released on 23rd July, 1996. I am looking ahead to its thirtieth anniversary. Criminal won a GRAMMY Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1998. Shadowboxer and Sleep to Dream the other singles from the album. Slow Like Honey and Pale September these gorgeous and almost soulful songs. Maybe some felt Tidal is not as experimental or bold as later albums. However, there is a great mix in terms of genres and styles. Beautiful string arrangements, great percussion and piano. Fiona Apple’s voice so expressive and stunning throughout. A good chart outing and an album that won critical praise, I did want to bring in some features and reviews about the album into this feature, as we prepare to mark thirty years of a classic debut. In 1996, there were few artists like Fiona Apple in music. She was being compared to artists Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos. That is what people do with women in music: they tend to lump them together and not distinguish them as individual artists. Only eighteen when Tidal was released, Popmatters looked at the legendary waves behind Fiona Apple’s grand debut. They note how “Using the spirals of poetry and jazz that formed her, Fiona Apple’s Tidal established the 18-year-old as an honest and revolutionary voice in music”:

“The first track on Fiona Apple‘s debut album Tidal, released in the summer of 1996, opens with a rumbling start. In “Sleep to Dream”, written when Apple was only 14, she comes in tough as any giant, her voice a towering beacon of dignity and self-respect as she rips this unserious lover to bits. “I tell you how I feel, but you don’t care / I say tell me the truth, but you don’t dare / You say love is a hell you cannot bear / And I say ‘gimme mine back and then go there for all I care.”

Fiona Apple’s smoldering rage hits a blazing peak: “I have never been so insulted in all my life”, “I could swallow the seas to wash down all this pride”. Like the pounding of a drum, each word hangs heavy in the air, accompanied by the hard-stricken piano keys, which she bangs like a percussive instrument. Apple’s bracing bluntness and unbound sound are a defiant stare back at a world that would expect her to harbor all this pain rather than release it.

It’s beyond any doubt that Fiona Apple and her landmark debut album Tidal, continue to make legendary waves on the pop music landscape today. Following Alanis Morissette‘s album, Jagged Little Pill, Tidal’s release a year later rocked a heavily male-dominated indie and pop scene away and transformed 18-year-old Apple into one of the most famous – and scrutinized – pop icons at the time.

Filled with candid clever songs, the record went platinum within just a year. Its influence and charm would only grow more potent with time. As Apple’s messages of individualism and resilience ultimately redefined the status quo and what it meant to be a confessional female singer-songwriter, ushering in a new wave of outspoken, stunning artists into the spotlight.

The magical story of Tidal plays out almost exactly like a teen movie. When Fiona Apple was 17, her self-made demo tape miraculously found its way from her friend Anna, who was babysitting for a music executive, to Andy Slater, who immediately signed on to be Apple’s producer and manager. Together, Slater helped Fiona devise a sound for Tidal based on Fiona’s most significant musical inspirations: hip-hop and jazz.

“She didn’t have all the songs written, and for a long time, it was just me trying to find out what kind of sound she liked— Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and the hip-hop records. So, we started from there.” Slater said in an interview with Spin.

Although not as experimental and fluid as Apple’s later works, Tidal stands as a cohesive blend of these old and new styles. A strong and palpable ‘rap-like’ cadence cuts through Apple’s plainspokenness and jazzy score across Tidal. A feature that finds its roots in the distinctive influences of Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and hip-hop, which have collectively come together to form something unyielding and unclassifiable.

Before recording Tidal, Apple had never entered a music studio or even performed a single show. More impressively, Apple had no formal musical background whatsoever. She had taught herself to play the piano with a compilation of jazz standards called The Real Book. “I would teach myself a song that I’d never heard before.” she shared in a MuchMusic interview, “and then I’d go out and buy the albums to see if I got the song right or had totally screwed it up.” As an intensely introverted child who’d struggled to feel heard by authority figures, she’d been pouring her heart and feelings into words and music to set her side of the story straight. “I would love the way that it felt to have your side of an argument right here in front of you. If I wrote a letter, I didn’t even need to win an argument.” Fiona shared with The Washington Post.

“My mother always said there was a series of noises that followed an argument in our house — a lot of yelling, me stomping down the hall, my door slamming, and then the piano. When you’re young, another language to express yourself in, that people can’t make fun of, is very important.” Apple recounted with MOJO.

Above all else, like most teenage girls, Apple longed to feel understood. Undoubtedly, some of the greatest musical works of all time have blossomed into existence out of that same garden as well, an impulse to grow and reach an all-opposing, unaware audience of any number – or in the staggering case of Tidal, three million.

That grand debut came out in the wake of the success of unabashed female rockers like Alanis Morisette, Liz Phair, and Tori Amos. When Apple joined the Lilith Fair tour in 1997, it felt inevitable as the popularity of women in mainstream pop and rock grew. However, in a music industry mostly centered around male artists and conventional numbers, no other mainstream musician in the 1990s had been so daring, provocative, and unapologetically sincere in their explorations of female adolescence in the way Apple was”.

Consequence of Sound wrote a brilliant essay about Tidal for its twenty-fifth anniversary on 23rd July, 2021. That sense that Fiona Apple appeared in summer 1996. That was a time that weas so geared towards make artists. How intimidating it must have seemed launching a debut album then. However, the impact and legacy of Tidal is unmistakable. It was a remarkable offering from a prodigious, brutally honest and genius songwriter:

“In the summer of 1996, the music industry was largely dominated by a sea of male artists. Before Tidal’s release, the commercial successes of artists like Sheryl Crow and Tori Amos helped make room for the possibility of more women on rock radio, but it was Apple, then 18, who upended the whole enterprise.

Like Alanis Morrisette, Shirley Manson and Liz Phair, Apple was radically honest about sexuality and power dynamics, but they were the few in the mainstream who dared to be so outspoken, rebellious, provocative and unapologetically angry at the world. “I’m so sensitive — meaning I feel things very intensely — that when things happen to me, they happen through me, and in me,” Apple explained to Billboard in 1996.

Unlike the more saccharine songs from boy bands like Backstreet Boys or the radio-friendly guitar rock of Goo Goo Dolls, Apple’s music was an eccentric, jazz-filled opus that explored female sensuality, fragility and trauma — topics that were decidedly taboo at the time. With Apple’s husky vocals soaking every lyric, Tidal was poetic defiance paired with piano. “I guess there’s a certain maturity to what I write, but there’s no way to say what an 18-year-old should be writing,” she also told Billboard.

What’s more impressive is that much of Apple’s debut was penned when she was only 16. It shocked even Andy Slater, who would produce her debut LP. ”I was not entirely convinced that this person sitting in front of me — who was clearly 17 — had written those words,” he told The New York Times.

But those who simply wrote Apple off because of surface-level judgments didn’t grasp the weight of “Criminal” or Tidal — and she simply didn’t care to make anyone comfortable with her work. Instead of being lauded as an artistic genius, she was seen as a “diva” and a “bad, bad girl.”

To the public, an acceptance speech for Best New Artist at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards fueled her “reputation.” Apple went off-script and took aim at the pop machine: “Everybody out there that’s watching this world: this world is bullshit. And you shouldn’t model your life around what we think is cool, and what we’re wearing and we’re saying and everything. Go with yourself.”

Her message, while decried then, is more prescient now. The “sit down and shut up” attitude that once encumbered Apple has dissipated. More than ever, individualism and candor are celebrated within the pop music industry.

In a then-squeaky-clean pop world, Tidal was messy, moody and rife with self-loathing. And yet it was brilliant. The maturity of Apple’s work was refreshing, palpable; fierce. Written when Apple was only 14, the striking opener “Sleep to Dream” is an amalgamation of teenage frustration and self-assuredness. Second track “Sullen Girl” manages to be even more affecting, as Apple confronts the aftermath of her own rape at age 12: ”They don’t know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea/ But he washed me ashore and he took my pearl/ And left an empty shell of me.”

While Apple was at one point a total newcomer, she has since become the absolute industry standard. From her vulnerability and authenticity to her lyrical prowess and the experimental nature of her sound, it’s impossible not to see her influence abound. No longer is Apple up for debate. The tables have turned.

Apple and her landmark album Tidal remain canon. The album inarguably recast what pop stardom could look like and set the stage for artists — particularly complicated women — to remain uncompromising in their vision and boldly outspoken. There’s no doubt that the album remains a masterclass in confessional songwriting that will continue to reverberate for generations to come”.

Prior to wrapping up with a review, there is another twenty-fifth anniversary feature. Albumism wrote how Fiona Apple got her three-track demo to Sony Music executive Andrew Slater. Blown away, he signed Apple to his Clean Slate label. Songs written by a seventeen year old. So open, mature and extraordinarily candid. An accomplished pianist and with this incredible voice that had wisdom and age – despite Apple being a teenager -, it was a revelation. This incredible artist who would endure to this day:

“Not simply a “fuckin’ piano album,” albeit a beautifully crafted one, Tidal is a profoundly brave and confessional song suite fueled by Apple’s fearless candor and self-possession. Nowhere is this more evident than on the soul-baring “Sullen Girl,” a stark, minimalist composition buoyed by aquatic-themed references throughout, most eloquently articulated in the song’s chorus (“It's calm under the waves / In the blue of my oblivion”). Throughout her career, Apple has openly discussed being raped at the age of 12 outside of her mother’s Manhattan apartment, a life-altering experience, the psychological and emotional aftermath of which she alludes to in the song’s second verse, when she sings “But he washed me 'shore / And he took my pearl / And left an empty shell of me.”

Depending on your interpretation of the plaintive “The Child is Gone,” a somber examination of innocence lost that seemingly functions as a thematic extension of “Sullen Girl,” Apple may be referencing the same experience here as well. Some have latched on to a more literal meaning within Apple’s lyrics, suggestive of the actual loss of a child by way of abortion or miscarriage. Whatever your particular reading may be, this is unquestionably one of Tidal’s most poignant moments.

The soulful, sultry “Shadowboxer” examines the emotional damage inflicted by a fair-weather lover’s penchant for manipulation and mind games. The lover that Apple portrays therein is so inconsistent and conniving that she’s hard-pressed to take him seriously. Instead, she spars, as the title suggests, with an imaginary, intermittent presence that comes in and out of her life whenever he feels so inclined.

Presumably the most recognizable single from the album, thanks in no small part to its controversial video, the Ozella Jones indebted “Criminal” finds the penitent Apple owning up to her misdeeds and infidelity at the expense of “a delicate man,” as she seeks redemption for her sins “before there’s hell to pay.” An act of contrition, to be sure, but the song also seems to double as Apple’s retribution for all of the boys who have done her wrong. Quite remarkably, Apple claims to have written “Criminal” in all of 45 minutes.

“Sleep to Dream,” which includes the first lyrics Apple ever penned, at the age of 14, is an impassioned kiss-off to an unworthy lover with his “head in the clouds” and a grand declaration of self-empowerment, as Apple proclaims in the chorus that “This mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways.” The mid-album, back-to-back punch of the seductive, slow-churning ballads “Slow Like Honey” and “The First Taste” is an undeniable highlight as well.

For my money, however, “Never is a Promise” was, is, and will forever be Tidal’s most indispensably devastating track. A heartbreaking ode to a love that remains out of reach, but also a subdued “fuck you” to the guy who’s too naïve to recognize what he’s giving up in letting her go, this was one of the three songs included on Apple’s original demo (the other two songs have never been released). On the strength of “Never is a Promise” alone, it’s no wonder that Andrew Slater signed her without hesitation and vowed to shepherd her career.

Knowing full well that the precociously talented and boldly provocative Apple represented a critical and potentially commercial goldmine, Slater and the label promoted Tidal aggressively, by way of discounted retail pricing and six singles released over the span of a year or so. And it paid off in heavy radio spins, pervasive MTV play, and ultimately, 3 million units sold.

Unfortunately, though perhaps not completely unexpectedly, Apple’s music was often overshadowed by the media’s fixation and scrutiny of her public persona, which was only exacerbated by her infamous on-stage meltdowns. As previously mentioned, the notorious “Criminal” video provided her critics with plenty of fodder for their largely misguided vitriol, with the New York Times referring to her as a “Lolita-ish suburban party girl” and The New Yorker likening her to an “underfed Calvin Klein model.”

Fortunately, as Apple’s career has developed over the past quarter-century, critics have found less and less to take umbrage with, forcing them to acknowledge her artistic gifts above and beyond all else. Unlike many of her singer-songwriter peers, though very much like her Sony Music labelmate Sade, Apple has opted for a more methodical, less workhorse-style approach to making music, having released just four long players— each of them excellent and distinctive—during the last two-and-a-half decades since Tidal arrived.

Beginning with Tidal all the way through to her universally acclaimed most recent LP Fetch The Bolt Cutters (2020), Apple’s music embodies the triumphs of quality over quantity, substance over semblance, sincerity over superficiality. Which is precisely why despite the long stretches between recordings, we’re always eager and grateful to discover her new songs and revisit the old”.

Produced brilliantly by Andrew Slater and recorded at Sony (Los Angeles), Ocean Way (Hollywood) and 4th Street, Los Angeles, Tidal is one of the most astonishing debut albums ever, in my view. I can see why there were some comparisons with Tori Amos and her 1992 debut, Little Earthquakes. Songs where she talks about trauma. How honest and raw she is. The phenomenal piano talents of both women. I am going to finish with Pitchfork. They observe how Fiona Apple “grapples eloquently with isolation, retribution, and the oceanic ups and downs of being young and being a woman. Rare is a debut so fully formed”. That is hard to argue against! It still sounds so remarkable thirty years later. I can feel some artists today very inspired by that album:

“Sleep to Dream” and “Shadowboxer” are the bones of the persona Fiona would come to project: skeptical, sensitive, and very smart; a lone young person betrayed by the ways of the world, summoning a colossal rage to match them. On these songs, she is a woman of herculean strength with her fists out, gloves on, building muscle to chip back at whoever has played her. “Once my lover/Now my friend/What a cruel thing to pretend,” Fiona sings on the latter. “What a cunning way to condescend.” One of the great wonders of pop music: that something so common could inspire a song so spectacular. She once said “Shadowboxer” is about “angry desperation”—“when your mind is fighting with your heart, when you know something isn’t good for you but you want it anyway, you’re trying really hard to do the right thing for yourself, but then finally you’re like, ‘I’m gonna do what I wanna do, I gotta do what my heart wants me to do, otherwise I won’t learn anything.’”

If “Shadowboxer” is her training ground, then “Sleep to Dream” is pure flexing. She rips the truth out of this idiot, she drags this guy who wronged her, all the while sounding self-possessed, feet on the ground, eyes wide, head clear, voice loud. It rumbles open, each word a drum: “I tell you how I feel, but you don’t care/I say tell me the truth, but you don’t dare/You say love is a hell you cannot bear/And I say ‘gimme mine back and then go there for all I care.’” Kanye said he was inspired by Fiona (and “Sleep to Dream” especially) because he wanted to rap like he was “at the top of a mountain.” On “Sleep to Dream,” Fiona sounds eight-feet tall. It’s full of classic Fiona missives, complete sentences of self-respect: “Don’t even show me your face ‘cause it’s a crying shame,” “I have never been so insulted in all my life,” “I got my own hell to raise.”

“Slow Like Honey” actualizes Tidal’s more glacial notes, its reveries that hang thick in the air with the accompaniment of Jon Brion’s vibraphone: “When I’m high like heaven/When I’m strong like music/’Cause I’m slow like honey/And heavy with mood.” In its florid verses, “Pale September” is her most classically romantic Tidal track, as she sings of “autumn days swung soft around me like cotton on my skin.” You might not include these on a mixtape of Fiona’s defining songs, but they turn Tidal into its own suspended universe nonetheless. You get why Solange, with her defiance and intellect and grace, deemed herself the president of the Fiona fan club—and why Perfume Genius once proclaimed that he should like to cover his body in tattoos of Fiona’s lyrics.

Tidal has some piano ballads of deceiving serenity, gentle but weighted by experience, heavy as cement. “Never Is a Promise” is the only Tidal track taken from her demo. In this severe six-minute confessional, you understand that of course Fiona comes from a lineage of stage actors and big band singers; its drama is operatic, with weeping strings arranged by Van Dyke Parks. It sounds so apart from the rest of the album—a song about absolute edge-of-the-earth isolation, about not expecting the world to catch you. “You’ll never feel the heat of this soul,” Fiona sings at its blazing peak, “My fever burns me deeper than I’ve ever shown/To you.” Throughout, she is calling out a person who says they will “never” give up on her. But she sees that “never” is hollow. How telling that this bracingly sad song is, at its core, a linguistic accusation. The last verse goes:

You’ll say you understand
You’ll never understand
I’ll say I’ll never wake up knowing how or why
I don’t know what to believe in
You don’t know who I am
You’ll say I need appeasing when
I start to cry
But never is a promise
And I’ll never need a lie.

People would constantly prod Fiona on how an 18-year-old could write songs as mature as these—as if the most horrifying shit does not happen to people when they are teenagers, as if Fiona does not make metaphors of a spider, the clouds, and a lily pad in reference to men. Why did they not ask instead how she became a genius? She sounds preternaturally wise on “The Child Is Gone,” with its cool sway, its knowing ease, evoking the cutting assuredness of Nina Simone. As “the darkness turns into the dawn,” she sounds self-aware, forthright, welcoming a grand revelation. “I suddenly feel like a different person,” Fiona sings, “From the roots of my soul come a gentle coercion.”

Tidal went platinum within one year and yet, Fiona’s best work was still to come. The pleasure and poetry and purpose of Tidal, though, only calcifies with time. So much of it seems to say: You could never feel the pain I feel because only I have felt it. There are things about me that you can’t see at all, because I have buried them so well. You don’t know who I am. But of course, in Tidal, we saw ourselves”.

The seismic and extraordinary Tidal turns thirty on 23rd July. Fiona Apple would follow it with the first of a couple of studio albums with very long titles. 1999’s When the Pawn.. is actually a mouthful. Same with 2012’s The Idler Wheel… In April, we marked five year since she released her fifth studio album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Even though there are quite long gaps between albums – especially from 2005’s Extraordinary Machine to The Idler Wheel… and then to Fetch the Bolt Cutters -, this is an artist taking her time to make an album on her terms. One that feels true. Might we one day see a sixth studio album? That would be amazing! Few knew about New York-born Fiona Apple at the start of 1996. By 23rd July, when this incredible debut was released, that would change. Tidal created ripples and waves…

THAT can still be seen today.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: ‘The Witch’ (Waking the Witch)/’Those Millionaires’ (The Sensual World)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

‘The Witch’ (Waking the Witch)/’Those Millionaires’ (The Sensual World)

__________

I feel I have included…

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

the last character that is mentioned in Kate Bush’s sixth studio album, The Sensual World. Released in 1989, the ten songs were as character-filled as other albums. I am pairing this album with the one that proceeded it, Hounds of Love (1985). There are more characters from that album that I need to cover off. There is a lot to focus on when it comes to Waking the Witch. The character of ‘The Witch’. This song appears during the second side of the album, The Ninth Wave. It comes after Under Ice and before Watching You Without Me. The moment the heroine/Kate Bush gets trapped under ice in the water after going overboard from a ship. Clinging to life, Waking the Witch is this masterpiece song that showcases Kate Bush’s phenomenal production talents. A pivotal moment in the suite, does the woman die here? You ask that, because Watching You Without Me is a family waiting for their loved one to return to them, not knowing where she is. I am going to reference a feature I wrote about Waking the Witch last year when celebrating forty years of Hounds of Love. There are subjects to cover when it comes to this song. Is it the strangest and scariest Kate Bush song? Is it the most important song on that suite, in terms of how the plot changes and the fate of the heroine? There are features from other people to bring in. However, it is worth noting what inspired Kate Bush to write this song. I will discuss the live version of Waking the Witch that was performed during 2014’s Before the Dawn. How powerful and punchy it is. One of the most hypnotic and standout tracks from that residency and live album (released in 2016).

This is what Kate Bush said about Waking the Witch. In terms of the voices we hear in the mix, it is great that she has family members and a much-missed and beloved actor. Trying to wake her up. After suffering struggle and fighting against tiredness and the waves, this is a moment on The Ninth Wave when her life is in the balance:

“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don’t drown. My mother’s in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench – the guy that mixed the album with us – is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says “Wake up child, pay attention!”. (…) I couldn’t get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I’d heard for years for years [laughs].
I think it’s very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women’s power. In a way it’s very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she’s committed no crime, and they’re trying to push her under the water to see if she’ll sink or float.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.

That idea of Kate Bush’s heroine being a witch. On trial. Kate Bush looking back at history and how women were seen as witches. Their instincts and intuitions very strong. Instead of being celebrated, it was seen as suspect. They were put on trial and condemned to death. Appropriate when thinking about Waking the Witch. Perhaps Kate Bush reacting to sexism against her and using the water and witch metaphor to look at the industry and how some perceived her. Also, the production on this song shows what a genius Kate Bush is. That helicopter sample. It is a great production piece that is almost filmic. Collages of sounds and voices. Different effects. Such a head-spinning and sense-altering track. Looking back at my feature from last year, I was referencing Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 Hounds of Love book and her observations. Kate Bush undoubtably a phenomenal producer. Not only in terms of mixing the instruments and sounds. In terms of bringing these different voices together and making sure it was not too busy or crowded. The effect of these voices and where they would sit in the mix and where they would be coming from. So much to consider. The technical considerations and brilliance needed to execute this song perfectly:

“Leah Kardos writes how we hear various voices – including Robbie Coltrane, whale song, and John Carder Bush’s voice, “from the back of the right speaker peeks out to stage-whisper ‘Over here!’”. The explosion happens after some brief build-up. “Most shocking is Bush’s frantic voice, cutting in and out as she pleads , ‘Listen to me, help me, help me baby’”. It is, as Kardos suggests, the panic-stricken sounds of someone drowning. I often wonder whether Bush/the heroine made it out of the song. Whether this is the moment she succumbs. That garbled cry was achieved by “quickly moving the record switch on the tape machine”. That was the source of a heated argument between Kate Bush and her engineer and then-boyfriend, Del Palmer. In a later interview, Palmer admitted he had to eat humble pie and was wrong!

The heroine goes from this drowning and scared person to someone accused of witchcraft She is put on trial and condemned. “Witch ‘swimming’ or ‘ducking’ was the practice of tying up and dunking an accused woman into the body of water to see if they sank or floated”. It is a terrifying and tense moment that brings so much story and twist to the song. “With its monstrous voice effect (Eventime Harmonizer set to minus-two octaves), Bush’s Witchfinder subjects the accused to such tests (‘You won’t burn, you won’t bleed, confess to me girl’)”. These tests including subjecting the accused to burning and pricking. The feeling that witches were impervious to pain and would have a bloodless mark. It was based around belief, though it was sexism and misogyny. A fascinating thing to bring into the middle of a 1985 album! Bush herself must have felt like a witch being judged and on trial. Subject to so much blatant misogyny through her career! I do not know that background voices “sing lines adapted from the halyard sea shanty Blood Red Shoes. The tune was popularized by folk revivalist A.L. (Bert) Lloyd”. Bush does some riffing on Lloyd’s lines. “Pinks and posies, red, red roses go down”. Bush was no stranger to a sea shanty. Leah Kardos remarks how the B-side of Hounds of Love’s title single was a cover of The Handsome Cabin Boy.  It was originally by Lloyd and Ewan MacColl. “The music breaks away from the C# minor for a counter phrase that swirls with the sound of church bells and woozy spiralling guitar figures around E minor. Bush murmurs snatches of Catholic Vulgate scripture that she may be forgetting or getting wrong: ‘Spiritus sanctus in nomine no-no-no-no’ (the name of the Holy Spirit, no) and later ‘Deus et dei domino no-no-no-no’ (God and God’s lord, no)”. The Witchfinder questions the innocence of the woman and delivers the verdict. Kardos writes about the line, “Help this blackbird, there’s a stone around my leg”. With the sound of a helicopter coming in and yelling at the woman to get out of the water – the same helicopter sample used on Pink Floyd’s The Wall -, there is mystery around the blackbird and what that references.

Leah Kardos theorises it could be a reference to Elizabeth George Speare’s 1958 novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. The lead is seen as a witch and viewed with suspicion after diving into the water to retrieve a child’s toy and she has this ability to swim. That was seen as unusual. Bush remarked how female instinct and intuition was put down and people fear a woman’s power. She channelled all of this in Waking the Witch”.

Waking the Witch very much frames the ill-fated woman in the water as someone being judged. After being dragged under the water or struggling on Under Ice, is this the moment when she floats and is saved? Most women who were on trial after being caught by witch-finders were probably not as fortunate. Or is this the moment on Hounds of Love when the woman (Kate Bush said it was not her on The Ninth Wave, though she obviously played this character for Before the Dawn). There is something intense about Waking the Witch. Ghostly, horrific and dark, it is such a head-spinning and intense song. Is it her scariest song ever? There might be argument for that. Waking the witch was a horrific torture technique used during sixteenth-century witch trials, where accused women were kept awake for days, often forced to walk continuously. This brutal sleep deprivation induced extreme psychological distress, hallucinations, and paranoia, leading to forced confessions to escape the torture. The witchfinders would keep accused women awake for three to five days. I have modified this information from this site. I feel that Waking the Witch is one of her scariest songs. Up there with Get Out of My House from The Dreaming (1982). There is some competition, but is it also her strangest song? In terms of Hounds of Love, there is nothing quite as odd and unsettling. Perhaps Mother Stands for Comfort. Waking the Witch is a song where you are sympathising with the woman and willing her to stay alive. Last year, Far Out Magazine wrote how Waking the Witch is Kate Bush’s strangest song:

“It’s a jarring narrative ledge that Bush hangs the song on, but heightened all the more by her musical arrangement for the track. Combining everything from ambient piano flourishes with scratchy samples that give us a peek into the matrix, it defies all pop conventions and flirts with the esoteric lands of electronic music more popular in the current day.

While some experimentation hints towards a sporadic use of studio time, where anything and everything is chucked at the wall, Bush’s performance of sonic obscurity was a deliberate method. It was used to add context to the broader narrative of the song. Speaking of the song’s fractured use of Morse code, Bush said, “That’s an effect that we managed to muck around with. It was a very experimental idea, a sort of trick really, that took us a long time to do. I wanted to give the impression of a very desperate attempt to communicate.”

Using the dystopic world her soundscape depicts allows Bush to carry forth haunting social commentary. In the song, Bush pulls on traditional mythologisation of witchcraft to tell the tale of a woman who is on trial for being a witch, where she is savagely pushed underwater to see if she will “sink or float.” In a soundscape already packed with texture, Bush adds broken sound effects and splashing noises to vividly depict the disconnect of being thrown underwater without control.

But it’s not just a scary bedtime tale of a witch’s trial, bolstered by dramatic sound production. No Bush’s experimentalism swirls around an exploration of the political and, in turn, delivers a poignant and provocative take on sexism. She explained, “I think it’s very interesting, the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women’s power. In a way, it’s very sexist behaviour, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong and are still put down, really”.

It is arguable how Waking the Witch is the most important song on The Ninth Wave. It is a massive turning point. Thematically, narratively and sonically. Watching You Without Me is haunted and this missing woman who nobody knows what happened to her. Jig of Life then comes after and is this spirited and hopefully song. A second wind. In terms of how The Ninth Wave story changes and its first huge moment, Waking the Witch is so tense and suspenseful! I feel it is the most important album through the suite, and it is also one of Kate Bush’s most powerful songs. In terms of how relevant it is to this day. If she took influence from centuries ago and women being drowned as they were seen as witches, this sort of persecution and violence affects women around the world today. The defiance of Waking the Witch undoubtably can be compared to the strength of women who face persecution, death and their rights being stripped. Women not allowed out in public or to educated. The risk of violence and death if they defy regimes and totalitarian governments. This feature from last year made an interesting observation:  “I think of the women of Afghanistan singing in defiance of the Taliban’s femicidal death cult, punished for doing what blackbirds can do freely. This feels like a song for anyone who is drowning, but I also think it’s worth noting that the violent imagery here brings with it the will to stay awake. Unlike the gentle suicide suggested by ‘And Dream of Sheep,’ a sinister song masquerading as a lullaby, this song pricks our drowning woman awake and lights a fire of determination underneath her. It’s at the climax of her persecution that rescue suddenly arrives”. It is worth enduing this section by saying how amazing the live version of Waking the Witch is on Before the Dawn. Listen to the live album and you will know what I mean. The percussion drives and hits so hard. Incredible guitar riffs. A song that drives and rides like a wave. I am dropping it in here, as it gives new weight and punch to such an incredible song. It must have been awe-inspiring hearing this track live.

Flipping to the second side, and we need to talk about characters mentioned on The Sensual World’s title track. Although Molly Boom from James Joyce’s Ulysses is not mentioned by name, she is very much the unnamed character. Although they are also not named and they are a vague collection of characters not defined, they do allow me to examine The Sensual World and themes around it. The characters are ‘those millionaires’: “To where the water and the earth caress/And the down of a peach says mmh, yes/Do I look for those millionaires/Like a Machiavellian girl would/When I could wear a sunset? mmh, yes”. If you could argue Waking the Witch is one of Kate Bush’s weirdest and scariest song, there is no doubt The Sensual World is one of Bush’s most sensual, charged and beautiful tracks. I will investigate the lines when ‘those millionaires’ were mentioned. It is best to start out with some words from Kate Bush about this song:

“The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world – the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual – you know… the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand – the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that’s an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I’m sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (…) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary – such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the book Ulysse sby James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn’t get permission to use the words.

Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989

There’s a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, ‘The Sensual World’. Uh, you’ve probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of ‘Ulysses’, and uh, I just couldn’t believe how the whole thing came together, it was so… It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted – they justfitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying, ‘Yes! Yes!’. And when I asked for permission, you know, they said, ‘No! No!’ That was one of the hardest things for me to swallow. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was that, um, I wasn’t allowed to have access to this great piece of work that I thought was public. And in fact I really didn’t think you had to get permission but that you would just pay a royalty. So I was really, really frustrated about it. And, um… kind of rewrote the words, trying to keep the same – same rhythm and sounds.

Kate Bush Con, 1990”.

Reading about her frustration of writing the track. Not being allowed permission from the James Joyce estate to use text from Ulysses. Kate Bush talking about the tactility of nature and the world. How we can touch and experience things around us. A lot of people do not appreciate that. Whilst there is also this aspect of embracing or recognising the sensuality of the trees and grass, there is also this other sensuality. An erotic lust that runs through the track. It is worth bringing in this information that gives us a bit of context about Molly Bloom and “In Ulysses Molly Bloom, the wife of Leopold, comes to life mainly in her husband’s thoughts. Throughout the day he contemplates her affair with a man called Blazes Boylan. Much more than an object of desire and jealousy, however, Molly is also the character who gets the last word. In the book’s final episode, “Penelope,” Molly is not merely breathless but also eloquent, not merely sexually frank but also an engaging narrator and storyteller”. I love the sensuality and the breathlessness of Kate Bush’s delivery. I am thinking about some of Molly Bloom’s final words and the language used: “When I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes”.

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

I have a few other things to discuss when it comes to this song. I am going to move to those lyrics where Kate Bush mentions the millionaires. Bush singing “Do I look for those millionaires/Like a Machiavellian girl would”. A clever and interesting pairing of lines. In terms of Machiavellian, this refers to “a personality trait and political philosophy characterized by cunning, manipulation, and a cynical disregard for morality, focusing solely on acquiring power and achieving personal goals by any means necessary. It is part of the "dark triad" of personalities and is named after 16th-century philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, who advised that rulers should prioritize power over ethics”. Almost like a poetic couplet. Is Bush talking about seeking wealth and the wrong type of men? Chasing wealth and emptiness rather than appreciating the world around her and the earth. If Bush had not been able to use words from Ulysses, she would be granted permission when she re-recorded the song and called it Flower of the Mountain for 2011’s Director’s Cut. The power of the word, ‘yes’. Almost bookmarking that verse, it is affirmative and sensual. Each time Kate Bush sings that word, she brings such sexuality and eroticism. Whereas the rest of The Sensual World’s title track is about the sensuality of the world around and this tangible passion and something hugely evocative, that line where Kate Bush mentions millionaires sticks out. I was trying to find reference to millionaires in Ulysses and whether Molly Bloom was tempted by a wealthy suitor or was thinking of stepping into high society. It is an intriguing inclusion that made me want to dig deeper.

In terms of single release from The Sensual World, the title track was the first released. After Hounds of Love and the reception it got, The Sensual World was a very different album. It was a more mature album in some ways. Bush had turned thirty by the time the album was released and she was thinking more about this stage of life. Making a more feminine album. Hounds of Love had a more masculine energy. Something that was harder-hitting. The Sensual World has this lower heat in terms of energy and percussion, but it burns hotter in other ways. We can see how critics considered The Sensual World when it was released as a single on 18th September, 1989:

“A dazzling return to form after a few slightly indifferent releases. The best song she’s written since ‘Army Dreamers’, even if slightly on the long side.

David Giles, Music week, 23 september 1989

She’s got bloomin’ sexy… in which talk of desire, touching, and Kate’s own breasts is rife. But these aren’t merely shock tactics… a delicate and all-consuming song.

Tim Southwell, Record Mirror, 23 September 1989

She sings of a deep sensuality that ensures that I have to wear baggy trousers when I dance. Beautiful, warm, and ever-lasting.

Kerrang!, 23 September 1989”.

She was being reviewed by men who were writing for magazines and sources that were probably used to other forms of music. It was a time for U.K. Dance and genres that did not easily sit alongside Kate Bush and The Sensual World. You can feel a sense of leering and sexism in some of the words. A slightly prurient take by some journalists. However, The Sensual World reached number twelve. It is interesting, too, how Kate Bush was inspired to write the song after hearing Irish actress Siobhán McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Another case of her being inspired by acting and television. Siobhán McKenna died in 1986. Bush immortalising her work and brilliance in this song.

Reviewers picking up the musical richness of The Sensual World. The song was inspired by a traditional Macedonian piece of music called Nevestinsko Oro (Bride’s Dance). A recording of this piece of music was sent to Kate Bush by Jan Libbenga. As in the traditional version, the melody is played on uilleann pipes, in this case by Irish musician Davy Spillane. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for this detail. The globe-trotting nature of Kate Bush’s music. It is worth noting the Irishness of Kate Bush’s music. I wrote about a Hounds of Love song, Waking the Witch, that is not Irish in tone. However, the track called Jig of Life, is a very Irish-influenced song and features Irish instrumentation. Kate Bush was mentioned in this article about the Irish influence in British Pop music:

“Also born in London, English singer-songwriter Kate Bush is half-Irish with her mother hailing from county Waterford. Bush is best known for her hit ‘Wuthering Heights’ from 1978, but she also won the BRIT award for best female solo artist in 1987.

Since the 1980s, Bush has taken inspiration from Irish music, literature and language. Her albums often feature traditional musicians and instruments. Bodhrans and bouzoukis can be heard on the likes of ‘The Sensual world’ – a song inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses – and ‘Jig of Life’.

In 2014, she expressed pride in her Irish heritage and her mother’s influence, which inspired her work on ‘Mná na hÉireann’ with trad musician Dónal Lunny”.

Dónal Lunny on bouzouki. John Sheahan on fiddle. Uillean pipes from Davy Spillane. Owing to the fact Ulysses is a novel by an Irish author, Bush matching that with the composition. Another chance to dip into the history of Irish music in Kate Bush’s catalogue. The Sensual World was perhaps the last album where Irish music influenced her own. Bush’s mother, Hannah, died in 1992 – three years after The Sensual World was released. The Red Shoes (1993), Aerial (2005), Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow (2011) not really referencing Irish music and sounds, even though Bush remained proud of her heritage. Perhaps the loss of her mother made it too heartbreaking to think of her when using Irish players. From ‘The Witch’ in Waking the Witch and the imperilled woman being on trial and drowned in some ways, this was Bush talking about sexism and the way women’s institution and instincts are judged and seen as suspicious. We then move to the mysterious millionaires in The Sensual World. Perhaps specific people who might turn her eye and could woo Molly Bloom, it might be a reference to distracting riches and wealthy people who could lead someone astray. When Molly Bloom/Kate Bush could embrace the sensuality of the earth and everything around her. The purity of that passion. Songs taken from albums that were released side-by-side, they are vastly different. The production also not the same on both albums. Bush’s brilliance and constant evolution. Waking the Witch and The Sensual World are two district…

WORKS of genius.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Tinashe

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

Tinashe

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THE next instalment of this series…

will collate the work of an iconic American artist. However, you can say that Tinashe is definitely a modern-day role model and queen. An artist who inspires so many others. I wanted to explore her music for The Great American Songbook, as this Kentucky-raised artist, born Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe, has an incredible catalogue. One that does not get discussed and explored enough. A phenomenal songwriter and such a distinct voice in music, she has been compared to Janet Jackson, Aaliyah, and James Blake. Though her style and sound is very much her own. I will end this feature by compiling a twenty-song mix, that takes us from her 2014 debut album, Aquarius, to 2024’s Quantum Baby. She has collaborated with other artists, though I am going to keep this to her studio albums only. I will start out with AllMusic and their biography of the great Tinashe:

“Tinashe is a contemporary R&B artist who moves with ease -- and sometimes blurs the line -- between sensual slow jams and pop-flavored dance tracks. Having established herself as an actor and model, she made her commercial breakthrough in 2014 with the slinking "2 On," a platinum Top 40 hit collaboration with producer Mustard and guest rapper ScHoolboy Q. This led to a trio of full-length projects for RCA, including Aquarius (2014) and Nightride (2016), both of which went Top Ten R&B/hip-hop. She starred in the Emmy-nominated Rent: Live and charted with her first two independent LPs, Songs for You (2019) and 333 (2021), before she offered BB/ANG3L (2023) and Quantum Baby (2024), related short albums containing some of her most popular singles, including the Hot 100 hits "Nasty" and "No Broke Boys."

Before she made her recorded debut as a solo artist, the singer, songwriter, and producer born Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe was known for acting and modeling work. Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, she moved in the early 2000s to Los Angeles, where she established her acting career. Toward the end of that decade, she joined the Stunners, a short-lived teen pop group that recorded for Columbia and Republic and opened for Justin Bieber. After the group's 2011 split, Tinashe went solo with a low-key contemporary R&B direction, released a pair of 2012 mixtapes, and ultimately signed with major-label RCA. In 2013, she collaborated with Jacques Greene on the one-off track "Painted Faces" and released her third mixtape, Black Water, near the end of the year.

Tinashe made her RCA debut and commercial breakthrough in January 2014. The single "2 On," was released that month and reached number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also peaked at number five on the R&B/hip-hop chart and eventually went platinum. Appearances on Erik Hassle's "Innocence Lost" and RZA's "Doctor" followed through that May. Her debut album, Aquarius, landed in October, debuted at number 17, and was given an additional boost from the gold-certified Stargate and Iggy Azalea collaboration "All Hands on Deck." The self-released Amethyst and RCA-issued Nightride mixtapes, along with numerous guest appearances and headlining singles, preceded Tinashe's second proper album. Boasting a guest list that included Offset, Ty Dolla $ign, and Future, Joyride arrived in April 2018 and entered the R&B/hip-hop chart at number 29.

After starring in the Emmy-nominated Rent: Live, Tinashe signed a management deal with Roc Nation and went independent with Songs for You, issued in November 2019. The holiday EP Comfort & Joy followed in 2020. Tinashe then unveiled a slew of singles, including the breezy "Bouncin'" and the Buddy collaboration "Pasadena," before she issued the full-length 333 in 2021. The album's 2022 deluxe edition included the single "Naturally." Tinashe guested on the Calvin Harris single "New to You," along with Offset and Normani, and made additional appearances on songs by Snakehips, Gryffin, Shygirl, and KYLE. Tinashe's slinking "Talk to Me Nice" and booming "Needs," respectively co-produced by the duos of Nosaj Thing and Scoop DeVille and Royce David and Jonny Made It, previewed BB/ANG3L, a 20-minute album that arrived in 2023. Within a year, she was back with Quantum Baby, another set of similar length. Closing track "Nasty," a collaboration with Ricky Reed and Zack Sekoff, became the singer's second Hot 100 single before she began a 2024-2025 world tour dubbed Match My Freak, named after the song's hook. "No Broke Boys," a Quantum Baby track, became a global hit when Disco Lines remixed it in 2025, making it Tinashe's second U.S. Top 40 hit”.

He most recent album, Quantum Baby, was the second part of a trilogy that started with 2023’s BB/Ang3l. You wonder how she is going to end that trilogy. She is such an incredible artist who has consistently put out genre-fusing and astonishing. A modern visionary who I feel is almost not given quite as much love as she deserves, it is a chance to salute a great. An American artist who will continue to push forward. As The Line of Best Fit said when closing their review of Quantum Baby: “The best part is she’s never satisfied staying still”. Who quite knows…

WHERE she’ll head next.

FEATURE: Speaking Words of Wisdom… Can Hollywood Ever Truly Evoke the Realities of Being a Major Artist?

FEATURE:

 

 

Speaking Words of Wisdom…

Can Hollywood Ever Truly Evoke the Realities of Being a Major Artist?

__________

THERE have been a fair amount of…

IN THIS PHOTO: Michaela Coel and Anne Hathaway in Mother Mary/PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Zachanowich/A24

films from the past few years where music is at the centre. Whether biopics or films where actors are playing artists, I do wonder whether Hollywood can ever truly portray the star power, complexities and realities of what it is like to be a major artist. The highs, lows and nuances. I raise this, as there was a recent article from Adrian Horton in The Guardian, who said that Mother Mary is the latest film to fail to convey the life of an arena-touring artist into a compelling and authentic cinematic experience. The film stars Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel. It has won a lot of rave reviews. Many commending Anne Hathaway’s performance in the central role. This is what Empire said in their four-star review regarding the premise: “The set-up seems simple. On a Thursday, sad-girl pop star Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) shows up at the offices of her former designer, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), and requests a dress to be made for her headline show that Sunday. The pair, it’s immediately clear, have not spoken in years, and Sam is not thrilled to see her. But against her better judgement, she agrees. Sam asks the singer to describe her thoughts and feelings, which she will then translate into her fashion, calling it a “transubstantiation of feeling” — the kind of lapsed-Catholic line that might be dismissed as pretension. But it speaks to a profound truism: that the creative process is effectively a search for the divine, for the metaphysical, the world beyond the visible”. In terms of its angle and straying away from a basic or cliché story of a major artist and their life, this is a great psychological drama. This is what Rolling Stone wrote in the conclusion of their review: “Having shifted the register into both spooky action and good old-fashioned spookiness, Mother Mary rushes headfirst into Giallo-colored delirium — and it’s here that the film either abandons you or works its way into your own psyche like a malevolent specter. Lowery is grasping at something that lies beyond the confines of genre flicks, cracked-up character studies, and highfalutin fashion dramas, and when he and his cast do tune into that desired frequency, it’s thrilling and unsettling in a way that’s hard to nail down. A certain leap of faith is required. But for those who believe that movies can get into your head and under your skin in ways that sometimes defy description, and tap into the same transcendent state that great pop music does — that sensation of temporarily floating into some other dizzying realm — this is for you. It isn’t the movie you think you’re walking into. Amen for that”.

I will drop in parts of that feature from The Guardian. However, I wonder what critics and cinema-goers are looking for when it comes to films that revolve around artists. Do they want to see the realities of touring life and the incredible highs, but also those backstage moments and the real tough times? Many biopics have struggled because they are either whitewashing and sanitising too much (in the case of the recent Michael Jackson biopic, Michael), or they are seen as  getting the balance wrong. The actor playing an artist not convincing. The tone of the film being off-balance and jarring. It is very hard to get it right. With plans for a Julia Garner-starring Madonna biopic and a Joni Mitchell biopic slated, you do wonder if they will fail or manage to strike gold. When we think of fictional characters who are very similar to major Pop artists, perhaps Smile 2 and Skye Riley is one of the most gripping modern films. Released in 2024 and starring Naomi Scott, many compared Skye Riley to Lady Gaga. That is another psychological film. A Horror. There is the danger that, if a film around a massive artist is too straight and does not have edge or this original angle, then it might come off as too flat or boring. These are interesting takeaways from that article on The Guardian’s website:

“By all accounts, the pop elements of Mother Mary, meant to color a character whose relationship to fandom serves as an overarching metaphor, were made with great reverence for an artform often easily dismissed as, well, easy. On the Popcast, Hathaway waxes poetic about studying pop music like an academic, and Mother Mary certainly appears erudite – speaking nonsense, sure, but well-versed in the precise choreography, deific grace and outsized persona of an archetypical pop star. But the effect is not, as FKA twigs put it in the same interview, “total feeling” despite imperfect approximation. It is the opposite, and the latest disappointing example of a nagging paradox: pop’s power is everywhere – commanding evermore feelings, attention and fan investment – yet almost nowhere, at least convincingly, in film and TV

Mother Mary, to be fair, sets itself the very difficult task of not only convincing us of the music’s reality but also its fictional popularity, a thing which requires ineffable star quality – that quicksilver thing that makes a certain performer pop on camera, or why, say, Harry Styles stood out in One Direction – that definitionally cannot be created, only trained. The impossibility of reverse alchemy, of creating the matter of cultural legend, is the same reason why Amazon’s splashy Daisy Jones & The Six, which employed almost as much star wattage to create an alternative Fleetwood Mac, fizzled on impact.

But it’s Vox Lux, Brady Corbet’s 2018 precursor to The Brutalist, that remains the most divisive and compelling pop star movie in recent memory for its pitch-black view of pop music as fundamentally empty, stardom a Faustian bargain; in it, a school shooting survivor becomes a star played by a sneering Natalie Portman, but her music contains no depth, nor comfort, just violence metabolized into earworms that slowly poison her. It’s an incredibly dim view – the movie, unsurprisingly, made little money – but so wildly ambitious and unnerving as to be unforgettable. (I can’t say the same for the music, which is both too low-budget, and too disdaining of actual pop, to take seriously.)”.

Even if many music biopics have been commercially successfully, they have fared less well with critics. The recent mockumentary, The Moment, starring Charli xcx was not received well by all. If Mother Mary combines elements of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, does the balance and blend work into something convincing and memorable? Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel are terrific, and Mother Mary is rightly being hailed by many as a fascinating and bold film that takes risks and does something different. It is hard to pull off that feat. Perhaps no single film can do everything, in terms of getting that star power and appeal radiating from the screen! Someone playing an artist and making sure that they convince. Is it hard to fictionalise Pop music and artists? There is an argument for that. Even if incredible films like Smile 2 succeed in some ways, there are those that say the film struggled to carve out its identity and stand out. It may well be the case that it is impossible to create a fictional artist and story that also is relatable to modern Pop. The machinations and machinery. Whilst Mother Mary is a brilliant physiological drama with some incredible surreal moments and some committed performances, did it address the gristle of Pop stardom? That is what Adrian Horton asks in her review. It is an interesting discussion. If people have examples of music biopics or films where they wholeheartedly succeed. It has been many years since a music biopic has received praise across the board and has ticked all of the boxes. In terms of films that have actors portraying fictional artists, and trying to articulate the realities of the Pop world and also have that sheen and shine. The earworms and easy charm, but also something that digs deep and explores the depths and darkness of Pop. The real struggles arena-touring artists face. Would that be a tonal mess?! I am a huge fan of Anne Hathaway, and she is brilliant in Mother Mary. Even so, will Hollywood and the film industry ever create that alchemy and be able to produce a film that takes the best elements of Smile 2, Mother Mary, great music biopics and the 2024 rom-com, The Idea of You, and transcend beyond parody? It may take the right script and concept. However, it may be the fact that the reality of touring the world and being at the mercy of fans and the media is only best described and portrayed by real artists living through that. Trying to fictionalise and asking an actor to truly convince as a modern mainstream artist and have that star power might be…

AN impossible undertaking.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Persia Holder

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Emily Anna

Persia Holder

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I cannot find any interviews…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rankin

with her from this year, so I will dip back to last year when spotlighting and talking about Persia Holder. Her E.P., I Didn’t Think You’d Hear This, was released last  July. I wanted to cover off a couple of interviews around the release of a marvellous debut E.P. There are only a couple I could find, so I will combine them. This is another artist I am spotlighting who is playing Brighton’s The Great Escape Festival. Here is some biography about one of brightest artists. There are so many talented musicians coming through. If she would not class herself as emerging, perhaps there is an argument that Persia Holder is not known to all. That will soon change: “With her blend of emotional pop and soulful storytelling, Persia Holder is part of a new wave of British artists redefining vulnerability. Her debut EP I Didn’t Think You’d Hear This introduced a voice both powerful and deeply human — one that turns late-night thoughts into anthems. Persia writes songs that hold space for heartbreak, self-growth and the quiet moments in between”. The first of two 2025 interviews I am sourcing is from Ticketmaster Discover. Persia Holder tells how her voice has always been like a protective mechanism. She has a truly extraordinary voice:

“The voice is singer-songwriter Persia Holder’s strongest instrument, and the piano the vehicle that carries it forward. So is her gift for sharing personal storms and emotional ‘Baggage’, as the title of her 2024 debut single goes, in poignant, key-laden narratives that hit home, regardless of what you’ve been through. Released in summer 2025, her first EP I Didn’t Think You’d Hear This assembles recent singles like ‘Echo’, a sweeping inner monologue of broken promises, in a patiently crafted, deeply expressive five-song portrait of an artist navigating the challenges of her 20s in choruses that effortlessly soar.

You’re quite open about having gone through your fair share of emotional challenges. How do you feel these have shaped your songwriting — are there any experiences or moments that you feel have defined you as an artist?

A 100%. Growing up with a single mum, a very strong female woman around me, I always felt like I could do anything I wanted to do and my mum would support that. I think seeing her raise two kids on her own gave me the strength to be like, “okay, I wanna do something that’s scary”, which is follow my dreams.

And also I tried to look at the challenges I faced — it’s a double edged sword cause, obviously, you don’t wanna go through stuff like that, but also it’s given me this gift of things to write about and to try and shape my stories in a way that make other people feel seen, which I think is one of the most beautiful things about music. You know when you hear a song and you think, “Oh my God, that’s captured exactly how I feel!”. I try and do that through my music. Not that all my struggles are relatable — not that everybody’s are, but I think there’s a way to craft that narrative where people feel like there’s a bit of their story in there.

Your music seems like an outlet and a form of healing. Was there a song that was particularly hard to write?

Yeah, I think actually my first release, “Baggage”. I really struggled in lockdown. For me, it was really tough mentally losing connection with people, losing the friendships that anchored me when I was struggling.

I wrote that song pretty soon after lockdown, just about how isolated we all felt in that time and how important it is to have someone in your corner that you can reach out to and unpack all your baggage with and it’ll be a safe place. I think it’s really easy to think everybody has that. To have someone who you feel safe enough to be open with and talk to about things that feel kinda scary. That song for me was super important, that came out first. It’s not just about love for me. It’s kind of framed in a romantic way but it’s really about connection and struggle. I wanted people to hear it and think about love, but also maybe hear that underlying message. That was, to me, such a great first song to put out into the world.

How difficult is it to find the right people to work on that kind of music especially, that is so vulnerable?

That’s a really good question. I’m very deep, I’m very emotional. I struggle with surface level, that’s why my songs are normally, you know, there’s always something at the core of them. I think my biggest problem has been finding people that I feel safe enough to even explore with. And it’s not something you can really predict. It’s really when you get into the room, you either feel that or you don’t. And that’s not to say you don’t have an amazing session or make a friend. There’s a specific feeling I get where I feel like I can really delve here, go down some deep holes and not feel judgement. I think that’s the main thing.

Cause if I write from a place of no fear, I think you hear that reflected in the writing. When you can relate, other people in the room can relate to me and I feel like I’m not alone here.

You sang to over 5000 people at the Royal Albert Hall last December. How was that experience, what were some of your highlights this year — and how do you plan to build on this and take things to the next level?

It was really funny, I got a call from my old manager at the time, and it was about three days away. He said you’re booked to support Jamie Cullum at the Albert Hall on Friday, for example, and it was like, a Wednesday! At that time I’d only ever played just me and keys — playing myself. So we got a keys player in and we had about an hour before to play together and rehearse. So it’s all super last minute but we ended up smashing it. The first time I could stand on stage, didn’t have to worry about the piano, just sing and get all the emotions out. It was absolutely incredible! It was one of those moments where you think, “This is why you do this”. To see all these faces… ‘Baggage’ had just come out in October, so it was very early on to my EP coming out and it felt like a great way to to honour that.

Getting support from BBC Introducing has been really huge this year. It was something that I’d always really hoped, to get played on the radio. As a Londoner born and raised, getting support from the team in London is just amazing. Playing this German festival, I had a couple of fans who had come to see me — I think, at this stage, you don’t always think many people whowould do that. That made me think that I can’t wait to keep growing this.

Next step is really solidifying my live set-up. I’ve now got a band for the first time, which is amazing, so it’s not just me and piano. It’s drums and track, guitar to try and really emulate the tracks a bit better. Cause not all the songs are super sad and ballady. Having a track and drums to bring the energy, so the set feels like it’s got dynamics. I think an EP two is the next step, for sure”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rankin

I am going to finish off with HUNGER and their fantastic interview. Persia Holder discussed her then-new single, Echoes. The extraordinary singer-songwriter is “using her big voice to sing about the small stuff”. I would love to interview her one day, as I am really excited to see what comes next. If there is going to be an album or another E.P. Holder has one of those voices that moves you as soon as you hear it. Her music comes deep from her soul. I Didn’t Think You’d Hear This is a remarkable debut E.P. that you need to listen to:

“According to Persia Holder, life begins at the piano. A “chronic overthinker”, the twenty-four-year-old songwriter finds herself in front of the keys every time she needs to channel an emotion or musically exorcise an experience from her mind — which I’m told is very often. In fact, emotion is at the beginning and end of all her music. It’s a two-way street between the inspiration the south Londoner derives from the city around her and the way her sound travels back into the world. That, Holder tells me, is how she came to write her upcoming (and debut) EP, I didn’t think you’d hear this, which is slated for this July.

But Holder’s new single, ‘Echo’, is the reason we’ve caught up today — and one of many reasons why she’s quickly becoming one of London’s ones-to-watch in the music space. With a voice and musical taste reminiscent of early-2000s icons like J-Lo, Rihanna and Amerie, she delivers unapologetic, knife- to-the heart songs with hefty vocal runs (her song, ‘Don’t Wanna Take it Slow’, is a high-class diss track). It’s by using this big voice to sing about the small stuff that makes Holder in equal parts extraordinary and relatable.

Camille Bavera: I’ve heard you lock away emotions until they’re ready to become music. Would you say that’s true?

Persia Holder: When I was a kid, anytime I felt overwhelmed or upset, my mum would find me at the piano, singing for hours. I didn’t even realise I was processing anything, but that instinct to express myself through music was always there. It’s probably why I’m drawn to writing and performing songs that hold depth and lived experience. Now, as an adult, I’ve definitely noticed myself almost subconsciously storing moments away — my Notes app could tell a thousand stories. I’m a chronic overthinker, but there’s real magic in being able to alchemise pain into something beautiful. Sometimes I think I’ve moved on from something only to write a song and realise I hadn’t healed from it at all. That’s such a deeply human thing.

CB: Your music silently screams Rihanna, J Lo and other Y2K icons. Where do you pull from for musical inspiration?

PH: That’s such a compliment! I’ve always been drawn to artists like Rihanna, where emotion lives in every vocal run, every pause. I think that era of music, especially the early 2000s, gave us these big, emotional pop songs, and I definitely carry that in my own way. I love making music that feels like a memory you didn’t know you still held.

CB: What would you say is your favorite song on the EP?

PH: That’s a tough one, but I’d have to say ‘Don’t Wanna Take It Slow’. I was crushing hard on a guy who was actually one of my best friends, and on a drunken night out he said the classic line, “I think we should take things slow”. I literally ran to the bathroom, opened my Notes app, and wrote that down on the spot. I brought it into my next session the following week — no shame. It’s wild looking back now because that was three years ago, but I still know how universal that feeling is — the confusion, the waiting, wondering what someone actually wants from you. The lyrics are pretty much word for word. And yes, the guy definitely knows it’s about him [laughs]”.

Do go and follow Persia Holder. I do think that the next few years will be really big for her. I am new to Holder’s music, though I am instantly engrossed seduced. Reading interviews that she has conducted, I really need to see her live one day soon. When listening to her music, you know that Persia Holder is going to go…

A very long way.

_____________

Follow Persia Holder

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/persiaholder/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3b6h32F8106P4eodXJHhmd?si=cnaVaejUT4GPfVvLL6aCBQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvs3wgY4FuqqCNmf5VOjuvg

FEATURE: Spotlight: Ava Joe

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Ava Joe

__________

THIS run of Spotlight features…

PHOTO CREDIT: Garry Jones

is around artists who played or will play at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton. So much incredible rising talent at that festival. I think a lot of industry figures attend so that they can discover some of the best new artists around. That takes me to Ava Joe. Her Big Beautiful Mess EP came out in April. I want to bring in some press around that. Before bringing things up to date, there is an interview from last year. The Line of Best Fit spoke with Ava Joe around the release of her debut E.P., Try Me:

“Offstage, Joe speaks with the same soft intensity that runs through her debut EP, Try Me, a reflective project that explores the rawness of healing, control, and survival, with an element of diaristic lyricism and intimacy that allows listeners to be let in on something that sounds personal and sacred. Ava is cementing herself as a striking and fresh voice of the UK soul scene.

We chat about her childhood beginnings growing up in Devon, featuring a blended family of ten, where rock music was a constant backdrop thanks to her dad’s band rehearsals. The young Ava Joe dabbled in theatre, appearing in school plays and assemblies, and landing the angel role in nearly every nativity production; however, it was songwriting that drew her in deeper. That eventually led her to the BRIT School, an institution renowned for its ability to shape some of the UK’s most beloved acts, including two of her inspirations, Adele and Amy Winehouse.

Speaking on the experience with distance and clarity, Joe looks back on that time as quietly pivotal. “One thing that BRIT really did for me is it opened up music,” she says. “I was introduced to jazz musicians and funk and soul. It just opened everything up musically, completely.”

A self-proclaimed student of early 2000s-pop, the soulful artist was fascinated by the pop girls of the time, such as Lily Allen, Adele, Lady Gaga, and Britney Spears. But it was her time at BRIT, which introduced her to musical diversity and left a lasting impact on her musicianship. “Looking back, it was such a beautiful experience because it introduced me to so many different types of music. “If it wasn’t for BRIT, I definitely wouldn’t be the artist I am today.”

That same openness pulses through Joe’s five-track debut EP, Try Me, which maps and follows the emotional wreckage and knowledge left behind by a controlling relationship she had entered at just the age of sixteen. The songs sift through the aftermath with hard-won clarity, curiosity, and care, rather than looking back in only anger. Now, at twenty-three years old, Joe began writing the project after leaving the relationship, once enough distance had passed for the memories to soften and for perspective to sit in.

“It was definitely written in the healing process,” she says. “When I was in all of that dark stuff, it was just happening, I almost couldn’t write. It was like I just had to live it. But I always knew, going through it, there was a tiny little bit of hope. And that hope kept saying to me: ‘This is going to be for your music. You’re going to write about it.”

That experience is mirrored via the track “Polly Pocket,” one of the EP’s standouts. “Sometimes this happens when you’re writing — you’ll have a title already,” she explains. “So I knew that I wanted to write a song called ‘Polly Pocket’ and I knew what I wanted to write it about.”

The name appears as symbolic, offering listeners a glimpse into the slow process of reclaiming your voice. “I was in a relationship that was very, very controlling,” she says. “I was in quite a vulnerable, naive place in my life. I was only 16 when I met him. It was on and off for a very long time. But it got very dark… he would pretty much tell me what I can and can’t wear.” She pauses for a moment. “I wouldn’t have any of that now,” she firmly states.

I ask if writing Try Me helped her make peace with that version of herself. “It’s definitely helped me know what not to go for in a guy,” she says with a soft laugh, hinting briefly at where she is now, happier and more grounded. But the conversation quickly turns inward, as she reflects on the deeper inner workings of having more compassion for both her past and present self. “I think I give that younger place in me a lot of love and compassion,” she says.

Therapy has become an anchor in Ava’s personal life and work. It comes up as a framework for how she processes the past, approaches relationships, and creates music. “I actually just started, which is very long overdue,” she says. “It’s helping so much. It’s helping with my music too, because it’s allowing me to process things and give the creative space in me way more free flow.”

And that space is crucial to her process. “Music is something that I go to and turn to when no one else is there,” she says. “It helps me through everything. It’s never left me. It’s never going to take anything from me. It’s never going to let me down or leave.”

That sense of musical safety grounds Ava, even as the shape of her sound continues to shift with her. Joe is still discovering her sound and voice, literally and artistically. “I still feel like I’ve got such a long way to define my genre even further,” she says. “I feel like I’m trying out a lot of things and trying out different sounds to see what works.”

Adele was one of Joe’s earliest inspirations, and for a while, she imagined a more straightforward path for herself—something clean-cut, classic, familiar. But life, as she puts it, had other plans. “After going through things, my voice changed with it,” she says. “Now you can almost hear the trauma in my voice, which is very strange. That’s why I love artists like Billie Holiday and Chet Baker. You can actually hear the pain.”

I tell her that her EP and aesthetic remind me of Lana Del Rey’s early days as Lizzy Grant, and she lights up, explaining how Lana is one of her inspirations and the impact that she’s had on female artists.

It tracks: Like Del Rey, Joe is drawn to the nostalgia that music brings. “It’s such a powerful feeling,” she says. “It’s like you miss it, but it fucking hurts. It’s gut-wrenching if you think of a certain memory and time. And when you hear a song and it makes you feel nostalgic even when you’ve never heard it before, that does something to me”.

I will come to CLASH and their recent chat with this incredible artist. Although she is an artist who has a lot of fans and some high-profile admirers (including Cate Blanchett), I do not think that she gets played on the radio enough. Ava Joe is an incredible artist who I feel will be releasing music for decades more:

“Sat outside Next Door Records in Dalston, I see Ava Joe rushing across the road, with all pleasantries exchanged and chit chat beginning, I was eager to start recording to ensure I didn’t miss any quotable gems.

Having travelled during much of her younger life, which encompassed Ireland, Devon, Surrey and London, Ava had plenty of time to pursue hobbies, music being the main one.

With influences such as Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and Adele – the strong vocalist that Ava would become was almost predestined, “I was really into singing, like I remember getting a karaoke initially one Christmas and I was obsessed with Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Adele and Lily Allen, all of the sort of like mainstream pop artists at the time.”

She gives credit to her father, “My dad is in a band, actually, and I think growing up, seeing him play and listening to his music and just being around that, sort of really inspired me.”

Ava continues, “I feel so blessed that I knew from such a young age. Literally from the age of three, I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ And ever since then, I’ve just stuck with it.”

Having started ‘writing’ at 14, taking on a school project on the Aztecs, Ava didn’t start taking it seriously until she was 16. Seeing it as a form of therapy; “I was about 14 when my parents got divorced and my whole world sort of just like collapsed and that’s when I really started writing because like I always wanted to write but I felt like I never really had much to write about until that happened and then there was so much loss and so much pain that I couldn’t really do anything but write about it, you know?”

Ava has used songwriting as a way to express her angst through relationships, family problems, anxiety and life experiences, both positive and negative.

She cites her childhood experiences, travelling around at a young age, as the reason she can get along with so many people.

Ava mentions she is unable to make long-term friendships and this has left her feeling like she does not belong in some environments, but this allows her to take on intimate writing and collaboration projects with the ease of knowing she may not meet this person again. She doesn’t look back with a negative look, however, believing “everything happens for a reason”, allowing her experiences to become fuel for creativity, “It’s kind of like a form of therapy to me as well.”

The breakout songwriter has since evolved from Lady Gaga karaoke, citing new influences such as Winehouse, The Beach Boys, Chet Baker and Radiohead.

Writing has evolved from her early Aztec storytelling to adapting poetry that she writes on her own typewriter, “I feel like there’s poetry in my songs, and I feel like it’s, again, it’s inspired by the same kind of things, the land, the relationships, the life, the emotions.”

She elaborates, “I love art, I just love art, I love poetry, I love paintings, I love songs, I love music. I think it’s all around us and I love it”.

Some Other Time spent some time with Ava Joe. It is interesting what they remark about her style and music. How you might think, judged on her fashion and aesthetic, that the music would have a set sound. However, it is very different to what you might imagine: “Beneath the soft glow of stage lights, Ava Joe exudes the intoxicating glamour of the golden age of French New Wave. There is something of Anna Karina about the London-based singer-songwriter; big, bouncy hair, cat-eye flicks, and vintage dresses. Her songs, however, betray the illusion, cracking the veneer to reveal a more complex, Lynchian figure”:

“In many ways, the EP marks a significant leap forward, a tight collection of tracks that channel both the hedonistic reverie and emotional turbulence of life in your early twenties. Juggling those dissonant feelings, she masterfully shapes the contradictions into something cohesive, crafting a project that feels more expansive and enthralling than her debut.

‘Am I A Dreamer’ was the first track to really catch our attention. Here, Ava is still finding her footing, but asking the bigger questions. Gentle and meandering, it drifts through existential longing, meditating on love, loss, and the finitude of life over the hum of crudely plucked acoustic guitars, playing out as something reminiscent of early Corinne Bailey Rae.

Time will defeat us
End this loneliness
Consuming me
Am I a dreamer
Or did you leave her
For me?

Across the rest of the EP, there are countless opportunities to sink into the depths of a ruminating mind. A sense of excavation, almost exorcism,  runs through the heart of the project. As the tracks unfold, Ava gradually lays herself bare, revealing more with each individual cut, ultimately arriving at a place of release while offering listeners something to anchor their own emotions to. There’s a quiet sense of communion here, a mutual recognition. You see her, and she sees you.

That instinct has been there from the very beginning of her journey as an artist. “I remember writing a song when I was 14, my parents had just divorced and I wrote something for my mum’s birthday. My whole family came round to watch me sing it in the living room, and everyone started crying,” she recalls. “Looking back, it was a really bad song, but I feel like it’s always a good sign when people cry to music.”

Like many, Joe’s early understanding of love was shaped by the rupture of her parents separation. “My whole world came crumbling down,” she says. Naturally, that experience stayed with her, distorting ideas of relationships in the years that followed and drawing her into unhealthy patterns. “I feel like when you’re in that kind of state, you attract the wrong kinds of men or people in general. From there, I got into quite a few toxic relationships.” These themes, present on her debut in tracks like ‘Eleanor Close’ and ‘Polly Pocket’, continue to form a key source of inspiration today.

Our twenties are crucial formative years, often defined by the slow collapse of our expectations, of love, life, and who we thought we might become. In Dubliners, James Joyce captures this disillusionment in ‘Araby’, a story driven by romantic idealism that ultimately gives way to something starkly sobering. There’s a similar tension running through Ava Joe’s music. Like Joyce’s narrator, her songs trace a misalignment between fantasy and reality, between a wide-screen vision of love and the quiet, often painful recognition of what it truly looks like.

That kind of upheaval can often leave you questioning your place in the world, something Joe has been contending with of late. “I’ve always felt like I’ve never really found my place in the world, and then I realised that is my place, and I love it,” she says. It’s a perspective that feeds directly into the emotional core of this new record, the idea of finding solace on the fringes. The misadventures of misfits and mavericks. Here, we sense that she isn’t searching for any form of resolution, but instead finding acceptance, not just as an artist, but as an individual.

Reaching that point, however, required an internal shift, a new kind of radical generosity toward herself. “For this EP, and just in general, how I was feeling when I was writing it, I was more accepting. I’m being warmer to myself, more loving to myself,” she explains.

‘Milk & Honey’ is perhaps the purest distillation of this newfound warmth, forming the silver-screen centrepiece of the project. Borrowing subtle stylistic cues from 60s acts like The Ronettes, the track plays out like a runaway romance. Star-crossed lovers speeding down an open freeway, Ava’s hair caught in the wind, suspended in a state of ecstasy. The imagery is unmistakably cinematic. Built around hazy guitar lines and a slow-burning rhythm, the track immerses you in a dreamlike trance.

Dreamers
No one can reach us
I’m his bad girl
He is my leader

That sense of sepia-toned nostalgia becomes a key motif throughout Big Beautiful Mess, shaped in part by the way the record came together. A self-confessed “old soul,” Ava explains, “I had Woodstock on my mind, that sense of freedom, and we were writing while watching videos of people dancing in fields during the 60s. It just kind of made itself.” That influence is perhaps clearest on the EP’s title track, a euphorically psychedelic number, perfectly suited to the languid euphoria of those long summer nights.

Whatever comes next for Ava Joe feels like an exciting prospect. Having experienced an extended period of creative release that culminated in this project, her inspiration shows no signs of slowing. “At the moment it’s just flowing out of me, and I love being in that state, not overthinking the lyrics, just letting the feeling take over and speak for itself.”

It’s not always clear where Ava Joe the person ends and the artist begins. For some, creativity takes the form of a constructed persona; for others, it flows as a natural extension of the self. In her case, the two feel almost inseparable. As romantic ideals fracture and yield to lived experience, what emerges is something more honest, the gradual unfurling of a young woman learning to inhabit the intensity of her own emotions and discovering the beauty within them.

“My life is not very boring, I feel like my emotions keep it entertaining,” she says. “I’m very up and down and all over the place. I love that about myself. It’s hard, but I really do love it. That’s kind of the point of the EP, things can be intense and chaotic sometimes, but I think there is a beauty in it”.

I am going to finish the interview section with The Standard. One of the coolest artists in London and one of our very best young songwriters, if you have not heard the Big Beautiful Mess EP, then do go and hear it. This is someone “with a style and sensibility aimed at taking listeners into another world to have their heartstrings plucked”. Go and follow her and see her live if you can:

“New EP Big Beautiful Mess is a dreamy world to enter, but founded on harsh realities. The songs are truly psychedelic in that sense, and the Sixties were an important inspiration.

“Freedom is the key theme,” she says of the record, “We recorded the title track while watching a film of people dancing at Woodstock. We wanted to get that feeling of freedom across, being wild and young. And finding beauty in things that aren’t beautiful. The beauty in the sadness, finding beauty in pain, finding beauty in the mess.”

Born in Devon, she lived in Ireland and Surrey before settling in London. She’s the eldest of 10 children from a blended family and started writing songs amidst her parents’ divorce when she was in her early teens. She always sang, but songwriting became an outlet.

“I think that period caused me a lot of problems. It caused me to sort of seek love in the wrong places. But through it all I knew that this was going to be my story, this is what I'm going to write about and I wouldn't change it.”

The Brit School, with its diverse mix of people from different background, helped bring jazz, funk and soul into her style. Still, after a bad relationship in her late teens, she found she couldn't sing: “I lost everything, my people, my voice, myself... I had to build it all back again.” That voice now is a powerful yet vulnerable instrument wired directly to her heartstrings; Sunkissed on the EP, about the fleeting joy of first love, sees it rise on emotion till it breaks.

“It’s always been about turning a bad situation, a heaviness or a sadness, and channeling it into something beautiful that can then uplift you, and others too. It's a universal language beyond words, it's a magical thing.”

With the likes of Sienna Spiro also doing distinctive things while retaining control of their direction, Ava is part of an exciting new wave of female singer-songwriters. And while she acknowledges the risks of delving into the darkness for material, she also possesses a steely confidence that could take her stadium-sized.

“I supported Jalen Ngonda on his UK tour and played at Hammersmith Apollo and it made me realise I'm meant for bigger stages. I've always wanted to be a singer for really big audiences. I want my music to be reached by as many people as possible”.

I have only recently discovered Ava Joe, though this is someone who has won the ear and praise of so many fans. Her Big Beautiful Mess EP is a stunning collection of songs. I was trying to find some reviews for it, though there was not a lot of choice. People should have written about the E.P., as it is wonderful. I am publishing this ahead of Ava Joe’s appearance at The Great Escape Festival. If this artist is not on your radar already, then make sure…

THAT she soon is.

_____________

Follow Ava Joe

PHOTO CREDIT: Nat Traxel

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/avajoee/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/AvaJoee

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1kExWfjjFzo8vNlmtBjCdj?si=CsaTbmuIS0ymyhOBbS4Xow

YouTube:

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

FEATURE: Spotlight: Alice Costelloe

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Alice Costelloe

__________

AS Brighton’s The Great Escape…

is on between 13th and 16th May, I am doing Spotlight features around artists who are appearing on the bill. Or have appeared, as some will go out after the festival. An artist I have known about for years and am not sure why I have not spotlighted yet is Alice Costelloe. Perhaps a little late in spotlighting her, I feel she is an artist who does not have as much support and love as she deserves. She has a large fanbase, though there are stations who have not played her music. I feel she deserves bigger festival placings and much more airplay. Before getting to some interviews, this is what The Great Escape say in their biography:

“London based Alice Costelloe – formerly of critically acclaimed shoegaze duo Big Deal (Mute Records) and previously live bassist for Superfood began her solo endeavour at the end of September 2023.

In 2024 she signed to cult UK label Moshi Moshi Records and released her EP ‘When It’s The Time’. Her debut album ‘Move On With The Year’, produced by Mike Lindsay (Lump/Tuung) in his Margate studio released February 2026, is a break-away record consisting of 10 tracks of beguiling art-pop built on self- trust, instinct, and a necessary process of creative detangling”.

Her amazing debut album, Move on with the Year, was released in February. It is an extraordinary work that will stay in your heart and mind long after you hear it. It is worth noting how her has some great dates and festival appearances. I have never seen Alice Costelloe live, though I will try and catch her at a London date, as that is where I am based. Her slot at The Great Escape will earn her more focus and attention. The chance to hear songs from her debut album. I have loved her music for a while, so it is always pleasing when she gets recognition and bookings! This is an artist that everyone needs to know about.

There is so much to love and adore about Alice Costelloe. I especially love her voice. More than most other singers, she carries so many different emotions and layers. It is a beautiful voice, but there are these depths and characteristics that give her music such resonance and nuance! A phenomenal songwriter, we all need to shine a light on a supreme talent. One of very best artists in my view. In fact, I don’t think I will dip back that far, as most of the older interviews are from when she was with Big Deal. Instead, I will drop in two reviews for Move on with the Year. It might seem insulting to call Alice Costelloe a ‘rising’ artist. That is not what I am referring to her as. However, it is important to spotlight her, partly because she released her debut solo album. Also, because she is a gifted artist that should be celebrated more. I want to start with an interview from Karma Magazine.  They say how “Move On With The Year is Alice Costelloe’s path to processing a tough past that until now was left in the shadows. In it, she faces the damage left by her father’s addiction and emotional absence head first— from the very beginning, Alice Costelloe refuses to comply with what is demanded…”:

“The 80s sound of the album caught my attention, which made me wonder about the artists that inspired her. Costelloe admitted that the 80s influence was more from Mike Lindsey’s production. Besides that, she cites Cate Le Bon, Weyes Blood, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Harry Nielsen: “I’d worked with Mike before, and I knew he had this whole kind of like treasure chest of amazing synths and all different things, it was sort of like this coming together of what I imagine in my head. Classic influences from those legend acts, and then bringing together this modern enough 80s sound that he’s really into. That’s a byproduct of our collaboration.”

While the title of the album Move On The Year evocates interpretations from the listener, Costelloe explained her perspective on the decision. “I felt like I was trying not to be too negative. When I was writing, I was thinking this is about progress as much as it is about engaging with difficult feelings and memories. It’s about engaging with them so you can get to the other side of them. Move On With The Year summed up that, and it was genuinely where I was at the time when I was recording it. I was going through lots of difficult things, and was just thinking, if I can get this album out, I can move on with the year.” She remembers turning towards music since she was a teenager as a way to move on.

When asked if what matters most to her is immortalising moments of the past or if it’s simply a necessary process to put them aside, she remarked that she never thought of music as immortalizing memories. “I was thinking more about just actually being yourself and being open with the world.” She feels that she spent a lot of her childhood and some of her adult years hiding different parts of herself. “For me, engaging with memories and writing them out for other people to see was a part of just trying to be okay with all the parts of myself and my past. If I put it all out there, then the world is going to see a 360 degree vision of who I am, and then that’s done, and I don’t have to deal with it.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Bex Aston

“This whole record, I wrote whatever came naturally,” she continues. “I’ve spent so many years resisting writing this record. I genuinely think I’ve been resisting since I was a teenager. When I started writing it, I thought I’m going to write the songs that come naturally. If I never put it out, it would also be fine.”

When asked which song can she recommend for the Karma! Magazine Playlist, she replied, “The track that’s coming out with the album next month is ‘Feet On The Sand,’ and that is, like, one of my favorites on the album. It’s never made sense as a proper single, but I do think it sums up the album and the sound of the album.”

Her songwriting is intriguing as well, with lyrics such as “My friends are dropping like flies” referring to people around her getting married. “It’s a really hard thing to put into words and to not sound bitter. I’m so happy for everyone and whatever choices my friends make. I do find it hard to square feminism and marriage and some of the associations that are still there with marriage. And I know people who are married in completely amazing equal relationships. It was more about the rituals around weddings that can feel a bit…”

When asked which color she or her music would be, she responded with pistachio green. “It’s the first color that came to mind, but that is just my favorite color.”

To end the interview, there is a quote by Costelloe that I was interested in, which is “The older I get, the more I understand it’s not healthy to be hiding or to be ashamed of parts of yourself.” I inquired of the album’s impact and reinforcement in that realization. “I think it’s something that I still struggle with. I’m sure lots of people have this with their work and their personal self, but I work in an Orthodox religious community, so I do really have to split myself every day and be super polite, not swear, and lots of other things. I come home and I have to remember I’m a musician, I’m creative, I can swear if I want”.

Two more interviews to cover off before wrapping up with some Move on with the Year reviews. One of the most emotionally open and raw albums. Though it is an album filled with beautiful moments. Let’s come to CLASH and their interview. They observe that “Move On With The Year’ is bold, brave, and hugely honest, a song cycle that filters through uncomfortable emotions and early life trauma to emerge emboldened, and refreshed. At times, it can be challenging, but Costelloe’s frankness – and gift for ear-worm melodies – means that it’s engaging at every turn”:

“Congrats on the new album which is a hugely impressive piece of work! How does it feel to share something as honest and personal as this?

Thank you! It feels both amazing and a little bit scary. I’ve spent a lot of my life being very private and only showing certain parts of myself, so it feels both liberating and a bit insane to reveal so much.

Much of the record deals with your father’s addiction issues, and the impact this had on you and your family. What made this the right time to confront those topics?

As I started writing the record I tried EMDR for the first time which massively helped me navigate everything me and my siblings had experienced dealing with an addict parent. It helped me to see my situation really differently, I could see the impact all of this had had on my life, but I understood that it didn’t have to define me or the rest of my life, and for the first time I could be more objective. At the same time my dad was becoming less and less in touch with reality to the point where I knew he’d never hear the record and I think that made me feel freer to write it.

‘Damned If You Do’ feels incredibly honest – what was it like to record that one?

It is I think one of the more upbeat songs on the album so it was actually more fun than most to record! Me and Jono Helsby my drummer had worked a lot on getting the groove of the song locked in so it felt really instinctive when we tracked the bass and drums together. But I just couldn’t sing these vocals properly in the studio so we actually mixed in a lot of my demo vocals and so maybe that helped me to feel a bit less on show when we recorded.

When I was writing it, I was feeling creatively fulfilled in a way I hadn’t since I was a kid and it made me think about how much I’d hate this to have to change if I were to have a life with more serious grownup commitments! For me it’s always the big milestones in life that remind you of absence, so as I contemplated the possibilities of marriage and children, the subjects felt particularly complex for me as I was thinking about not only the way it might change my creative output but that these would also be milestones that would bring into focus the absence of my father.

What was the biggest challenge when making this record?

Learning that being productive all the time is not productive! When I first started working on the album I was super disciplined about writing and demoing daily, but repeatedly found myself getting stuck and burnt out. Once I realised that you can’t endlessly mine your creativity without also feeding it with good things – music, art, nature, friends (whatever fills your cup) – I changed my approach and found I could write much better and easier if I regularly took myself on little adventures. I explored London as if I was a tourist, and went to more exhibitions that year than I probably have in my whole life, it really helped to be absorbed in something other than music. Taking in all the amazing culture and vitality of the city inspired me to keep going.

A number of live shows are upcoming – are you looking to seeing how these songs translate in the live environment?

I’m really looking forward to playing the album live. For the tour this Spring we’re going to play the album tracks in order from start to finish. It’s going to be an interesting experiment and I think requires quite a lot of patience and kindness from the audience, as some of these songs are very slow and very quiet and some might say quite sad. In a world where our attention is strained and shifting all the time, asking people to engage with a whole album is a lot, but I believe in music lovers, and if it works, I think these shows are going to be extra special.

What’s next for you?

We start our little UK tour at the end of this month, and then it’s quite a hectic year with festivals and another headline tour in October, but all exciting things ahead! Having spent so many weeks by myself writing and demoing this heavy record, I’d love to spend some time this year working collaboratively on something lighter with someone whose work I admire. I think I need a breather from being exclusively stuck inside my own head and experiencing someone else’s approach and perspectives would be a welcome relief!”.

 

I will get to DIY’s review of Move on with the Year, though I first want to come to their interview from February. I can imagine it would have been tough instantly transitioning from playing in bands to going solo. The dynamic is different. Being used to sharing the stage and studio with bandmates, doing things on her own must have been scary as well as liberating. If you are a solo artist, then everything is on you. However, being solo also means Alice Costelloe can let her voice and words take charge. She can be very honest and personal, rather than have to share credit or sing songs that don’t feel true to her:

“Making ‘Move On With the Year’ became a period of growth in more ways than one. Coming from a hefty family of creatives (including fashion designer Bella Freud and painter Lucien Freud) meant there was an unspoken pressure to succeed. At the same time, her musical touchstones were largely male, shaping a narrow idea of what an album should be: a grand, capital-C Concept filled with oversized ideas and lyrics. So when it came to her own attempt, she tried to fit that mould: “I wrote some awful songs about London and Greek mythology,” she chuckles. “I had this weird idea that I wasn’t enough and I needed to make it somehow grander, lyrically. I hope no one ever hears the songs I wrote before figuring out what to make this album about. It was like someone posturing on what an album should be.”

When she finally figured out why she’d been struggling, it all made sense. “I’d been comparing myself to these men that weren’t really relevant to my life, even though I love the music they make,” she says. The breakthrough came when she stopped trying to impress anyone, instead choosing to let everything out and writing directly from how she felt. “I’d just said: ‘whatever happens, that’s what this record is going to be’.” That shift produced ‘Anywhere Else’, the album’s opening track. “Once I’d got that down, everything else just came from there.”

 

From there, the record took shape quickly, and it soon became clear that it was more than just a debut album. Instead, it formed a patchwork of childhood memories, shaped by the experience of growing up with a father living with addiction. While EMDR therapy had already helped her process much of it, writing the record allowed her to revisit those memories with distance, bridging the gap between memory and acceptance. “It was about exploring it to the nth degree so I could kind of let it go. I would have never been able to get this record down if I had been finding it as heavy as I had in previous years,” she reflects.

This mindset filters through the record’s lyrics. Take the self-affirmation in ‘How Can I?’ or the album’s final moments, where she quietly announces her departure: “I’ve already done my time / I’m going to walk into the garden / And say my last goodbye”. Slowly but surely, the album became less about individual moments of pain and more about the collective process of letting go and moving on. She realised that while she couldn’t change the past, she could change how she thought about it. She explains: “I didn’t want it to be like a ‘screw you’, like, ‘hate you’. I was coming from a place of ‘I just need to be okay and move past this’.”

At the same time, she began widening her musical frame of reference. “I was consciously listening to albums by women. Cate Le Bon, Weyes Blood… I listened to Joni Mitchell for the first time! I thought: ‘What is going on, that I’ve got to be this age and not listened to a Joni Mitchell record all the way through?’” she exclaims. It was the first step to reducing her impostor syndrome. It also gave her permission to write smaller, quieter songs without feeling like she was being too “feminine” or “vulnerable”.

Then came the instruments: “I’m just so sick of guitar,” she laughs, reflecting on the time. “I’m not bored of all guitar music; I’m bored of me and guitar.” Looking for a way out, she bought a £60 flute on Amazon and taught herself how to play it. It was another way of refusing the habits she’d fallen into. “I was like, ‘I can play a recorder, I’ll be able to play this’. A flute is actually so much harder to play than a recorder!” Encouraged by producer Mike Lindsey, the flute quickly became central to the record, appearing on every track.

The last thing she needed was confidence, a shift that happened in great part thanks to Mike. “He doesn’t need everything to be perfect, so I just instantly felt like it was okay that I play many things at a sort of average level,” she reflects fondly. “Honestly, it’s the first time I’ve not felt like an impostor in a studio.”

Thus, ‘Move On With the Year’ was born. What began as a practical attempt to get an album finished became a farewell to old habits, borrowed voices, and a lesson in self-belief. “As a result of trusting my instinct, things worked out really well”.

It is well worth reading DIY’s four-star review for the incredible Move on with the Year. I did recently publish a feature where I predicted a collection of albums that might well be shortlisted for the Mercury Prize later in the year. I would say that Alice Costelloe is also in with a shot. She thoroughly deserves to be among the dozen! I would not bet against that happening. Although it is a brief review, I think it is worth bringing in. This is what DIY say:

“While Alice Costelloe first stepped out as a solo artist back in 2024 with the soft, synthy EP ‘When It’s The Time’, for this full-length debut, the former Big Deal and Superfood member adds dashes of self-taught flute, recorder and organ to the mix beneath her husky vocal, all while lyrically retaining her lofty curiosity.

‘Move On With The Year’ marries sonic familiarity with emotional lyrical introspection, her often dainty but always dependable indie pop toying with minimalism while she expresses past wounds, emotional distance and long-avoided family scars. A huge step forward musically, as it would appear to be personally”.

Alice Costelloe is a queen that has released one of the great debut albums of this year. I do hope it is rewarded with award recognition! I am going to make a real effort to see her live, and I would love to interview her one day. I listen to Move on with the Year. It is so affecting! I can only wonder how challenging and upsetting it must have been writing some of the words and singing them in the studio. I feel that Costelloe’s songs will connect with other people who have been through similar things. I wonder if writing the album had a cathartic effect or helped her in some way.

I want to end with a review from Popmatters. They called Move on with the Year “refined, elegant art pop, in which her crystalline voice floats over a rich palette of electronic instrumentation with grace”. Alice Costelloe is truly special. If you are able to go and see her live, then make sure you do:

“The fact that the London-based singer-songwriter Alice Costelloe, the great-great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, is, on her debut album Move on With the Year, probing into her unconscious to conjure up memories of her estranged father might seem too on the nose or a send-up. Don’t worry, it isn’t either. Instead, it’s a gallant portrayal of a child of a parent battling substance abuse—in other words, it’s an indie pop record with a subject matter barely acknowledged, let alone expressed with such finesse and stoicism. Yet, despite the heaviness of its themes, you could be floating.

The post-war English poet Philip Larkin wrote, in his customary sardonic tone, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.” In the next stanza of “This Be the Verse”, Larkin opens with a punchline to a joke that never existed: “But they were fucked up in their turn.” The specter of Move on With the Year is, of course, Costelloe’s absent father, who moves through the songs fucking her up, or, in her own words, “a vagabond haunting the night.” Yet, perhaps in realizing that he, in turn, was subjected to the errors of his parents, Costelloe doesn’t appear to be reproachful—if anything, compassionate.

It’s this acute sensitivity to the writing, along with not eschewing hard truths, that makes Move on With the Year a compelling and, more importantly, moving piece of work. Moreover, it never falls into the trappings of mawkishness—even when the content is direct and hits you with the sheer force of involuntary memories, which is what Move on With the Year is: a series of reverie-laden imagery set to supple and graceful indie-pop tunes.

To zero in on the lyrics would be to miss what makes Move on With the Year special: a perfectly executed, sophisticated pop record, complete with warm, analogue production. After disbanding the shoegaze duo Big Deal in 2016, Alice Costelloe released her debut EP in 2023, So Neurotic, and, a year later, followed it up with a second, When It’s the Time, produced by Mike Lindsay (one half of LUMP with Laura Marling), whose brilliant production on Move on With the Year accentuates the acoustic woodwinds, synths, Moog, mellotron, crunchy tambourines, rolling drums, and acoustic guitars.

Costelloe’s blithe vocals make you feel as if she has replayed these memories a thousand times: flipping the scenes as if by hand to find a new image, or a new meaning behind an image, and by doing so, the emotion attached to the image dissolves to leave her singing with aplomb like Cate Le Bon and Lael Neale.

The synth-washed opener, “Anywhere Else”, starts so slow that you can almost hear the thoughts of the singer running backwards to a time when innocence, perhaps, can be regained. By the end, the dream is over, and the singer is left with sadness and pain, indignation and desperation, a feeling that fate has dealt her the wrong cards. When the narrator receives a call from the hospital concerning her father, Alice Costelloe screams “Ahhhhhh”, bringing to mind Munch’s The Scream, an existential scream traveling the distance from adulthood to childhood to somewhere between reliving and living.

“How Can I” picks up where “Anywhere Else” left off: the hospital. However, it is about the narrator’s birth, when her father was absent. Musically, it begins with a punchy motorik snare, followed shortly thereafter by a pulsing synth, a recorder, and a tambourine.

Move on With the Year, written in 2024, is infused with stately pop arrangements that hint at an array of influences: 1990s alternative rock (as seen in the dreamlike, Spiritualized-like “Too Late Now”), 1970s soft rock, 1960s chamber pop, and, lastly, the girl groups of the 1960s. Halfway through Move On With The Year, “Damned If You Do” lifts the listener out of the past and into the present: a narrator witnesses friends’ weddings, all the while believing her father will not walk her down the aisle.

Writing in such a candid and direct manner is, firstly, brave; secondly, it can be difficult to pull off. Trauma isn’t interesting in and of itself, which is why many artists are right bores: they fail to look up from their wounds to see that everyone—including their deceased grandmother (god bless her soul)—is/was fucked, as Larkin jocosely highlights. However, Alice Costelloe is too self-aware to become self-indulgent—perhaps she has read Freud’s 1914 essay, On Narcissism.

“Of Course I Know”, the zenith of Move on With the Year, could be Cate Le Bon singing a ballad on Let It Be, complete with a spectral mellotron and a recorder solo. “If I Could Reach You”, the penultimate track, is by far the catchiest track onthe album, an earworm that will have dancing and crying, neither or both. Lastly, the dark wave “Is There Something (Goodbye)” isn’t a sanguine conclusion but a resolute goodbye, instead.

Move on With the Year is a work of refined, elegant art pop, rendered through stunning production, in which Alice Costelloe’s crystalline voice floats over a rich palette of electronic instrumentation with grace. In many ways, Costelloe has taken an intensely personal subject matter and transcended it, as if the real story—the only story, in fact—of the record is the music, which is to say she is a survivor. Although she cannot entirely lay the ghost of her father, the record isn’t a pyrrhic victory: by confronting the past, the present is lived and, possibly, embraced. If not, this album will make you dance. Sometimes that is enough”.

Even if I have known about Alice Costelloe as a band member and was aware of her solo work, I wanted to spotlight her now, as she plays at The Great Escape, and there has been this time since her debut album was released. A chance to let some dust settle in a way and look at this debut further from its release. I am so interested to see where she goes next and what her future music will sound like. Whether her next solo album will be similar to Move on with the Year. Alice Costelloe is…

ABSOLUTELY exceptional.

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Follow Alice Costelloe

PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Swann

Bandcamp:

https://alcostelloe.bandcamp.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/alicecostelloe/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1xbZZl0gYutFPyiUAXuJLy?si=USDH7ZkRRwK8kb3b1HU1yw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbMeJAm9_KpE5DD2-0mdq8Q

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/alcostelloemusic/

FEATURE: Fever Pitch: A Netflix Documentary, A Classic Album at Twenty-Five, and Pop Reinvention

FEATURE:

 

 

Fever Pitch

IN THIS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue with director Michel Gondry in Paris in March 2026. Chanel unveiled its latest global campaign starring Margot Robbie, with a reimagining of Kylie Minogue’s 2001 hit, Come Into My World. The campaign is for the CHANEL 25 handbag, and was directed by Gondry – who also directed the original video more than two decades ago. Kylie Minogue herself makes a special appearance in the film, marking twenty-five years since the release of the track (information courtesy of Variety Australia)

A Netflix Documentary, A Classic Album at Twenty-Five, and Pop Reinvention

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I am thinking about…

PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix

Kylie Minogue, as this year is already shaping up to one of her most important. A Netflix documentary, KYLIE, will get a release date soon. I will come to details of it. In October, Fever turns twenty-five. Her eighth studio album is a classic that I feel has influenced so many modern artists. I wrote about this in a recent feature. I want to come back to the fact Minogue is an underrated artist in terms of how she has transformed Pop and is one of the great reinventors. I have also said how last year, she should have been offered the headline slot at Glastonbury. Maybe she will next year, as it would be a chance to celebrate twenty-five years of Fever and bring this career-spanning set together. Here are some more details about a documentary that will hear from one of the true greats:

“From her breakout role as Charlene in the ’80s Australian soap Neighbours to chart-topping success across five decades, Kylie Minogue has never stopped reinventing herself. Now the new documentary KYLIE explores how she reshaped pop and became one of music’s most enduring icons, selling over 80 million records.

In this intimate three-part documentary, Kylie Minogue opens her personal archives and reflects on a life that continues to captivate, inspire, and soundtrack multiple generations. Featuring footage from home movies, personal photographs, and new interviews with Kylie herself (as seen in the first-look image above), the documentary shows the woman behind the hits. It examines how she’s faced public scrutiny, personal loss, and illness with grit and grace, earning respect far beyond her own fandom.

Directed by Emmy and BAFTA Award winner Michael Harte (Three Identical Strangers, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, BECKHAM) and produced by John Battsek’s Ventureland — the multi-award-winning team behind The Deepest Breath, WHAM!, and BECKHAM — KYLIE features insights from friends, family, and collaborators including Dannii Minogue, Jason Donovan, Nick Cave, and Pete Waterman. The docuseries celebrates the joy, connection, and euphoria that make Kylie unmistakably Kylie.

Check back for more information, including when KYLIE will be released”.

I really wanted to talk about the documentary, but there are other things to bring in. There have obviously been a fair few documentaries about Pop greats. From Madonna to Taylor Swift, it allows us a chance to hear about their legacy and amazing career and contributions from those around them. A lot more concert documentaries coming out. In the case of Kylie Minogue, there is so much to say about her. Whilst KYLIE might not be able to cover all of the bases, it is going to be unmissable. Someone who has experienced loss, is a cancer survivor, has gone through some ups and downs regarding critical approval, she is now in this new phase of her career. Fever and 2000’s Light Years were important albums. Reinventions that found Kylie Minogue celebrated once again after previous albums did not win too much critical love – her 1990s work is fascinating but does not get that much love (her 1994 album, Kylie, is among her best) -, this was very much her back on top. Fever might be her very best album. Though albums like TENSION (2023) are up there with her best. It is the way that Minogue is able to shift genres and personas. Or looks. She is also this style icon. Through the years, she has sported so many incredible looks and we often look at artists such as Madonna when considering the style greats. Though Minogue needs to be in the conversation. I want to move to DAZED and their interview published a few days ago. The interview explores her Pop legacy, “personal style, Fever at 25, and her starring role in JW Anderson’s latest campaign”:

“It’s been almost two years to the day since Kylie Minogue met Jonathan Anderson. On the first Monday in May, 2024, the princess of pop took a much-needed break from her Las Vegas residency to attend the Met Gala. The dress code that year was ‘The Garden of Time’, and Minogue wore a custom Diesel gown that transformed her into Sleeping Beauty – and sleepy she was, exhausted from performing night after night. Despite her fatigue, there was one person who could persuade her to attend an afterparty, and that person was Anderson. Naturally, Kylie out-danced everyone and ended up being the person on the dancefloor.

Immediately, the pair hit it off, and earlier this year the Australian icon fronted JW Anderson’s AW26 lookbook, alongside the likes of super model Mona Tougaard and fashion journalist Tim Blanks. Anderson might be one of the busiest people in fashion – juggling his namesake label while designing womenswear, menswear and couture at Dior – but he’ll always make time for Kylie. Today (May 1), the duo have reunited once again, giving Dazed the exclusive look at the second iteration of their AW26 campaign, which you watch below. “Kylie Minogue brings a special excitement, an emotion,” says Anderson. “Placing her within this world allows something new to emerge.”

2026 marks a huge year for Kylie. Not only is she a JW Anderson It-girl, she’s also about to drop a hotly anticipated three-part Netflix documentary about her life. Then, she’ll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of her monumental 2001 album, Fever. Plus, we can expect a few more surprises too, as she explains below.

PHOTO CREDIT: JW Anderson

Hey Kylie – when and where did you first meet Jonathan?

Kylie Minogue: We first met at his party after the Met Gala in 2024. I was doing my Vegas residency at the time and was really clinging onto my sanity with the workload and seemingly endless other things. So I wasn’t entirely sure if I would get to an afterparty. I asked how long it would take to get to Jonathan’s party and the answer was twelve minutes. I couldn’t argue with twelve minutes, so headed downtown. That’s where we met and that’s where I was one of the last ones dancing. He was divine and the night was wonderful. We didn’t meet again until the lookbook photoshoot, so next time I’d say ‘how about a cup of tea!?’

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Fever! How will you be celebrating?

Kylie Minogue: This depends. Can you keep a secret? Hmmmmm. What I can say is that I will definitely be celebrating. It’s an album that still stands up, marks a real point in time not only for me but for some others and it’s such a weird and wonderful mix of emotions looking back.

Do you have a favourite look from the Fever era?

Kylie Minogue: Omg, so many. Grace Jones’ white catsuit and Manolo Blahnik white pumps from the “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” video for starters. I also love the Dolce & Gabbana looks from the tour, the Clockwork Orange section, and the ballad section.

What’s something you’re looking forward to this year?

Kylie Minogue: There’s a lot happening. My Netflix documentary is coming very soon, we'll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Fever later this year, and a few other little surprises...”.

It is this interesting point where this Pop queen is still reigning. Having gone through different stages and experimented with various sounds, she always remains fresh and exciting. I wonder how she will follow TENSION and this Disco/Dance period. Fever sort of Electronic and Dance. She has moved through sounds and you always get this incredible visual campaign. Minogue as arresting, iconic and stylish as she ever was. She turns fifty-eight on 28th May, so I wonder how she will celebrate. In terms of her next album and what she will do, you wonder if it will be personal and something more emotive. A more soulful or jazzier album. If there will be a slight return to Fever and that sound. Minogue is responsible for influencing modern greats like Dua Lipa. I wonder what she has planned for Fever’s twenty-fifth anniversary. It is such an important album, maybe a special concert series, those songs backed by an orchestra, a special short film or new videos. Will there be an expanded vinyl edition? I am going to write about this album and how it was a turning point. Though Minogue has experienced tragedy and personal challenges and relationship breakdowns, she always remains so strong. In terms of her artistry and vision, she never compromises at all. One of those artists that is true to herself and has faced her fair share of ageism and scrutiny. However, defiant and always brilliant, Kylie Minogue releases the absolute best music, is this incredible and awe-inspiring live performer, and you know she will continue to be this way for many years. KYLIE is a documentary that will not only appeal to her fans. I feel there will be interest from those new to her music or people who followed her in the 1980s and perhaps dipped out. I have been a fan for decades, and it is always sad when Minogue is not mentioned in the same breath of the greatest artists ever. Let’s hope 2027 sees a Glastonbury headline slot. In terms of new music, we will see what comes. A big anniversary to mark in October. I would also love to see another Christmas album from her, though she may not want to do that anymore. Whatever comes, it is going to be incredible. So many reasons to admire and love…

THIS music titan.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Tawny Moon (Before the Dawn)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

Tawny Moon (Before the Dawn)

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I am thinking about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs on the opening night of her Before the Dawn residency with her son, Albert Mcintosh, during Somewhere in Between/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn, as I have been listening to it a lot lately. The more that I listen to, the more I am transfixed by it. Kate Bush’s vocals are so powerful! I was not at any of the shows, yet I feel like I am there and transported to Hammersmith when she performed her run of twenty-two dates in 2014. The live album was released in November 2016, so we mark ten years of that soon. I am going to come back to that live album and also explore the residency, as there is so much to unpack and dissect. A fascinating and awesome residency, I am going to bring in some words about a special and unique song. Bush performed the entirety of The Ninth Wave and A Sky of Honey. These two suites appeared on 1985’s Hounds of Love and 2005’s Aerial respectively. The first act features eight tracks that are a mix of songs from various albums. The Red Shoes, Hounds of Love and Aerial are represented. The second act is The Ninth Wave, then the third act consists of A Sky of Honey. The encore brings us Among Angels from 50 Words for Snow (2011) and Cloudbusting (from Hounds of Love). A gem that does not appear on her albums and was included in the residency is Tawny Moon. Perhaps a bit controversial calling it a Kate Bush song, it is performed by Albert McIntosh. It is a Kate Bush song, though it very much hands the spotlight to her son. We heard Albert (or Bertie) on Aerial, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow prior to Before the Dawn. For Before the Dawn, Mcintosh got to show his acting chops. He was also the Creative Adviser and played Son, and Painter. It is part of Kate Bush’s residency, though this is a rare occasion where I am throwing the focus to Albert Mcintosh. There is not a lot of information about the song, though those reviewing the residency and live album did have their say on Tawny Moon. This is what the Irish Times noted about this underrated jewel: “Surprisingly, one of the highlights of the collection is new song Tawny Moon - a song sung by her son, Albert, who prompted her comeback and took part in the ensemble of backing vocals throughout the show. That song was taken from Act 3, based largely around the Sky of Honey song suite from 2005's Aerial, as she observes the work of a painter from the 19th century, replete with birdsong and a significantly lusher, more pastoral palette to draw from”.

Tawny Moon appears after dusk. Kate Bush noting it was the perfect time to slot this song in. Seeing the moon rising and writing about it. Even though it is not sung by Kate Bush, I wanted to include it in this series. Though I have seen some reviews saying that it was not a highlight hearing Albert Mcintosh sing solo and being maybe a bit overdramatic, there was a lot of kindness for Tawny Moon. Background Magazine caught Before the Dawn and discussed Tawny Moon. Providing a mixed review: “Miss Bush's son Bertie got to shine in a solo, the song Tawny Moon, and although he's only sixteen he proved to be both a very talented singer and actor, who clearly felt very much at home on stage, but his voice sounded quite musical-like and therefore couldn't appeal to me that much. I had the feeling that a larger part of the audience felt the same”. When reviewing the live album, Kate Bush biographer Graeme Thomson said this when writing for UNCUT: “A new song, “Tawny Moon”, is slotted into A Sky Of Honey, and it’s good, a churning, mechanical piece of modern blues, sung gamely by Bush’s teenage son Bertie McIntosh”. If you ignore horrible reviews and hatchet jobs like this one, you’ll find that there was a lot of fascination around Tawny Moon. It is interesting what Kitty Empire said in this review for The Guardian: “Bertie stars as the painter in A Sky of Honey and sings a new song, Tawny Moon. While this maternal indulgence is only natural from Bush, Bertie's voice is more suited to the West End stage than art pop”. I wonder why this song was not considered for Aerial, and whether Kate Bush thought of a song like this to allow Albert/Bertie a chance to shine solo? It would have made an interesting addition. I think that her lyrics are wonderful and evocative. The first verse sets the scene: “I'll give every cloud a silver lining/Every star will be bright and shining/Tawny owls swoop, the howling wolf/Every swimming pool will shiver with excitement/I've made the wind blow and starry heavens hang/I ache from head to toe, I've got blisters on my hands”. Albert appearing on Aerial very briefly. When it was rereleased in 2018 and Rolf Harris’s parts were replaced – in light of his sexual assault conviction -, we do hear Mcintosh there. I guess he was too young to sing Tawny Moon in 2005, though it would have been great if Tawny Moon made an appearance. A studio version.

Aerial has this complex history and there is that unfortunate black mark where Rolf Harris appears on the original. I wonder too if he was ever considered for 2014 to appear on stage. As I wrote recently regarding this, it was largely down to her son that she did the residency and came back to the stage, so he was always a first choice. His acting is great and he was a key part of the residency. I really like Tawny Moon. The lyrics are brilliant. I like these lines: “Oh, my love, my love, my Luna/Night is nearly here/Here comes the night, she shimmies across the track/I've got to get it just right, I've got blisters on my hands “. Bush wrote about the nightingale and how “She knows precisely why/The unrequited poet cries”. Bush also mentioned the “Queen of Bedlam”. That would be a great character study for my series, Them Heavy People…, though I will try and keep that pure and reference songs Bush has song. I needed a place for Tawny Moon. To see it in a new light. It is a beautiful and stirring song I could see fitting into a West End show or something dramatic where Albert Mcintosh leads. The final lines are particularly romantic and evocative: “Rise and shine, Tawny Moon/I'm gonna paint all night with the Tawny Moon/I'm gonna dance all with the Tawny Moon”. In spite of the acidic reviews from a couple of people, I do have a lot of love for Tawny Moon. The one time I will include a Kate Bus song in this run that was not sung by Kate Bush. Its importance, though, is a reason for inclusion. As it is her son showcasing his vocal and dramatic talents. Also, and perhaps handily for her, a brief chance to rest her voice and slow down before she was singing and back at the front! On thew beautiful and brilliant Tawny Moon, we get to see…

THE son rising.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential June Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Rodrigo/PHOTO CREDIT: Morgan Maher for Cosmopolitan

Essential June Releases

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JUNE is traditionally…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lizzo

a busy one for albums. Just before the summer beckons and the festivals kick off, artists keen to put out albums. July and August are also very packed. I am going to recommend a selection of the best albums due next month. There is a fuller list here that you might want to reference for further suggestions. Let’s start off with the albums due on 5th June. I am looking forward to hearing Lizzo’s Bitch. I am a big fan of Lizzo and I always love what she puts out. The cover alone is worth getting the album for! You can pre-order it here. Rough Trade have not really spent any time giving us information about Lizzo or the album, so instantly I am forced to look elsewhere. They need to do a bit better when it comes to which albums they give information about or, like this, leave with the bare minimum! I will bring in a new interview from People. Lizzo talks about self-love, swimwear-confidence and her new album:

"You know how exhausting being fabulous is?" asks Lizzo.

The musician is known for being all things fabulous indeed, but in this case, she's talking about her newest fashion campaign. Spoiler: she's living her best life in bikinis and one-pieces on a yacht ("It's tongue-in-cheek. It's a wink and a nod").

It's been four years since the "Good as Hell" singer launched size-inclusive shapewear line Yitty in collaboration with Fabletics and two years since the brand came out with its swim line. This summer, Yitty Swim is debuting its largest collection of bathing suits with more than 25 new styles ranging from sizes XS to 6X that the brand markets for every body and every baddie.

"Swimwear was always the goal in the beginning because I truly believed that we could bring some of the shaping comfort and sexiness that our shapewear had to a swim [line]," Lizzo tells PEOPLE exclusively. "I want people to find a product that makes them feel good. My goal with Yitty has always been to create something that changes a person's day for the better and the way they feel about themselves when they walk past the mirror."

It often feels like the swimsuit genre can lack empathy for consumers, but Lizzo dreamt of creating a narrative that gave shoppers hope of finding a piece that could make them feel snatched and sexy and comfortable. She made it a reality.

In the short amount of time Lizzo has been working on Yitty, she's seen it "explode in ways we didn't even realize." So diving deeper into the category wasn't so much of an undertaking, but rather an "exciting and fun" chapter to embark on. "It's all about florals and fun colors while still having our classic shaping styles that everyone knows and loves," she says of the launch, adding that this time it was also about experimenting with the technicalities — such as the amount of compression — of a swimsuit.

Lizzo's personal mantra when it comes to swim style is as empowering as it gets. "I always like to honor my curves and my shape. The silhouette is so important to me. How are my curves? Am I flaunting them? Never want to hide them."

In 2025, Lizzo talked about undergoing an “intentional weight release journey” about two years prior and revealed in January that year that she reached her goal weight from 2014. She brought fans inside her transformative lifestyle changes and continued to embrace her beauty with all the selfies — including the swimsuit ones. Today she says, "I am just enjoying my body like I always have."

"That's the beauty of self-love. [It's about] just accepting yourself through every stage of life. Where I'm at right now is, I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying my beautiful body, and I'm appreciative for it every single day. Yitty swim helps me show it off."

As the age-old adage goes, confidence is not about the destination but the journey — that couldn't be truer for Lizzo. "What I've learned is that you're always learning and you're never done. There's always a new lesson, and I think it's about how open you are to learning that lesson." This will all be packaged in her upcoming album 𝖡̶𝖨̶𝖳̶𝖢̶𝖧̶ (out June 5).

"It's called 𝖡̶𝖨̶𝖳̶𝖢̶𝖧̶, but there's a line going through it because I'm not the names that you call me," she explains of the name. "It's about empowering yourself and loving yourself through your flaws. Life is a journey, and thank God I get to make music about it”.

A few more form 5th June before moving on to the following week. I want to spotlight Niall Horan’s Dinner Party. You can pore-order it here. Again, not any real information about the album (“Niall Horan returns with his fourth solo album, Dinner Party. Calling it “a thank you to the past and a hello to the present,” Niall delivers 12 new tracks shaped by “love, intimacy, fear, loss, hope and dreams.” Cinematic yet organic, Dinner Party invites listeners to take a seat at the table and share in the warmth, wit and sincerity that define the album.”), so I am looking around again. The former One Direction member spoke with Rolling Stone UK, and discussed finding new love, grieving, and building something new with his music:

“Horan has been in a more reflective state over the past few years. There’s the whirlwind romance of his current relationship, which anchors the album. He met his girlfriend at a dinner party he held about six years ago, proving that love really can just come knocking at your front door. He sounds settled and enamoured across the record, even as he contends with grief following the death of his former bandmate Liam Payne in October 2024. More than anything, Dinner Party is a celebration of life and love.

“This is your second album in a row that is deeply rooted in love and romance. How does that feel for you as a songwriter, in contrast to writing about heartbreak?

It’s very different stuff to write. If I have to go into the studio and make something up, then it’s harder. Sometimes I do write observational-type music, where I look at other people’s scenarios or other people’s relationships or things I might have seen on the street. But when it comes to love or heartbreak, I find if you’re going through them, you can write about them a lot easier. These last two albums have definitely been more on the romantic side, because that’s where I’m at.

You do still manage to find a level of grit and conflict, even in that. There’s this awareness that something could go wrong.

If it was all rosy, it wouldn’t be a great listen. All of my favourite songs have a bit of doubt to them. And if there’s no doubt, you’re lying to yourself. When I’m trying to put pen to paper, there has to be a bit of both in there for me. I always try, even in the doubtful songs, to have a happier ending. When I did ‘What a Time’ with Julia [Michaels], I remember listening to that song for the first time and the whole thing was “What a time, what a time, what a time.” And at the very end, she went, “What a lie, what a lie, what a lie.” And I was just like, “That’s where it’s at.” I liked flipping the song on its head and making it something different. ‘Better Man’ on this album, I did it in that. There’s a bit of bad dream and doubt, and a bit of songwriting tips and tricks.

Some artists are very insular — “I don’t want to hear anything else.” But you’re the opposite of that.

My first-ever singer-songwriter I heard was Paul Simon, which gave me Damien Rice. Or the first rock band I heard was the Eagles, and that gave me Bruce [Springsteen] and gave me Fleetwood [Mac]. You’re constantly just picking up new stuff. It’s nearly impossible not to these days, being around people and listening to what they’re listening to. Or going on Spotify or Apple [Music] and going through the different playlists. You can’t help but pick up different influences, whether they’re conscious or subconscious.

What’s driving you musically now?

I just love the evolution. I don’t think that I’ll scare anyone away with this album. I hope not, anyway. I don’t think it’s musically going, “What’s he doing?” I like that. I like the slow evolution that we get to go on together. That makes me excited for what the music is going to sound like in eight years’ time. But I do think that the crux of rock and fingerpicked acoustic guitar are always going to be there. That’s not changing. The touring really gets me out of bed. I’m just loving it more and more year on year. When I announced the tour and the album, you could feel it in the air. I think that’s exciting in itself.

Harry, Louis and Zayn are all touring this year. Have you been able to experience any of their shows?

I went to Harry’s show a couple of years ago, and that was just wild. Madness going on there. It reminded me of the 1D stadium shows where it was just seas of people jumping up and down. Watching the things going on on the floor, all the fans dancing around, I love that. You feel a sense of pride watching the boys doing what they love to do, and the communities that they’re able to create. I’m going to try and get to a Louis show of some capacity in the next few weeks.

It’s crazy watching the fans and watching how they’ve grown up, but still have that youthful energy, and what they bring to shows. Hearing that roar when each of them come out onto the stage, it’s like, “Yeah, I understand that scream. I get it.” It sounds like a rocket’s about to take off”.

Let’s come to Poppy Ackroyd and Liminal. You can pre-order the album here. This is a musician that you might not have heard of. However, I would suggest that you check out her music. She is an extraordinary composer. Someone who I am very interested in:

“Acclaimed composer and pianist Poppy Ackroyd returns with Liminal, her intimate new album. Written and recorded during a period of profound upheaval and transition, it marks a return to the core of Ackroyd’s practice, bringing piano and violin back together.

For the first time since 2019’s Feathers, Ackroyd reunites these two instruments exclusively, with every sound on the album drawn from piano and violin alone. Melody, harmony, rhythm and texture are all extracted from the physical bodies of the instruments themselves, from bowed and plucked strings to percussive elements. Working within these limitations remains central to her creative process”.

One more from 5th June that I want to highlight. Rosa Walton’s Tell Me It’s a Dream is an album that you will certainly want to pre-order. I am not sure whether Let’s Eat Grandma are releasing more albums together. Walton, one-half of the duo, is releasing her debut album. I do hope that she releases more solo work and there is more from Let’s Eat Grandma:

“The debut solo album from Rosa Walton, best known as one half of Let’s Eat Grandma. Co-produced by David Wrench (Frank Ocean, Jamie XX, FKA twigs). Tell Me It's A Dream opens a new creative chapter for Walton, a record that expands her sonic world while remaining rooted in heartfelt vulnerability and bold ambition. Despite originating during a complicated period in Walton’s life, the record ultimately celebrates love, friendship and creative freedom.

Rosa produced and performed the synth-pop song 'I Really Want to Stay at Your House' for the Cyberpunk 2077 video game soundtrack. The track became a viral sensation after being featured in the Netflix anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and has over 400m streams”.

Four from 12th June I want to cover off, including one of the most anticipated albums of this year from an American Pop superstar. One of the best artists and songwriters of her generation. First, I am getting to Bebe Rexha’s Dirty Blonde. This is an incredible artist who I have been following for a while now. I am interested by what Dirty Blonde will offer. Pre-order it here. Promising to be among the strongest albums from this year:

“You can’t put Bebe Rexha in a box. From her Grammy-winning songwriting roots on Eminem’s “The Monster” to global chart-toppers with David Guetta and Florida Georgia Line, Rexha has established herself as a premier musical chameleon. With her latest project, Dirty Blonde, she officially enters a new era as an independent powerhouse. Now signed to Empire, the Brooklyn-born star has crafted a 13-song "genre kaleidoscope" that serves as her first-ever visual album, representing a total creative rebirth and a departure from the major-label system she’s known since she was a teenager.

Recorded across London, Tokyo, and Europe, Dirty Blonde captures the energy of Rexha’s global travels. The project seamlessly blends heavy-hitting dance floor anthems with deep, personal storytelling. With the lead single “New Religion” she takes us straight to the club by reimagining the iconic dance record “Insomnia” by Faithless. On “Tokyo,” she explores a drum & bass pulse inspired by a late-night rendezvous in Japan, while “Cike Cike” (produced by long-time collaborator DJ Snake) sees Rexha embracing her Albanian heritage by mixing traditional linguistic roots with modern 808 basslines.

At the emotional core of the album is the lead single, “I Like You Better Than Me.” The track strips away the pop-star veneer to tackle themes of insecurity and self-scrutiny, blending raw lyrics with a pop-rock edge. From the Jersey-bounce-meets-country vibes of “Drink and a Little Love” to her vulnerable reflections on fame, Dirty Blonde is a celebration of an artist who is finally playing by her own rules. As Rexha firmly asserts, “The old Bebe is dead,” leaving behind a focused, stronger creator who is making the music she truly loves”.

I would also point people in the direction of Kelsey Lu’s So Help Me God. This is another incredible artist who always releases such astonishing music. Perhaps one of the most anticipated albums of this year, June is offering more than a couple of albums that people are very keen to hear. Go and pre-order So Help Me God -, as I think it is going to be astonishing. One of those albums that will win a load of critical love and show Kelsey Lu is one of the true modern greats:

“So Help Me God is the long-awaited second album from Kelsey Lu, via Dirty Hit. Moving between shadow and release, the 10-track record follows her groundbreaking 2019 debut Blood and is co-produced by Lu, Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, mixed by Oli Jacobs, with contributions from Sampha, Kamasi Washington and Kim Gordon. Across the record, Lu blends distorted guitars, choral swells and dark electronic pulses into a sonic landscape that moves between devotional intensity and cinematic scale. So Help Me God expands Lu’s singular creative universe - where music, visual art and performance converge into one multidisciplinary project, marking the return of one of contemporary music’s most singular voices”.

Prior to getting to that hotly-anticipated album from a Pop colossus, I do want to recommend The Bobby Lees’ New Self. Pre-order the album here. If you need some more details about this album, then below is some much-needed information from Rough Trade. It is an album that I feel many in the U.K. might not be aware of. The Bobby Lees not a huge name here. However, their music is well worth listening to:

“For The Bobby Lees, their fourth album and Epitaph debut New Self marks a thrilling new chapter for the band while doubling down on what’s always made them so magnetic.

The Bobby Lees don’t need much in the way of introduction. Within a few seconds of exposure to their furnace-blast live shows or their bottled-lightning studio records, it’s easy to hear why they’ve earned fans in legendary musicians like Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, and Henry Rollins. They’re as uncompromising in their sound and generous with their energy as any of their punk ancestors who first rewrote the rules of engagement back in the 1970s. Led by singer and guitarist Sam Quartin, drummer Macky Bowman, and bassist Kendall Wind, The Bob- by Lees bring wildness and danger back into punk rock.
You can hear the band easing into a new confidence - one that’s both looser and more towering - all throughout New Self, from the seething, fiery “Napoleon” to the rambunctious, offbeat take on PJ Harvey’s “50ft Queenie.” This is the sound of a band who’s scrambled over shaky ground only to come back stronger than ever: more confident more connected, louder and fiercer and secure in their own skin”.

Alongside Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II – which arrives in July -, arguably the biggest album of this year comes from Olivia Rodrigo. Her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, is one you can pre-order here. The GRAMMY-winning modern-day genius is such a fascinating artist. Her music is astonishing and she is one of the greatest live performers in the world. Only twenty-three, who knows how far she can go. I want to drop in an interview from Cosmopolitan, who talked about “surviving her angsty years, chasing joy in her music, and the one true love of her life”:

“Do you find it harder to write about happiness?

It’s not hard to do when I’m sitting there by myself in my room, but it was never the stuff that I put out. Sometimes I listen back to it and I cringe.

Is it cringier to be happy or sad?

It’s cringier to be happy. I cringe, but I’m free. All of my favourite love songs have an element of sadness, and that’s what makes them so beautiful. A great love song has so much emotion behind it that it could go either way. I want to make love songs that you can cry to.9

9. Two of Olivia and Madison’s favourite love songs to cry to are Bright Eyes’ 'First Day of My Life' and Nick Cave’s 'Into My Arms.'

I remember after 'drivers license,; you felt this pressure to follow it up again and again and again. How has your songwriting process changed?

We didn’t have time for revisions on SOUR. The whole world was watching. I wrote and we just fucking recorded and put it out. Then with GUTS, I was under so much pressure, like, 'Oh my god, I’m never going to be able to make another good song.' It wasn’t even making music to make music. It was making music to please people or prove something.

What about this new album?

With this album, I actually was like, “I’m done with the sophomore one. Now I can have fun again.” I was writing songs the way I did when I was 16, purely for fun. There were some beautiful moments, like, “Whoa, it’s flowing out,” which feels like catching a butterfly10 in a net.

10. Butterflies are a motif that Olivia used throughout the promotion of her first two albums, and her updated site logo also hints at a butterfly, making fans speculate whether the insect would be a big part of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’s imagery, too. Livies are also convinced that a bee will be involved. The poster for her one-night-only show in L.A. featured a bee, which echoed a t-shirt she previously wore on the GUTS tour.

And how have you changed from the person who made SOUR five years ago?

I was so young then and felt like the world was on my shoulders and that I had to have everything together. I was motivated, but there was fear. Now I feel a lot more self-assured. My passion and work ethic come from a place of positivity rather than a scared mindset.

What’s a boundary you’re really proud of setting recently?

I always thought a boundary was like, “Don’t do this.” But actually, a boundary is like, “If you do this, this is how I will react and protect myself.” It’s not about controlling other people, it’s about how you will respond: 'If somebody does this, I will be okay because I have this plan in place of what I’m going to do.' It gives you so much more confidence and self-assuredness. And honestly, setting boundaries with yourself is really important, too. Saying you’re going to do something and actually doing it. For me, the phone stuff has got to go. Otherwise, I’m a brain rot person.15

15. This perhaps explains why Olivia follows zero people on Instagram despite having more than 39M followers. Although she has hinted at various times that she does have a finsta”.

There is one album from 19th June I want to drop in before finishing off with a few from 26th June. Graham Coxon’s Castle Park is an album that you should pre-order. This is especially exciting, because this is a never-before-heard album from the Blur legend. Any fans out there, this is an album that you will not want to miss out on:

“Titled Castle Park and recorded in 2011, the previously unreleased record comes as part of a comprehensive reissue of Coxon's complete solo catalogue, spanning 9 studio albums and 3 original soundtracks. Produced by Ben Hillier (blur - Think Tank), Castle Park was recorded in 2011 as part of the A+E (2012) sessions. Originally intended as a follow up to A+E, the release was postponed due to blur activity in 2012, before Coxon moved on to other projects. Castle Park is a collection of 10 songs that lean into the artist's classic mod sound, with lead single 'Billy Says' - a longtime feature of Coxon's live set - already familiar to fans and now finally available for the first time”.

Beth Orton’s The Ground Above is going to be one of the biggest albums from June. I love her music. You can pre-order it here. I especially love the album cover and the choice of vinyl. The Cigarette Curls Smoky Marbled looks amazing. I am thinking of ordering the album, but am aware I have quite a tight budget. The vinyl looks very inviting:

“For more than 30 years, Beth Orton has been our antenna to the cosmos, the poet laureate of forces too vast to take in all at once. A testament to her artistry, The Ground Above is Orton’s most direct and unapologetic music to date; urgent, raw, embodied and emotionally fearless, moving between subconscious expression and expansive, timeless song craft. Her voice, from whispered incantation to primal wail, equally delivers melodies reminiscent of classic songbook form. Throughout the album, Orton documents survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing choice to stay - in love, in art, and in the world.

As with 2022’s critical breakthrough Weather Alive, Orton self-produced the album, staying true to the collective spirit of the initial live recordings whilst sculpting and expanding, over a year long process, the record we hear today. Working with trusted musicians including multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, Vernon Spring’s Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro (Antibalas, Radiohead) and Vishal Nayak (Nick Hakim), Trumpet player Christos Styliandes and bassist Tom Herbert, Orton reaches new heights as a producer and songwriter”.

I am not sure how I feel about the cover for Muse’s The WOW! Signal. Some might find it appropriate given the title, though I do wonder! The Devon trio released their debut album in 1999, so it is incredible that they are still putting out awesome music. You can pre-order their new album here. I have loved the band since the start, and they are always doing something new and pushing themselves. The WOW! Signal shaping up to be one of their strongest albums in many years:

“Muse are a culturally-attuned, genre-defying band who channel the anxieties of each era—technology, power, rebellion, and identity—into maximalist, stadium-ready rock that evolves with the times while staying unmistakably Muse.

Kicking off with new single “Be With You,” this next era of Muse is rooted in electronic experimentation and an insatiable curiosity. The WOW! Signal represents a world of cosmic mystery, existential hope, and the exhilarating possibility of contact with something far greater than ourselves”.

I am going to end things with M. Geddes Gengras’s Guest List. I would definitely urge you to pre-order this gem of an album. If you need some more details about this album, then below is some information. It is a bit different to the ones I have recommended, though definitely one worth checking out:

“Over nearly two decades, composer / multi-instrumentalist M. Geddes Gengras has released an enormous catalog of wide-ranging, synth-focused music in solo and collaborative settings. He has participated in influential experimental groups like Sun Araw, Pocahaunted, Robedoor, and Akron/Family. Along with Sun Araw’s Cameron Stallones and a host of Jamaican singers and artists, Gengras blurs the boundaries of dub and electronic music under the banner of Duppy Gun Productions. His solo works have appeared on labels including Room40, Leaving Records, Holy Mountain, and Umor Rex. After many years living in Los Angeles, Gengras now calls upstate New York home. M. Geddes Gengras returns to Hausu Mountain with Guest List, his fourth entry in the label's catalog since 2019 and the first to be issued on vinyl.

His albums for HausMo have ranged from the topographical ambient synth networks of I Am The Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World, to the dense technoid beat experiments of Time Makes Nothing Happen, to the lush post-rock-adjacent harmonic architectures of Expressed, I Noticed Silence.

On Guest List, Gengras composes the most ambitious song cycle that he has ever captured in the context of one album, weaving his own synths and electronics into a dense tapestry of contrasting genres and ideas all animated by the presence of an enormous cast of collaborators. In Gengras's hands, the infinite-limbed drum performances of Greg Fox, the ecstatic guitar explorations of Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), the soaring vocalizations of Christina Carter (Charalambides), and the contributions of many more artists become individual brushstrokes to paint across the canvases of his dense mixes. Channeling sonic details from his wide circle of friends, Gengras broadens his range of expression and composes the most communal and ultimately personal program of music in his bottomless catalog”.

These are the album due next month that I think that you should investigate. From Lizzo and Olivia Rodrigo to Niall Horan and Muse, it is an eclectic and busy one. Something in there for everyone. I said that June is one of the most packed months. July promises some genuinely huge albums from Madonna, Suki Waterhouse, Tyla, Tricky, and Ariana Grande. I will spotlight those soon enough. However, the above are the best albums…

OUT in June.