FEATURE: I Just Want Your Extra Time and Your… Prince’s Kiss at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

I Just Want Your Extra Time and Your…

 

Prince’s Kiss at Forty

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RELEASED on 5th February, 1986…

IN THIS PHOTO: Prince in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Everett Collection/Bridgeman Images

Kiss is one of Prince’s most adored and acclaimed songs. One of his most recognisable. It was the lead single from and The Revolution's eighth studio album, Parade: Music from the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon. The album is the soundtrack for the 1986 film, directed by and starring Prince. Although the film was panned upon its release and is not really worth watching like 1984’s Purple Rain, the songs from Under the Cherry Moon are phenomenal. I am going to get to some insight into Kiss. How it came together and why it is so impactful. A number one smash in the U.S., I think that 1985 and 1986 are years of Prince’s career not as investigated and respected perhaps as what came before and after. The fact is that 1985’s Around the World in a Day and 1986’s Parade: Music from the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon were sandwiched between 1984’s Purple Rain and 1987’s Sign o’ the Times means they will always fall short. However, Parade (I will shorten it for the rest of the feature) has plenty of incredible songs. New Position, Girls & Boys, Under the Cherry Moon and Sometimes It Snows in April are classic examples. In terms of singles from Parade, some less obvious songs were released instead. Mountains and Anotherloverholenyohead are less obvious singles. If some felt Parade was overblown and not to his usual high standard, Parade was a commercial success and in years since is ranked alongside the best and most important Prince albums. How Parade led to the mighty Sign o’ the Times. I think that Kiss is one of those songs that everyone knows the words to. Covered by the likes of Tom Jones, nothing beats the electric and sexy original. There are various features written about Kiss. Varying in length, insight and quality, there are two very detailed ones I am going to draw and quote heavily from. The first is from Sound on Sound that was published in 2013. There is a tinge of sadness looking ahead to 5th February. Just over a couple of months later, we mark ten years since Prince died. It still doesn’t seem real that he is no longer with us. However, thanks to his legendary Vault, there is material and whole albums still being released by his estate:

"For a long time, Prince had been talking about forming his own record label,” says David Z, who by then was heavily into the creative employment of sampling, synths, loops and drum machines that had already become characteristic of that era. "One day, he called me and said, 'There's a group that I've just signed and want you to have something to do with. Come to LA.' So, I went there, walked into Sunset Sound, and he said, 'You're going to produce this group called Mazarati.' That was the first time I'd been labelled a producer, which I'm very grateful for. It got me started.”

Formed by the Revolution's bassist Mark Brown (aka Brown Mark), Mazarati was a funk/R&B outfit whose only hit was the Z-produced/Prince-co-written '100 MPH', but whose greatest claim to fame was a recording that never saw the light of day — at least, not in the form that the band members intended.

"We did a bunch of songs for Mazarati's album,” Z recalls. "Then, when we needed a single, Prince gave me this demo of him just playing straight chords on an acoustic guitar — one verse and one chorus — while singing in a normal pitch; not the falsetto that's on the finished record. To us, it sounded like a folk song and we were wondering what we could do with it. No way was it funky. Anyway, starting with a LinnDrum, I programmed the beat and began experimenting. Taking a hi-hat from the drum machine, I ran it through a delay unit and switched between input and output and in the middle. That created a very funky rhythm. Then I took an acoustic guitar, played these open chords and gated that to the hi-hat trigger. The result was a really unique rhythm that was unbelievably funky but also impossible to actually play... I'm sure that sound influenced the fabulous new Daft Punk song 'Get Lucky', because it uses the same trick, with the guitar gated to some sort of rhythm and sequencer.

"Next, I remembered a little piano part from a Bo Diddley song called 'Say Man' and put it on there, and then Tony Christian sang the lead part, an octave lower than what Prince wound up doing. The background vocals I adapted from the Brenda Lee song 'Sweet Nothings' — good music is always taken from somewhere else — and that was that. The whole thing was done in a day.”

Hijacked

Or David Z and the guys in Mazarati thought it was. The fact is, in this form 'Kiss' sounded OK — a so-so dance number. However, Tony Christian's lead vocal was a little soulless and uninspiring, and when Prince heard the track he decided to head in a different direction... with himself at the helm.

"When I came back into the studio the next morning, Prince had already taken it off the machine, replaced the vocal with his own falsetto performance — which, I guess, he felt it needed — got rid of the bass part and added a James Brown 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag' guitar lick,” Z recalls. "'What happened?' I asked, to which he replied, 'It's too good for you guys. I'm taking it back.'”

Boasting a four-octave range, Prince sang virtually the entire song in head voice, reverting to chest voice for the final line, as well as a single note before the last chorus. "At the time, I think he was into using a [Sennheiser MD] 441,” says Z.

"We only used nine tracks for that song, including a bass drum on one track, the rest of the drums on another and the hi-hat on a separate track. As for the lack of bass guitar, we always ran the kick drum through an [AMS] RMX16 and put it on the Reverse 2 setting to extend the tail of the reverb. That served as a kick drum and a bass, and it was a signature sound that we used all the time with Prince. We didn't need a real bass. And there was no reverb on anything else; just the kick. The guitar was dry and gated, and everything else sounded kind of different to the corporate rock that was on the radio at that time.”

Mazarati's backing vocals ended up on the finished record, yet this was scant compensation for what they had hoped would be their breakout hit.

"They were pissed,” says Z. "Prince had promised everyone a share of the songwriting credit, but that never happened and they were kind of mad about it.”

While Z had engineered the Mazarati recording in Sunset Sound's Neve 8088-equipped Studio 2, Prince used the API/DeMedio-equipped Studio 3 to record his overdubs.

"We had a factory going,” Z says. "I did a bunch of things like that, with him always in the other room. That's also how we worked at Paisley Park.”

According to David Z, the minimalist arrangement of 'Kiss' required him and Prince to spend only "about five minutes doing the mix”. Nevertheless, he wasn't involved with the 12-inch mix, which, built around the funky guitar lick and featuring additional lyrics as well as a more comprehensive arrangement — complete with organ and bass guitar — could be heard in Prince's critically-panned, commercially disappointing 1986 musical-drama movie Under The Cherry Moon, which he directed and starred in.

"The 12-inch was done by Prince after the fact,” Z explains. "He was obligated by the record company to do a dance version, and it was just a matter of editing in eight bars and then another eight bars of something different. Prince did a lot of his own engineering; sitting behind the board and singing, playing guitar or playing bass while punching buttons at the same time. He worked super-fast. And, apart from the first album, that went for everything we did.

"We'd have these stations set up, with drums out in the room, the bass plugged in, the keyboard plugged in, the guitar plugged in, and he'd jump around between stations while expecting everyone to work as super-fast as he did. If someone didn't, there'd be hell to pay; I've seen him be really hard on some second engineers. So we had to be aware of what he was doing and when he wanted it done. He'd jump to the guitar, you'd hit 'record' and bam, it was done.

"There was no rehearsing. I think he just rehearses in his head, 24/7. He'd start a song, do all of the parts, and then we'd mix it and take it off the board before starting another one. We often did two songs a day, and it was usually a constant process of starting a song and totally finishing the song within about fours hours without any coming back to overdub or remix.”

Power Play

The soundtrack album, Parade: Music From The Motion Picture Under The Cherry Moon, was the final record on which Prince was backed by the Revolution. He was reinventing himself, as evidenced by the new image that saw him dispense with his curly mane, purple outfits and ruffled shirts in favour of shorter, slicked-back hair and smoother-looking clothes. Accordingly, 'Kiss' matched the mood of the moment, yet it initially didn't impress the record-company honchos.

"It was so different to everything else out there that the Warner Brothers executives freaked out when they first heard it,” David Z confirms. "I was going to get credit as the producer, arranger, everything, but when I talked to the Warners A&R guy he said, 'Oh man, Prince really screwed up. It sucks.' I thought, what? My heart just hit the floor. He said, 'It sounds like a demo. There's no reverb, there's no bass — it's terrible.'

"I was shaken and really disappointed. At that time, however, Prince had enough power to go, 'That's the single and you're not getting another one until you put it out.' The rest is history. When he recorded 'Kiss', Prince was actually going down in terms of his popularity. He had already hit his peak and people were going, 'Ah, Prince is over with.' Well, that song, because it was so different, totally reignited his career and a year later Warners were trying to sign people who sounded like that”.

I am going to conclude with a feature from Stereogum. They explored the sublime and supreme Kiss as part of their The Number Ones run. Although it was number one for only a couple of weeks, it is one of Prince’s most enduring tracks. You can play it to anyone and get a reaction. It is insatiable and slinky. Sweaty and seductive. Classic Prince! If you have not listened to this song for a while then go and play it now:

“In the first decade of his career, Prince released 10 albums. Most of those albums are essential. A couple of them are double LPs. The man kept up an insane pace, but he didn't release all the great songs he wrote. By the early '80s, Prince had already made a habit of gifting hit singles to other artists.

Sometimes, other artists covered Prince's songs and turned them into hits. That's what happened with "I Feel For You," Chaka Khan's 1984 take on a 1979 Prince track. (Khan's version of "I Feel For You" peaked at #3. It's a 9.) Other times, artists took Prince's melodies and built new songs out of them. Stevie Nicks' 1983 single "Stand Back" is essentially a rewrite of "Little Red Corvette," the Prince single from that same year. Before she recorded "Stand Back," Nicks called Prince to tell him that she'd used his song, and Prince came in to play keyboards on Nicks' track. ("Stand Back" peaked at #5. It's an 8. "Little Red Corvette," meanwhile, peaked at #6. It's a 10.) There were also plenty of cases, like Phil Collins' "Sussidio," where artists landed huge hits by outright biting Prince songs and not getting his blessing beforehand.

The stories I love the best are the ones about Prince just writing these glittering and immaculate pop songs and tossing them out to whoever he felt like helping out. By 1986, Prince had done that for plenty of people. In 1984, Prince wrote and co-produced Sheila E's "The Glamorous Life," which peaked at #7. (It's a 9.) A year later, Prince wrote "Sugar Walls" for Sheena Easton, and that one peaked at #9. (It's an 8.) One week in the spring of 1986, the top two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 were both tracks that Prince had written with other artists in mind. With one of those tracks, though, Prince heard what the other artist did with the track and decided that he wanted the song back. This was a wise decision, and it may have saved Prince's hitmaking career.

It seems far-fetched that Prince's mid-'80s run was ever in any kind of jeopardy, especially just two years after the global-conquest move of Purple Rain. But in 1986, many of Prince's ambitions got the better of him. Prince had followed up Purple Rain with the psychedelic pop LP Around The World In A Day. That album went double platinum and sent two singles into the top 10 -- including the classic "Raspberry Beret," which peaked at #2. (It's a 10.) But Around The World In A Day only managed a fraction of those Purple Rain sales, and then Prince went even further down that rabbit hole.

Prince's next album, 1986's Parade, was straight-up Sgt. Pepper-style baroque pop opulence. Parts of it, like the woozy ballad "Sometimes It Snows In April," are brilliant. But other parts are lushly disjointed to the point of absurdity. For the most part, Parade marked a severe departure from the pop zeitgeist of the moment. While most of Prince's peers were going for big drum-machine boom -- doing variations on Prince's Purple Rain sound -- Prince was fucking around with fussy string arrangements and flugelhorns. On top of that, Parade was also the unofficial soundtrack to Prince's second film, the black-and-white musical Under The Cherry Moon. Prince directed the movie himself, and it became an instant-punchline flop. (I've never seen Under The Cherry Moon, and now, watching the trailer, I feel like I should fix that.)

Ultimately, though, none of those moves wounded Prince because Prince was smart enough to drop "Kiss" right in the midst of all this. Originally, "Kiss" wasn't supposed to be a Prince song. At the time, Brownmark, the bassist for Prince's backing band the Revolution had a synth-funk side project called Mazarati, and they were signed to Prince's Paisley Park label. (Mazarati's highest-charting single was 1986's "100 MPH," which Prince wrote and co-produced. It peaked at #19.) Prince wrote "Kiss" with Mazarati in mind.

When Prince gave Mazarati the "Kiss" demo, it was a short and bluesy acoustic sketch of a song. At the time, Mazarati were working with producer David Z, a longtime Minneapolis music-scene fixture who'd played guitar on Lipps, Inc.'s "Funkytown" and whose brother was the Revolution's drummer Bobby Z. David Z took Prince's "Kiss" demo and rearranged it, using a LinnDrum drum machine to turn the song into a spacey, funky vamp. In other words, David Z made "Kiss," a song that Prince had written, sound like a Prince song. Mazarati recorded that version of "Kiss," but when Prince heard it, he decided to take it back for himself. David Z tells Sound On Sound that Prince literally told the band that "Kiss" was "too good for you guys."

Prince wasn't wrong. Mazarati's version of "Kiss" is close to the finished version, but singer Tony Christian sounds weirdly bored on it, and not in a cool way. Prince took that version of the song and made a couple of key adjustments, singing it in a squeaky falsetto and adding the spider-funk guitar fill from James Brown's "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag." ("Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" peaked at #8 in 1965. It's a 10.) Prince credited David Z as the arranger for "Kiss," and he left Mazarati's backing vocals intact. But Prince didn't give Mazarati co-writing credits for Kiss, which infuriated Brownmark. (David Z will eventually appear in this column as a producer.)

You wouldn't think a song as simple as "Kiss" would have that complicated a backstory. It sounds like the kind of thing that Prince could do in his sleep. For most artists, this would be a complaint. For Prince, it's anything but. "Kiss" stands out on Parade because it's the one song where Prince doesn't work to smother his funkiest instincts. Instead, it's all negative space and swaggering fuck-squeak -- one of the most fundamentally Prince songs that Prince ever made.

When Prince first wrote the "Kiss" lyrics, he might've meant them as reassurance: "You don't have to be beautiful to turn me on/ I just need your body, baby, from dusk till dawn." Over and over, Prince tells this potential lover that she doesn't have to change anything about herself. She doesn't have to be rich or cool or experienced. She doesn't have to watch Dynasty. (Was there social pressure to watch Dynasty?) Prince would prefer it if this potential lover did not act younger than her age or attempt to talk dirty, since Prince can talk dirty enough for both of them. Mostly, though, he just wants her to be herself. That's all he needs -- her extra time and her kiss.

In its final form, though, there's nothing reassuring about "Kiss." Instead, it becomes a radically horny statement of intent. Prince sounds like he exists on the outer edges of the sexual imagination. He sings the whole thing in a near-inhuman falsetto, like Barry Gibb taking hits of helium. The beat is a spartan echo of a shimmy, a mechanized strut. His guitar needles and itches. The lyrics tell you that everything is going to be OK, that he just wants to hang out with you. The music tells you that everything is not OK. It tells you that you're about to go on a journey.

Just as much as that syncopated yip-stomp, the "Kiss" video speaks of fuck-worlds that most of us can scarcely imagine. Fashion photographer Rebecca Blake directs, filming Prince sliding and mugging in rooms full of sunset colors. Prince somehow looks more scandalous in his giant leather jacket and tiny little half-shirt than he does when he's straight-up shirtless. He does splits and spinkicks and twirls in towering heels. Dancer Monique Mannen and Revolution member Wendy Melvoin are both in the video, and both are plenty charismatic. But Prince carries himself like he exists on a whole other plane, like he's the only man in existence. It's some of the greatest peacocking ever put to film.

Decades of constant repetition have hurt "Kiss." Sometimes, its minimalism can sound slight and brittle, and it doesn't have the same heft or presence as Prince's best Purple Rain songs. But as a workout, it's extremely slick and beguiling. It's the kind of song that must take unearthly confidence to pull off. At the time, some Warner executives thought "Kiss" was too weird to be a single, even though it might be the least weird song on Parade. But at the time, nobody was going to tell Prince no.

After "Kiss," none of the other singles from Parade cracked the top 10. Parade would be the last album credited to Prince & The Revolution. Prince ditched most of his backing band after they finished touring behind Parade. Mazarati broke up a few years later without making any more hits. (Two members of Mazarati will eventually appear in this column, but only by voicing a rapping cartoon character.) Prince, meanwhile, went on to record Sign O' The Times, the astonishing double album that turned all his Parade-era pretensions into something sprawling but cohesive. We'll see Prince in this column again.

GRADE: 9/10”.

Kiss was ranked second when The Guardian ranked Prince’s greatest singles in 2019. Many might place Kiss a bit lower, though the fact it has this legacy and remains flawless speaks volumes. It is a song I heard as a child and never get tired of: “By 1986, Prince was peerless, so far ahead of everyone else in contemporary pop it was almost laughable. Kiss was all the evidence you needed. It repeated When Doves Cry’s hugely impressive trick of conjuring up funk without a bassline, and added perhaps the most indelible chorus of his career and a vocal that turns into an astonishing lust-racked scream at 3min 20sec”. American Songwriter declared Kiss as the third-best Prince song in their 2022 article. In 2024, when Rolling Stone decided on the best 250 songs ever, Kiss came in at eighty-five: “When Mazarati, one of the bands in Prince’s Paisley Park orbit, asked him for a song, Prince dashed off a bluesy acoustic demo for them. Mazarati added a funk groove, and Prince was smart enough to take the song back, maintaining some of producer David Z’s arrangements and the band’s background vocals but no bass line, to the disappointment of his label. “At that time, however, Prince had enough power to go, ‘That’s the single and you’re not getting another one until you put it out.’ The rest is history,” Z recalled in an interview. “That song totally reignited his career, and a year later Warner Bros. was trying to sign people who sounded like that”. On 5th February, it will be forty years since Kiss was released. The lead single from a fascinating soundtrack album that I think works better standalone, rather than tie it to Under the Cherry Moon, Parade is a masterpiece. Kiss is its brightest and boldest song. In 1986, with the world at his feet, Prince was this titan of an artist that…

FEW could equal.

FEATURE: What I Do: Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

What I Do

Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat at Twenty

__________

IN terms of artists I would love to…

IN THIS PHOTO: Donald Fagen in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Rick Diamond

hear an album from, there is this shortlist. I feel, because it has been quite a while, Donald Fagen is near the top of that list. His most recent album, Sunken Condos, was released in 2012. I do wonder if he will release another solo album, as there is nobody out there like him. Many might know him as the co-founder of Steely Dan alongside the late Walter Becker. The final Steely Dan album was 2003’s Everything Must Go. Donald Fagen had a solo career after the group/duo went on hiatus after 1980’s Gaucho. Morph the Cat was his first solo album of the 2000s. On 7th March, 2006, this incredible album came out. Whilst not quite up there with Sunken Condos, I feel Morph the Cat is an extraordinary work that needs to be highlighted. I am going to come to a few reviews. Many note how it was business as usual for Donald Fagen. In terms of it was not a huge break from his previous solo and Steely Dan work, though it is was still extraordinary and better than a lot of what was out there. It is strange that Fagen saw Morph the Cat as his ‘death album’. He was only fifty-eight when it was released, so I wonder how he feels twenty years later. The fact Morph the Cat is recorded and written in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the devastation in New York and the shockwaves caused gives Morph the Cat this idea of being very serious and a hard listen. Maybe not as witty and light as Sunken Condos or even The Nightfly (1982), there is plenty of dry humour, sarcasm and fascinating characters. The eponymous Morph the Cat is this spirit and shadow that hovers over New York. Maybe this symbolism for foreboding or a black cloud, it is a song that is full of interesting and humorous ideas. I love the eponymous H Gang, Security Joan and the fella who is a more multicoloured version of Death. He is the unnamed lead of Brite Nightgown. It is an album that takes its time to unfurl. Longer songs that many Donald Fagen/Steely Dan albums, maybe that slight lack of economy is a fault.

However, I really like how the music occasionally wanders and you get longer to spend with these great tracks. If mortality and a certain dread following the 2001 terrorist attacks and the danger the world faced in the first decade of this century, I feel you could adapt Morph the Cat today and apply it to Donald Trump, genocide, domestic terrorism and fears in the U.S. That is why a Donald Fagen album would be much needed. Reacting to ICE, Donald Trump’s dictatorship and the situation in the U..S., maybe even he feels reality is too bleak to bring into the studio! I think anyone who has not heard Morph the Cat should give it a play. My favourite track is the opening title cut, as it has a truly funky riff and a great Fagen vocal as he watches this ominous-but-cute Morph float above Manhattan. Before getting to some reviews, there is an interview from The New York Times from 2006 that I want to spotlight. Donald Fagen discussing the album but also displaying his trademark humour and sardonic edge:

“THIS is my death album," Donald Fagen said in his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. "It's about the death of culture, the death of politics, the beginning of the end of my life." Then he mock-sobbed, "Boo hoo hoo."

Mr. Fagen, best known as the vocalizing half of the rock band Steely Dan, turned 58 years old in January. His new CD, "Morph the Cat," is his first solo album in 13 years, and he's kicking it off with an 18-city concert tour, starting this Wednesday -- his first live shows with his own band ever.

He wrote "Morph the Cat" in the wake of Sept. 11, and it's an album about fellow New Yorkers dealing with the aftershocks -- tales of love and dread in a time of terror.

One of its eight songs, a ballad called "The Night Belongs to Mona" is about a woman who stays cooped up in her Chelsea high-rise. At one point, Mr. Fagen, playing one of Mona's worried friends, sings, "Was it the fire downtown/ that turned her world around?" It's the album's only reference to the World Trade Center. But the attack lingers as a constant backdrop.

"The Great Pagoda of Funn" is about two lovers who stay together as shelter from the world's horrors, itemized by a choir of background singers: "Poison skies/ and severed heads/ and pain and lies "

"I wrote that after several beheadings in Iraq," Mr. Fagen said. "You can thank Mr. Zarqawi for that song."

"Security Joan" is a comic blues about a man who swoons for an airport guard while rushing to catch a plane.

When I felt her wand sweep over me

You know I never felt so clean

Girl you won't find my name on your list

Honey you know I ain't no terrorist

The album's finale, "Mary Shut the Garden Door," sounds like the score for a spooky political thriller. Mr. Fagen's liner notes describe it: "Paranoia blooms when a thuggish cult gains control of the government."

"I wrote that song right after the Republican Convention took over New York," he said. "I'm afraid of religious people in general -- any adult who believes in magic." It's a gloomy number -- the doo-wop background singers chant, "They won/ Storms raged/ Things changed/ Forever" -- but it holds out a thin hope in its last line: "This ballad is for lovers/ with something left to lose."

That's a contrast to the most recent Steely Dan album, 2003's "Everything Must Go." It too was produced in the shadow of 9/11, but it responded to catastrophes with mordant retreat ("the long sad Sunday of the early resigned") or down-with-the-ship partying ("Let's switch off the lights/ and light up all the Luckies/ Crankin' up the afterglow").

All nine Steely Dan albums over the past 34 years -- which Mr. Fagen wrote with Walter Becker, his musical partner since their undergraduate days at Bard College -- dwell to some degree on destruction and doomsday, but usually with black humor or a diffident shrug. "Morph the Cat" has the familiar Steely Dan sound: the dense chords, jazz vamps, laser backbeat, skylark guitar riffs and sly lyrics -- polished narratives of insouciant irony and cryptic allusions -- sung by Mr. Fagen in a nasal troubadour's wail. But this time, he's staring at the darkness with open apprehension.

"Part of the difference," he said, "is that Walter's more snarky than I am. He's more realistic; I'm more of a fantasist, a romantic. Walter has that side, too. But when we write together, we assume this collective guise -- this guy you could call Dan -- who isn't either of us, really. Dan's a much colder dude. Or maybe he just seems cold. Maybe he's afraid to show his emotions; that's more likely."

Cut loose from Dan, Mr. Fagen writes songs that are "more personal," he said, "and, as it turns out, more autobiographical." The keys to this chapter of his chronicle are not just the attack on his city but also the death of his mother, in January 2003, after a long bout with Alzheimer's disease.

"It was a horrible death, very agitated toward the end," he recalled. The album is dedicated to her. "In memory of Elinor Rosenberg Fagen, a k a Ellen Ross," the liner notes read. "Ellen Ross was her stage name," he explained. "She was a professional singer from the age of 5 years to 15. She was the Shirley Temple of the Catskills. Her mother would take her up there in the summers to sing in a hotel. One time, the guy who owned the hotel took her over to an amateur-hour radio show. She had an anxiety attack. That was the end of her career."

While Mr. Fagen was growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, his mother sang show tunes around the house, encouraged him to play piano, and took him into Manhattan on weekends to see Broadway musicals. "I got most of my musical theory from her," he said.

"Morph the Cat" begins with the title song, which sounds like an R. Crumb cartoon theme about a cat named Morph who flies above Manhattan and seeps into apartments, spreading good cheer. But when the tune is reprised at the end of the album, after the songs about severed heads and so forth, Morph (as in Morpheus, god of dreams?) seems more menacing.

"Yeah, the cat is narcotizing the citizens," Mr. Fagen said. "I observe it in people, this mind-death, these layers of brain-washing that's gone on for so many years. It's in the techniques of political machines, the unbelievable stupidity on television." He stopped and raised his eyebrows. "Hey, maybe Morph is television."

Then he backed away, chuckling. "I refuse to take responsibility for any interpretation," he mumbled.

Last week, he was busy rehearsing for his tour. Steely Dan gave up live performance in 1974. "I burned myself out quickly, my voice was getting tired, I was in my mid-20's, my lifestyle wasn't very healthy." Mr. Fagen recalled. After he and Mr. Becker broke up the band in 1980 (a split that lasted 16 years) , "I didn't have the confidence in myself to organize a band and a tour without him."

In the late 80's, he met a producer, Libby Titus, whom he later married. "She was putting together what she called these 'horrid little evenings,' " he said, concerts with several big-name pop singers, performing one after another. Mr. Fagen joined them. At first, he just played piano; then, under her prodding, he sang again, too. "So," he said, "I got back into it a bit."

Still, his element is the studio. Last August, he sat in a booth at Avatar Studios, in Midtown, with his engineer, Elliot Scheiner. Mr. Fagen had spent a year recording the album's tracks. Now it was time to mix them. He and Mr. Becker were notorious perfectionists in mixing the Steely Dan sessions. That part hasn't changed.

"Mmmm, bring the snare down in those two bars by one-tenth," Mr. Fagen said, listening to the rhythm tracks of "Mona." He meant one-tenth of a decibel, a minuscule adjustment in volume.

Later, listening to the horn tracks, he said, "After the first bop-bop, you've got to bring up the da-bop."

Then the vocal tracks. Hearing himself sing the line, "To see how the story ends," he said, "The first syllable of 'story' is a little hard; bring it down two-tenths." Another line, "When you're already dressed in black," was a little soft. "Bring up the whole line one-tenth." He listened again. "Maybe only the end of the line -- "dee dressed in black" -- bring just that up one-tenth."

After five hours mixing, he said, "I'm wearying of this," in a stentorian tone. He got up, stretched, sat down, and went back at it for two more hours.

Soon, Mr. Fagen hopes to remix his previous solo disc, the 1993 "Kamakiriad." His voice on that album was buried: too soft and indistinct. "I was in my self-loathing period," he said.

The remix will be part of a three-disc box-set, which Reprise Records plans to release later this year, of all three Fagen solo albums, starting with "The Nightfly" (1982), his wistful look back at his cold-war adolescence. "I see them as Youth, Middle Age and Death," he said with a crooked smile.

But if "Morph the Cat" is "Death," what will he do for an encore?

In an e-mail note, Mr. Fagen replied, "just one of those cringe-worthy duet albums: you know, me and gwen stefani, me and tony bennett, me and gladys knight also some tricked-up duets with dead people: nat king cole, tiny tim, mae west, etc."

But those aren't booked. What is likely, he said, is another tour with his new band this summer and probably some gigs with his musical companion of youth and middle age, Mr. Becker. Just because you've done death doesn't mean you're done with Dan”.

There is one more interview that I want to source before getting to some reviews. In 2006, MP3.com’s Chris Rolls spoke with Donald Fagen about Morph the Cat. They also discuss Steely Dan, literature, and lyrical inspirations. A Donald Fagen interview is always fascinating!

“Chris: Do you often draw upon literature for inspiration?

Donald: Well, when Walter and I met, we — aside from having some musical favorites in common — we were both jazz fans as, really as kids, which is kind of very unusual, especially for that time, you know, like since we were 10 or 11 years old, type of thing. But we also had some literary tastes in common, particularly what they used to call black humorist, which is not African American books so much but a dark humorist like Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Berger, Philip Roth, and Vladimir Nabokov. And although these represent a wide variety of authors, they were kind of … in those days kind of categorized as a type of literature, which before that time really … no one had really categorized them that way, but it was very big in the early ’50s and the early ’60s.

Chris: Were you a fan of Philip K. Dick?

Donald: Yeah also…well, science fiction writers were part of that in a way, although in those days they didn’t make science fiction with what they would call literary fiction. But indeed, Philip K. Dick as well as the books of Fredrick Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth, and…Alfred Bester is another one I remember, and some of the Theodore Sturgeon stories. And just, a lot of science fiction writers really are satirists — they just use the forum to satirize the present, really.

Chris: And those literary themes have carried over very well into your lyricism, both in your solo work and with Steely Dan, and that really seems to be something that’s absent from contemporary popular music. And I’m just curious what your take is on…?

Donald: Oh, you know, reading is absent from a lot of popular culture altogether.

Chris: It is, and I feel it’s reflected in popular music, and I’m just curious how you feel about the popular music industry?

Donald: You know, I don’t have that much contact with it really. You know, I recently have been talking to some people from Warner Brothers… I’ve been in Warner Brothers since The Nightfly in 1982, and I think between… I guess in between albums I never get one phone call from Warner Brothers. Like, I have no contact with the company whatsoever unless it’s to do something specific. So when an album comes out, there’s a whole new bunch of people there because everyone else has been fired, and they’re all young, you know much younger, increasingly younger than I am and don’t even know who I am, so I have to reintroduce myself. It’s, you know, that shows how alien I am to the whole process really.

Chris: The sort of “man on the hill.”

Donald: Exactly.

Chris: Do you listen to any contemporary music?

Donald: Not that often. I mean, there’s a few things I like if someone brings it to my attention, but I only listen to the same 40 jazz records I had in high school pretty much.

Chris: It’s funny that you say you sort of have to reintroduce yourself. Your music has remained a constant over the years; it’s instantly recognizable.

Donald: Oh, well thanks.

Chris: And I’m curious do you — well it sounds like maybe you’ve answered this — but do you consciously sort of shut out anything that’s going on with contemporary music trends or…?

Donald: It’s not really necessary, because I don’t think anything has happened for 30 years or so.

Chris: Really.

Donald: Not really. You know there’s a new kind of… you know they have different names for like crunk and stuff like that, or there’s this kind of music, but you know aside from some fairly subtle things, and like, maybe they use a drum machine instead of drums or something. But that’s really kind of the opposite of evolution as far as I can say so. It’s really… I don’t think there’s anything really… I don’t see any sort of major thing that’s happened since maybe reggae music in the ’70s that’s really different.

Chris: So you wouldn’t consider, say, rap music to be new?

Donald: Well, I mean it’s more of a theatrical forum really… or poetry with music type of thing, which certainly isn’t new. And the beats are basically funk, or something else, only played by machines, it’s really not… it doesn’t sound new to me. I mean, what’s new about it?

Chris: Well…

Donald: I mean, they use sampling technology to put out a blip of sound, but it’s really like an orchestral hit will be sampled and then so… you know and maybe they do… like if they appear very rapidly, that’s something maybe an orchestra couldn’t do, because it happens faster than an orchestra could play it but… it’s not what I would call a really significant change or anything.

Chris: So no real validity to the art of sampling, in your opinion?

Donald: Well it all sounds so canned that it’s basically… since they use drum machines and sequences for even the ballads now… people are used to it now, but to me, it also sounds like the kick drum comes in the wrong place, or it sounds wrong. You know like it’s… there’s really something wrong with the groove. Although, they’re getting better at mimicking real grooves. To me there’s always something, and the fact that it’s unchanging makes it sound, it may be hypnotic, but it has no dynamics, and it has no shape.

And what’s more, if you want to continue with the technical thing, as far as the other instruments are concerned, if you use synthesizers for all the keyboards and stuff like that, they’re always out of tune, technically, and I can hear it. It’s like the top end is always a little flat, and the bottom end is always a little sharp, because the keyboards aren’t what they call “stretched.” Like, when a piano tuner tunes a piano, aside from being tempered, they’ll stretch the tops of the harmonics so they aren’t flat on the top and sharp on the bottom. So they’re… there’s no groove and they’re out of tune.

Chris: Have you adopted… well, I assume you haven’t adopted modern synthesizers then into your work?

Donald: Well, I sometimes use synthesizers, but only in special situations… I’ll play a Rhodes piano, which is tunable, or some other kind of, like a Wurlitzer piano, which is also tunable by a piano tuner, because I just can’t take the out-of-tune quality of synthesizers.

Chris: What about in your recording process? Have you adopted any of the modern recording techniques?

Donald: Yeah I think Pro Tools for instance, the digital technology is really helpful at times, just because you can maneuver around easily and quickly.

Chris: Where was the bulk of Morph the Cat recorded?

Donald: Mostly in Manhattan . My wife and I went on a vacation to Hawaii in the middle of it, but I got bored and, you know, rented this studio and did some of the vocals there as well.

Chris: Did Walter Becker help out with this particular record?

Donald: Not on this one.

Chris: OK, I know the two of you tend to work outside of Steely Dan together.

Donald: Yeah, sometimes, but we were just on a kind of a break.

Chris: Are you going to be touring in support of this?

Donald: Yeah I’ll be out in March and — with my own band — and then in the summer, I’m going to go out again, and then maybe toward the end of the summer, Walter and I will hook up and do some Steely Dan gigs as well.

Chris: Oh really! Oh that’s very exciting. What could someone expect from your live performance of solo material? Will there be theatrics involved?

Donald: Yes, smoke bombs, the usual kind of — no, I’m kidding. Usually Steely Dan, when we play, it’s pretty basic, in fact we’ll be probably … my show will probably be even more stripped down, like usually, Steely Dan has a kind of fairly deluxe-looking stage set, and lights and stuff — I’ll probably have something a little more economical.

Chris: Interesting. Well I wanted to say that I grew up listening to Steely Dan in the ’70s and listened to many of the albums. Well, my mother would play them for me. But it seemed like when I was a child, you were releasing albums quite often…

Donald: Yeah, that’s right.

Chris: And I would sit and stare at the records, and I found myself pulling them out again as I became an adult. And there’s this quality about your music that really sort of manages to transcend whatever is happening at present.

Donald: Oh, thanks a lot.

Chris: What do you personally feel it is about the music that gives it a timeless quality?

Donald: Don’t know, it’s hard to say. You know, I think as far as the lyrics, I think we’ve always tried to be honest and address problems like aging and you know…I think we didn’t even start out pretending we were adolescents or anything like that, so we didn’t have to keep that up. You know, maybe coming out of adult traditions like jazz and literary tradition kept us honest, I think, and so … but on the other hand, the Rolling Stones still pretend they’re adolescents, and they’re in their 60s, and they survived very well, so I’m not sure.

Chris: Well you seem to be surviving well. Two Against Nature brought home a Grammy.

Donald: I saw the Rolling Stones the other day. They were great. You know, I mean, Mick Jagger was in incredible shape, he was actually very inspiring … not only was he pounding around for two hours, but he seems to sing just as well doing that, as if he was standing still, which is quite miraculous.

Chris: You saw them live?

Donald: Mm hmm, in Madison Square Garden .

Chris: Are you friends with them?

Donald: No, I met Keith Richards a couple of times, but I’m not really friends with anybody, no.

Chris: With anybody?

Donald: Well, with any, you know, any like celebrity-type people for the most part.

Chris: Did the continued success of Steely Dan into this millennium, has it surprised you at all?

Donald: Yeah….when we got nominated for the Grammy and all that stuff — it was quite unexpected.

Chris: So, back to Morph the Cat . What are the themes that dominate this particular record?

Donald: Death.

Chris: Death.

Donald: Mm hmm.

Chris: Is that something that, well, is on your mind?

Donald: Well yeah. I’m 58 as I say, and so you start thinking about, you know, I have so many years left, and so what am I going to do, what’s important. My mother died a couple of years ago, so that was interesting, and then I’m a New Yorker, so 9/11 I think was particularly … had a fairly intense effect, and I think it still does on all New Yorkers. You know, this kind of underlying paranoia in the city that was never there before, and I think it also tends to eroticize the society a little bit more, in that it’s kind of a reaction to the imminent extinction.

Chris: Of the self or society?

Donald: Well just, you know, both. If they think … when people think they don’t have that much time left, and when there’s a threat of war, or during wartime, I think it’s kind of sexy.

Chris: And do you feel the same way about the sort of omnipresent paranoia and fear that’s been injected into the American mind?

Donald: Mm hmm, yeah sure.

Chris: It certainly plays upon a lot of the literary themes that you mentioned earlier.

Donald: Yeah. I think especially like, for instance, in Milan Kundera’s work, when he talks about Czechoslovakia during the communist regime he makes a point of saying, “I kind of eroticized the society,” and that’s different in many ways from what I’m talking about, but I think there’s a parallel somehow”.

The first of three reviews I want to drop in is from Popmatters. Awarding it eight-of-ten, maybe those not a fan of Steely Dan or familiar with Donald Fagen might have felt cold towards Morph the Cat in 2006. Consider albums released in that year – including Lily Allen’s Alright, Still, Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, Joanna Newsom’s Ys, and Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black – and it is a harder sell. It does stand out. A sophisticated, rich and occasionally bleak album, there is stunning musicianship, world-class harmonies and lyrics from Donald Fagen that brings in humour and intelligence but addresses terrorism, death, and subjects many artists would not be able to elevate beyond the basic or heavy-handed:

“Morph the Cat is the latest product from the Dan imprint. And though it is a solo album written and produced only by Donald Fagen (The Dan’s singer and co-composer), it is inarguably a Steely Dan album in musical approach. Recorded by the very nearly the same band as Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go (particularly, Jon Herrington on guitar, Keith Carlock on drums, Walt Weiskoff on saxophones, and many others), Morph brims with tight but light funk grooves, astonishing harmonic twists going into choruses or bridges, and creepy, funny, mad lyrics that tell stories too dark for most pop music. The guitar and saxophone solos are serpentine and brilliant, and the singing — both Mr. Fagen’s flexible but sneering lead and the gorgeously layered backgrounds — is pitch-lovely.

The question of whether you’ll like this music will be based almost wholly on your gut-level feeling about Steely Dan as a whole. If you’re one of those in-my-DNA Steely Dan-haters (you know who you are: you are under 40, think Steely Dan sounds like smoove jazz with vocals, and find the whole thing contrived and plastic, utterly without soul), then this is a big-time PASS for you. It is slick-o-rific. But for those who love The Dan’s bop-cum-funk mixtures juxtaposed with sick stories, well — you’re in for the usual treat.

Lyrically, Morph the Cat is a logical successor to the first two Donald Fagen solo albums, The Nightfly and Kamakiriad. While Nightfly was set nostalgically in the 1950s and ’60s of Mr. Fagen’s youth, Kamakiriad and Morph are present tense missives from middle-age and late middle-age, respectively. The one significant difference between “Steely Dan” and “Donald Fagen” is the personal cast to the stories Mr. Fagen chooses to tell on his own. This time around, our narrator faces mortality on his home turf of 9/11-shaken New York City. The Old Bastard Death hangs around many of these songs like a bad smell, mixed whenever possible with the usual Dan/Fagen sense of creepy horniness.

Thus, in “Security Joan”, a slippery blues with all manner of harmonic elaboration, the narrator tries to explain to the alluring airport security officer both that “I’m not a terrorist” and that she is more than welcome to confiscate his shoes and perhaps his other clothes too. “The Night Belongs to Mona” describes a “child of the night” who’s become a hermit in her 40th-floor New York apartment, likely because of “the fire downtown / that turned her world around.” The couple in “The Great Pagoda of Fun” also cloister themselves “inside this house of light”, hiding from “psycho-moms / and dying stars / and dirty bombs”. No doubt, it’s an album of nightmares wrapped in crystalline music — particularly “Brite Nightgown”, a series of three dreams of Donald Fagen’s meetings with the Grim Reaper: a deadly fever, a sucker’s mugging, and an overdose. Fagen dresses this tune in a jumpy vocal that sounds as much like Prince as it does like Steely Dan — a falsetto octave syncopatedly set against the funk.

The title track is about a ghostly feline who floats over the whole city, visiting upscale apartments, playground basketball courts, and even Yankee Stadium, maybe a cousin to the devil who pads about the Russian novel The Master and Margherita cutting deals and promising a reprieve from the hardest thing there is. And Morph offers a few reprieves of its own. The “single” is “H Gang”, a story of a charismatic band that rises and then fades into MTV obscurity — perhaps the opposite of Steely Dan. It bops with fine pop pleasure. Better, though, is “What I Do”, a dastardly clever conversation between the ghost of Ray Charles and a young Donald Fagen seeking romantic tips. “I say, Ray, why do girls treat you nice that way?” Brother Ray replies: “It’s not what I know, what I think or say / It’s what I do.” You won’t find a better description of Ray’s music than this: “Well, you bring some church, but you leave no doubt / As to what kind of love you love to shout about.” This one is also a blues, but a gorgeous catchy blues with tasty stop-time for the piano and guitar. 

Despite the craft in this music — no, because of the craft in this music — most younger fans will run from Morph like it carried the very plague. No question, this album sounds uniform and rather overpleasant — engineered to a sheen of perfection by Elliott Scheiner. If that makes baby-boomers nostalgic and cozy, remembering cruising in their 1974 Camero listening to Aja, it’s not really Donald Fagen’s fault. He is still making — unapologetically — some very beautiful and very weird music that comes through the gate like a Trojan Horse and then explodes with disturbing imagery.

Indeed, “Mary Shut the Garden Door” is about that very topic: “They came in under the radar / When our backs were turned around / In a fleet of Lincoln Town Cars / They rolled into our town / Confounded all six senses / Like an opiate in the brain”. Morph the Cat works very much the same way. At first it sounds perhaps too much like Two Against Nature or Gaucho, but it insinuates. The melody of “The Night Belongs to Mona” is unique and sturdy as rock, the intimacy of “What I Do” is as vulnerable and intimate as anything on The Nightfly, and the death-groove of “Brite Nightgown” is sung and played with good nastiness. All this great stuff creeps out of the belly of Morph at midnight. My recommendation: keep your eyes — and ears — open”.

The penultimate review is from the Steely Dan Reader that makes some compelling observations about Morph the Cat. It is an album that I did not hear back in 2006. However, as a massive Steely Dan and Donald Fagen fan, it is one I listen to a lot now. I would recommend it to anyone:

“So Morph the Cat is the title and apparently it is the third part in a highly personal trilogy. The Nightfly about youth, Kamakiriad about midlife and Morph the Cat about endings or as Fagen himself puts it, “I’m starting to get older and began to think about mortality a little more. My mother died in 2003 and that was a big shock. When your parents start to die off, that’s going to be a revelation. So for me, this album, although it might sound quite cheery, is really talking a lot about death.” There are plans to release the trilogy as a separate box set, no doubt with extra tracks so we have to buy the albums again.

The first single from the album is “H Gang” and it’s just perfect. I am sure it will be and probably already is a radio smash and is just indicative of the album — it really is just perfect. I want to take you through my own personal mindset when I get a new album from the Steely Dan boys. Initially I really want it to be the best thing I’ve ever heard.

It starts with the CD arriving, then the anticipation about the first hearing, then strangely, disappointment as it can never live up to my non-realistic expectations. First listen over, phew, pressures off, now I can relax and really start to get into it. Every time this has happened and with repeated listens the albums just get better and better!

Well, it’s here and in my life, a new solo album from Donald Fagen and I can’t stop playing it, over and over. Those “right in the pocket” grooves, heavenly harmonies, strange lyrics and subject matters, fantastic musicianship, Fagen’s strained but powerful vocals, it’s everything you could want and more. It’s not jazz, not soul, and not rock but is infused with the spirit of all these genres. It is unique and in possession of that x factor so missing in today’s money, fame and power obsessed music industry, much like Mr Fagen himself. A true original musician who has lived his life and reacted to it through his music, including long periods of writers block and inactivity, times that must have been incredibly frustrating. 

I haven’t got any sleeve notes to help me try and dismember the subject matter on hand but despite its upbeat sound the album is dark and serious and I can only hazard an educated guess about some of the songs. “Mary Shut the Garden Door” seems to be about fighting or hiding from aliens and has probably got some political agenda. “Security Joan” is another great character created for the purpose of one of life’s patience building experiences, the airport security routine, especially since 9/11.

“It’s What I Do” is a song he has had for a while, as Fagen says to explain this piece, “I think I didn’t accept myself as a performer until recently. I always thought I had this sort of fake job. Like a lot of people of my generation, I didn’t quite sink into my actual profession, so it was difficult to take myself seriously in any given role. So I had this song that concerned itself with that concept. Then when Ray Charles died, I realized it would be much better if I addressed it to Ray Charles rather than just have it about me because he was such a great role model. So that one’s really a younger version of myself addressing the ghost of Ray Charles.”

Here we have the essence of Donald Fagen, an ability to blend jazz, soul and other musical influences with extended grooves and changing musical landscapes, in fact not unlike Ray Charles! He has no problem if this album echoes our troubled times, it is the reason for his own longevity, the instinct to reflect what’s going on both in his own life and the world at large. As to the real nitty gritty I’ll leave the last word to the great man himself: “I like it when songs develop in some way and four minutes usually isn’t enough time for something to develop. I’m still kind of plugged into that Duke Ellington model – something akin to classical music – where you start something, you develop it a little bit and stick with it and when you get a groove going, time flies.”

I found out two interesting pieces of information when writing this review, firstly both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker attended Bard College along with actor/comedian Chevy Chase and the three of them played together in a band known as Leather Canary! If you have ever wondered about the meaning of some of the crazy and exotic words used in Steely Dan/Becker & Fagen songs then you will be very pleased to discover www.steelydandictionary.com where you will find out things you probably didn’t even want to know but are so glad you did. Enjoy this new album from one of music’s great original craftsman and let’s hope he tours the UK very soon”.

I am going to wrap up with this review from AllMusic. Most people share the same point that it is not a big break from any previous Steely Dan/Donald Fagen album. Even if the same hallmarks are there, the lyrics themes and players are different:

“There are no surprises in sound and style on Morph the Cat, Donald Fagen's long-awaited third solo album, nor should any be expected -- ever since Steely Dan's 1980 masterwork, Gaucho, his work, either on his own or with longtime collaborator Walter Becker, has been of a piece. Each record has been sleek, sophisticated, and immaculately produced, meticulously recorded and arranged, heavy on groove and mood, which tends to mask the sly wit of the songs. When it works well -- as it did on Fagen's peerless 1982 solo debut, The Nightfly, or on Steely Dan's 2001 comeback, Two Against Nature -- the results go down smoothly upon first listen and reveal their complexity with each spin; when it doesn't quite succeed -- both 1993's Kamakiriad and the Dan's 2003 effort Everything Must Go didn't quite gel -- the albums sound good but samey on the surface and don't quite resonate. Morph the Cat belongs in the first group: at first it sounds cozily familiar, almost too familiar, but it digs deep, both as music and song.

Sonically, at least superficially, it is very much a continuation of the two Steely Dan records of the new millennium -- not only does it share Fagen's aesthetic, but it was recorded with many of the same musicians who have shown up on the Dan projects. There are slight differences -- without Becker around, there's a greater emphasis on keyboards and the songs stretch on a bit longer than anything on Everything Must Go -- but this, at least on pure sonics, could have functioned as a sequel to Two Against Nature. But Morph the Cat is very much a solo affair, fitting comfortably next to his first two solo albums as a conclusion to what he calls a trilogy. If The Nightfly concerned the past and Kamakiriad was set in a hazy future, Morph the Cat is rooted in the present, teeming with the fears and insecurities of post-9/11 America. Fagen doesn't camouflage his intent with the gleefully enigmatic rhymes that have been his trademark: his words, while still knowingly sardonic, are direct, and in case you don't want to bother reading the lyrics or listening closely, he helpfully offers brief explanations of the songs (for instance, on "Mary Shut the Garden Door," he writes "Paranoia blooms when a thuggish cult gains control of the government," a statement that's not exactly veiled). On top of this unease, Fagen faces mortality throughout the album -- he talks with the ghost of Ray Charles, borrows W.C. Fields' phrase for death for "Brite Nitegown," writes about attempted suicides -- and every song seems to be about things drawing to a close.

It's a little disarming to hear Fagen talk so bluntly -- although he came close to doing so on the deliberately nostalgic The Nightfly, the fact that he was writing about the past kept him at a bit of a distance -- but despite the abundance of morbid themes, Morph the Cat never sounds dour or depressing. In large part this is due to Fagen's viewpoint -- he never succumbs to mawkishness, always preferring to keep things witty and sardonic, which helps keep things from getting too heavy -- but it's also due to his smooth jazz-rock, which always sounds nimble and light. This, of course, is how Fagen's music always sounds, but here, it not only functions as a counterpoint to the darkness creeping on the edges of the album, but it's executed expertly: as spotless as this production is, it never sounds sterile, and when the songs start stretching past the five-minute mark -- two cuts are over seven minutes -- it never gets boring, because there's a genuine warmth to the clean, easy groove. More so than on Kamakiriad, or on the tight Everything Must Go, there is a sense of genuine band interplay on this record, which helps give it both consistency and heart -- something appropriate for an album that is Fagen's most personal song cycle since The Nightfly, and quite possibly his best album since then”.

If you have never experienced the brilliant Morph the Cat then you need to go and listen to it. It turns twenty on 7th March, and I am not sure whether there will be much new discussion or whether anyone will wrap about it. We definitely need a new Donald Fagen album. However, having not lost his wife, Libby Titus, and things in America being so bleak, it may be a while until his next solo album. In the meantime, we have works of genius like Morph the Cat. I think that it is a masterpiece…

YOU definitely need to hear.

FEATURE: When the War is Finally Done… The Importance of the HELP(2) Album

FEATURE:

 

 

When the War is Finally Done…

ARTWORK CREDIT: Jonathan Glazer

The Importance of the HELP(2) Album

__________

I remember when…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jarvis Cocker said he hoped the HELP(2) album would raise both money and awareness

the original HELP album came out in 1995. I had not really heard anything like until that point. I was aware of compilation albums and that sort of thing, but the notion of a range of popular artists coming together recording songs for a charity album was such an incredible idea. I am going to drop a couple of the HELP tracks in to show the type of artists who were involved. HELP(2) seem hugely important right now, as there is genocide and bloodshed around the world. The album is designed to raise money for War Child. You can donate to the charity here. Consider the scenes we see of countries afflicted by war and violence. It has been over thirty years since the first HELP album, so I do think that it is long overdue. At perhaps one of the scariest and most violent times in decades for the world, minds turn to the children affected by this. I am going to come to a feature first where producer James Ford revealed some artists approached to record for HELP(2) turned him down, as they thought it was too political. That seems infuriating, as it is not a political decision but a moral one! Supporting a charity that raise money for war-afflicted children does not make you anti-Semitic or against any nation. It is not an artist tying themselves to a political party. The thought artists would be worried fans would create backlash because it is controversial to support War Child. I can’t quite fathom why artists would do that. I know that Kate Bush has raised money for War Child and I wonder if she was approached. I cannot imagine she would decline for political reasons, but it would have been cool to see her in the fold. However, I am curious which artists declined to be a part of HELP(2). This NME article featured James Ford talking about that strange and shocking decision of artists not wanting to be part of an album raising much-needed money for War Child:

“James Ford, producer of War Child’s upcoming ‘Help(2)’ album, says some artists refused to be involved as they thought it was “too political”.

The collaborative album, inspired by the landmark 1995 ‘HELP’ record for War Child, comes out on March 6 – you can pre-order here. Produced and stewarded by Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, Florence + The Machine, Blur, Pet Shop Boys), ‘HELP(2)’ was recorded through “a close collaboration with Abbey Road Studios” mostly during one week in November 2025.

So far, the album has been previewed by one track – ‘Opening Night’ by Arctic Monkeys, which also marks their first new song in four years. Now, in a new interview with the Guardian, Ford has said that some artists declined to be a part of the album out of fear that it was too political.

War Child was first set up in 1993 by filmmakers David Wilson and Bill Leeson, who had seen the effects of war in the former Yugoslavia first-hand. The 1995 ‘Help’ record saw the charity gain mass exposure and generated a significant increase in donations.

IN THIS PHOTO: HELP(2) producer James Ford/PHOTO CREDIT: Pip Bourdillon

The decision to make a new album came from the severity of the crises in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and Syria.

“Obviously, a lot of people I know and I’ve worked with were easy targets, so we started with them: Fontaines DC, Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Gorillaz, Pulp and people like that,” Ford told the publication.

He went on to say that curating the record was “actually a great insight into the industry: which people are willing to do something. People who you’d think would be into it flat-out refused because they saw it as too political or something like that. It was fascinating.”

Alongside Alex Turner and co’s first material since 2022’s ‘The Car‘, the album also features Anna Calvi, Arlo Parks, Arooj Aftab, Bat For Lashes, Beabadoobee, Beck, Portishead‘s Beth Gibbons, Big Thief, Black Country, New Road, Cameron Winter, Blur’s Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, Depeche Mode, Dove Ellis, Wolf Alice‘s Ellie Rowsell, English Teacher, Ezra Collective, Foals, Fontaines D.C. and frontman Grian Chatten, Greentea Peng, Kae Tempest, King Krule, Nilüfer Yanya, Olivia Rodrigo, Pulp, Sampha, The Last Dinner Party, Wet Leg, The Smiths‘ icon Johnny Marr and Young Fathers.

However, shortly after being asked to lead the project, Ford was diagnosed with leukaemia. He told the Guardian that he was in the ICU during the week of recording sessions “with a pipe coming out of my fucking neck.”

“But because of technology, I could actually be in hospital, on my laptop, listening to what they were doing on the desk,” he added. “I could press the space bar and talk to everyone’s headphones, so I was remotely producing a lot of the tracks.

The record follows more than 30 years from the original and legendary Brian Eno-led 1995 ‘Help’ album that featured Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Orbital, Portishead, Massive Attack, Suede, Sinéad O’Connor, Manic Street Preachers, The Boo Radleys and more.

That album raised over £1.25million and sold over 700,000 copies, and was followed by other charity records including 2002’s ‘1 Love’, 2003’s ‘Hope’, 2005’s ‘Help!: A Day in the Life’ and 2009’s ‘War Child Presents Heroes’. The charity works to protect, educate, and support the mental health of children affected by war – and comes at a time of conflicts in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and beyond.

The original ‘Help’ charity album was reissued and made available on streaming platforms in 2020 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. In October last year, it was then reissued again, this time as a limited, numbered 7” single boxed set in celebration of it turning 30”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Arctic Monkeys/PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

Before going into the behind the scenes and the making of, Abbey Road give all the details of where you can pre-order the album, the artists involved, the tracks that have been recorded, and some details around the original HELP album. I must mention that in-person sessions at Abbey Road Studios were assisted by phenomenal producers, Marta Salogni and Catherine Marks (who is one of my favourite producers ever):

“HELP(2) is a brand new collaborative album inspired by the landmark 1995 release HELP to engage music lovers globally in support of War Child's vital work delivering immediate aid, education, specialist mental health support, and protection to children affected by conflict around the world. The new album, like the original, speaks to the urgency of the humanitarian situation globally today.

HELP(2) will be released on Friday 6 March via War Child Records. You can pre-order the album HERE.

HELP(2) carries forward the spirit of the original HELP album and was brought to life through a close collaboration with Abbey Road Studios, recorded predominantly across one extraordinary week in November 2025 under the stewardship of acclaimed producer James Ford.

HELP(2) features an incredible line-up of contributors including Anna Calvi, Arctic Monkeys, Arlo Parks, Arooj Aftab, Bat For Lashes, Beabadoobee, Beck, Beth Gibbons, Big Thief, Black Country, New Road, Cameron Winter, Damon Albarn, Depeche Mode, Dove Ellis, Ellie Rowsell, English Teacher, Ezra Collective, Foals, Fontaines D.C., Graham Coxon, Greentea Peng, Grian Chatten, Kae Tempest, King Krule, Nilüfer Yanya, Olivia Rodrigo, Pulp, Sampha, The Last Dinner Party, Wet Leg and Young Fathers. You can find the full HELP(2) tracklist below.

The spirit of the original record was reflected in the collaborative nature of the recording process with numerous impromptu moments unfolding in the studio. Damon Albarn's session for Flags saw him joined by Johnny Marr on guitar and Kae Tempest and Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. on vocals; and Olivia Rodrigo was connected with Graham Coxon resulting in the guitarist performing on her cover of The Book of Love.

In addition to the stellar cast of musicians involved, renowned filmmaker and Academy Award Winner Jonathan Glazer acted as Creative Director for HELP(2), working with Academy Films to assemble a team of brilliant creatives and overseeing the filming and art direction for the project. Glazer and Mica Levi’s concept was simple - By Children, For Children - with his team handing the cameras over to children in order to see the world through their eyes and serve as a constant reminder of the reason for the endeavor to the audience and all involved.

Each child operated their own small camera and was invited into the studios to film the artists recording without any restrictions. In addition, Glazer’s team worked with fixers and filmmakers in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and Sudan to gather footage filmed by children on the ground in these conflict zones. The results are a stunning piece of work that, ultimately, connects the album to the children the music seeks to help.

Recorded in a single day in 1995, the original HELP album raised over £1.2 million, enabling War Child to provide vital support to thousands of children caught in the Bosnian conflict.

However, when HELP was first released, around 10% of the world’s children were affected by conflict. Today, that figure has almost doubled to nearly 1 in 5, or 520 million children worldwide; more than at any time since the Second World War. With conflicts escalating and funding cuts hitting hard, War Child’s work has never been more urgent and the need for these artists to carry forward the original album’s spirit of collective action could not be more vital.

“When James Ford called and asked if we’d contribute to the HELP(2) album we set to work on a song idea and assembled in Abbey Road to record it. We are proud to support the invaluable work War Child do and hope the record will make a positive difference to the lives of children affected by war.” - Arctic Monkeys

“I felt incredibly honored when War Child asked me to work on ‘HELP(2)’. The original ‘HELP’ meant a lot to me and to have the opportunity, given the current news cycle, to  help galvanize our music community into doing something as unarguably positive as helping children in war zones seemed like a no brainer. The experience of making the album itself has been very powerful, and dare I say life affirming for me personally, against the backdrop of a very difficult year. I’m extremely proud of the results and of the efforts made by all involved. I can’t wait for people to hear this very special record. ” - James Ford

“It has been such a privilege to be part of bringing a team together to film this incredible collective effort.” - Jonathan Glazer

“HELP(2) is more than an album. It’s a powerful example of what can happen when the music industry comes together around a shared purpose. It has united a diverse group of artists and creatives in support of War Child’s vital work with children affected by the devastating impacts of war. We are immensely grateful to all the artists and teams who have donated their voices, talent and time to support our mission to ensure that no child is caught up in conflict zones. We hope this record not only raises vital funds, but also awareness of the urgent need to turn compassion into action and do more to protect children living through war.” - Rich Clarke, Head of Music at War Child UK.

War Child is driven by a single goal – ensuring a safe future for every child affected by war. Using 30 years of experience and proven methodologies, War Child aims to reach children as quickly as possible when conflict breaks out and stays long after the cameras have gone to support them through their recovery.

Together with its partners, War Child delivers vital work in 14 countries across the globe, including Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and more. Every day, its local teams are in communities and refugee camps creating safe spaces for children to play, learn, and access psychological support. War Child also specialises in responding rapidly to emergency crisis situations as they happen, offering immediate and critical aid impartially to keep children safe and help them through their trauma.

Led by Brian Eno, the original HELP album has become one of the most celebrated charity records ever made, featuring contributions from Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Portishead, Sinéad O’Connor, Paul McCartney, Paul Weller and more.

The story behind the record and its recording is now legend: all of the songs were recorded on one single day, Monday 4th September 1995, mixed the following day, and released to the buying public a few days later, on Saturday 9th September. The idea to record in 24 hours came from John Lennon, who, when discussing his 1970 record Instant Karma said that records should be like newspapers, reflecting events as they are happening.

HELP sold over 70,000 copies on day one and reached number one in the UK compilation charts and would have reached number one on the UK albums chart had it been eligible. Following its release, the record won both a specially created BRIT Award, collected by Thom Yorke, and a Q Award to recognise its impact. It was also nominated for the 1996 Mercury Prize; Pulp won that year with Different Class but donated the prize fund to War Child.

HELP captured a defining cultural moment and, nearly three decades on, its unparalleled influence continues to resonate with a globally-conscious generation of listeners.

No child should be a part of war. Ever.

HELP(2) Tracklist:
Arctic Monkeys - Opening Night
Damon Albarn, Grian Chatten & Kae Tempest - Flags
Black Country, New Road - Strangers
The Last Dinner Party - Let’s do it again!
Beth Gibbons - Sunday Morning
Arooj Aftab & Beck - Lilac Wine
King Krule - The 343 Loop
Depeche Mode - Universal Soldier
Ezra Collective & Greentea Peng - Helicopters
Arlo Parks - Nothing I Could Hide
English Teacher & Graham Coxon - Parasite
Beabadoobee - Say Yes
Big Thief - Relive, Redie
Fontaines D.C. - Black Boys on Mopeds
Cameron Winter - Warning
Young Fathers - Don’t Fight the Young
Pulp - Begging for Change
Sampha - Naboo
Wet Leg - Obvious
Foals - When the War is Finally Done
Bat For Lashes - Carried my girl
Anna Calvi, Ellie Rowsell, Nilüfer Yanya & Dove Ellis - Sunday Light
Olivia Rodrigo - The Book of Love”.

Some truly major and influential artists are behind the HELP(2) album. I hope to interview some of them or some of the technical crew and those responsible for bringing the music together, as I would love to know what it was like seeing it all coalesce. Rolling Stone gave us some insight a charity album that I hope raises millions for War Child. I have heard the Arctic Monkeys’ song that has just been released, Opening Night, and it is a fantastic track:

“Arctic Monkeys have their own relationship with War Child going back to 2018, when they played a show at the Royal Albert Hall and donated the proceeds to the organization. A live album from that concert, released two years later, yielded even more funds for children affected by war. “I think we’re just shy of £1.5 million from the show and the record,” Clarke says.

When the band met up at Abbey Road toward the end of 2025, it was their first time together in a studio in a few years. They decided to revisit an unfinished song that Turner had been toying with for more than a decade; Helders estimates that it first surfaced “in Joshua Tree, when we used to record out there.” (Dedicated Monkeys scholars can deduce that it probably entered the picture during the sessions for 2009’s Humbug or 2013’s AM, both partially recorded in the California desert.)

“He never got to scratch the itch of completing this song,” Helders says. “It was just one of those that wouldn’t go away in his head, I think. There was never a full version of it. We’d jam it out and try to write parts for it. It never got over the finish line, but it was too good to just leave alone.”

Now, they tried taking another run at “Opening Night” in the style they’ve evolved into on later albums like Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and The Car. “And it just worked,” Helders says. “It’s different to what it was going to be if we did it 10, 15 years ago, but we were all really happy with it… It’s almost like this song was waiting until we were good enough to do it.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Damon Albarn

Coming Full Circle

The rest of the HELP(2) sessions, the bulk of which took place over three days at Abbey Road, featured some other familiar faces, too. Back in 1996, when Pulp won the Mercury Prize for their era-defining album Different Class, they donated their winnings to War Child, feeling that The Help Album ought to have won instead. Three decades later, Jarvis Cocker and company stepped up to contribute a characteristically droll rocker called “Begging for Change” to the new project.

The original Help album, released at the height of the Britpop craze, included an instrumental track from Blur. This time, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon dropped by Abbey Road to sit in with the indie band English Teacher, while Albarn teamed up with Chatten and rapper Kae Tempest to polish off a new song called “Flags.”

“It was quite major chords, which is unusual for me,” the Blur/Gorillaz singer tells Rolling Stone. “So when conversation of War Child came, I thought it was quite a good thing to present as an idea.”

Albarn is a fan of both Chatten and Tempest, calling them both “huge talents,” and he was delighted to form an impromptu trio with them in the studio. “Flags” wound up featuring guitar from Johnny Marr, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, and Dave Okumu, as well as backing vocals from Cocker, Barât, Declan McKenna, Marika Hackman, the members of Black Country, New Road, and several other musicians who were around that day.

“We did it all together, like a band,” Albarn says. “When you do music for charity, it can be a bit trite somehow. But I don’t think we got distracted by that sense of, ‘Oh, we’re doing a charity record.’ We all just enjoyed recording together in Abbey Road.”

All of this action was recorded on hand-held cameras wielded by a crew of grade-schoolers that Glazer, the filmmaker behind The Zone of Interest and Under the Skin, sent to Abbey Road to document the sessions. “It’s to tell the story through the eyes of children,” Clarke says. “At one point, they’d be sat next to Damon on the piano stool, or sticking a camera up Jarvis’ nose in the vocal booth in Studio Three. It had a wonderful effect on the atmosphere, because once you’ve got kids running around, it just takes the stress away.”

Sadly, Ford, who was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2025, was unable to attend the sessions in person. So War Child brought in top producers including Marta Salogni and Catherine Marks to help out, and Ford continued to provide as much remote input as possible.

On the final day of recording, Dec. 17, Olivia Rodrigo came by Abbey Road to record a quietly stunning cover of the Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love”; the track also features Coxon on acoustic guitar. Ford, who was receiving treatment in the hospital at the time, guided the session over Zoom. “He was actually talking into Olivia Rodrigo’s [headphones] while she was recording, while he was having a blood transfusion,” Clarke says. “Remarkable man, and an absolute genius.”

Around Christmas, Clarke got to hear Arctic Monkeys’ “Opening Night” for the first time. A longtime fan of the band — “I’m old enough to remember seeing them in Camden in skinny jeans and a flannel shirt and long hair” — he knows that getting a new single from them is no small feat. “We didn’t take it for granted,” he says. “I was absolutely blown away. It’s a brilliant track, isn’t it?”

With “Opening Night” out now and the album arriving on streaming services soon, he’s looking forward to seeing how fans respond to all the music that got made at Abbey Road for War Child. “The wonderful thing is, these rights are going to support children affected by conflict in perpetuity,” Clarke says. “The music’s the legacy piece, and the quality of that will carry through for the next 30 years, we hope. Fingers crossed”.

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A post shared by Catherine Marks (@cjmarks)

I will end with a BBC article that also takes us inside the recording of HELP(2). It is important because there is this crisis moment in terms of the children displaced and affected by war around the world. It is not talked about as much as it should. Whilst events in the U.S. and global politics is crucial, there is not as much media coverage of the nations affected by violence and what they are facing. HELP(2) will help shine new light on a conversation that needs to continue. Those artists who turned down the opportunity participate and add their voices, I feel, should be ashamed:

“These were the scenes in London last November, as some of the world's biggest stars convened to record a new charity album in aid of Warchild.

The tracklist, revealed yesterday, is like a who's who of indie rock. Wet Leg, The Last Dinner Party, Wolf Alice, Fontaines DC, Nilüfer Yanya, Cameron Winter, Ezra Collective, Foals and Young Fathers all contribute.

Over the course of one week, 23 tracks were recorded. At times, five of Abbey Road's famed studios were in use, with collaborations springing up on the spur of the moment.

Blur's Graham Coxon plays guitar with Rodrigo on a cover of The Magnetic Fields' The Book Of Love. Damon Albarn's session saw him joined by Johnny Marr on guitar, with additional vocals by Kae Tempest and Grian Chatten.

Later in the day, Jarvis Cocker got back from a bathroom break to find them all in his studio - so he got them to sing the intro to a new Pulp song, Begging For Change.

"The just turned up, so I thought, 'Why not?'" he laughs. "I'm not used to that kind of thing, but it was really good."

The original 1995 Help album featured Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney and Paul Weller playing a cover of The Beatles' Come Together, under the name Mojo Filters

The album is the spritual successor to 1995's Help! - recorded at the height of Britpop, and featuring contributions from Paul Weller, Radiohead, Suede, Paul McCartney, The KLF, Portishead and The Manic Street Preachers.

It was also, famously, the only time Oasis and Blur appeared on the same record, just months after their legendary (and acrimonious) chart battle.

"We'll put aside our differences for the cause," Noel Gallagher said at the time. "And it's the only time you'll see us agreeing on anything."

The record sold 70,000 copies in its first week, raising nearly £1.25m to help children in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 2025, the fund-raising is even more urgent. According to Warchild, 520 million children worldwide - almost one in five - are affected by war, with simultaneous crises in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza.

The figure is higher than any time since the Second World War, at the same time as governments across the world are cutting international aid.

"At the moment, there really does seem to be a lot of bad things happening, and a lot of people feel powerless," says Cocker.

"They're looking at the news and they don't know what to do. So I would hope this album is something the people can enjoy, and also know that they're trying to make a positive change."

More than 15 million children are in need of assistance in Sudan alone, with more than a third of the population fleeing their homes amidst a brutal civil war.

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A post shared by War Child UK (@warchilduk)

The first single, released on Thursday, is a new track by Arctic Monkeys called Opening Night.

A sparse, sinister ballad, it finds Alex Turner singing about political sloganeering and "supercomputer crusades" before a beautifully harmonised chorus that offers a message of hope in dark times.

The song dates back a couple of years, drummer Matt Helders tells the BBC, but had never been finished.

Getting the call from Warchild was the prompt they needed to complete the song, with lyrics that felt like a call to arms.

"With charity records, it's often tempting to do a cover, or an interesting collaboration," he says, "but we enjoy making records and being in the studio, so it was fun to work on something that we'd written."

Adding to the fun was that film crew of children, principally aged between eight and 10, who documented the entire recording progress.

They were corralled by Bafta-winning director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under The Skin, The Zone Of Interest), who wanted to connect the music back to the young people it would help.

"They were given free reign to just roam around, which really changed the atmosphere," says Helders.

"Studios can be quite a stiff, clinical environment, sometimes. But they were walking around and bumping into stuff. It made it fun."

The stars at Abbey Road were filmed and interviewed by a cast of junior documentarians

Cocker wasn't so sure.

"I hate anybody watching me sing in the studio, because I'm kind of a self-conscious person and somebody pointing a camera at me doesn't help with that," he says.

You won't get to hear that song until Help(2) is released on 6 March. Thanks to record labels and pressing plants donating their services free of charge, it will be cheaper than standard albums - with a double vinyl costing around £26 - and Warchild receiving all the profits.

"We found that this project really lit a fire under the creative community, " says Rich Clarke, the charity's head of music. "Lots of people wanted to get involved."

He lets slip that the 23 tracks on the album weren't the only product of the week-long recording sessions.

"There's a there's a whole load of tracks, around 10 or so, that that came in when people heard about the project. So actually, there were some tough decisions for the team about what made it onto the record."

But Olivia Rodrigo's song - about the purity of love - was always earmarked as the closing track”.

Even though HELP(2) is about raising money and this wonderful and vital combination of artists, it is also intriguing looking at the tracks and artists performing together. I am particularly excited to hear Olivia Rodrigo’s take on The Book of Love. I love Peter Gabriel’s version, but Rodrigo will do something different with it. Anna Calvi, Ellie Rowsell, Nilüfer Yanya & Dove Ellis together will be awesome arrangement of talent. I do hope that there is more life in terms of a documentary coming soon and maybe in-depth magazine articles. I am not sure whether many publications and websites beyond Rolling Stone are running features with photos, interviews and insights. I will keep an eye out. I would encourage everyone reading this to pre-order HELP(2), as it is very affordable for a double album and all that money goes to War Child. It is going to be a phenomenal collection of songs and a unique occasion. These artists all together and in harmony for a great cause. On 6th March, you can experience this wonderful album. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios and thinking about the atmosphere. These amazing scenes of artists who might never interact chatting and being in the same space. The power of these performances and the possibility that HELP(2) could raise many millions. Let’s hope so. Opening Night is a tantalising cut from the album, and it may be the final track we hear from Arctic Monkeys. If it is, then it is a wonderful way to wrap things up. However, it is more than being about the artists. So paramount that War Child is supported so that they can get much-needed resources and help to those living in absolutely awful circumstances. Let’s not rule out a third volume of this album. However, here and now, everyone needs to throw their weight behind…

THE stunning and moving HELP(2).

FEATURE: It’s the Good Advice That You Just Didn’t Take… Alanis Morissette’s Ironic at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

It’s the Good Advice That You Just Didn’t Take…

IN THIS PHOTO: Alanis Morissette in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Hutson/Redferns (via SPIN)

Alanis Morissette’s Ironic at Thirty

__________

THE fourth single taken…

from Alanis Morissette’s third studio album, Jagged Little Pill, Ironic was released on 27th February, 1996. I want to mark thirty years of one of the defining songs of the '90s. I wrote about Ironic fairly recently, though that was around the debate about whether the ‘ironic’ scenarios in the song were actually ironic. Many people thought they were being clever by saying the situations were not irony. This has been disproven. I will include an article about that. However, that is pretty much all said about a song that is a standout from the masterpiece, Jagged Little Pill. A huge chart success that Morissette has played live numerous times, I want to explore this song more ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. Let’s get the is it/isn’t it actually ironic part out of the way first. In December, American Songwriter published an article reacting to an interview Alanis Morissette gave, where she discussed her views on the controversy and discussion around the accuracy and irony of Ironic’s lyrics:

“Alanis Morissette was about as big as any artist has ever been in the ’90s. Her cutting lyricism earned her many ears, thanks to the era’s affinity for punchy realism. She released one of her name-making songs in 1996, “Ironic.” Despite its massive success, there was some lyrical controversy surrounding it. According to Morissette, fans missed the real irony behind this thematically questionable track.

The Real Irony of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic”

You might be saying to yourself, “What’s controversial about ‘ironic’?” For most listeners, absolutely nothing. But some listeners have pointed out that the lyrics, built around the idea of ironic circumstances, aren’t actually ironic—at least not in the strictest sense.

The chorus reads: It’s like rain on your wedding day / It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid / It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take / And who would’ve thought? It figures.

The list of “ironic” situations Morissette puts together in this song is more plainly unfortunate than truly ironic. Many naysayers have pointed out this fact, over the years, using this song as a punchline for Morissette’s lack of understanding.

According to the singer herself, there’s an even greater irony at play that fans have missed.

“Not Wildly Precious About It”

There are greater offenses in lyricism than Morissette missing the mark of irony. Countless artists have made up words or forced a meaning for the sake of rhyme. Lyricism isn’t always graded on grammatical correctness. This is a fact that Morissette knows and doesn’t think about too hard.

“People got really triggered by the malapropism, or whatever the word is,” Morissette said on MGM+’s Words + Music. “I am a linguist. I’m obsessed with linguistics. I also love making up words, and I also don’t care.”

“Where I go when people are triggered by anything is I quickly go to ‘what’s at the epicentre of this, what is everyone really up in arms about,’” she continued. “‘Why is everyone laughing?’ And I think we’re afraid to look stupid.”

She went on to say that she knows the irony in “Ironic” isn’t strong, but that she wasn’t being too precious about the writing process.

“I think a lot of lyrics around the planet, many, many artists, most of us aren’t being wildly precious about it,” she continued elsewhere. “So I’m 90% grammar police, which is the real irony. And then 10%, I really couldn’t care less. So I think the 10% won over on that song.”

In the end, “Ironic” has many shades of irony. And, all in all, it doesn’t matter if this song was ironclad in its use of language; it became a hit all the same”.

I might actually return to that debate about the lyrics and whether the word ‘ironic’ is used correctly, just because I found an interesting article. However, in 2024, GRAMMY published an article giving some background to Ironic and its legacy. A track I obviously first heard in 1995 when Jagged Little Pill came out, though it was more ubiquitous in 1996 when it was released as a single:

“Ironic” was written by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard, the driving force behind her breakout album “Jagged Little Pill.” Ballard, known for his work with Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul, pushed Morissette to tap into her raw emotions, resulting in the album’s signature angsty sound. Glen Ballard handled production duties alongside engineer Jeff Greenberg.

Misunderstood Irony: A Look at the Lyrics

The song’s central theme is frustration with life’s unfair twists. Morissette strings together situations like rain on your wedding day and a ten-dollar bill blowing away from a homeless man, all punctuated by the question “Isn’t it ironic?”

However, many listeners (and critics) pointed out that the situations aren’t truly ironic, lacking the expected contrast between expectation and reality. Morissette herself has acknowledged this, stating “I’d always embraced the fact that every once in a while I’d be the malapropism queen.”

Despite the technicality, the lyrics resonate with their portrayal of life’s unpleasant surprises and the frustration of feeling like the universe is working against you. Lines like “A traffic jam when you’re already late” capture the essence of everyday annoyances that feel like personal attacks.

Chart-Topping Success and Awards Recognition

“Ironic” became a global phenomenon, topping charts worldwide and propelling “Jagged Little Pill” to diamond-selling status. While the song itself didn’t win any major awards, the album won two GRAMMY Awards, including Album of the Year.

A Flood of Covers and Enduring Legacy

Many iconic songs have been covered, a way to pay tribute to the original musician. “Ironic” is no exception, it has been covered by countless artists, from Vienna Teng’s stripped-down acoustic version to Aaron Lewis of Staind, covering it at a live show. Other Alanis classics have been covered from artists including Weird Al Yankovic’s parody songs to more traditional rendition from First To Eleven. These covers highlight the song’s versatility and ability to connect with different audiences across genres.

While the debate over the true meaning of “ironic” continues, “Ironic” remains an iconic song. It captures the emotional turmoil of young adulthood and the frustration of feeling like the world doesn’t understand you. Its raw energy and relatable lyrics continue to resonate with listeners decades after its release”.

I think there will be new interest around Alanis Morissette’s Ironic, given that Jagged Little Pill turned thirty last year and Morissette spoke about the album and its importance. There are so many great singles from that album, including Hand in My Pocket, You Learn and You Oughta Know. I will end with some critical reaction to the song. However, this article is the next thing I want to illustrate:

“Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill is one of the bestselling albums of all time (33 million global sales and counting) and a staple filler of SOTB’s inaugural decade. On its 25th anniversary it remains one of those rare albums with a quintessentially distinctive sound, subsequently much imitated but never bettered. Morissette and producer/co-writer Glen Ballard wrote and recorded a song a day at Ballard’s home studio , and amazingly retained the original demo vocals for the final cut, all of which were captured in one or two takes. That live, raw and fresh lyrical brilliance snaps and fizzles out of the speakers from the opening, “Do I stress you out?” all the way through to the concluding “ if I cry all afternoon”.

Although I could have nominated many other (less reviled) JLP singles that appear later in the canon (Mary Jane, Head Over Feet and Hand in My Pocket all being outstanding contenders), Ironic takes the crown for notoriety. It’s also just a damn great track. The twinkly folksy acoustic opening exploding into a monster chorus, anthemic with its grungy power chords and layered soaring vocals replete with lilting harmonies, driven on a bed of 90’s distorted drum loop. The Grammy nominated video is pretty strong too, even if it did suffer the plague of yet another “Weird” Al Yankovic interpolation in 2003. This is a song that perfectly lends itself to driving down a snowy highway in a 1978 Lincoln Continental Mark V, caterwauling the chorus whilst pounding the steering wheel and/or narrowly being decapitated by a passing bridge.

As to the lyrical content, more than enough sincere, po-faced and condescending white male superior hot-takes have already crashed like waves upon this monolith of a pop song, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. For what it’s worth, I’m with professor Simon DeDeo, whose forensic apologetic posits an 85% hit rate for irony, be that situational, Hegelian or other. He concludes that, “[s]ince its inception, people have used it as an example of how the subtleties of irony escape the grasp of popular culture, and cited the lyrics to demonstrate their superior grasp of the concept. They hear, but do not hear.”

I do hear, and I hear the exuberant soundtrack of the Spring of 1996, vivid in all its jangling untamed brilliance”.

The American Reader explores the unbearable ironies of Alanis Morissette for their feature. There are few songs in history that have been as poured over and debated because of the lyrics or the accuracy of them. Most people would just admire a song and leave it there. However, Ironic is pulled apart and dissected:

“First, let’s get this out of the way: calling Alanis Morissette’s lyrics unironic is wrong. From “irony” in the Oxford English Dictionary:

3. A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what was or might be expected; an outcome cruelly, humorously, or strangely at odds with assumptions or expectations.

This accurately and uncontroversially describes almost all of the song’s situations. For everyone I know, rain on one’s wedding day would indeed be cruelly, humorously, and strangely at odds with expectations. This sort of irony is usually called “situational irony,” and while I’m usually opposed to breaking irony apart into discrete kinds, the phrase works pretty well here to describe the many ironic examples that Alanis describes. Both that 98-year-old-man and Mr. Play-it-Safe possess fates that are truly ironic; they struggle to create a meaningful narrative in the face of a world that thwarts their intentions. The only moment in the song that doesn’t easily fit into this definition of irony is one of the last, with the “man of my dreams” and “his beautiful wife.” There is certainly a contrast there, but it doesn’t seem to be one of expectations; I’ll get to that later. In general, though, the song evokes the disparity of meaning that comes from the difference of expectation and actuality. Just because no one is being sarcastic doesn’t mean the song isn’t ironic.

But let’s not stop there. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that in writing this Alanis has a much deeper, more radical, and philosophical concept of irony. It seems to me that Ms. Morissette is remarkably well versed in the theories of irony from Erasmus to Paul de Man; if she hasn’t read their works herself, then she has certainly internalized much of the theory of irony not only as a trope but as a question of philosophy.

Take, for example: “It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take.” This is the vaguest line in the song, and it seems to pose a challenge to the ironist. Presumably the situational irony here is that the listener didn’t expect the advice to apply, whereas it did indeed. But why didn’t “you” take the advice? It’s possible that you thought the advice-giver was being ironic, and didn’t intend for you to heed the advice. Or you simply thought that the advice wasn’t “good” when it was; either way you don’t take it “seriously.” In fact that word, “seriously,” haunts the end of the lyric; the irony here is one of (mis)interpretation. Paul de Man addresses this difficulty of interpretation in his essay “The Concept of Irony” (not to be confused with Kierkegaard’s book of the same name): “what is at stake in irony is the possibility of understanding, the possibility of reading, the readability of texts, the possibility of deciding on A meaning or on a multiple set of meanings or on a controlled polysemy of meanings.” Doesn’t Alanis provide the perfect example of living in a world where we’re unsure of what to take seriously, and what not to? And who, really, would have thought it figures?

A more global question: what is “Ironic” really about, anyway? I turn to the bridge/outro: “Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you / Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out” What is she talking about here? How is life helping her out? It seems to me that this song, like so many songs on Jagged Little Pill, is describing the wistful emotional reflection that a Gen-Xer feels when distanced from her own life experience. Think Daria, think Reality Bites. It’s telling that the music video features three Alanises taking a road trip: Alanis sees herself from the outside. A friend once described this popular 1990s attitude as “the meaningfulness of meaninglessness.“ Come to think of it, that describes the poetry of T.S. Eliot pretty well too.

Or, put another way, Alanis is describing the affect of Kierkegaardian irony. From the philosopher’s book The Concept of Irony:

In irony, the subject is negatively free, since the actuality that is supposed to give the subject content is not there. He is free from the constraint in which the given actuality holds the subject, but he is negatively free and as such is suspended, because there is nothing that holds him. But this very freedom, this suspension, gives the ironist a certain enthusiasm, because he becomes intoxicated, so to speak, in the infinity of possibilities…

Does this quote not perfectly describe the emotional content of “Ironic”? The situations in the song simultaneously create a feeling of freedom and one of alienation; we are free to laugh at the irony of the world, but we are unable to experience its meaning unironically. I most strongly identify with this emotion (and song) when I’m hung over.

To conclude I want to return to the troubling final example in the song, the man of Alanis’s dreams and his beautiful wife. There is a yearning here, as well as its negation or deferral, but how is it ironic? Well, in his 1828 book The Philosophy of Life and of Language, Friedrich Schlegel connects irony and love:

True irony—for there also is a false one—is the irony of love. It arises out of the feeling of finiteness and one’s own limitation, and out of the apparent contradiction between this feeling and the idea of infinity which is involved in all true love.

I don’t even want to think about false irony, and to be honest I’m not 100% sure what this quote (or book) really means, but I can tell that Alanis knows. Elsewhere Schlegel describes irony as the effect of a ‘finite being striving to comprehend an infinite reality.’ This is the feeling that “Ironic” both describes and evokes when I try to interpret it”.

I want to bring in Wikipedia and their article about Ironic. The critical reaction to a song that I think has grown in stature since 1996. It has received more praise and love than some provided it thirty years ago. It is often seen as one of Alanis Morissette’s greatest songs. It is an anthem and one that so many people can sing along to:

“Jaime Gill from Dot Music commented on the original version of "Ironic", on his review of Jagged Little Pill Acoustic (2005), that "[Jagged Little Pill] gave us pop's greatest parlour game, with spot the genuine irony in 'Ironic'" and calling the song "pretty" and "catchy". Additionally, he noted that the acoustic version “actually sounds more relaxed and engaging without the hoary loud guitars of the original". Even though Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic marked the track as one of the "All Media Guide track pick" of the album, in a separate review, from the same website, the CD single release was rated with two-and-a-half out of five stars. Pareles noted that in verses of "Ironic", and another song from the album ("Mary Jane"), "it's easy to envision Morissette on the stage of a club, singing wry couplets backed by acoustic guitar". He also commented in another article he wrote, that the song was actually "unironic". Victoria Segal from Melody Maker praised it as "a perfectly nice piece of bubbling folk rock." A reviewer from Music Week rated it four out of five, noting that it "builds into another powerful anthem with beautiful echoes of The Cocteau Twins. It could see her break into the Top 20 for the first time." Dave Brecheisen of PopMatters felt that the acoustic version of "Ironic", was much worse than the original version. The single won the Juno Award for Single of the Year at the 1997 ceremony, and in the same year it was nominated for a Grammy Award, in the category of Record of the Year”.

On 27th February, it will be thirty years since Ironic was released as a single. It shows how strong Jagged Little Pill is that a song as towering as Ironic was the fourth single. Whilst the decades-lasting linguistic debate – why hopefully has been put to bed now – has somewhat stolen focus and been a disservice to a genuinely phenomenal song, the fact it received so much airplay shows that there is a lot of affection for this track. Everyone has their favourite lyrics from Ironic. Mine are these: “Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you/When you think everything's okay and everything's going right/And life has a funny way of helping you out/When you think everything's gone wrong/And everything blows up in your face”. I am looking forward to the thirtieth anniversary of Ironic and I hope that people show this song the respect…

IT thoroughly deserves.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Elvis Presley (King of the Mountain)/Prof. Joseph Yupik (50 Words for Snow)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2005’s Aerial/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Elvis Presley (King of the Mountain)/Prof. Joseph Yupik (50 Words for Snow)

__________

I am going to pair…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 50 Words for Snow

characters from 1993’s The Red Shoes and 1978’s Lionheart before then moving to 1980’s Never for Ever and 1985’s Hounds of Love. That would mean I have included each of Kate Bush’s studio albums (excluding 2011’s Director’s Cut) twice. I am looking at her latter career for this edition. Two characters that are not named in songs but definitely are relevant. I shall move to a character voiced by a comedy legend in a minute. However, I am going back to Aerial and another great character. In future features, I am going to mention, Bertie and Mrs. Bartolozzi. I will also feature 50 Words for Snow again as there is the Lady in the Lake from Lake Tahoe and Elton John’s character from Snowed in at Wheeler Street (technically the ‘Lover’, though I am not sure how to name him). However, Aerial is relevant as it was Kate Bush’s first album since 1993’s The Red Shoes. King of the Mountain was a hugely exciting moment. I have written about the song before. It is the last video to feature Kate Bush in it., Directed by the late Jimmy Murakami, there was a lot of discussion around the video. Bush was concerned how she looked and self-conscious. Murakami has to reassure her but, after this experience, Bush did not feature in future videos. Aerial was also the first album that did not feature her – or her feet in the case of The Red Shoes – on the cover. This was not Bush’s first song since 1993. She has recorded others and I think the last single or thing she featured on was 1995/1996. However, we are still talking about a decade almost, so this was like a comeback. Appropriate given the main character that is alluded to in King of the Mountain.

Elvis Presley is very much at the heart of this song. There are other characters in the song. “Another Hollywood waitress/Is telling us she's having your baby”. I was going to write about Hollywood, the film industry and this waitress. However, critics were a little ignorant to the relevance of Elvis Presley in this song. Many not knowing that Bush was putting on an Elvis drawl. I have noted this before, but a lot of the lyrics seem to apply to Bush’s situation. Maybe allusions to an artist seen as gone and departed but more to do with Bush’s domestic life and being a mother: “Elvis, are you out there somewhere/Looking like a happy man?”. This idea that Bush was finished or retired: “And there's a rumour that you're on ice/And you will rise again someday”. What is significant is this was the first song written for Aerial. Some might think Bush wrote King of the Mountain in 2005 and she was responding to this absence and press speculation. However, we can date King of the Mountain down to 1996, so this was two years before she became a mother. In 1996, Bush was writing for this new album but also not embroiled in press runs and any pressure. It was not her retiring, but this was a period of her not immersed in making an album to a deadline. You can feel her taking on this idea of a legendary artist who had this career and is now in the mountains or hidden away. Bush herself was living in Theale, West Berkshire and very much building this new life and home. It is fascinating that Bush mentioned Elvis Presley and he was the subject of this mountain-dwelling mystical figure. There are lines that are a little oblique or that have multiple meanings or possibilities: “Could you see the storm rising?/Could you see the guy who was driving?/Could you climb higher and higher?/Could you climb right over the top?/Why does a multi-millionaire/Fill up his home with priceless junk?”.

It is interesting reading into King of the Mountain. After 1993’s The Red Shoes and the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve received some negative press, Bush was burned out and she experienced family tragedy and loss, she needed to step back. She wandered out of public view and there was this view in the press that Bush’s eccentricities were more interesting than the music. This is what Graeme Thomson notes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Tori Amos was new on the scene and being compared to Kate Bush. Her music seemed fresher and more interesting. Björk’s Debut came out in 1993 and she was seen as a more important and complete artist. She is a big fan of Kate Bush and has shouted out to her through the years. Both these artists compared to Kate Bush but seen as more intriguing and better alternatives. Bush was lukewarm towards The Red Shoes. The first time she felt like that since 1978. Maybe overworked or balancing too much, she said she did the best she could at the time. Paddy and John Bush, her brothers, backed away from fanzine contacts and were a bit more detached. The 1994 fan convention was the last one she attended. When dubbing in Cricklewood for The Line, the Cross and the Curve, Kate Bush said she wanted to take time off. She mentioned how she loved being by the sea (she would move to Devon) and get away from the city. Maybe, as Graeme Thomson notes, connecting with her childhood holidays in Birchington-on-Sea. She wanted to be away from the studio. After the death of her mother in 1992 and splitting from Del Palmer (who continued working with her and engineered Aerial), there as reduced activity between 1994 and 2005. Bush had not really grieved her mother. She set up  new home with Dan McIntosh and it would not be long until she became a mother herself. There were rumours Bush was living in a cage, castle or gothic retreat. That she changed her name officially to Catherine Earnshaw (the heroine from Wuthering Heights). Considering all of this context, you can read a lot of the lyrics to be about Bush. Using Elvis Presley as someone who died young and was killed by excess and this awful pressure, celebrity life and working himself into the ground. Rather than thinking about him dying young, Bush imagined him as maybe being alive but now being in the mountains and away from the limelight. I see Bush talking about herself and her situation – though I could be overreading it!

IN THIS PHOTO: Elvis Presley

It is the nature of fame and industry pressure. How critics saw her and the fact that she was so busy recording and working that she could not deal with her personal life and changes. Even if there seem to be stronger songs on Aerial that would have made a good lead single – Mrs. Bartolozzi or How to Be Invisible -, King of the Mountain seems to be the most important, relevant and powerful. Del Palmer’s prowling and brilliant bass. Steve Sanger’s punchy drums. Dan McIntosh on guitar and Bush on keyboard. Paddy Bush providing backing vocals. One of the last times he would feature on his sister’s albums (he did not appear at all on 50 Words for Snow). Family old and new on this incredible single. Elvis Presley is also this music idol. I am not sure whether Bush was inspired by him musically. In this case, he was this character in her song. However, Bush did not really mention her music idols much through song. Whereas Elton John actually appeared on 50 Words for Snow and Prince on The Red Shoes (on Why Should I Love You?), there are others that never featured. Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Paul McCartney and so many others never featured on her records. Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour did, so there is a bit of a split. However, Elvis Presxley was an artist who as taken advantage of early on and exploited. A controversial figure for sure – the fact Priscilla Presley was fourteen when they met -, he was a revelation and revolution. However, in terms of freedom, money and a private life, you feel he was not given a moment to breathe. Not that Kate Bush experienced anything as horrible. However, there were times when she was perhaps living unhealthy and really depressed. That she was being taken advantage of slightly in terms of releasing albums quickly or not given enough time early in her career to relax or have some downtime. There are connections and mentions of Elvis Presley. Far Out Magazine published this article, where they highlight an interview from 2006 from Rolling Stone France:

“Despite being a private, shy and retiring figure, Bush remains iconic and beloved by many, but she doesn’t quite understand why anyone would want to pursue a career in music in any other way opposite to how she has always chosen to. Many people often choose not to pursue a career in music for this exact reason, but in Bush’s eyes, those who do go chasing the delights of being world-renowned are destined to find out the hard way that it’s hard to ever escape fame for a little bit of peace.

In a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone France, Bush was asked whether for this reason she would consider someone like Elvis Presley to be her opposite, with interviewer Philippe Badhorn stating: “You work at your own pace; you manage to have a life away from show-business when he stepped out of day-to-day reality.”

Rather predictably, Bush would state that she has no idea why someone like Presley would have actively wished for the fame that he received, and hypothesised that he never truly sought it in the first place.

“I believe he really was a sweet and fun loving nice guy who couldn’t say no,” she argued. “Nobody would want to be that famous. I was already asked if I felt I was like him. Thank god I don’t. I’m not as famous, nobody is, except maybe Frank Sinatra or Marilyn Monroe, but she died because of that sooner than him. It’s hard to have the whole world looking at you”.

I am going to move to this article, that takes a passage from Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. It gives us more of an insight into King of the Mountain and why Elvis Presley is particularly important as a subject. Think of Bush writing King of the Mountain in 1996, I still cannot help think she was reflecting on her career and her desire to get away from everything and escape the pressures of fame. Something she never wanted, it was thrust upon her:

“‘What a horrible nightmare. Particularly for somebody like Elvis. Because the impression I get was that he was fun-loving and just happened to be really gorgeous and sexy and talented. And I think, y’know, partly why people respond to him the way they do – and I really feel strongly about this – is that people [sense] an intention from somebody, whether it’s an actor or a singer. People felt that Elvis was a really genuinely sweet person and that’s why everybody loves him so much. Not that I know a great deal about Elvis, but I thought he was a very beautiful- looking man with a fantastic voice and this fun-loving quality where you see he’s up there kind of taking the piss out of himself.’

I said I’d recently re-watched Presley’s 1970 Vegas-era documentary, That’s the Way It Is, and it had struck me that it often must have been a real laugh being Elvis.

‘Well, I hope it was. What I see is somebody who was a sweetheart in the truest sense, just being eaten alive. To be as famous as he was . . . how could anybody survive that and still be a human being? I see him as being destroyed really by the fact that he was so famous. So I just love the idea of him being alive somewhere, away from all the people and the greed and the wanting to take him over’”.

There is one more Kate Bush/Elvis Presley connection before I flip to Side B and Bush’s latest album. In 2014, when Kate Bush brought her Before the Dawn residency to Hammersmith, she became the first woman ever to have eight albums in the Official Album Charts at the same time. She was behind Elvis Presley in terms of the most albums being in the charts simultaneously, as this article reveals:

“Today, two of Bush's albums are in the top 10 , The Whole Story at number six and Hounds Of Love at number nine, with a total of eight Bush albums in the top 40, the company said.

And 50 Words For Snow is at number 20, The Kick Inside is at number 24, The Sensual World is at 26, The Dreaming is at 37, Never For Ever is at 38 and Lionheart is at 40.

A further three of her albums are at numbers 43, 44 and 49.

Bush is now only behind Elvis Presley, the overall record holder who managed 12 entries in the top 40 following his death in 1977, and The Beatles, who notched up 11 simultaneous top 40 entries with their 2009 album reissues”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Sir Stephen Fry in 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Elena Ternovaja

If King of the Mountain is very much about Elvis Presley and this real person who died prematurely, 50 Words for Snow is a song that features a fictional character voiced by a real person. Though his full name is not mentioned in the title track of Kate Bush’s tenth studio album, she does mention the name ‘Joe’ in the chorus. She revealed in promotional interviews that the character is Prof. Joseph Yupik. Voiced by Sir Stephen Fry, this is someone who I admired for a very long time. Maybe his legacy and genius has diminished slightly in my heart and eyes. Referring to a previous comment where he said abuse victims, who he saw as self-pitying, need to “grow up”. That was a bit of a blow in terms of how I saw him! However, I am detaching the artist from the art for a moment. He is someone, for the most part, whose heart is in the right place. Whilst he has not spoken out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, he has called out Donald Trump as a fascist. Very much concerned with what Trump is doing in America and this almost dictatorship reign Fry is also someone who has appeared in some of my favourite T.V. shows ever. As a main character in two series of Blackadder, Jeeves in Jeeves and Wooster, and one half of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, he is responsible for some of my favourite comedy moments. His comedy partners, Hugh Laurie, appeared in the video for Kate Bush’s Experiment IV (1986). It is a shame 50 Words for Snow was not released as a single, as it would have been cool seeing Fry dressed as a professor. I am not sure how I see him now. Balancing some past controversy and issues with his legacy and brilliant work. Also, I did write to him when I was a depressed student and he did write me back. So I have to be thankful for that! An intellect and one of the greatest comic actors ever, Kate Bush naturally turned to Stephen Fry when looking for someone to say out loud these increasingly insane and lobate names for snow!

It is a myth that Inuit and Yupik people have fifty words for snow. Whereas most people know that fact and leave it there, an artist like Kate Bush not only used it and examined that for a song. It is actually the name of her album. I guess King of the Mountain is about mythology and the wild and wind. An atmospheric song set in the mountains. It has so much weather and mystery. Whilst that is quite a propulsive and big song, 50 Words for Snow has this groove and liquidity. In terms of the players, we have Dan McIntosh on guitar again. Offering a different sound and dynamic compared to King of the Mountain. Kate Bush on keyboard again and John Giblin on bass instead of Del Palmer. The legendary Steve Gadd on drums providing this incredible beat. What I want to explore with this song is Kate Bush and numbers. I also want to explore 50 Words for Snow being an underrated album and the comedy connection. However, before that, here is an interview, where Bush discussed this humorous and fascinating title track:

“Years ago I think I must have heard this idea that there were 50 words for snow in this, ah, Eskimo Land! And I just thought it was such a great idea to have so many words about one thing. It is a myth – although, as you say it may hold true in a different language – but it was just a play on the idea, that if they had that many words for snow, did we? If you start actually thinking about snow in all of its forms you can imagine that there are an awful lot of words about it. Just in our immediate language we have words like hail, slush, sleet, settling… So this was a way to try and take it into a more imaginative world. And I really wanted Stephen to read this because I wanted to have someone who had an incredibly beautiful voice but also someone with a real sense of authority when he said things. So the idea was that the words would get progressively more silly really but even when they were silly there was this idea that they would have been important, to still carry weight. And I really, really wanted him to do it and it was fantastic that he could do it. (…) I just briefly explained to him the idea of the song, more or less what I said to you really. I just said it’s our idea of 50 Words For Snow. Stephen is a lovely man but he is also an extraordinary person and an incredible actor amongst his many other talents. So really it was just trying to get the right tone which was the only thing we had to work on. He just came into the studio and we just worked through the words. And he works very quickly because he’s such an able performer. (…) I think faloop’njoompoola is one of my favourites. [laughs]

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

I have written about this song before and my favourite words for snow. Some are better than others, but I love eleven (stellatundra), twenty-two (erase-o-dust) and thirty-one (whippoccino). I am surprised whippoccino is not a type of coffee inspired by Kate Bush. Maybe something with a lot of whipped cream?! Anyway, this song is essentially about numbers. Whereas Bush could have written this title track and sung more generally about Inuit and Yupik people and this myth around them having fifty words for snow, she committed to coming up with possibilities! Maybe backing herself into a corner, it is impressive she came up with so many. Think about π from Aerial and Bush reciting π. Bush recognised how numbers had a language of their own. She was always interested in how everything can be broken down into numbers. It is interesting why anyone would have more than one word for snow, let alone fifty! Stephen Fry has the unique honour of being one of very few high-profile names who have sung/narrated on her albums. Lenny Henry was on Why Should I Love You? from The Red Shoes. Two great comedy actors who Bush brought into the studio. Whilst Hugh Laurie, Dawn French, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Noel Fielding, Steve Coogan and Pamela Stephenson have, in different ways, interacted with her work or been a part of her career, there was not a lot of opportunity for Bush to work with comics and comedy actors she loved. 50 Words for Snow is one of those songs that blends Kate Bush’s sense of humour and eccentricity. If some find it exhausting and tiresome that 50 Words for Snow goes beyond eight minutes, I do think her commitment to this concept and theme is impressive! It is also the bond of Stephen Fry seriously committing to the seriousness of these words for snow. Prof. Joseph Yupik almost delivering this seminar. Having him say “phlegm de neige” and “Zhivagodamarbletash” and asking us to take this seriously is actually quite funny! I don’t think people credit Kate Bush with being a funny writer. She loved comedy and still does. I think that there is a link between comedy and her work. Kate Bush has adopted slightly quirkier personas and definitely injected humour into her work. In 50 Words for Snow, Bush’s role is popping up in the chorus to encourage Prof. Joseph Yupik. Or maybe hurrying him along: “Come on Joe, you’ve got 32 to go, come on Joe, you’ve got 32 to go/Come on now, you’ve got 32 to go, come on now, you’ve got 32 to go/Don’t you know it’s not just the Eskimo/Let me hear your 50 words for snow”. It is comedic in tone but she is also quite gravelled and growling almost. It is a vocal side that I really love!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 50 Words for Snow

Whilst it is brilliant that Stephen Fry travelled to Kate Bush’s house, was given this list of fifty words for snow very last-minute and the last words were being worked on pretty much as he walked in, he then stood in the studio and rattled them off – first take, I bet! -, he is one of several very diverse and fascinating characters. Even though there are only seven songs on 50 Words for Snow, we get everything from a wild man, a snowman that melts, the ghost of a woman who drowned in a lake, and this sweetheart of Kate Bush’s, where the two are drawn apart through various periods of history. I might also feature Little Shrew (Snowflake) in this feature, as this was Bush taking the album’s opener, Snowflake, and releasing it to raise money for War Child. The video for the song features a little shrew scurrying through this war-torn scene. It is a fascinating additional character to a rich album that never gets the respect it deserves. Bush’s latest album is one where she steps fully away from Pop and its structure and strictures. Graeme Thomson also noted this. How, with 50 Words for Snow, Bush went more int Chamber Jazz. Allowing these longer songs and greater breathing space. It is a very open album where you get so much of the outside. You could say that about Aerial, but that has a lot of different songs and what could more traditional be seen as conventional or closer to Pop. 50 Words for Snow is almost like Bush composing a film soundtrack. More cinematic and off-piste, I think, than ever, she also sort of put the piano front and centre again. Drawing back to her debut, 1978’s The Kick Inside. It will be fascinating seeing what her next album sounds like and whether we get a lot of characters in the songs. I love 50 Words for Snow and Stephen Fry’s Prof. Joseph Yupik. A pity he never made it into a video where he and Bush were int his lecture hall or setting where these words were being read from a parchment or ancient book. However, it is this brilliant song that I wanted to explore here. From a magnificent album one hopes will not be…

KATE Bush’s last.

FEATURE: …Baby One More Time: Exploring the Legacy of Britney Spears

FEATURE:

 

 

…Baby One More Time

Exploring the Legacy of Britney Spears

__________

YOU can’t blame…

Britney Spears for not wanting to perform in the U.S. again. Although she has millions of fans in her country, especially under Donald Trump, there are a lot of artists reluctant to perform there. Also, in terms of press intrusion and the media in the U.S., there would be this spotlight on Spears. They have not been supportive and kind to her and I feel like they have done a lot of damage. There is no denying the impact and legacy of Britney Spears. Artists like Taylor Swift owe a huge debt to her. I feel like her early career and her work at the end of the 1990s was hugely important. There had never been a Pop artist like her. Such a tremendously talented artist, her entire career has helped change and shape Pop. So many artists today (including Charli xcx) you can tie to Britney Spears. I will move to that in a minute. Attitude recently wrote about a Britney Spears post, where she hinted that she may well be coming to the U.K. to perform:

“Britney Spears has suggested her next public performance could take place in the UK, after revealing she does not plan to perform in the US again.

The singer made the comments in an Instagram post shared yesterday (8 January), in which she spoke about her life since being released from the conservatorship imposed by her father Jamie Spears in 2008. The arrangement was formally lifted in 2021.

Alongside a throwback photo of herself seated at a piano, Spears told fans she is preparing to gift the instrument to one of her sons.

“Sending this piano to my son this year!!!” she wrote.

She also addressed her Instagram dance videos, explaining: “Interestingly enough, I dance on IG to heal things in my body that people have no idea about,” adding that “it’s embarrassing sometimes”.

She added in the same post, “But I walked through the fire to save my life… I will never perform in the U.S. again because of extremely sensitive reasons but I hope to be sitting on a stool with a red rose in my hair, in a bun, performing with my son… in the UK and AUSTRALIA very soon. He’s a huge star and I’m so humbled to be in his presence!!! God speed, little man!!!”

Spears shares two sons with her ex-husband Kevin Federline – Jayden, 19, and Preston, 20 – though she did not specify which son she was referring to. The ‘Gimme More’ songstress was married to the DJ from 2004 to 2007.

In his memoir, entitled You Thought You Knew, Federline shared details about the Grammy Award-winner, claiming his then-teen sons were scared to stay at their mother’s house.

Since then, Spears has spoken out on social media, labelling her ex-husband as “gaslighting,” adding she is exhausted by his claims.

When did Spears last perform live?

She has not performed live on stage since 2018. Her most recent tour was the Piece of Me Tour, which ran across North America and Europe in 2018 and included UK dates in London and Manchester.

The tour followed her hugely successful Las Vegas residency Britney: Piece of Me, which ran at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino from 2013 to 2017 and saw her perform 248 shows. The residency was later adapted into international touring productions in 2017 and 2018.

Her final documented live performance took place in Austin, Texas on 21 October 2018. Since then, Spears has not returned to the stage, despite her conservatorship ending in 2021”.

Britney Spears is helping bring her son Jayden into music. t would be awesome to see them both perform together. However, I feel like there is this desire for fans to see Spears perform. In December, this enormously loved artist turns forty-five. There will be celebration around that. Her third album, Britney, turn’s twenty-five in October. One of her most underrated albums, 2011’s Femme Fatale, turns fifteen in March. Earlier this month, we marked twenty-seven years since her debut album, ..Baby One More Time, was released. Its title track (her debut single) was released the year before. I remember it coming out in 1998 and being thrilled by Britney Spears! I was new to her work and was not aware of her U.S. T.V. work. At the end of the 1990s, there were these incredible U.S. Pop artists coming through.

It was a really exciting time. Also, it was one perhaps where these very young women were being overly-sexualised and exploited by the press. Right from the off, Britney Spears had this confidence and strength. The video for ..Baby One More Time was her idea. She added elements to the song and was this incredible hard-working artist who was spending a lot of hours in the studio. I think there was a lot of re-examination of Britney Spears’ legacy and work around 2021 and 2022.  Spears' conservatorship began in February 2008. It was initiated by her father, Jamie Spears, following mental health struggles, granting him legal authority over her finances and personal life for over thirteen years until its termination in November 2021. That meant a Los Angeles judge gave Britney Spears autonomy and granted her sole access to her $60 million estate for the first time since 1st February, 2008. I guess there is another anniversary this year. On 26th August, it will be ten years since Spears released her most recent album, Glory.

I am not sure if it will be her final album. However, given Spears legacy today and how many artists you can draw to her – Addison Rae is another that comes to mind -, you would like to think that she has another album in her. Spears has also recently been discussing her ongoing admiration for Madonna. The Queen of Pop follows up 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor this year. I wonder whether Spears will maybe revisit older work and follow it up with a modern-day sequel. It would be exciting! Before looking at her legacy today in terms of artists inspired by her, I want to get to a couple of articles. The first is from TIME in 2021. They reframed Britney Spears’s legacy in terms of going beyond her music: “One thing that Spears voiced objection to in her Instagram post was the way she had been ignored by her team while “begging to put my new music in my show for MY fans.” While this plea for agency highlights recent revelations of her utter lack of it, both in her conservatorship hearings and this year’s documentary Framing Britney Spears, it also brings up a compelling question about Spears’ career and artistic legacy. Spears was the biggest pop star of the Y2K teen pop era, and she still looms large today, with artists as varied as the nightmare-conjuring Billie Eilish and the alt-rock doyenne Courtney Love spotlighting her impact on the pop world through interviews and cover songs. If the Britney Spears catalog turns out to be complete as it stands today, how will we look back on her career?”. I do think that we need some new articles where her contemporary impact and influence is explored. Think about other artists, like maybe Madison Beer and Slayyyter, who you can trace a line through to Britney Spears:

“That full-length project, released in 1999, wasn’t a full-spectrum showcase of those “qualities,” but it did offer listeners a crash course in her strengths. Chief among them is her voice, which balances the husky, knowing qualities it displays on the title track and other upbeat songs like “(You Drive Me) Crazy” with the wounded, searching emotionalism heard on ballads like the sparkling “Sometimes” and the pleading “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart.”

Pop songwriting is more laden with mythology than most entertainment products; credits can include people charged with writing toplines (vocal melodies), snatches of melody, or even bits that sound like already-existing hits (a la Right Said Fred’s credit for a borrowed cadence on Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do”). Run down the credits of Spears’ albums and you’ll see her name pop up under the lists of songwriters. What that actually might mean is fairly opaque; she could have written an entire song or just a line.

Still, Britney Spears wouldn’t be Britney Spears without the outsized, appealing personality at the megastar’s nucleus. Martin was onto something when he said he would “use [Spears’] qualities appropriately,” even if the phrasing does give one pause in the context of her present life under conservatorship. Over the years, her catalog has been studded with songs that reflect the facets of the singular traits at which she’s offered glimpses. Her 2011 comeback single “Hold It Against Me” pivots on a pickup line that sounded dated in the swingers’ era four decades prior–”If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me?”–but her attitude, half-winking, half-serious, makes it work. Tracks like the defiant “Stronger” and the hip-shaking “Overprotected,” meanwhile, showed off her inner strength, presaging her recent courage in speaking out against her current situation. And other pieces of her catalog, particularly in the depths of special-edition bonus tracks, show off her personality’s quirks and depth, from the loopy 2016 track “If I’m Dancing” to the chilling video for her 2004 single “Everytime.”

This was why her performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, during which she sleepwalked through the brooding Blackout opener “Gimme More,” was such a blow for fans. That show, which followed a string of highly publicized personal challenges exacerbated by the cruel tabloid landscape of the era—felt like a sign that Spears’ spirit, which had propelled her into the American mainstream, had been if not snuffed out, at least misplaced.

Blackout, which contained production and songwriting contributions from the likes of Pharrell Williams (with his duo The Neptunes) and “Toxic” hitmakers Bloodshy & Avant, was hailed upon its release, presaging the synth-heavier, moodier sounds embraced by the likes of Kanye West on 808s & Heartbreak and Lady Gaga on The Fame. While Spears was reportedly more in control on that record than any other, Blackout succeeds in part because she’s a mysterious presence at its core, her signature wail refracted by effects and shrouded in synths. The shadowy vibe reflects the atmosphere surrounding her at the time, with songs like the glitchy paparazzi rebuke “Piece of Me” and the spare synth pop banger “Radar” feeling of the always-on digital age.

Since Blackout, Spears has released four albums, all of which have sold well; their reception, though, seems to parallel just how weird she can get on them. The lead single from 2013’s Britney Jean, the brittle “Work Bitch,” was shrug-worthy upon release, and lyrics like “You want a hot body, you want a Bugatti/ you want a Maserati? You better work, bitch” land uncomfortably after her conservatorship hearings. In contrast, her most recent full-length, 2016’s Glory, was hailed for its explorations of post-millennial pop’s fringes. It concludes with “Coupure Électrique,” an icily minimalist track in which Spears whisper-sings, in broken French, of love in the dark, a throwback to the Blackout era that also lets her display her playful side.

More than two decades after her debut, Spears’ legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows. This year, Olivia Rodrigo’s path from Disney stardom to pop-chart domination bears broad similarities to Spears’. The “drivers license” singer was born a few years into Spears’ era of TRL superiority, though, and in a recent interview with Nylon, her response to a question about Framing Britney Spears indicated that she sees the treatment of the elder pop supernova as a sign of how easily pop stardom can be undermined by supposed allies. “I just hope that this next generation of women don’t get asked [invasive] questions…. I hope reporters don’t think that that’s OK. It’s just disgusting,” she said in the interview.

The twists and turns in Spears’ story over recent years have fundamentally altered the dream of becoming a pop star, even as the appeal of finding one artist who can make a song that changes the world for five minutes remains. While Spears’ catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she’s shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones”.

The BBC ran an article in 2022 that seemed like a watershed moment. A sense of freedom and liberation or Britney Spears, it was a time to reconsider her legacy. Huge artists such as Lady Gaga and Charli xcx shouting her out and very much channelling her work, I do think there needs to be a 2026 update. Given how there is a mix of huge and established artists who owe a debt to her and these newer and innovative Pop artists that are reminiscent of Spears:

“She has been hailed as an inspiration by everyone from Lady Gaga, who in 2009 described her as "the most provocative performer of my time", to Lana Del Rey. "There is something about Britney that compelled me," Del Rey said in 2012, "the way she sings and just the way she looks." More recently, the highly acclaimed Japanese-British singer-songwriter Rina Sawayama said Spears was the first artist she fell in love with. She recalled watching her music videos as a child and thinking: "I want her as an older sister". Spears' videos could be high-concept affairs where she played a lonely Hollywood actress (Lucky) or a vampish flight attendant (Toxic), but with 2000 single Stronger, she showed she could hold our full attention with nothing but her dance moves and simple props like a chair and a cane. Swedish singer-songwriter Tove Styrke is equally effusive when asked how Spears has influenced her as a musician. "Oh my, how hasn't she?" she tells BBC Culture. "She has inspired a maybe delusional strive for pop stardom [in me], wanting to be a pop princess with a pure heart. Her voice, her dancing, her blonde hair… all of it has been influential."

No fear

Spears is also a long-time LGBTQ icon who has influenced the contemporary drag scene with her high-octane dance routines. Jonbers Blonde, a Northern Irish drag performer who was a finalist on the latest series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK, says she was particularly fascinated by two audacious performances Spears gave at the MTV Video Music Awards. In 2000, Spears delivered an inventive medley of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and Oops!... I Did It Again that really showed off her commanding stage presence and precision-tooled dance moves. Then the following year, she sang I'm A Slave 4 U with a live python draped over her shoulders. "I think it was the fearlessness that she portrayed in those MTV performances that inspired me," Blonde says. "Doing drag, you need to be fearless – even to leave the house in drag is brave – and that's something that Britney definitely is."

So why, given all this praise from performers who've followed in her wake, is Spears still slightly underrated? Partly it's a result of what we might call her "origin story". As a child growing up in Kentwood, Louisiana, a small town in the US Bible Belt, Spears displayed a preternatural flair for performance. "I was in my own world. I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age," she recalled in a 1999 Rolling Stone cover story. At 12, having already appeared on the talent show Star Search and in several TV adverts, Spears was cast in The Mickey Mouse Club, a wholesome Disney variety show on which she sang and danced with fellow future A-listers Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling. But when she launched her music career in 1998, four years after the show was axed, the "Mouseketeer" tag seemed to cling a little more closely to Spears than it did to her peers.

It could be argued that Spears' rise in the late 1990s was so meteoric that the media of the time had trouble processing it. Written and produced by Max Martin, the Swedish songwriting genius who has now penned more Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers than anyone bar John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Spears' irresistible 1998 debut single ...Baby One More Time wasn't just a hit but a pop culture phenomenon. Helped by a memorable music video in which Spears chose to wear a schoolgirl outfit – a look often interpreted as suggestive, but which also reflected her age – it became one of the best-selling singles of all time. Her debut album, also called ...Baby One More Time, ended up selling 26 million copies worldwide after spawning further huge hits with Sometimes and (You Drive Me) Crazy. "When ...Baby One More Time came out, the market, particularly in America, was saturated by boy bands," notes Alim Kheraj, a music, culture and LGBTQ journalist. "I don't think since Madonna had there been a female artist that had really skyrocketed in pop that way."

By 1999, Spears was already successful enough to embark on the Baby One More Time Tour, a 56-date criss-cross of North America, but her popularity came laced with a certain amount of disdain. Because she was so young and didn't write any of the songs on her debut album, it was all too easy to dismiss and dehumanise her as a mere "pop puppet".  "I don't doubt that, initially, Max Martin had a large role to play in how ...Baby One More Time sounded," Kheraj counters, "but ultimately the delivery, the timbre and the performance of the song is all Britney. She is in control of the song." For Kheraj, this minimisation of Spears' creative input was intensified by a toxic combination of sexism and classism. "From the off, Britney was dubbed 'stupid' and 'trailer trash' by the media," he says. Sometimes this snobbery was a little more thinly veiled, complete with patronising misogyny: Rolling Stone's review of her debut album said that Baby One More Time [the song] had succeeded in "effectively transforming this ex-Mouseketeer born in a tiny Louisiana town into a growling jailbait dynamo".

Because she broke through in the late 1990s, at the tail end of an era dominated by powerhouse vocalists like Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, Spears' distinctive singing voice was often woefully undervalued. Kheraj points to her more mature third album, 2001's Britney, which saw her embrace R&B on I'm A Slave 4 U and soft rock on I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman, as the point at which she really honed her vocal style. "She pushes her voice into more whispery textures, playing with the different sounds that she's able to create in order to elevate a song," Kheraj says, comparing her to Kylie Minogue and Janet Jackson in this respect. "Though in my opinion," he adds, "Spears' ability to be an actress with her own voice, taking on different tones, timbres and vibrations, is second to none." This assessment of Spears' vocal technique is echoed by Andrew Watt, a producer who worked with her on this year's Elton John duet Hold Me Closer. "She's unbelievable at layering her voice and doubling, which is one of the hardest things to do," he told The Guardian in August, adding: "She's so good at knowing when she got the right take. She took complete control."

Finding her voice

As Spears' career progressed, she also took more control of her music from the very start of the creative process. Kheraj says she had a predilection for finding collaborators who "would disrupt the status quo of pop" – like envelope-pushing R&B duo the Neptunes, who produced her early 2000s hits I'm a Slave 4 U and Boys, and Moby, who worked on her trance-influenced track Early Mornin'. The latter appeared on Spears' 2003 album In the Zone, her fourth, on which she co-wrote eight of 12 songs including the beautifully subdued ballad Everytime. "The video was always on MTV when I was about 11, and I remember feeling so sad for her," says Styrke, referring to the song's regretful lyrics as well as its video depicting the dark side of fame. "Hearing it [now] still makes me really feel for her."

In the Zone was another step up for Spears, but her magnum opus came four years later with 2007's Blackout, an incredibly innovative album that she executive produced. Home to the huge hits Gimme More and Piece of Me, Blackout didn't just feature cutting-edge production blending elements of techno, EDM and dubstep (then a very new genre); it also underlined Spears' fearlessness. Piece of Me, a song that savagely sends up negative perceptions of her at the time, is as self-referential as pop music gets. "Guess I can't see the harm in working and being a mama," Spears sings. "And with a kid on my arm, I'm still an exceptional earner." It doesn't matter that Spears didn't write it; she said everything she needed to just by putting it out. Blackout was a high-water mark, but Spears has displayed a knack for picking winning material throughout her career. "Have you heard her albums? They're so intelligent," avant-garde singer-songwriter Charli XCX said in 2014. "The way her songs are crafted is really amazing. I think that [her] music is really interesting and clever."

In terms of new artists controlling their visuals, videos and songs. Talking openly about their lives and that incredible stagecraft. Think about the raft of artists today like Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae, Dua Lipa, Rina Sawayama, Billie Eilish and so many other artists who have cited Britney Spears or been influenced by some aspect of her career. Especially interesting seeing powerful Gen Z artists who are carrying the torch. Even if Britney Spears has not released an album in almost a decade and there has been little in the way of performance, I feel this year is a hugely important one. There are some important album anniversaries, and that tantalising prospect that she may perform in the U.K. The fact she could bring on to stage some of these artists that name her as an influence. A career-spanning set. I am ending this feature with a selection of her best hits and those deeper cuts that show what a consistent and innovative artist she is. Over twenty-five years since she broke through, Britney Spears is still impacting the mainstream and fringes. I have been a fan since the very start and I follow her Instagram. She is someone who is thinking about her son and a possible music career, though she is also looking at where she heads next. This year could be a massive one. With many similar artists to Britney Spears releasing the boldest and best Pop of today, the original is very much in our midst! For that, we have to show love and salute…

A peerless superstar.

FEATURE: Becoming Kate Bush: Highlighting Two Events Where Fans Truly Get to Embrace the Beloved Queen

FEATURE:

Becoming Kate Bush

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

Highlighting Two Events Where Fans Truly Get to Embrace the Beloved Queen

__________

I have been wondering…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fans of Kate Bush congregated at Folkestone Harbour Arm for The Most Wuthering Heights Day/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Aitchison

whether there will be many opportunities this year for fans of Kate Bush to get together to celebrate her work. I might be involved with something towards the summer around one of her albums. I think a new documentary about her is out this month which I took part in. As I have said before, 2026 is a quieter year in terms of celebrating big anniversaries. None of her studios albums have a special anniversary. There are bits and pieces here and there. However, whilst I tend to look nationally and internationally to what is happening and whether there is anything huge coming along, I tend to ignore the local and smaller. There are communities, smaller venues and areas of the world where Kate Bush is being honoured. A lot of the time, events celebrating artists tend to be watching them live. Exhibitions or tribute concerts. These are great, though I find there is something appealing and very intriguing where fans get together and inhabit the artist. Rather than it being cosplay, it would be fans paying tribute and celebrating the artist in this very loving way. It is not even drag artistry. Kate Bush has tribute acts and there is the brilliant An Evening Without Kate Bush, where Sarah-Louise Young inhabits the icon. Rather than it being a tribute act or covers, this is a theatrical experience. It is a way of seeing Kate Bush without seeing Kate Bush if you see what I mean. That is great. I have not seen her show yet though I do need to at some point. I am looking around to see what events are out there where I and other Kate Bush fans can unite to celebrate her. Become her in a way!

There are two events that caught my eye. As this article highlights, the successful and hugely popular The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever will be held against Folkestone Harbour Arm. Four days before Kate Bush’s sixty-eighth birthday, hundred and thousands of fans will don a red dress and dance in synchronicity – or as close as possible – to recreate the video for Wuthering Heights (1978) where Kate Bush danced on Salisbury Plain (Baden's Clump, near Sidbury Hill to be exact!). It is one of the most important moments in her career, and it is a rare occasion when fans get to come together and pay tribute to Kate Bush in this very special way:

“Returning for its sixth year, a huge celebration of Kentish icon Kate Bush, The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever (@mostwutheringheightsdayfolke), returns to Folkestone Harbour Arm on Sunday 26th of July for 2026.

Thousands of enthusiasts dressed in wigs and red playsuits, are set to head down to the town’s waterfront for an experience that is fast becoming one of the most recognised in the county.

Dancers of all abilities pay tribute to Kent-born (Bexleyheath) Kate Bush, with a mass choreographed performance to the soundtrack of the 1978 smash hit ‘Wuthering Heights’.

Some history… Started in 2013 by Brighton-based performance group Shambush, The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience was an attempt to set a world record of having the most people dressed as legendary musician Kate Bush in one location.

More than a decade on and the event has stretched across the world, with Kate Bush-themed events popping up in July across cities from Austin in Texas to Sydney in Australia, with many more (Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin and Tel Aviv, to name but a few) between.

But one of the most successful has been one right here in Kent, down in Folkestone, who took to the Harbour Arm for the first time in 2018 with some trepidation. But with hundreds turning up to honour the star, a marker was set down and the attendance was doubled when it was recreated in 2019.

Having had a Covid hiatus, The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever returned on July 30th 2023 due to popular demand, and has continued to grow ever since.

Bush is said to have been inspired to write the famous song after watching the 1967 BBC adaptation of Emily Bronte’s 1847 Wuthering Heights novel, producing the lyrics from the perspective of heroine Catherine Earnshaw”.

I have never attended The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever and I have no dance ability. However, there is something very appealing about this moment of fun and fandom. Joining others in this congregation of love and fun! There are not that many moments or opportunities when fans can represent an artist like this. As I say, it is not cosplay or a drag act or anything like that. Instead, it is this unique event that continues to gather pace. Long may it reign! I do feel like there need to be more Kate Bush events where fans can assemble. It does not even have to be them dressing as Kate Bush. I have suggested before how there have not been conventions or anything huge for years. I pitch quite a few ideas relating to Bush’s work. Like an exhibition where we get to see her work and legacy brought to life through cutting-edge visuals, artefacts and memorabilia. However, she may not be on board with that. Kate Bush has always admired people that celebrate her work. Like when a Brisbane pub choir performed their rendition of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 2022, Kate Bush sent an email saying how much she loved the rendition. With that song very much at they forefront and being covered, discussed and streamed, Bush cannot escape its legacy and importance. I am not sure what she feels about The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, though you feel she would be very touched and honoured! I am considering going up to Folkestone in July and either witnessing the event or being involved. There is another event coming before then that grabbed my attention. A bit more intimate, there is this wonderful event at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club which you can get tickets for. This incredible discotheque that coincides with the release of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights (which is in cinemas from 13th February), it really sounds like a must-attend for any Kate Bush fans who live nearby:

“To celebrate the release of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club is throwing the ultimate Kate Bush party. Get running up that hill all the way to Bethnal Green and prepare to do the jig of life on the dancefloor to all of Kate’s best tracks, plus music from the likes of Tori Amos, Florence + The Machine, David Bowie, Eurythmics, and Fleetwood Mac.

Dressing up is absolutely encouraged and there will be smoke machines along with free Kate face masks and capes for a fully authentic atmosphere. There’ll also be Bush-offs throughout the night, where you can lip sync for your life to the Bush back catalogue. And it wouldn’t be a Wuthering Nights party without plenty of ‘Wuthering Heights’ – the iconic single will be spun on the hour, every hour, so get ready to sing along”.

I do love how there is this great Kate Bush event in London. I guess there will be similar things happening because of the Wuthering Heights film. The fact that it comes out the day before Valentine’s Day and it seems to be this rather racy and erotic take on the novel. It has gained some backlash, though it is a progressive and bold take from a brilliant filmmaker. I have been thinking about Valentine’s Day and dating/matchmaking based around Kate Bush. Not an event that would see people dressed as Kate Bush or losing yourself in the music, this would be a chance for those who are single or looking for a relationship to find like-minded people. It may sound quite niche, though you would be surprised how many people are together because they love similar music. It can be this very strong bond! This compatibility. Not even dating. Maybe a social event where Kate Bush songs can be played and fans get together and talk about her. Some focus on Kate Bush’s debut single and her work in 1978. Whereas Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has dominated a lot of focus the past four years or so, this is a chance for us to go further back and mark other Kate Bush work. I like the idea of The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever and becoming Kate Bush. Also, a discotheque and night celebrating her where you can dress up. Not necessarily dressing in a red or white dress. It can be, I guess, any Kate Bush-themed or appropriate outfit. These great local events that many people might not know about. Chances to salute one of music’s most enduring, important and influential artists. I wanted to shine a light on them, though I will keep my eyes open for any similar that come along. It is about community, connection and joyfulness. The power of her music. Last year, The Sensual World: A Kate Bush Celebration for Cabaret vs Cancer took place at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern (“Money raised via ticket sales and a raffle on the night will go to supporting Cabaret vs Cancer, to help people affected by cancer. You can find out more about CvC at https://www.cabaretvscancer.co.uk/”). I do hope there is fundraising events like this later in the year. These different ways in which Kate Bush’s work can bring people together and also raise money. If you are able to get to any of these events then do so. A wonderful and enriching…

JIG of life.

FEATURE: First Band on the Moon: Why a New U.K. Show from The Cardigans Is Especially Pleasing

FEATURE:

 

 

First Band on the Moon

Why a New U.K. Show from The Cardigans Is Especially Pleasing

__________

EVEN if there have been…

a couple of departures from the original line-up of 1992, The Cardigans are a band that I feel have a lot more life in them. This ties in to an announcement that they will play their first U.K. show in eight years. Lars-Olof Johansson, Bengt Lagerberg, Nina Persson and Magnus Sveningsson could well record another album. That is the hope at least. Their most recent album is 2005’s Super Extra Gravity. Nina Persson has recorded solo and collaborative music since then, but it has been more than twenty years since we received an album from the band. Their amazing debut, Emmerdale, was released in 1994. This year is a big anniversary year. Their 1996 album, First Band on the Moon, was released on 6th September that year. I will focus on it closer to the time. On 6th August, it will be thirty years since Lovefool was released. The best-known and adored song from The Cardigans, it was one that scored high school days. One of those songs that sticks in the mind and brings back happy memories. I shall end with a mixtape of The Cardigans’ best tracks and some deep cuts. However, NME reported on some very pleasing news for fans of the Swedish band:

“The Cardigans have announced their first UK show in eight years will take place this summer in London.

The Swedish pop veterans last played in the country in December 2018 when they performed a string of shows to mark the 20th anniversary of their landmark fourth album ‘Gran Turismo’.

That run of dates concluded with a show at London’s Eventim Apollo, and now the band have confirmed that they will be playing a one-off show at the same venue on June 27. It will be their only UK show of 2026.

The special early doors show will have a 9pm curfew and a pre-sale for tickets begins at 10am on Wednesday (January 28) for fans who sign up here. They will then go on general sale at the same time on Friday (January 30) and you will be able to find yours here.

The band formed in 1992 and made their debut with 1994’s ‘Emmerdale’. The single ‘Lovefool’ served as a major international breakthrough in 1996, reaching Number Two in the UK and being included in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.

Further hits followed, including ‘My Favourite Game’, ‘Erase/Rewind’ and ‘Hanging Around’, but they went on hiatus after the release of their sixth studio album ‘Super Extra Gravity’ in 2005.

Since then, frontwoman Nina Persson has released albums under her solo side project A Camp and memorably provided guest vocals on Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’, from 2007’s ‘Send Away The Tigers’.

The Cardigans have continued to tour in recent years, after ending their hiatus in 2012, and have played sporadically around Europe and Japan, including a pair of shows in the latter country last October.

As for the possibility of new music, Persson said in 2014 that “if we continue having this much fun [on tour] we would like to make another record, because we like to create new things.”

The closest we have come to that happening, however, was a clip of the band playing apparently new music that was posted on social media in 2022”.

It is a perfect year for the band to come back to the stage. I think they are following bands like Oasis and tying touring and live work to a big anniversary. Oasis reformed last year when (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? turned thirty. Not the only reason they reunited for live work. However, it did seem like a perfect moment. The same with Cardigans and thirty years of Last Band on the Moon. Maybe them playing Lovefool thirty years after it was released and became this huge chart success.

I am not sure whether we will get many other incredible bands from the 1990s doing a reunion or, in the case of The Cardigans, coming out of hibernation. The band have not broken up, so it is more to do with them embarking on this new stage of their career. You wonder whether Spice Girls will come back to the stage to mark thirty years of Wannabe in the summer. Celebrate the same anniversary for their debut album, Spice. That would be something fans would love to see! I did not know that The Cardigans were in communication and there were any plans, so this announcement was quite a surprise! However, you wonder whether there will be new material or it is just this sort of brief moment of reunion. However, I do feel like there could be some new material. Nina Persson is one of the greatest band leads ever. One of the coolest women of the 1990s, I was a huge fan of The Cardigans. I remember when Lovefool came out and it was played all over the radio. I think the song still sound completely wonderful and unique. Its video is so charming and utterly spellbinding! I bought Gran Turismo in 1998 and that was off of the strength of its leads single, My Favourite Game. It is a terrific album that I hope gets an outing when The Cardigans come to London. The band will bring together fans who have been following them since the start and those new to their music. This year more than ever is depressing and bleak. Live music cannot banish that blackness, through great news like The Cardigans performing live is a welcome relief and treat! Nearly thirty years after their released their third studio album, they will be gracing the stage. There will be a lot of demand, as the 27th June gig at the Eventim Apollo is their only performance here. Tickets will sell out very quickly. I would like to think that their first album in over two decades will come. Given the love still out there for them, many would embrace a follow-up to Super Extra Gravity. Rather than this show being a celebration of Lovefool/First Band on the Moon turning thirty, it might be more than that. At the moment nothing is confirmed though, given the huge anniversaries later in the year and the excitement around that, who knows…

WHAT could happen!

FEATURE: At the Chime of a City Clock: Nick Drake's Bryter Layter at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

At the Chime of a City Clock

Nick Drake's Bryter Layter at Fifty-Five

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ONE of the most beautiful…

IN THIS PHOTO: Nick Drake in 1971/PHOTO CREDIT: Tony Evans/Timelapse Library Ltd/Getty Images (via The Guardian)

albums ever turns fifty-five on 5th March. Bryter Layter was the second studio album from Nick Drake. I don’t think it gets as much attention as his debut, Five Leaves Left, or his third (and final) album, Pink Moon. The latter album was Drake unaccompanied and it was this more sparse and stripped work. Like Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter is different in terms of its sound. String and brass arrangements. Flute, saxophone, celeste and harpsichord are among the instruments that help score these wonderful songs. Perhaps best known for tracks like Northern Sky and Poor Boy, I feel every track on the album is a work of wonder. At the Chime of a City Clock and Hazey Jane I are among my favourites. I do want to get to some reviews of Bryter Layter. I am not sure how many people will mark its fifty-fifth anniversary. It is a pity, as this is a really remarkable artist whose career was short but remains hugely influential. In terms of musicians who have been affected by Nick Drake. In 2000, Q placed Bryter Layter at number twenty-three in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. I want to start out with Golden Plec and their assessment and reflection on 1971’s Bryter Layter. Reappraising this masterpiece in 2016 – forty-five years after its release -, I would like to feel people will write new words about Bryter Layter close to 5th March:

“Cambridge, 1969. Cyclists throng the roads, college scarves flying; the bells of Great St. Mary’s clang out, whilst the River Cam meanders slowly by. Nick Drake is submerged in all of this, ostensibly studying for a degree in English literature. A product of colonial Britain (he lived in Burma as a child), public schooling, and now the stifling traditions of Oxbridge, Drake finds release in the dual pleasures of guitar and smoke - his debut album, ‘Five Leaves Left’, is named after the preemptive warning near the end of a Rizla packet. After playing a supporting slot at the Camden Roundhouse, he strolls into a record deal and accordingly strolls out of Cambridge, though the influence of that city remains plain to hear in his music.

At the time, East Anglia was a haven for aspiring troubadours. The annual Cambridge Folk Festival was inaugurated in 1965, welcoming acts including Pentangle, Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. Pink Floyd’s 1969 album ‘Ummagumma’ included a seven minute paean to Grantchester Meadows, an area of pastureland just south of the city. Likewise, Nick Drake’s music is shaped by the topography of bleak fenland, river weed and fresh ploughed fields. He sings of the River Man, fallen leaves, the day dawning from the ground - depicting the English countryside through chords alone. Unfortunately for Drake, what is popular in rural England is not necessarily popular elsewhere - and so to 1971, ‘Bryter Layter’, and the ensuing tensions between musical self expression and thirst for public acclaim.

Put simply, ‘Bryter Layter’ is a beautiful album. It is suffused with warmth, excitement, a sense of promise. It’s the early 1970s, London’s calling: Nick Drake has escaped the rigours of academia for a leafy suburb of Camden Town, and his sense of optimism is palpable.

The opening track, instrumental Introduction, evokes the smell of cut grass warmed by slightly tipsy afternoon sun, its lush string arrangements drawn out over rippling fretwork. Everything speaks of a bright future - as Drake insists in Hazey Jane II, “Now that you’re lifting/ Your feet from the ground/ Weigh up your anchor/ And never look round”, upbeat lyrics leaping effortlessly over bobbing bassline and offbeat horns. You get the sense that he is perfectly happy making music purely for his own enjoyment, relishing the collaboration with folk luminaries such as Fairport Convention’s Dave Mattacks and Dave Pegg, and John Cale, formerly of The Velvet Underground, all of whom feature on the record.

In truth, the ‘green and pleasant’ vision of England and its music was fading fast. By 1971, Drake sat slightly uncomfortably between Haight-Ashbury psychedelia, and the slow onslaught of prog and folk rock. The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers’, was released a month after ‘Bryter Layter’, and the dropped T, working class vibe of Jagger and Richards resonated with the public far more than the middle class accent of a sensitive songster could. Despite the defiance of Hazey Jane I (“Try to be true/ Even if it’s only in your hazey way”), the cold hard facts of album sales were hard to ignore. Though ‘Bryter Layter’ was a critical success, Drake’s aversion to performing, compounded by worsening depression, saw him refuse to tour the album. It sold fewer than 5000 copies.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Listening to ‘Bryter Layter’ 45 years after its release, it is possible to take the album entirely out of context and treat it as a stand alone work - an atmospheric blend of metaphysical lyrics, quasi-orchestral arrangement and virtuosic guitar.

Indeed it’s arguably more relevant today than it was back then - in this era of instant celebrity and stifling PR, the underlying bitterness of songs dealing candidly with fame, or the lack of it, is particularly pertinent. And of course the tragic circumstances of Drake’s suicide at the age of 26 colour modern perceptions of his work, and interpretation of his lyrics. But whether ‘Bryter Layter’ is a product of its time, or a product of its legacy, it is an album well deserving of its cult status. Time to dust off that vinyl - and let Nick Drake brighten your Northern Sky”.

I will end with a review of Bryter Layter from Rolling Stone. Next, I am going to come to Klof Mag and their take on Bryter Layter. Reviewing it in 2021, they write how the album offers these magical qualities. Something that is there “ to allow us to glimpse the fleeting intangible parts of us, act as a vessel to this visceral realm – forever slipping through our fingers in the vice-like grip of the modern world”. Critics in 1971 were not fond of an album they felt was boring and did not like the tone and timbre of Nick Drake’s voice. The fact he did not tour the album didn’t help. However, Bryter Layter is more influential today than it ever was, so it is getting overdue affection:

“Folk music was at the heart of the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s: troubadours created elaborate progressive folk; Al Stewart and Roy Harper employed diverse instrumentation; explorative basslines became ever more common; John Martyn and the Pentangle fused jazz rhythms and harmonies into hardwired folk, whilst Fairport convention produced angular, electric albums. Drake’s producer Joe Boyd was notably present, signing the prolific Incredible String Band, who along with the likes of the Third Ear Band and Quintessence developed another 70s folk direction. It was in this world of experimentation and musical fervency that Nick Drake recorded Bryter Layter.

Drake’s producers, friends and labelmates pushed at the forefront of experimentation as his iconic sound matured. But it’s easy to see him as apart or distant from this world. Even on the cover of Bryter Layter, his most collaborative work, he’s shrouded in shadow – a promise of the quiet, dark place we enter through his songs. Drake was described by his close, protective friend John Martyn as the most withdrawn person he’d ever met, whilst Nick’s long-time producers Wood and Boyd recall his hesitation to stamp his authority when recording ‘Five Leaves Left’ and his despondent frailty in the ‘Pink Moon’ sessions. Bryter Layter, however, is distinct, and with the benefit of distance that time provides, it is, I think, Drake at his most ambitious and coherent – proactively responding to the vibrant musical world around him.

A clear example of Drake’s control and steel-mindedness on Bryter Layter can be seen in his choice of musicians. Even against the influential personalities of his producers, Drake was driven by his own vision, dismissing their string arrangements. As Wood told Arthur Lubow, ‘He said he’d got his friend, Robert Kirby, who had never done anything in a recording studio.’

This personal stamp of decision making is seen as the album opens. Drake’s overture, the first of three instrumentals Nick insisted on against Boyd’s wishes, features lilting, delicate guitar swirls throughout – drawing attention among the sombre sweep of Kirby’s strings. It’s gentle crafting of a mournful yet playful veil of sound hints at mortality and loss as it scatters around.  Hazey Jane II whisks the veil back into the air, lacing it with layers of Richard Thompson’s intricate guitar. A rhythmic skip is provided by Dave Mattack and Dave Pegg, also of Fairport Convention, who appear throughout the record, enriching the albums rhythm section with the dulcet backbeat of their well-honed dialogue, evidence of Drake’s relish of the ever-expanding folk pallet. Drake later delves into what were prominent contemporary tropes (perhaps dating the album somewhat for the modern listener), with the use of Lyn Dobson’s flute on the title track and John Cale’s viola, celeste and harpsichord contributions to sprawling folk jams, Fly and Northern Sky.

Drake was an admirer of the Beach Boys, and drummer Mike Kowalski brings a crucial element to Bryter Layter, his contributions offering poignant moments of fragility. Poor boy offers another twist and change of pace; uneasiness subtly imbued with the offbeat stabs of Drake’s guitar, referencing the 60s New York jazz of Jimmy Smith. Accompanying this is a deftly frantic drumming and gospel undertow bolstered by melodic Bossa Nova phrasing. Tension heightens as Drake floats ‘where will I stay tonight,’ leading into the rhythmic solo of Chris McGregor, a force in both jazz and African music, bringing with him echoes of the harmonic inventiveness of McCoy Tyner shimmying through the piano.

The veil sweetly draped from note one remains throughout, as hints of Dylan and Van Morrison’s lilting, ethereal lyrical influences adorn the album in half-rhymes. Other American influences can perhaps be seen in some of Drake’s guitar work, the sparser arpeggiated moments, often indulged with chromatic changes and major to minor shifts, such as in One of These Things First, evoking the American musicians he became enamoured with: Peter, Paul and Mary, Joni Mitchell on Song to a Seagull, and the older folk masters such as Josh White.

This is an album brimming with influences, stripped down and reeled together in a sequence of dreams, helping Bryter Layter stand out not just among Drake’s haunting discography, but against the whole era. It is an album of contemporary decision, led by Drake.

Conversely, Drake was rarely cited as an influence in his time, adding all the more fuel to his image of doomed inertia. However, the closing song on the album, Sunday bears a startling resemblance to Bowie’s Kooks released the following year, perhaps the first of many debtors – an impact unknown by Drake himself”.

I am ending with a 1977 review from Rolling Stone. They wrote about this majestic album that contains “enchanting melodies, stirring empathy, and authenticity”. You can argue which of Nick Drake’s three albums is his finest moment. I feel Bryter Layter is his most underappreciated, so I was keen to spotlight it ahead of its fifty-fifth anniversary:

“Nick Drake may be the most ethereal recording artist I’ve ever heard. His fleeting career — the moody, mysterious music, the remote relationship with his record company — seemed calculated to distance him from reality. Yet his hushed songs touch a rare tranquillity that approaches poetry, and when he died in 1974 at the age of 26, he left behind three albums which are gradually making him a posthumous legend. Bryter Layter is the second of these LPs to be rereleased by Island Records through its remarkable budget label, Antilles.

Drake’s melodies are seldom less than enchanting. Built around acoustic folk-jazz guitar figures and muffled percussion, they become emotionally charged when shaded by arranger Robert Kirby’s poignant, eddying strings. Drake’s impressionistic lyrics are vivid but provocatively sketchy, making them as curiously personal as phrases mumbled in sleep. They’re delivered in an airy, nearly unconscious whisper that blends as naturally into the arrangements as a breeze rippling through tall grass.

Compared to the gloomy, vinegary, autumnal Five Leaves Left and the reportedly stark Pink Moon, Drake’s second album is a relatively pleasant collection. “Bryter Layter” and “Sunday” are light, carefree flute instrumental, and the cantering “Hazey Jane II” is positively brisk (though qualified by some disturbing lyrics). “Northern Sky” gently details how a loved one has enhanced his appreciation of life.

Even in his best moods, though, Drake seems to be reaching out from a position of isolation to a like soul, as in “Hazey Jane I”: “Do you feel like a remnant of something that’s past?” More characteristic is the intensely considered solitude of “Poor Boy,” “One of These Things First,” (a light waltz about possibilities dismissed) and “Fly,” which features John Cale’s moaning viola.

Whether obscurely introspective or groping outward, Drake seems to be communing with a pantheistic spirit; he consistently charts this communion with stirring empathy and authenticity — but not clarity. It’s a measure of his instinct for maintaining a sense of mystery that Bryter Layter’s reflections are as ephemeral as a man’s breath on a mirror”.

Nick Drake would follow Bryter Layter a year later with Pink Moon. He sadly died on 25th November, 1974 at the age of twenty-six. One of these artists you wonder where he could have headed had he lived. However, Drake left behind these wonderful and transcendent albums. Bryter Layter among the most beautiful albums ever recorded. One that people should listen to ahead of 5th March. If this is an album that you have not heard in a while (or ever), then do make sure that you…

PLAY it now.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Ledbyher

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Fraser Thorne

Ledbyher

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I am new to…

the sensational Ledbyher, but she has released two albums already. Her debut, CUNCH, arrived in 2023. The following year she put out achy. They are both seven tracks long, so I wonder if she classes them as albums or E.P.s. Maybe projects? It is hard to tell. In any case, this is an artist that I would now recommend to everyone else. There are interviews from last year that I want to get to before closing off this feature. I am going to start out with DAZED and their feature from last year. They gathered a “creative consortium including David Sonubi, Hilary Xherimeja and TJ Sawyer gather to reflect on both Martine Rose and their own visions for the city”. Ledbyher was among those who was interviewed:

“Rachel Aisyah Diack – AKA Ledbyher – is the artist behind ‘bedroom drill’, a self-described term she attributes to an Instagram comment. With a discography that combines Clairo-like vocals with Playboi Carti’s alien beat signatures, Diack is kicking a path through an industry that, she says, isn’t always welcoming to women.

Martine’s work never leans into being ‘trendy’ – do you ever feel like there’s pressure to conform creatively to musical trends?

Rachel Aisyah Diack: In some ways I feel like it creeps in. Being a woman in rap comes with its own ceilings and floors, of course, but because of that I’ve always been more interested in one-manning my own little world than squeezing into someone else’s. There’s a sort of dance between what I love and what my fans love that creates the magic. Whether that’s genre or videos or clothing, I don’t think of how to conform but how to comfort.

What do you think London needs right now?

Rachel Aisyah Diack: London needs a lie-in. When I moved here and started chatting to people it felt like everyone was racing against themselves to the next project or the next train or something. But it’s still really cool to have a day off! Go grab a Greggs with your mates and have that be the most exciting part of the day. I’ve started giving myself Sundays off (listening to The Sundays usually), doing things that require minimal brain cells and maximum joy.

You’ve described your sound as ‘bedroom drill’ – can you elaborate on that?

Rachel Aisyah Diack: Honestly, it came from a comment years ago. I remember captioning a post: “What sound is this?” The options were lady trap or bedroom drill. I went with that partly because it made me laugh, but mostly because it’s true! I used to turn down studio sessions just to sit on my bed with a laptop on FL and a pair of battered headphones, producing until the sun came up. There’s something romantic about it. That’s where I started placing the drill drums I was making on top of bedroom pop melodies”.

I am going to move to Wonderland. and their interview from July. Ahead of her performance at London’s Jazz Cafe’s and this hugely anticipated day festival in early August, “rising artist Ledbyher talks heritage, essence and leprechauns”. I do feel that everyone needs to follow the wonderful Ledbyher. Although she is a woman working in Drill and she has this strength and confidence, you wonder whether her male contemporaries will raise her up. She has had co-signs from the likes of Skepta, so I think that has helped. However, it is still a genre which is very male-heavy and not always embracing and open to incredible women:

“Talk us through your year so far, what have you been up to?

I’ve been up to so much that it honestly feels like there must be a leprechaun working with me behind the scenes or something. I keep looking back through my camera roll since January like, “oh wait, that happened too.” It’s all moving fast, but I’m so thankful to finally be doing the things it took me six years to reach, and to be doing them with people who share the same passions.

And I say passions plural because it’s been a real mix: music stuff, fashion stuff, uni stuff, and even some unexpected things I’ve picked up along the way like basketball, and a newfound love for a latte.

How does your Indonesian Scottish heritage inform your musicality and personal outlook?

Well I grew up first in Medan, Indonesia and if you ever go, the first thing you’ll notice is how loud and saturated it all is. The colours, the smells, the tastes… everything is so alive. Then we moved to a rural Norfolk village, which was a much quieter, calmer way of living. But that early perception of Indonesia never really left me. Seeing that side first made me aware as a kid that there was a big wide world out there, and so I never wanted to stay put.

When we moved here me and my sister also couldn’t speak English at all, which didn’t help. We faced quite a lot of rubbish as the mixed-race family who moved in down the road, so I saw the bad side of people quite early on. I understood at a young age how the way you look, or the way you articulate yourself, can define how you’re treated, but also that hate is often simply a lack of knowledge.

What, at the core, influences you to write and create?

I think about this a lot. It’s still something I’m figuring out! I’ve realised most of my writing ends up foreshadowing something that’s about to happen, even though I’m usually pulling from past experiences. It’s the creepiest thing. But I heard the icon Bel Cobain say the same thing live once, and it was such a relief, because it happens to me allllll the time.

I write about love a lot in my spare time, but the songs I tend to release are the ones I feel could connect with more people. So there are probably hundreds of love poems that’ll never see the light of day hahaa. It’s ironic, because I barely date, my last relationship was almost two years ago now, but yeah, it’s love. The sappy stuff. Oh and I always try to put a bit of motivation in there too so I can feel like a boss in the shower of course.

Are you a natural live performer or is it an aspect of artistry you’ve had to grow into?

Hmmm maybe a bit of both. I remember my first time playing live, I only had about three songs out, so I’d fill the rest of the set with covers, like “Soft Spot” by Piri and Tommy just to reach the 30-minute slot and get the crowd singing back something, anything we both knew. As soon as my foot touched the stage, the nerves disappeared. There was this weight lifted knowing the tracks weren’t mine, it felt more like karaoke, having fun, dancing it out, trying to get the words right.

Fast forward to now, the fact that when I go out people are actually singing my songs back to me? That’s been the natural journey evolving in real time. I’m growing into being the person behind my own music live, and learning to truly believe what’s happening in front of me.

What is in your festival survival pack?

Oooo if I’m playing, it’s orange juice, incense, a fat JBL speaker for the green room, another outfit (my real one) for when I inevitably spill said orange juice on the first, and tea, lots of tea.

But if I’m going to a festival? Whole different story. Get me a rolling tray, a box of white wine with the little spout thingy, 100 hair bobbles, my Ed Hardy side bag and… BLISTER PLASTERS!!

What else have you coming this summer and beyond?

Shapeshifting…making noise inevitably! Lots of collaborations with cool folks and videos that make you feel like you’ve been there before. I’ve got something very big and exciting on the way, so right now I’m just focused on doing my friends, family and myself proud, while representing everyone from the small-town dreamers to the big-city go-getters and beyond.

This is all still new to me, so you’ll probably also catch me frolicking in the sun with my friends in random places… or riding a Lime Bike the wrong way up the road”.

In association with Lyle & Scott, CLASH spoke with Ledbyher in August. They went into depth and detail. It is a really interesting interview I would suggest you read in full. However, I have pulled a few parts from it that I wanted to highlight here. This is an artist capturing a lot of love and attention right now. Someone you cannot miss out on:

“A vocalist, producer and creative director all-in-one, she keeps her circle tight-knit. Last year saw the artist release her collaborative project ‘achy’, created in tandem with her older sister Anjeli, which submerged itself in a more stripped-back, contemplative headspace. Followed by a string of singles, a sonnet-led EP and a buzzy On The Radar Freestyle appearance, each release becomes more defined, exerting Ledbyher’s strengths as a bad-to-the-bone world-builder.

You moved from your family home in Norfolk to London – how have you found that shift? What have you learnt during your time in the capital?

People are crazy. That’s what I love, because I’m a bit crazy so I kind of fit in. I think the hardest thing about London is trying to keep up with everything. In Norfolk, you have one party a month, and that’s the thing everyone talks about for the next two months, and then you’ll go to another party, and that’ll be the cycle. But now it’s like a party every day, a show, an opportunity…and a birthday. I’m so grateful for it because I was so bored.

By the age of 15 you were selling self-produced beats online. Where do you think this drive, and DIY-ethos stems from?

I don’t know, I mean, I’ve always considered myself my dad’s daughter, a daddy’s girl, but in a way where he kind of treated me like a son. We did a lot of boy-ish stuff. We’d build something from the roots, like a whole summer house. When I said I wanted to build a studio, he was like, okay, we’re gonna rip out everything in the shed, we’re gonna make a soundproof studio. I feel like that has always been in me, to build from the ground up. He gave me all the tools, and then he was like – you do it. Now I’m older, I think back and I’m like yeah, he did push me to be the really tough female that I am today. You can’t break my skin.

Where do you feel most inspired, artistically?

Recently, I’ve realised that I can’t live somewhere without water. In Norfolk. I’d go every week or so to the river. We lived by a little stream so even when I went to sleep, I’d hear water all the time. I used to live in Stratford, I was very weirded out by it. Then, when I moved to London Bridge, I found I kept going to the water and realised – it must be this bloody thing.

You seem to approach drill from a new angle, what do those productions unlock for you and your sense of expression?

I love drill percussion. BK The Producer, he’s a good friend of mine now, but I’d replay his beats over and over again on YouTube. I think it was the claps, he changes the velocity of the clap so it makes you feel like you’re going up and down, up and down. You see the crowds of drill, everyone goes mental. I’m trying to take away what I like from that, and not become a drill artist, more so understanding that I like these patterns in it and this feeling.

You’ve established yourself as a multi-disciplinary artist – you direct and edit your own visuals, you design clothing and flit between the role of a producer and vocalist. What kind of world are you looking to build as Ledbyher?

Oh, I don’t know. I have no idea. I’ve got an ideal world I’d love to do. I’d love to do a lot of charity work. I want to live in London, but I want to be everywhere. I don’t like flights, but I enjoy travelling and meeting people that I would never have met. I like performing as well, maybe a tour. I like what Tyler does with Chromakopia, something very hyper stylised, era-defining”.

I think I might actually leave it there. There are other features like this that celebrate Ledbyher and her rise. I am looking forward to seeing where she heads this year. UP TO MY NEXT IN U was released recently and is another incredible track from someone who is going to continue to grow and build her career. I feel this year is going to be a really exciting and eventful one. No doubt there will be a lot of festival appearances through the summer. Do go and follow Ledbyher and check out her incredible music. This is someone that…

EVERYONE should know about.

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Follow Ledbyher

PHOTO CREDIT: Fraser Thorne

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/babyrachy/

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaOgKmBjbDyCbu0nXfYs-6Q

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4UDkTxtdr3HpZrDRu9727s?si=MDtYbCKdSoiMFLbfrUBTug

FEATURE: Spotlight: she’s green

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

she’s green

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THE best way…

to discover more about the Minneapolis band, she’s green, is to get to some interviews from last year. 2025 is when they released their latest E.P., Chrysalis. That came out in August. I want to highlight some interesting interviews with them. FADER spoke with a quintet about their “muscular-yet-soft anthems ahead of the release of their upcoming EP Chrysalis and U.S. tour”. The group consists of Zofia Smith (vocals), Liam Armstrong (guitar), Raines Lucas (guitar), Teddy Nordvold (bass), and Kevin Seebeck (drums):

“The band, who are based in Minneapolis, write about adolescent self-discovery, ecological disaster, and purging repressed memories with a mixture of vulnerability and power. Songs such as "Graze" feel muscular yet soft to the touch, while the soaring "Willow" is densely layered with Zofia Smith's graceful vocals pushed to the front. The music has drawn comparisons to, and remind of me of, bands like The Sundays and Alvvays.

Over the past few months She's Green have been on the road with fellow rising shoegazers Glixen plus the Canadian grunge duo Softcult. This fall they will be opening for Slow Pulp, as well as headlining their first-ever shows in the U.S.

Ahead of Chrysalis and their upcoming tour, get to know She's Green as they discuss a bonding trip to see Ween, the advice they swear by, the sad ant meme they love, and more.

Describe the first show you ever went to as fans.

As a band, the first show we went to together was Ween. The energy was immaculate, the air was temperate, and the sound… The sound was paradise. It was outside at a brewery in the summer, which was the perfect Ween setting. Lots of laughs and a surplus of beer, just a real party.

Give a short review of the last movie you watched.

We watched this black and white movie, The Juniper Tree. Björk is the little sister in a family of witches in Iceland. It’s a very strange but beautiful, poetic film. It’s the type of film to hold you in a dream-like trance during its quiet moments. It feels heavy but light-hearted at the same time.

What’s a motto that you think everyone should live by?

Live, Laugh, Love.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Just move through life with honest intentions, and it will all pan out

What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received?

You should have your life planned out at a young age. “Where will you be in five years?” and all that. The world moves too quickly.

What’s your favorite song to play live right now and why?

Our song "Figurines" has been really fun. It starts very lowkey, but grows into this crazy ending. The energy is always up for us at the end of that song. It takes us on an emotional journey; we hope it does the same for listeners.

Describe the best show you’ve played this year so far.

Playing Bowery Ballroom in New York with Softcult was incredible. It was a dream venue for us and hitting that milestone was surreal. The crowd was super engaged, too, which made us feel more comfortable on a big stage like that”.

Maybe there will be some repetition in terms of questions asked and answers given from interviews. However, I think we discover new things about she’s green from this interview from Still Listening. The band discuss the new E.P. in addition to nature and transformation. Though they are new to me, they already have a growing and dedicated fanbase:

“For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

We’re she’s green from Minneapolis, Minnesota. We make textural music revolving around introspection and nature. We started making music with no expectation to be anything but as an emotional outlet for us and to have fun.

What was the inspiration behind the title of your latest EP, Chrysalis, and how does it reflect the music within?

A Chrysalis is a caterpillar before coming out of its cocoon as a butterfly and it seemed to be a perfect theme for the songs since we’ve been going through such a period of transformation as a band. We’ve gone through a lot these past few years from finishing up school, to relationships changing, and developing our sound as a band, playing a ton of shows on the road. Each song is reflecting on the journey in its own way.

Do you typically start with lyrics, melodies, or a particular concept in mind?

We have always started with a guitar part and worked from there. The melodies normally come next, singing gibberish and then the lyrics come from the images in my head, sometimes coming to fruition right away or over some time meditating on it. Our process has always been very natural. There hasn’t been a lot of thinking about concepts first in order to achieve this thing specifically, it’s just spewed out.

Can you share a memorable moment from the studio while recording Chrysalis?

We recorded Graze and Figurines with Henry Stoehr from Slow Pulp at his studio space in Chicago back in the summer of 2024. It was such a fun and rewarding experience, but had its share of silliness too. A lot of takes had to be abandoned because a hardcore band was practicing really loud just a couple rooms down the hall. While it may have been difficult to get clean takes, I can’t lie, that band sounded awesome. I wish I figured out what their name was.

Did anything unexpected happen that shaped the final product?

There’s always a lot of things that come up when you’re recording. Zofia was sick and had to record vocals for hours on end, Raines fractured his thumb a few days before tracking guitars, and we had to finish in a short time period between tours. All those things make recording hectic but also a unique experience.

Your music often incorporates themes of nature. How does your environment in Minneapolis shape your artistic vision and sound?

The Midwest has an almost feminine nature to it with bushy, soft hills and small trees. You drive about an hour away to farmlands with glowing cornfields at twilight and prancing deer. We have gorgeous blooming flowers on trees in the spring and summer, and bright colored leaves in fall. Winter is filled with days of fluffy snow covering everything you see, reminding you how pretty streetlights can be. The softness of our nature has impacted our love for lush textures in music and our love for cinematography as well”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Liam Armstrong

There are a couple of other interviews that I want to cover before finishing off. Chatting with the band as they were on their first tour ever, The Lunar Collective noted how she’s green already had this cult following. If you have not listened to she’s green and experienced their wonderful music then I would strongly urge you to check them out:

“LUNA: What is the shoegaze presence like in Minneapolis?

NORDVOLD: It’s definitely on the come-up right now. I feel like there’s a lot of newer bands that are toying with those kinds of sounds. Some really good friends of ours, like this band called 12th House Sun’s killing it right now…Shoutout Another Heaven, that’s a really, really cool shoegaze band that’s been in the game for a long time from Minneapolis.

LUNA: When you guys were first making music as she’s green, were you intentionally making stuff that was shoegaze, or were you just jamming and seeing what happens?

ARMSTRONG: We were making a lot of different stuff at the time. I mean, I was working on some indie stuff. I started making hip hop beats and stuff. I think I definitely wanted to try to make shoegaze for a few of the songs that we have out, or I was just drawing a lot from inspirations like that. I guess it’s just how it worked…It wasn’t like, we want to be a shoegaze band. It was just like, we want to put out music that reflects the kind of music that we really enjoy. [Zofia] wrote “Mandy”...

SMITH: I just had very raw, like, no pedal, very basic, straight  guitars and vocals in a demo. I feel like that’s how a lot of the songs have started—very raw and baseline. When we come together, we just gravitate towards shoegaze because it adds that element of emotion and extra texture that really enhances those feelings. I would say the first couple songs that Liam and I made, we were definitely in a shoegaze phase…like what we were listening to when we were really diving into the ‘90s music at the time. But now, we’re really finding our own sound, which is great.

LUNA: How do you feel about the shoegaze label for the band?

LUCAS: We’ve all had that shoegaze phase, but I would speak for all of us when I say it’s probably like ten percent of what we’re actually listening to, even though we love the music. We’re never, ever making music for the shoegaze listener. We’re never like, “Shoegaze people will really dig this.” You know, if they do, that’s awesome, but that’s not the focus at all.

LUNA: One thing I like about the shoegaze community is that, when people are into a band, they’re really into the band. I feel like you guys have those sorts of fans already. After you released Wisteria and your other singles, what has the past year been like?

NORDVOLD: One of the coolest things is like… sometimes, name-searching is kind of fun on social platforms. I’m just like, I wonder if anyone is posting about us or something. I’ll find a Turkish channel on Youtube that posted a lyric video for “smile again” with the lyrics translated into Turkish. I’m like, yo, this is so, so cool. I’ll hit up Google Translate and I’ll try to write a thank you in whatever language it is… It’s been completely mind-blowing to see these songs that came together in your basement talked about by people in all the far-reaching corners of the world. It’s beautiful.

SMITH: Everyone has been so kind and supportive. I don’t know, it’s overwhelming. I’m excited. It’s unreal, for sure.

LUNA: How did you guys end up getting signed to Photo Finish Records?

LUCAS: The guy who works there, his name is Shane, he flew out to see us at a basement show in Minneapolis. I think that was very special and cool that he flew all the way from New York to do that. He got to see us in our element, too.

ARMSTRONG: He was really excited about us, and I think that’s what drew us in.

SMITH: He’s just so genuine. There’s no bad energy.

LUNA: Any other plans once you guys wrap up this tour?

ARMSTRONG: Definitely going to be working on new stuff.

NORDVOLD: We’re trying to record some stuff soon.

ARMSTRONG: We have a lot of stuff written. I think it’ll be a good time to just hop in the studio and record once we get back.

LUNA: Did you guys want to mention anything I didn’t bring up already?

NORDVOLD: I want to make it clear that we don’t hate shoegaze and we don’t hate the shoegazers [laughs]. We got a lot of love for them and we got a lot of love for the genre.

LUCAS: “Shoegaze band she’s green denounces shoegaze.”

LUNA: That’ll be the headline when this goes live.

NORDVOLD: They’re gonna tear us apart on Reddit.

SMITH: I love the genre. We just don’t wanna be in a box.

NORDVOLD: There’s definitely going to be music in the future which is very different than a lot of what’s come out so far, which I’m excited for”.

This is the final interview I want to bring in. Quite a lengthy one, there is a lot of interesting takeaways from the interview. I do think that this band are primed for a long career. The group have a run of dates in the U.S. coming up.  I am really looking forward to seeing what they deliver this year. An amazing quintet that I think deserve a lot more love and focus here in the U.K. I hope that they come and play here at some point too:

“There’s so much natural imagery in your work, even your name is evocative of nature; what influence has it had on your music-making?

Liam: Growing up in the Midwest, we’re all deeply entwined with nature. I grew up in a town in Wisconsin where I would go down to this river a lot. When I make music, I want to translate those emotions I get from spending time outside.

Zofia: Liam’s cinematography in nature also adds to our sound. It adds a theatrical element.

Teddy: Like they were saying, we have these Midwestern backgrounds where we spend a lot of time in the woods, or camping, or hiking. There’s something impactful about being in really beautiful natural landscapes. It’s interesting to try translating that into a sonic medium rather than just a visual one.

Zofia: We have really gorgeous, blooming summers. Those memories that we make going camping and just doing outdoor activities are really special, especially since we have such isolating winters.

Teddy: Brutal winters…

Zofia: It’s still really gorgeous with the snow and stuff, but our summers are really special compared to other places.

Liam: The winter helps us write music that longs for the outside.

Teddy: It longs for greener pastures.

I see a lot about the negative side of the Midwest, but you all talk so beautifully about it. Is there anything you want to add to the Midwest discourse?

Teddy: The winters are a trial, but it makes the warmth and green foliage and humid air so much more appreciated.

Liam: We all really enjoy the winter, too. There’s something magical about being outside where everything’s blanketed. It’s so quiet.

Teddy: Yeah! We all live in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, so it’s a loud city environment. But whenever it’s snowing hard, everything’s so quiet and pretty.

Zofia: It’s also lighter, like when you go on a fresh snow walk. When the moon is out, everything is brighter because it’s reflecting on the snow. The sky has this really gorgeous color, too.

Teddy: It’s lustrous, almost.

Raines: I don’t know how I’d assess the passing of time if it wasn’t for the four seasons, so the change is really important, too. It makes my life feel more full than if I were in a consistent temperature, even though sometimes it sounds pretty nice.

Your first two singles were recorded at home; where was Wisteria made?

Liam: A lot of it was recorded at home, and the drums we recorded at our student radio.

Teddy: I knew the code to the college radio at The U, and…well, I don’t go there anymore, I can’t get in trouble.

Raines: Oh, you're gonna get expelled for sure.

Teddy: Hey, anyone who’s used that computer knows there are files of old students doing the same thing going back, like, 15 years. I’m far from the first. But it was a better drum recording setup than anything I had access to. Other than that, it was all home-brewed.

Liam: Secret’s out.

Were y’all sitting on the EP for a while?

Zofia: I feel like it just gracefully came together. We had those songs, and they all fit so well together.

Raines: I do remember the posts like, “EP soon!” And then nine months later, like “EP coming soon, I swear!”

Liam: We wanted it to be polished and stay true to what we’ve been dreaming after.

Zofia: We also wanted it to sound good. There are so many textures on there, and it was a lot to work with, so we struggled with that a bit. But once our friend Henry got in to mix everything, it was really good.

Teddy: Henry was the catalyst that we needed to focus the songs, make them cohesive, and have a sonic definition to them. So big thank-you to Henry Breen, love you.

What was the songwriting process like?

Zofia: All over the place. The boys usually come in with a riff or a rhythm, and we’ll throw bass and drums. I’ll start with melodies and write later. Just to serve the instrumental.

Liam: Sometimes we write as a group, too. Zofia had “Mandy” already fully written.

Zofia: “Purple” is also just Liam and me hanging out; It just happened. We wrote it in, like, an hour.

Teddy: Sometimes stuff emerges out of nowhere. There’s an unreleased track that we’re still honing that came from a jam. Just going back and forth between chords, like “there’s something there, but what?”

Raines: We have a new one we’ve been playing that came from Kevin warming up with some song he liked. I just started playing chords I’d never played before, and so did he. 30 minutes later, we had a song. Sometimes it comes like that, but “Graze,” the single that just came out, was a long time coming.

Big question: What are you making music for?

Liam: I want to make something that makes people want to continue enjoying their life. Make the world better.

Raines: This guy’s on a big mission. I didn’t know we were doing that, pressure’s on.

Teddy: A noble cause.

Zofia: I went into it as a self-exploration thing, with zero expectations. Now it’s turned into something that connects us to other people. Like people can relate and find it meaningful. Meeting people on tour has made that connection more of what I’m doing it for now.

Kevin: I’ve always enjoyed playing and being around music. One thing led to another, and now I’m in she’s green. I love to contribute. And make stuff that makes people…wanna continue enjoying their lives.

Raines: We don’t wanna put too much pressure on it either. You could just make music because you like making music.

Teddy: Exactly. I actually had a cool conversation with someone in Dallas last night. We were talking about how they recently picked up bass guitar. I hope I communicated it effectively, but the most rewarding aspect of all of this has been going into it with the intent of having fun. That’s why I started jamming with them in the first place. It’s such a good time, and being on the road has been the most amazing, rewarding experience. Just having fun. And gaining the satisfaction from the process of creation.

Liam: It’s a win-win situation when you get to do something that’s really cool and people are affected by it.

Teddy: One quick addendum I’ll make to my answer: when I listen to music that really clicks with me or I’m at a live show that I’m really immersed in, there’s a feeling. This process is just chasing that metaphorical dragon. I want to find that indescribable feeling. That inner connection with the music. I’ve had that feeling at least once at every show so far.

Zofia: I completely agree.

Liam: Materialized essence of the dream world.

Raines: How I interpret what Teddy is saying is that our main criteria for songwriting is that it has to make us feel something. If it doesn’t, we have to change something. I don’t think we’ll ever release a song that didn’t make us feel anything strong”.

Chrysalis came out last August, so many people might expect a new E.P. or music soon. However, you can’t rush artists and they have been pretty busy the last year or so. Building their name and gaining traction, I feel we will be talking about she’s green for years to come. This is a very special band that you…

NEED to know.

__________

Follow she’s green

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FEATURE: Shortlist: Reacting to the Academy Awards 2025 Nominations: Saluting Amazing Women and Highlighting Ongoing Gender Divides

FEATURE:

 

 

Shortlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Chloé Zhao is one of only three women - the others are Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion - who have won the Best Director Academy Award. She won in 2021 for Nomadland and is the second women (the first is Jane Campion) to get two Best Director nominations/PHOTO CREDIT: Pat Martin

Reacting to the Academy Awards 2025 Nominations: Saluting Amazing Women and Highlighting Ongoing Gender Divides

__________

I will tie this to music…

IN THIS PHOTO: Emma Stone has picked up her seventh Academy Award nomination. She is nominated for Best Actress for Bugonia

because there is an incredible songwriter who has been nominated again for an Academy Award but has never won one. You do hope that she finally gets one after being overlooked for so long! The nominations can be seen here. There are some takeaways from the shortlist. Hosted by Conan O’Brien (after his triumphant debut hosting last year) on 15th March, the best and brightest from Hollywood will be in attendance. Some truly stunning cinema is represented at this year’s ceremony. The Best Picture category divided people. Popular choices like Bugonia, Hamnnet and Marty Supreme alongside less obvious choices like F1 and Frankenstein. Although these films have female producers, they are still outnumbered by men. It is great that amazing actors like Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Rose Byrne (If I Had Leg’s I’d Kick You) and Emma Stone (Bugonia) are up for Actress in a Leading Role. It is going to be a wonderful night! In terms of nominations, there are some new and younger actors sitting alongside legends of the screen. One of the most incredible things is seeing Emma Stone nominated once more. She is the youngest woman ever to earn seven Oscar nominations in her career. At age thirty-seven, she received two nominations for Bugonia, one for Best Actress and one as a producer on Best Picture, bringing her total to seven. Winning the Actress in a Leading Role for 2017’s La La Land and 2024’s Poor Things, there are many feeling she will win her third Academy Award. One of the world’s greatest actors, I feel like Stone is going to be nominated multiple more time through her career!

I am going to end with the Directing category which, every year, throws up the same problem. It is one that is not improving. In terms of huge gender inequality. Almost tokenistic to include one woman in the category a year! However, before getting there, it is worth concentrating on the music side. I will include an album from the Music (Original Score) category for a feature. However, look at Music (Original Song). One of the lesser-highlighted and discussed categories, it is notable because it once again features Diane Warren. The song Relentless from Dear Me has lyrics and music by Warren. This is a songwriter who is an Ivor Novello Award-winning genius who has written huge hits for the likes of Cher and Aerosmith. In terms of the Academy Awards, this is someone who is a fixture. This Billboard feature spotlights the Diane Warren-written Academy Award-nominated songs. Not to say it is sexism, but is it telling that someone as wonderful as Diane Warren has not won an Academy Award. It seems strange that someone who has been nominated so often has been ignored. Maybe it is just bad luck. In any case, I think this year is the one where Warren is richly deserving and should get that allusive award:

“Diane Warren is now way up there on the all-time list of top Oscar nominees for best original song. Her nod this year for “Dear Me,” sung by Kesha in the documentary Diane Warren: Relentless, is her 17th — a tally equaled by only two other songwriters in the 92-year history of the category. Sammy Cahn leads with 26, followed by Johnny Mercer with 18.

Moreover, this is the ninth year in a row she has been nominated, which enables Warren to set a new record for the most consecutive nominations in the history of the category. She surpasses Cahn, who was nominated eight years running from 1954 to 1961.

If you’re looking for a common denominator among Warren’s best original song nominees — besides quality — good luck. Three of them reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, but several others didn’t even crack the chart. Three are from blockbuster action films, but several others are from smaller indie films that barely made a dent at the box office.

She’s rarely been part of an Oscar-magnet film that racked up multiple nominations. “Dear Me” is her 12th nominated song that originated in a film that received no other nominations besides hers”.

The biggest reason for writing this feature is to note that, as of this ceremony, only eleven women have been nominated for the Best Director in the history of the Academy Awards. Out of these nominations, only three women—Kathryn Bigelow, Chloé Zhao, and Jane Campion—have won the award. I think over 260 directors have been shortlisted in its history. It took until 2010 for Kathryn Bigelow to win the award for The Hurt Locker. Nominated for Hamnet, Chloé Zhao makes Oscar history for her second Best Director nomination. In 2021, Nomadland won Zhao her first Academy Award/Oscar. She could well receive her second, though I have seen sites tipping other directors this year. Hollywood Reporter ran a feature where the running order for each category was predicted. In terms of Best Director, Chloé Zhao was placed third behind Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler for Sinners. With many also agreeing that Paul Thomas Anderson will win, it means that possibly it will be another year where men dominate. Although Zhao won an Academy Award five years ago, we are not far from the one-hundredth Academy Awards. In 2028, when that historic ceremony occurs, will it be the case that only three women would have won the coveted Best Director award?! It seems shocking that there is this continued gender inequality. Rather than these statistics reflecting quality and merit, it is misogyny. Women across the cultural sector are paid less than men. From music to cinema, women are dominating and producing, I think, the best and most enduring work. However, there is still this sexism. Whilst the gatekeepers are men and there are not enough men across these industries calling for change then nothing will! Whilst there have been improvements since the bleakest days, it is insane we live in a time when there are any pay gaps in any creative industry. Not to lame men for this, but you do not often read of actors protesting or asking for a pay cut in order for their female counterparts to be paid equally.

Although women are nominated more in mixed-gender categories, there are still gulfs across many categories. The most glaring one is Best Director. This is arguably the most important category. The director is the person who brings out the wonderful performances from the actors that are nominated. They create these pictures that get nominated too. Of course, films are a collaborative effort, though the director is key. What we see year in and year out if this assumption that men are far exceeding women. As I say, it almost seems tokenistic or an afterthought to include women. Like they need to include one to not be accused of being all-male and misogynistic. Nobody can defend or rationalise the astonishing gap. One could say that there is limited room in that category. Here’s the thing: widen the category, then! Best Picture includes ten films. It is insane that the Actor and Actress categories only have five names in each, as you would think ten is more suitable. Even if you have five, you cannot say it is a case of eighty percent of the best films each year are directed by men. Look at articles such as this, that highlight great films of last year directed by women. How about If I Had Legs I'd Kick You?! Directed by Mary Bronstein, the fact that she directed such a commanding and mesmerising performance from Rose Byrne – who is nominated for Best Actress -and the film holds a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes shows that it is acclaimed. I know many say that site has a bad metric and is not reliable. Okay. Look at this review, or this or this, that commend the film and or Mary Bronstein. The performance of Rose Byrne, one of the most lauded in many years, is in many ways down to Bronstein’s direction and instincts. When Greta Gerwig was not nominated for 2023’s Barbie – she was twice-nominated for Best Director but never won -, it was a baffling snub. Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind is another award-worthy film. When people talk of the most notable Academy Awards snubs, it is about men not nominated or films directed by men. How many are looking at this year’s Best Director category and asking why only one woman was nominated?!

Even if you (wrongly) assume there are not enough talented female directors in the industry that warrant nominations, that reflects shockingly on an industry that is to blame. Even if the Academy Awards are not as all-male as they used to be when it comes to Best Director, this 2018 article from The Guardian asks questions relevant in 2026. How can this bias – let’s just call it what it is: misogyny – be fixed? It is a subject once again under the spotlight:

“The numbers haven’t changed significantly for the last two decades because at the highest levels of the business, people do not hire women to direct movies,” says Melissa Silverstein, founder/publisher of Women and Hollywood. “Studies have shown that when people in the industry think about a director, they picture a white male with greying hair – basically Steven Spielberg. That’s the default because that is what people have seen.

And it may be what voters are seeing, too. Greta Gerwig’s film Lady Bird picked up the Golden Globe for best motion picture (musical or comedy) as well as best actress (musical or comedy) for Saoirse Ronan. But who won the all-male best director category? Guillermo del Toro, for The Shape of Water. “A film like Lady Bird can have an almost perfect critical response, yet not get nominations,” laments Silverstein.

While it’s true that the best picture and director winners aren’t always awarded for the same film, for Gerwig not to be even nominated for an acclaimed feature speaks volumes. Del Toro’s fellow nominees demonstrate Silverstein’s point clearly: Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Martin McDonagh and yes, Steven Spielberg, for a film (The Post) that went home empty-handed, and wasn’t even nominated for a Bafta.

Spielberg, diplomatically, has since made optimistic comments about the chances for a female director nominee when the Oscar contenders are announced on 23 January. “This is a pretty incredible year, and I think you’ll be seeing some nominations, I’m predicting at the Oscars this year for a woman director, if not several.”

Silverstein says steps have been put in place that may help redress the imbalance. “Over the last two years, the Academy have completely remade the directing branch and have added many more women directors from all across the world. This will give women directors a fighting chance, one they really didn’t have previously when the branch was pretty much all men.”

Other less high-profile awards ceremonies have also offered hope: Gerwig has already won best director at numerous critics’ awards, while Dee Rees, the director of the racially charged Mudbound, has also been honoured, though less resoundingly than pundits predicted. Other awards are finding different ways to honour female film-makers. The Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society recently decided to split the best director award into male and female categories, but segregation can’t really be the answer. While it may have been done with the best of intentions – to give credit to talented women – might it not seem a little patronising to put them in a different category, as if they can’t compete with the big boys? Surely the way to show the industry that great directors can be any gender is to nominate them alongside each other.

What we need is an industry that welcomes all applicants for crew positions, whether they’re in sound, editing, cinematography or directing; and whatever their gender, race or sexuality. The Time’s Up campaign is raising awareness of the imbalance of power in every industry, and let’s hope film is making up for lost time by leading the way. Says Silverstein, “As a culture we need to shift away from our stories being about white men and by white men. That is how more women will receive the deserved honours.” Let’s hope the Academy takes note”.

In 2023, Sarah Polley, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Maria Schrader and Charlotte Wells were snubbed but, as Variety highlight, they were worthy. This article from 2024 talks of the long and complicated history of the Academy Awards and ignoring female directors. Women were shut out in 2020, and whilst two women were nominated in 2021, they still made up only forty percentage of the nominees. It is like a festival such as Glastonbury. The first time they included two female headliners on the Pyramid Stage was 2024 when Dua Lipa and SZA were booked. The festival had been running over fifty years before they booked more than one female headliner! It should not be news that two women are nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards. It should be common. However, if Hollywood and award ceremonies continue to overlook women and fewer women are being hired to direct, then how is the issue going to be rectified? I feel there are genuinely one or two female directors alongside Chloé Zhao who could have made the shortlist. women directed only 16% of the top 250 grossing films in 2024. Gender gaps seem to be widening. Even when you have a director like Mary Bronstein who should have been shortlisted this year, her name is left out. This article from 2017 asks how to fix Hollywood’s toxic gender exclusion in Hollywood. Barely any progress in nearly a decade! This 2015 article that reveals 99% of women – again, 99%! – in film and T.V. have experienced sexism. It is not only an issue with women not being nominated for awards as directors or having progress thwarted. Think about films in general and speaking roles for women. How this article from last year highlights the following:

“The discussion over women in films, it turns out, was only beginning to gather steam in the industry, and the numbers that have turned up are damning.

In a survey of movies from 2007-2012, the New York Film Academy (NYFA) found that only 31 percent of all speaking characters in film are women. Nearly 30 percent of all women in movies wear revealing clothes or become partially naked, versus less than 10 percent of men. Women characters tend to be younger than men and ancillary to them.

Gena Davis, star of "Thelma and Louise" and other female-driven films, points out that in family films the percentage of speaking female roles is even lower (28 percent) and the female roles are often stereotypical.

In animated films, in which the production company can include as many females as desired, women compose only 17 percent of crowd scenes! Are they that much harder to draw?

Black women have particularly difficult problems getting roles or visibility. By overwhelming numbers, black women in films are homeless, powerless, abused, or alone. Even when they achieve recognition, it’s often for a menial position. Two of the six academy awards won by black females in 88 years were for servant roles, Hattie McDaniel in 1941 and Octavia Spencer in 2011.

The lack of roles for women translates into a lack of leverage for paychecks. NYFA found that men took home the top 16 biggest paychecks in Hollywood. The highest salary for a woman, Angelina Jolie, was equal to the lowest two salaries for men on the list.

Nancy Myers, the acclaimed director of movies about women, said in a New York magazine interview in Sept. 2015 that, except for a “couple” of bankable female stars, most women are fighting over the same small number of roles. This gives them less negotiating power than men. She also said it’s hard to get male movie stars to play in a movie if a woman is the lead”.

Whilst this year’s Academy Awards is a celebration of golden talent across the film industry, it also has to be held responsible for once again excluding women largely from the Best Director category. You feel next year has to be one where female directors’ work is celebrated and included more. I feel Olivia Wilde is a director who could be on the Academy Awards shortlist next year for the hugely praised The Invite. This year is not only a missed opportunity but a plain disregard for award-worthy films from female directors. Natalie Portman was on the interview trail at the Sundance Film Festival as Variety write. Portman noted how The Testament of Ann Lee was directed by Mona Fastvold; Eva Victor directed Sorry, Baby. Both films critically acclaimed, popular with audiences and worthy of Academy Awards discussion:

“Natalie Portman hit the Sundance Film Festival press circuit for “The Gallerist” wearing “ICE Out” and “Be Good” pins, just hours after a man was fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis. Portman’s “Be Good” references Renée Good, who was killed by ICE in Minneapolis earlier this month. During an interview at the Variety Studio presented by Audible, Portman openly blasted ICE brutality.

“This is such a joyful community celebrating film here and we’re so excited to be showing ‘The Gallerist,’ but we’re also at a moment in our country’s history that is quite devastating,” Portman said. “It’s really impossible not to talk about what is happening right now and the brutality of ICE and how it has to stop immediately. But also, there’s a beautiful community that Americans are showing right now. They’re showing up for each other, protecting each other and fighting for their freedom. It’s a bittersweet moment to celebrate something we’re so proud of on the backdrop of our nation in pain.”

Portman’s interview took place ahead of the “The Gallerist” world premiere at this year’s festival. The movie, directed by “Birds of Prey” helmer Cathy Yan and co-starring Jenna Ortega, centers on a desperate gallerist who conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami. Portman heaped praise upon her younger co-star.

“She’s such a fucking great actress and so knowledgeable about film,” Portman said of Ortega. “She’s so on and in it. It is rare. I think you’re very focused and in tune with everything. You’re not there to mess around.”

Portman went on to call Yan “a brilliant leader,” adding: “She has a specificity of vision. All the work ahead of time and her precise leadership leads to the possibility of spontaneity. Balancing this very specific tone that is satirical but also true emotion in it, which is almost impossible to create, she knew how to do it and guide us to it.”

With “The Gallerist” being one of Sundance’s biggest movies from a woman director and the premiere taking place just a few days after the Oscar nominations, Portman also took a moment during the interview to call out the Academy for snubbing a handful of female-directed movies this year. While Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” scored 8 nominations, including best picture and best director, many other movies directed by women were shut out.

“So many of the best films I saw this year were made by women,” Portman said. “You just see the barriers at every level because so many were not recognized at awards time. Between ‘Sorry Baby’ and ‘Left-Handed Girl’ and ‘Hedda’ and ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’… Extraordinary films this year that I think a lot of people are enjoying and loving, but are not getting the accolades they deserve.”

In terms of all the categories and the extend of gender exclusion, you can see the figures here. It makes for distributing reading! The film industry needs to really take a long look at the statistics coming out and work hard to address issues and why women are excluded, not provided opportunities in terms of directing; being given important roles. Underpaid and undervalued. It is a paramount concern that they…

NEED to answer.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Red Ivory

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Red Ivory

__________

THERE are some really…

PHOTO CREDIT: Addy Nzerem

promising bands coming through at the moment who we will see grow this year. Among them are the incredible Red Ivory. The London four-piece consist of Eiliyah Redha (vocals/guitar), Frida Olaberria (guitar), Berenice ‘Berry’ L'étrange (bass), and Ivy Adams (drums). Please Leave, I Want to Wake Up Now, is their latest E.P., that was released in November (their 2023 debut E.P., Façade, is not available on streaming sites). I will end with a review of that incredible E.P. There are not too many interviews with the band. However, there are a couple from late last year worth bringing in. I am starting out with Still Listening and their chat with the brilliant quartet. These amazing women need to be on your radar:

“For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

We are Berry, Frida, Eiliyah and Ivy from south east London, and as Red Ivory we write and perform music inspired by grunge, post punk and alternative rock. We started playing together in 2021 when we were 14.

What inspired the title Please Leave, I Need To Wake Up Now and how does it reflect the themes within your EP?

The title came about in conversation while we were discussing how the EP was made — over such a long time and during so many environmental and interpersonal changes. It reflects the ideas of change, dependence and identity within the project.

What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a band since forming, and how has it influenced your music?

One of the biggest challenges we faced as a band was definitely our age up until this year or the end of last year. We weren’t able to play in a lot of venues, or had to do so sneakily, which especially at the start meant that we really had to focus on our songwriting over our live set if we wanted to be taken seriously rather than passed off because of how young we were. This was also the reason we initially recorded and released an EP in 2023 in a pretty rushed way, because we felt like we needed to prove ourselves in order to bypass the age thing.

What role does visual art play in your music, whether it’s in music videos, artwork, or your social media presence?

We have definitely started being more specific with our visual output lately, whereas before none of us considered it too much to be honest. Berry has always done all of our artwork though, so it has definitely always been really directly reflective of where we were as a band. Social media presence is obviously insanely important for new bands, and luckily in going about that we have managed to be really creative and have loads of fun, like during a photo shoot with Addy Nzerem (who did our EP promo photos) in Peckham or in creating the single artworks amongst ourselves and with our friends Ethan Holt and Rosalie Salkeld. We have done a couple of music videos with friends, and are definitely wanting to do more of that kind of thing in the campaign for our new EP.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

“I’m still listening to Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins because it made me feel really cool when I was 14. And Plastic Beach by Gorillaz because it was one of the only CDs we had in my car when I was growing up.” – Ivy

“Lush’s Lovelife album because it was the first album that made me love rock music when I was like 14.” – Eiliyah

“I still listen to Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars because it was an album that all my older siblings used to sing to me most nights. – Berry

When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?

We hope that the drive within our music sticks with people, because we feel like that’s a constant presence in our tracks and one that we aim to maintain. We also hope that the ease and smoothness of the writing process comes through the tracks and sticks to them”.

Prior to getting to a review of the sensational Please Leave, I Need to Wake Up Now, CLASH included Red Ivory in their Next Wave series. They are definitely a band to watch. I would love to see them live, as they seem like such an eclectic and powerful stage act. They have had a couple of January London dates. Paper Dress Vintage on 16th; George Tavern on 20th. Tomorrow (2nd February) they play Shackwell Arms. Although they are playing small spaces at the moment, it is not going to be long until they are playing major venues:

“Red Ivory is done with being hidden.

For the South London four-piece, music began initially as a curious outlet. “I guess because my family’s really religious, they think music’s a sin,” vocalist Eiliyah deadpans. “But then when I started doing it, they were like, ‘Okay, whatever.’” Stealing CDs from her dad’s collection, she taught herself how to sing and play the guitar. Ivy first picked up a guitar during lockdown, as more of a side hobby. Berry “did not know what the bass actually was”, as she claims, but came into possession of a five-string instrument somewhat accidentally. Ivy, whose only instrument was the piano, learned to play the drums after joining Red Ivory.

The self-taught musicians trace their proper musical roots back to their school days—which aren’t too far behind them. Eiliyah, Berry and Frida went to secondary school together, and linked up with Ivy, a friend of Berry’s from childhood, at school when they were 13. “We were known as a collective,” Ivy says, with their schoolmates often teasing them for being attached at the hip. In year 10, while studying their GCSEs in music, their writing teacher suggested they write as a band. From that day forward, their mutual ambitions became bound together. Now a band of 18-year-olds, they’re just scratching the surface.

“We knew what we wanted from the start; it wasn’t by accident,” Ivy says. “[We were] very intentional in wanting to achieve what we’re doing and what we still want to achieve now.” Officially starting Red Ivory at 14 years old, their age was never a personal deterrent; if anything, it drove them forward. At the motivation of Frida’s mum, who worked in events, Red Ivory became a staple in their local South London scene. For the young musicians, its community of venues was like entering a foreign post-punk and alternative world. “When we would tell people that we were from South London, they’d respect us a little bit more,” Eiliyah explains, though this did not eradicate their issue of being underage. The band would have to evade speculative eyes and, when asked their age by interviewers, would vaguely reply, “We’re in uni.”

“We were kind of an enigma for a while because it was like, ‘They can’t know how old we are, they can’t know who we are,” Ivy says. “We’d literally have to leave a venue as soon as we played.” Enduring getting kicked out of venues for being underage more than once, as Berry recalls, “We’ve always kind of been hidden… we couldn’t exactly show ourselves. Now, it’s like, ‘See us!’”

Red Ivory became nearly trapped in their own creation, their talents threatening to burst their cage open. When they weren’t spending their days under the confines of academia, they spent time writing together, bleeding themselves dry of every frustration that was brewing within. The resulting EP, ‘Please Leave, I Need To Wake Up Now’, recorded in the midst of preparing for their A Levels, immerses the listener into the teenagers’ mental state. Each song feels “like sections of a nightmare”, as Eiliyah describes. “Us being at school was just an absolute nightmare. Obviously, we had each other, but everything else around us was like…” She trails off with a shake of her head. In contrast, Berry explains, the EP’s title “feels like it came to us in a dream. All the songs were about claustrophobia and that kind of vibe”.

Across the EP, Red Ivory evolves into increasingly self-assured territory, gaining power in every note. ‘My Mind’ channels both anger and apathy, while ‘Interlude’ operates as a space for each musician to jam in their own worlds. For Eiliyah, an introspective love song like ‘Hate The Way’ allowed her to explore her vocal talents that were concealed by an innate shyness. “I would never find out what I could do more,” she explains, “and ‘Hate The Way’ was the first one where, in the end, I start belting. So, I think that song reflects vulnerability, but also growing out of it a lot more.” Any given Red Ivory song is rooted in a slight dissonance, like leaning into imperfection in favour of a radical honesty. Notes of grunge seep into them, and fittingly so. A mutual love of Sonic Youth guided Red Ivory in their early days, while nods to the Breeders, the Pixies and Fugazi exist in their chords. “It was just such a cool time, like Kim Deal and all of her different experimentations and bands,” Berry says. “That’s kind of what we want, you know? To be ever-changing.” Now, with bands like Mannequin Pussy, Wolf Alice and Pretty Sick to look towards, Red Ivory are emerging with a reimagined DIY energy that sparks a much-needed enthusiasm”.

I will wrap things up with a glowing review of the Please Leave, I Need to Wake Up Now E.P. Silent Radio had this to say about a work from a group that I can see enjoying a very long and successful career. It is clear, right from the off, they have this incredible and distinct sound. One that is winning them a lot of fans. If you are unfamiliar then make sure you connect with them:

“Twiddling your thumbs after finishing your A levels? Not if you’re Red Ivory. The South-London teenage four-piece released a new EP, Please Leave, I Need to Wake up Now instead. It’s gritty indie rock that hits you in the face – and the gut – offering confrontation rather than escape.

The first notes of opener “12 October” make it clear that the young women – Eiliyah Redha, Frida Olaberria, Berry Stuttard, Ivy Forbes Adam – are not interested in sleek production or sing-along choruses. Instead, they channel anxiety and rebellion, and the track would not be out of place on Nirvana’s Bleach. It’s scruffy and abrasive, filled with the kind of restless energy teenagers tend to be bursting with. “Can’t you see it’s no good for me / I don’t wanna feel but you make me”, Redha sings, sounding moody and petulant. A bit like a teenager, you might say, if it wasn’t for the fact that her voice has the primal rawness of PJ Harvey at the peak of her powers.

On “Crashing Down,” the band even manages to up the ante and plunge into the claustrophobic anxiety you may experience under the influence, which the song addresses. The distorted guitars create a dark, nervous atmosphere, and the song is the kind of masterclass in push-and-pull dynamics that Sonic Youth perfected over their career. When the manic collapse finally arrives and everything comes, well, crashing down, you feel like you could use a bit of a rest to regroup.

Thankfully, Red Ivory show some kindness in the form of “Hate the Way”, more jangly indie pop than in-your-face rock for the most part, not unlike Hole’s softer, melancholic offerings. Wistful and bittersweet, it’s proof that creating chaos isn’t Red Ivory’s only forte, and though the lyrics are anything but happy-go-lucky – “I hate the way I feel about you / But I can’t change anything” – the track shows the emotional nuance that stops the music from feeling one-dimensional.

At 1:12 minutes, “Interlude” may be the EP’s shortest song but it’s also the most ominous-sounding, keeping you guessing as to whether it’s going to turn into a full-on heavy metal assault. It doesn’t, segueing into closer “My Mind” instead, a song that somehow manages to bring to mind all those female or female-fronted acts that made ‘90s guitar music such a thrill. L7? Check! Veruca Salt? Check! Sleater-Kinney? Check!

Red Ivory pick up the mantle some 30 years later, and like all those artists as well as the ones mentioned earlier, they aren’t offering comfort but truth. It’s fierce, ragged, at times uncomfortable, the way truth tends to be. Here’s hoping that adulthood will not blunt their edge”.

There is no doubt that Red Ivory are worth all the buzz they are getting. I feel they should get some space on sites like Rolling Stone UK, NME and beyond. Some of the biggest and most influential websites and publications showing love for this band. Eiliyah Redha, Frida Olaberria, Berenice ‘Berry’ L'étrange and Ivy Adams are going to make some big strides. Although this year is young, you just know that they are going to accomplished…

SO much very soon.

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Follow Red Ivory

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/red1vory/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ggWd7TxGttLv9nujg9K3l?si=8ocsJCQZRHuUC5UfNa3Y3Q

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2bOI89MFp9riOz-JhbxcXw

FEATURE: Bigger Than The Beatles: Celebrating the Record-Setting Robbie Williams

FEATURE:

 

 

Bigger Than The Beatles

IN THIS PHOTO: Robbie Williams celebrates his sixteenth chart-topping album, BRITPOP, and holds the record of scoring the most chart-topping albums in the U.K. Williams surpasses The Beatles, who set the tally in 2000 with their 1s album

Celebrating the Record-Setting Robbie Williams

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THOUGH he himself…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jason Hetherington

(I hope) would not claim to be better than The Beatles – no artist who has ever lived is as good! -, he has claimed the honour of setting a record that sees him overtake the band. Robbie Williams’s BRITPOP has gone to the top of the charts and is another major success for one of our greatest artists. There are a couple of interesting anniversaries to tie this moment to. Thinking of The Beatles, John Lennon’s "more popular than Jesus" quote was originally published in The London Evening Standard on 4th March, 1966, in a profile written by Maureen Cleave. Almost sixty years ago, there was this massive controversy. Not to wander off course too much, but the point of Lennon’s quote was that The Beatles were more relevant than Jesus and religion. That they were affecting and influencing young people more. It is hard to sympathise with Lennon and the band, as there are some effective and really horrible quotes in that interview. However, as Robbie Williams has toppled The Beatles in terms of number one albums, I did want to bring that in. Also, his former band, Take That, had their own unfortunate and ‘controversial’ moment almost thirty years ago. On 13th February, they announced their split to the world. Fans were distraught and it was this huge event. Williams departed from Take That in 1995. He released his amazing debut album, Life Thru a Lens, in 1997. It will be interesting seeing what he does to mark its thirtieth anniversary next year. I wanted to celebrate this record-breaking moment from Williams with a career-spanning playlist. Some of his very best solo cuts. I will end with a positive review for BRITPOP. An album that got a lot of critical praise. First, The Guardian highlighted this massive moment for a legendary Pop artist:

“Robbie Williams has scored his 16th UK No 1 album, surpassing a tally set by the Beatles in 2000 to become the all-time chart record holder.

Britpop, Williams’ homage to the lairy and zeitgeist-setting guitar music of the mid-1990s, went straight to No 1 in its first week of release. All but one of his studio albums have now reached the top – except 2009’s Reality Killed the Video Star, kept off the top by boy band JLS – plus three greatest hits compilations and his soundtrack to the biopic Better Man. Not counted in that tally are two other No 1 albums Williams recorded as a member of Take That.

Williams had clearly longed to break the record, moving the release date of Britpop back from its intended date of October after realising it was going to compete with – and inevitably lose out to – Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. With Britpop then lined up for a 6 February release, he suddenly brought the release forwardto the relatively uncompetitive week of 16 January.

He has described Britpop as “the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995”. The Guardian’s chief pop critic Alexis Petridis praised it, writing: “There’s a swagger and sparkle to the melodies that shift these songs past the realm of pastiche, and the results are hugely enjoyable.”

The Beatles set the previous record with their greatest hits album 1, one of four chart-topping albums released since the band split. They have come close to adding further No 1s on numerous occasions, reaching No 2 or No 3 a total of 10 times.

Pop fans will debate whether Williams is truly “greater” than the Beatles, though he certainly reached his record tally quicker: 29 years versus the 37 years it took the Beatles’ to notch up their 15 No 1s”.

Regardless of whether you think Robbie Williams is more enduring, relevant and better than The Beatles or it is just this notable and impressive feat, the fact is that his latest album not only shows his enduring and enormous critical and commercial appeal. He also shifts and evolves. BRITPOP is really about him making the kind of music he could not in the 1990s. It evokes some of the sounds of the mid-1990s and that heady time of British Pop dominance. However, he adds something modern and unique into the mix. It is an epic and wonderful album from an artist who has had this incredible career. Take That’s debut single, Do What U Like, turns thirty-five in July. That fresh-faced and unknown artist has accomplished so much since then. Had quite the ride!

I do hope that we get a lot more music from Robbie Williams, as everything he releases is fascinating and excellent. Even albums that some are a bit mixed towards have their moments. I will get to a playlist very soon. However, before that, Rolling Stone UK published a four-star review of BRITPOP:

“By Robbie Williams’ own admission, his 13th studio album sees the national institution and now firmly mellowed hellraiser offer up the sound he wishes he had released upon notoriously leaving Take That in 1995. He’s bigged up the fact that guitar god Tony Iommi makes an explosive cameo on the lead single ‘Rocket’, while claiming it to be “raw – there are more guitars and it’s even more upbeat and anthemic than usual.”

All of this is true, and the result is a record which sees Robbie sounding more liberated and delivering some of his best songs in years. It’s unrepentantly mad, as illustrated by the swirling guitars on ‘Rocket’, but this constant sense of unpredictability is a strength. Here’s Robbie leaning into what he’s always done best: not giving a fuck and dancing to the beat of his own drum.

On ‘Spies’, he offers a swaggering, guitar-driven anthem that shares sonic DNA with fan-favourite ‘Monsoon’, but it touchingly comes from the perspec-tive of this zen family man reflecting on a misspent youth. “We used to stay up all night / Thinking we were all spies / Praying that tomorrow won’t come,” comes Robbie’s salvo on the chorus.

Elsewhere, the bolshy edge of ‘Cocky’ sees him boast that “you get to talk to Jesus, I get to talk to God” and – funnily enough – offers a bold guitar line which doesn’t sound a million miles away from Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus’. He’s yet to confirm if he’s started a war of words with the 80s icons, but it’s something we’d certainly be here for.

If you thought that was weird, you haven’t heard anything until encountering ‘Morrissey’, which sees Robbie team up with old pal/sparring partner Gary Barlow for a song written from the perspective of someone who is “completely obsessed and in love” with The Smiths icon, so takes to stalking him. It’s ironic, then, that this maddest of premises actually turns out to be one of the record’s best songs – a glittering synth pop banger indebted to Erasure.

And by the time things wrap up with ‘Bite Your Tongue’ (let’s conveniently ignore ‘Desire’, the misfiring FIFA anthem which closes the record), Robbie’s talk of guitars and anthems has largely rung true. It’s unrepentantly bonkers and will do little to win over his detractors, but who cares when the rest of us are having this much fun?”.

Robbie Williams plays Glasgow’s Barrowlands Ballroom on 4th February. I am sure there will be a lot of live dates this year. The next steps from him will be incredible. BRITPOP is an album he always wanted to make so it seems like the closing of a chapter and this look back. What will his next album contain? We will wait and see. In honour of Robbie Williams besting a chart record held by The Beatles, I am focusing on his solo work (sorry Take That fans!) and the brilliance he has produced since the 1997 debut, Life Thru a Lens. Now in his fifties, this amazing artist still has this energy, creativity and relevance. Long may he reign! Robbie Williams is an artist that I…

ALWAYS love to see succeed.

FEATURE: An Imperfect Moment: Why the Charli xcx Mockumentary Is an Overdue Treat

FEATURE:

 

 

An Imperfect Moment

Why the Charli xcx Mockumentary Is an Overdue Treat

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WHEN it comes to music…

PHOTO CREDIT: Hailey Benton Gates

bring represented on the small of big screen, there is not a lot in the way of visibility. There are music biopics and the odd film/series where music is at the heart, but it is not as visible and discussed as other genres and areas of cinema and television. When artists do appear on the screen, it is usually in a biopic. Big artists like Lady Gaga appearing in films. I have said how there are so many artists who would naturally translate to the screen and would make brilliant actors. Someone who has appeared in smaller roles but you can see doing big film roles is Charli xcx. She is an artist who has this screen presence. I would love her to appear in a range of films. The Moment is a mockumentary she is starring in. This is a genre of film that is always interesting. We are going to see this exaggerated version of Charli xcx. I think that something like this is overdue. Maybe because it offers a sense of levity at a very bleak time. Or that we rarely get to see major artists do something like this. So hallowed and revered by the press, we usually see all this gloss and shine. So much spotlight, focus and praise. It is wonderful, of course, but it can be a bit too much. It is hard to say why, but I do find myself looking for something a little scrappier or deeper. In terms of seeing an artist in a new light or them taking a different direction. This is a film that really accompanies her 2024 album, BRAT. One reason why The Moment is refreshing is because it is not the usual concert film you get. The big documentaries where you see the huge crowds and all the glamour and rapture. A much more interesting angle, The Moment will spotlight a more extreme version of Charli xcx, but also has this comedic tone. One could compare it to a film like This Is Spinal Tap. Variety spoke with Charli xcx recently about a film whose original pitch was too label-focused. She also discussed the recent Oscar nominations:

“Charli xcx is taking Sundance by storm ahead of the world premiere of “The Moment,” a concert mockumentary in which a fictionalized version of the pop star mounts an ambitious tour for her “Brat” album. The singer joined the Variety Studio presented by Audible hours before the film’s premiere and got honest about its origins, which included turning down her label’s original pitch.

“I was approached to make a more traditional tour film around the ‘Brat’ shows I was doing,” Charli explained. “It kind of felt like a way to elongate the life span of the album for my record label. I was just not really into that. I was only interested in flipping the form of something quite traditional.”

“I was thinking of how I could put a spin on a long-form film about what I had experienced throughout the album cycle. This is where I landed, this satirical take not only on the music industry but myself. It felt like a way into talking about pop culture, fame and the loss of art the second you put something out. This felt like a rich ground to breed ideas.”

Joining Charli in the film are Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Rachel Sennott, Isaac Powell and Alexander Skarsgård. Some actors play fictionalized version of themselves (Sennott), while others play fictionalized versions of real people on Charli’s team (Berlant is her make-up artist, for instance). The film is directed by Aidan Zamiri, one of Charli’s close collaborators during the “Brat” era as the helmer of her “360” music video and more.

“How cool and rewarding that ‘Brat’ was the most successful thing she’s ever done — something that she felt was such a true expression of her,” Zamiri told Variety in a pre-festival interview. “And then it’s interesting to see something like that become so global and so mass consumed that it became a commercial output for various brands.”

Elsewhere during her Sundance interview, Charli was asked by Variety’s Matt Donnelly about this week’s Oscar nominations. Charli is an outspoken cinephile, and her Letterboxd ratings often go viral across social media platforms like X and more.

“I haven’t looked at the nominations. I don’t know! I don’t know anything,” Charli admitted, although she was surprised to find out that Ariana Grande was snubbed in the best supporting actress category for “Wicked: For Good.” Grande and Charli worked together on the “Sympathy Is a Knife” remix off Charli’s “Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat.”

“Oh, Ari! She is amazing,” Charli said. “She goes full force. I literally do not know who is nominated or not, but that’s a surprise to me that she wasn’t.”

“The Moment” opens in theaters January 30, following its Sundance premiere”.

I do hope that The Moment reignites interest in BRAT. The biggest album of 2024, Charli xcx’s new album is out on 13th February. It is the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. It is this new direction and an artist stepping into writing for film. I do wonder how she will follow this and what the next album will contain. I have seen some mixed reviews for The Moment. However, there is this generational divide. Slightly older reviewers not aware of or fans of Charli xcx shrugging and writing it off. Whilst not perfect, Charli xcx is always engaging and eminently watchable. It is a brilliant concept. It is hard to ignore comparisons to a well-known music mockumentary. However, they are rare these days. You would like to see some major artists almost send themselves up like this. Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift or Harry Styles doing something like this. It would have been easy for Charli xcx to do a tour concert film for BRAT and follow everyone else. It would have been popular and well-received. However, The Moment offers something unexpected. A way to support the album but also move on. If some are not convinced by the plot, tone and highlight some drawbacks – I saw one review that said The Moment needs to be more broadly entertaining -, it allows Charli xcx to adopt an acting role rather than just being the artist. If contemporaries like Dua Lipa have stepped into film but it has not really ignited like you’d hope, I do think that Charli xcx will do a lot of huge film roles very soon. The Moment is fascinating. How people are reviewing and perceiving it. It is overdue because it departs from the usual concert film. They can be revealing and emotion, though it is very much the artist at their best. The celebration of massive tours and all the adulation. Here, there is something less perfect and almost self-deprecating. I want to bring in a review for The Moment. The Playlist provided their take on this wonderful new mockumentary:

“PARK CITY – In no manner of speaking can you prepare yourself for “The Moment.” Sold as a mockumentary centered on Charli XCX’s BRAT tour, the movie only hints at a narrative heading in that direction. It’s not a full-fledged comedy, and the only musical performance, if you want to call it that, comes under the opening credits. Instead, think of Aidan Zamiri’s feature directorial debut as a dramatic reenactment of an alternate timeline. A world where the pop dance superstar made choices out of fear instead of a cool, artistic confidence that is seemingly her calling card.

The film begins in a manner that the marketing has been selling audiences so far. Charli (Charlotte Emma Aitchison) has three weeks of rehearsals until the launch of her 2024-2025 BRAT tour. She’s just wrapped a crazy “BRAT summer,” after the release of her self-produced album BRAT, which became a pop culture phenomenon. Flanked by her manager Tim (Jamie Demetriou), her social media manager Lloyd (Isaac Powell), and assistant Ana (Trew Mullen), she films a Vogue “What’s My Bag” segment. Interview Magazine Editor-in-Chief Mel Ottenberg plays himself as a stylist for the shoot, having her sewn into a corset that will make her the first “bag” subject who participates standing up. This is played for laughs and hints at the movie you think you’ve signed up for.

Back in London, Charli’s record label, Atlantic, is visited by their American boss, Tammy (Patricia Arquette), who is preoccupied with a major credit card tie-in and concert movie for the tour. Tammy is thrilled to discover that the U.K. staff have already lined up the super-commercial director Joannes (Alexander Skarsgård, properly disturbing) to make sure the movie is a hit. Of course, no one asked for Charlie’s sign-off on any of this. She arrives at rehearsals to work with her assigned show director and creative collaborator, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), the woman responsible for the BRAT aesthetic (in reality, the tour was conceived by Jonny Kingsbury).

When Joannes, who has a difficult reputation, shows up at rehearsals, it sets up a confrontation with Celeste, the record company, and Charli that becomes progressively tense. Yes, this film, which is occasionally funny, becomes a slow burn of genuine tension. History tells us that the tour’s creative, created by “Celeste,” was at the center of the show. As “The Moment” moves forward, there is an increasing sense of dread surrounding the proceedings and Charli’s choices. And that’s because, in this script written by Zamiri and Bertie Brandes, this isn’t a celebration of BRAT, it’s a deconstruction of it. This is a movie about a public figure who begins to question all the bold choices she made to reach this peak in the first place. Like her record label, she feels an inordinate amount of pressure to keep this era alive. She’s spent over a decade trying to reach the top, and she doesn’t want to crash now.

Granted, that’s not to say there aren’t funny moments. Rachel Sennott, who appeared in the “360” music video Zamiri directed, wonderfully pokes fun at herself running into Charli at a Paris after-party. Even Kylie Jenner, who also plays herself, isn’t afraid to let the audience know she’s in on the joke, or at least whatever Charli and Zamiri think of the Kardashians. For the most part, everyone else surrounding this incarnation of Charli is only there to raise her anxiety. She’s even afraid of getting sick from the kooky makeup artist Molly (Kate Berlant, who deserved more screen time). Decidely, Celeste is the only character in the film attempting to keep her friend, Charli, on track, whether it personally benefits her own career or not.

Without spoiling much, when things come to a head, Aitchison delivers a monologue as this version of Charli that is borderline heartbreaking. She’s essentially justifying her actions in the third act to the audience. Choices that would shock her fans and peers in the real world. She’s startlingly good. Even if she’s playing “herself.” Perhaps this is “The Moment,” the movie’s title refers to.

The fact that Aitchison approved this script will leave many in the music industry with some big questions. Even if the movie is sold as a fictional exercise. Is Tim, a deceptive manager you could never envision Charli having in her close circle, representing a previous manager/agent in her life? Despite her success on the charts, does she have genuine disdain for he record labe Are there really moments where Aitchison feels as isolated as this Charli? Were there moments here where there was no one to trust? (It should be noted that this Charli doesn’t have a longtime partner or future husband to turn to as she does in this timeline).

It goes without saying that Zamiri has taken a very big swing with “The Moment.” So, frankly, has Aitchison. The legacy of BRAT and Charli’s contributions to this particular era of pop culture are on the line (and so is her relationship with her fanbase). And while it’s not a complete home run – it is a wee bit too long and certainly not as funny overall as it should be – in the end, it delivers. Because, love it or hate it, this film will linger with you. You certainly won’t forget Aitchison’s stirring performance. And for someone who has become wonderfully astute in the history of cinema, Aitchison couldn’t ask for anything more”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hailey Benton Gates

I actually want to bring in a December interview from A Rabbit’s Foot. Charli xcx discussed her film ambitions, being inspired by cinema, and she also talked about The Moment. Her goal seems to show less Charli xcx in her performances. Maybe feeling too exposed or like there is too narrow a spotlight on who she is, cinema allows her to be different people and explore completely different sides. I think it is an interesting interview that ties into The Moment and where Charli xcx might head. Such a compelling and fascinating talent. A definitely natural and powerful screen presence:

“Prior to our interview, Charli had spent all day being photographed by director (and her friend) Hailey Benton Gates, and was courteous with her time, despite how demanding we were with it. But there’s a meta quality tied to this shoot, she explains, that makes it more fun. “I wanted Hailey to photograph me because she plays my creative director in The Moment and here she is now directing me in real life,” Charli grins. “Everything I do is meta.”

Perhaps that’s why the transition to acting has seemed so effortless. She already lives in cinema’s spiritual heartland Los Angeles, a city that she loves but is steadily falling out of love with (“the scene was better in 2015”). She’s spending a lot more time in New York, where many of the BRAT Pack reside. London remains special to her too, she smiles.

Charli recently published an essay on her Substack, explaining, “… As some of you may know I’m currently feeling more inspired by film than I am by music. Film is where my creative brain seems to be gravitating.” It follows acclaimed acting performances in 100 Nights of Hero (2025), Pete Ohs’s Erupcja (2025), and the announcement of a Tokyo-set series by the legendary provocateur Takashi Miike. That came about after she watched Miike’s Imprint (2006) and decided to call the Japanese filmmaker on a whim. “I never thought he’d respond but he did, we had a Zoom and are now on this project,” she says. “I just want to make the movies I love watching.”

The same day as the shoot, her video for the sweepingly romantic, kind-of-heroic new song ‘Chains of Love’, for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation, was released. It’s a prolific start.

But most personal is The Moment—a satire mockumentary directed by the talented Aidan Zamiri. It is a story borne from Charli’s experiences following the surreal phenomenon of BRAT and what followed, with characters inspired by the very real people in Charli’s environment at that time (there are cameos by Sennott, among others). “It’s a 2024 period piece,” she explains. It’s also, perhaps, the ultimate meta role. “The Moment is on the nose, but the last thing I want is to play a version of myself,” she insists, referring to the Charli xcx “It girl” persona—an incarnation of post-internet sass, sunglasses, and cigarettes (the Charli in front of me is unlike that; rather, more kind and grounded). Other directors—big directors—have tried to typecast her but Charli is a natural shapeshifter. “My biggest goal is to disappear, for people to not see Charli xcx in my performances. Like Tom Waits in Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother (2025).” She pauses at my reaction. “You don’t feel the same about Tom Waits?”

“I did,” I replied. But looking back, I’m not sure I was being entirely honest. Time will tell if Charli will, indeed, blend in how she wants to; nor is she being naive about the switch—she’s already been at the apex of one industry, and is doing her best to navigate a film career without making some of the mistakes a younger actor would. “I’ve paid the price for some decisions in music and I don’t want to do that with film—because I love film much more than music,” she says. It’s a relief, a chance to escape. Cinema offers new worlds and possibilities, and acting allows Charli’s inner chameleon to be free to create unbound. There is also the potential for humiliation, she explains—a thrill she hasn’t felt for a while now. “I’ve been on the same hamster wheel since I was 15. I don’t feel the danger with music anymore,” she continues. “I’m in control of every aspect of my music—the sound, my image, the performing. But with cinema, I have to surrender myself to someone else’s vision.”

Since seeing her on stage in that musty room in 2011, I’ve watched the evolution of Charli xcx: the femme fatale persona—not the mind behind the shades, the cigarette smoke, and the dynamic songwriting. But she has been telling us who she really is all along. When I compliment her recent essay and the insight it gave me into her practice, she half-frowns as though suggesting that I have underestimated, or at least misunderstood, her. Filmmaker Ariel Schulman, a friend of hers, told me after: “Charli’s one of the most published poets in the world right now if you think about how many people are listening to her lyrics. She knows how to say what she wants like no one else.”

Charli concurs. “I’ve always been open in interviews about my art. People just haven’t listened… or I’ve been taken out of context. Writing publicly lets me create the context.” The Moment serves the same purpose. It’s Charli speaking directly to the world about the surreal aftermath of BRAT. She thought the album would be niche—something for her fans. Instead, it became a global phenomenon, reshaped and meme-ified far beyond her control. “I didn’t know if I’d make music again. Everything I did would be compared to BRAT.” The fallout sent her into a creative fog. And for Charli, creativity is not optional; it is existential. “Look, you might think I’m being dramatic, but I talk to my husband about this all the time. I want to feel life on overload, at full speed. If I couldn’t create, I would die. Someone might say, ‘She’s over the top,’ but the past five years I’ve been frustrated with my music rollout. I hate going on tour—it’s monotonous. I like to be in the throes of creation constantly. This is honestly what keeps me alive”.

Available in the U.S. from 30th January and 20th February in the U.K and Ireland, you can stream it here. In terms of artists doing anything similar, I cannot see anything around. St. Vincent’s The Nowhere Inn of 2021 has a similar feel, but you don’t really get artists doing mockumentaries. There are so many great acts I would love to follow Charli xcx. In a wider sense, this is an artist who is exploring cinema. Her Wuthering Heights soundtrack is another example. I feel we will see a lot more Charli xcx on the screen. Maybe composing scores for films too. Whilst Charli xcx the artists will always record music, at the moment, she seems to want to see less of herself out there. In the sense of being this artist that we all know and love. Go beyond that and perhaps escape more into characters or versions of herself. The Moment will be so interesting to see, even if you do not know her music that well. The latest chapter from…

THIS modern-day music icon.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Poppy

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

Poppy

__________

I have talked about…

PHOTO CREDIT: T-bone Fletcher

Poppy before, though never in this feature. I know she is not a fan of journalists that note she likes heavy music and then get her to name bands. Instead of being this basic, I am going to select some interviews from last/’this year from Poppy. She released her new album, Empty Hands, on 23rd January. Boston-born Moriah Rose Pereira followed up her acclaimed sixth studio album, Negative Spaces, with another tremendous album. I am ending with a review of Empty Hands. In May last year, CLASH spoke with Poppy. Noting how she survives on defiance, it is a really fascinating chat:

“Poppy is a child of the digital age. After being bullied into homeschooling due to her shy demeanour in public school, Poppy was weaned by the 2000s web. Though her love of the internet has declined in recent years (“it’s too cluttered”), it’s where she’d find her voice. From ASMR-esque videos of her silently eating cotton candy, to adverts for gravity-defying shoes, the early days of Poppy were ludicrously absurd. The Lynchian genesis of the project could have been deemed an act of AI in the modern age, with instalments taking the form of ten minute montages of the singer asserting “I’m Poppy” on a loop. “The internet was the Wild West,” Poppy says, an air of whimsy in her voice. “There were no rules.”

The videos and initial singles came as a perplexing search for meaning. Poppy’s sonic debut, ‘Everybody Wants To Be Poppy’, would blend squeaky-clean pop hooks into social commentary on mass-produced popstars. Yet there would also be cuts like the reggae fusion of ‘Lowlife’ and EDM-inflected ‘Interweb’ down the line. After luring in the masses as a family-friendly pop-bot, Poppy would eventually tear the rug out from under her fans. “I’ve always known where I’ve wanted to go,” she explains. 2018’s ‘Am I A Girl?’ threw in a burst of raw heavy metal right at the very last second, closing track ‘X’ an utter shock to the system. Poppy’s response to the blood-thirsty riffs? A giddy, butter-wouldn’t-melt exclamation of “ooo – heavy!”

Ever since slamming the brakes on her term as a plastic-fantastic popstar, Poppy has retained her discordant title and femininity as a badge of defiance. Poppy floats onstage in flouncy dresses like a fairytale, before channelling gutturals straight from the depths of hell. Her softer side has never hindered her success. In fact, Poppy has become the metal world’s favourite collaborator, previously hopping on tracks with Bad Omens, HEALTH and Fever 333.

2024’s ‘Negative Spaces’ is the culmination of this juxtaposition. It’s candy floss dissolved in engine oil, offering tar-smeared anthems with sugary-sweet centers: ‘vital’ feels like pop-rock cuts from the Avril Lavigne playbook, and ‘crystallized’ glistens with an ‘80s synthwave sheen, positively melting in your mouth. But that’s all before ‘the centre’s falling out’ absolutely rips the record to shreds, delving into cold, hard metallic hardcore in the same vein of Converge – a frazzled wall of guttural wails, scraping riffs and booming drums.

It’s a bittersweet meeting point of Poppy’s conflicting sides; gentle introversion melding with abrasive fury. “I never want to be predictable,” Poppy asserts. It’s why she’s always mixing things up, pushing out more unique content, like her Improbably Poppy TV series and comic books alongside her music. “If something I’m creating becomes unexciting, I’m no longer fond of it. When it comes to a record, every one should feel brand new.” On ‘Negative Spaces’, Poppy proudly claims she feels “uncharted” yet again. Aided by ex-Bring Me The Horizon producer Jordan Fish, Poppy was able to rediscover herself on track. “It honestly feels like my true debut,” she explains. “The saccharine is there, the aggression is there, and I’m sitting somewhere in between it all. It’s incredible to feel like your sixth record is just as exciting and expressive as your first release.”

PHOTO CREDIT: T-bone Fletcher

Poppy notes that ‘Negative Spaces’ is an effort to understand her “relationship with darkness” and comprehend the “unexplainable things” in life. “Of course, things don’t always make sense,” she’s quick to note. “We’re spinning in space on a rock, and that doesn’t really make any sense. You have to strike a balance, and allow yourself to have a fantastical, surface-level relationship with certain things. Sometimes the depths might be too heavy to handle.” The record is also a “very confrontational” dose of self-reflection. It’s a girl coming to terms with the sum of all her parts, even the more challenging fragments. “I accept myself for who I am now, but it’s interesting how you reflect on the past as you mature,” she muses. “You re-examine things you didn’t like when you were younger, consider the negative environments you’ve been in, and realise that they’re the things that make you unique today.”

As Poppy has evolved, she’s started to feel less alien than she felt as a young girl. “It was quite lonely when I was small,” she reflects. “I used to dream of having the friends I have now. So, I’ve gotten softer and more compassionate towards humans in recent years. But I’m still standing my ground, defending what matters to me.” While Poppy has finally “found her voice”, happily speaking out about shitty record labels and predatory industry men, she’s aware the space she exists within doesn’t take kindly to outspoken women. “I’ve become a lot more aware of my femininity, being in this industry,” she admits. “It can be a tricky balancing act because you’re expected to be soft but you need to be aggressive. Sometimes I get asked about being a ‘female in music’, and I always hope it’s a genuine desire to learn; to allow me to voice the disgust that I may possess, rather than a way of tricking me into complaining about being a woman in this industry.”

“I chose this path for a reason,” she affirms. “I want to write authentically about my experience, through my own eyes. I just make sure my aggression is targeted. Anger should never be misdirected or it loses its power. As a female, there are lots of things that I disagree with along the way.” It’s a statement that can be linked back to 2020’s ‘I Disagree’; a testament to how Poppy has grown into her voice, no longer afraid to speak up for herself. “There’s a power in saying it,” she declares. “Sometimes, when I get into debates with people, I’ll just say: I disagree. Not even politely or respectfully. That’s it. And I love meeting other women in the industry that disagree with what they’re witnessing as well”.

Empty Hands is one of the best albums of this year so far. The stunning Poppy is an artist I am surprised has not been asked to headline a major festival like Glastonbury. Maybe in 2027? There are a couple of interviews from this year that I want to get to. When speaking with Kerrang! earlier this year, Poppy said how she was like an explorer who has not yet found her place. Navigating all these territories, having played over a hundred shows last year, this artist knows all too well that there is a whole world out there. As Kerrang! say in their headline, Poppy is “digging into fresh territories with her music, she is adventurous, curious and thrillingly unpredictable. Is imminent new album Empty Hands any different?”. Another compelling interview with a remarkable artist who will be in the industry for decades more:

“Perhaps the jewel in the crown of Poppy’s year, however, was forming a power trio of sorts with Evanescence’s Amy Lee and Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante for a scene-shaking collaboration in the form of End Of You. It was Poppy who instigated the idea, writing with Amy at her house before Courtney added her parts remotely.

“I think it’s exciting when there are certain obstacles with it, but then it’s also exciting when you check your inbox for an updated version of what the other artist had done, and you’re like, ‘Wow!’” she says.

While she’s never been one to concern herself with external appraisal, she did get a slant of a sense that what they did was going to be received feverishly.

“I know three women in heavy music coming together to be on a song like this hadn’t been done before in this capacity.”

It would be easy to join the dots between these collabs, each connected to a tour entirely made up of female and non-binary artists, and see Poppy as someone helping to tip the scale in metal towards a more egalitarian future. The notion of women selling out arenas and headlining festivals becoming more of a normality than a novelty is closer to being a reality than ever. Yet, for Poppy, it’s always been more important for her to be seen as she is, on her own terms rather than on gendered ones.

“I just focus on what I have to say and what I’m creating,” she reasons. “And if that’s inspiring to others to want to join, then that is inspiring to me back, so it’s a little bit of a circle and a share. Some people will focus on the gender element of it because it’s easy and topical, but there’s more to offer than just that perspective, of course, at least for me. It’s nice to see more females in and around the space, but I think it’s a little bit low hanging to only focus on that as a fact. I hope that people look beyond just the gender to actually see what I’m saying.”

Poppy’s methods of ideating are tactile and analogue. She favours journalling, drawing and scrapbooking, pooling inspiration from photos and colours as she constructs her stories.

“Certain songs I will see as a collective of different colours, but not in a way that some people have synaesthesia,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s something more to it, just how I feel the song reflects a colour palette to me or the album.”

Without rhyme or reason, Empty Hands felt like a pastel blue album – it’s why it’s so prominent on the cover. It certainly suits the record’s tender moments, such as the courageous, loving sentiment of Guardian, a song whose melody couldn’t leave Poppy alone after she wrote it, to the point where she’d sing it in funny accents around the house. It seems a paradoxically soft shade for an album that often spikes to eye-widening levels of aggression. There’s the slamming Dying To Forget, on which she corrosively screams: ‘Rot in your piss in your shallow grave / I’ll watch your kingdom fall / I’ll cut the brakes so your car can’t stop,’ while the title-track’s lacerating heaviness shares some DNA with the sound of Knocked Loose.

PHOTO CREDIT: Megan Winstone

Even when she applies a more melodic touch, her tone is at times more acerbic than she’s ever been. ‘You’re celibate but no-one wants to fuck,’ she sneers on the energetic blast of Eat The Hate, while on the eerily theatrical opener Public Domain, she slips into a mocking, robotic register to eviscerate materialistic people: ‘Can you bottle it? Will you sell it for food? Would you sleep with it? Tell me who’s using who.’ There’s nothing placid about the pastel blue on the cover – instead, it’s more like the colour of ice.

Poppy is visceral and cynical when it comes to the record’s primary theme of greed. “The sentiment of Empty Hands has a couple of layers to it, depending on how you take it in, or what it means to you,” she explains. “A few of them are obvious and a few of them are a little bit more coy. The message that is pertinent to me in relation to this is when there are a lot of people that are trying to grab and take, what is all of it for? Because when we leave, none of it is ours anyway – whether it’s money or recognition or anything superficial. Why are you being so greedy when it’s not coming with you into the afterlife?”

After all, when you remember greed is futile, the world becomes more absurd. The lust for power, status, achievements and material gains becomes unjustifiable, whether it’s a follower count ticking up or world leaders threatening wars over oil reserves. And, of course, social safety and agency can be bought – but not happiness.

“Everything means nothing and nothing means everything,” Poppy muses. “You can have everything in the world and still be unhappy, or you can have nothing and be the most fulfilled”.

Empty Hands is produced by Jordan Fish. A collaborator she is close with, you can feel that sense of trust throughout the album. Before getting to a positive review for Empty Hands, I want to bring in part of an interview from NME that was published this month. She discussed the analogue approach that helps navigate touring life, in addition to this restlessness. This sense of discontent that she has. One that “drives the exploration”. Again, this artist who is always searching and navigating new musical terrain. Trying to find that golden spot, perhaps:

“Habitually cryptic and often coy around her lyrics, it was not too long ago that Poppy used to conduct interviews in character. Over the course of today’s conversation, she becomes increasingly candid and descriptive, as we get closer to figuring out what makes the human behind the rockstar tick. We probe her on one particular line, “I am constantly nowhere / On the roam”, which creates an intriguing duality alongside Poppy’s apparent ethos of everything, everywhere, all at once.

“When my friends would call to check in on me on tour, they would say, ‘Where are you?’ – I’m nowhere today,” she begins. “With the way that the internet is, information is out there – it’s everywhere – but it’s also nowhere, and you can detach from it by closing the computer. I remember at one point, making videos, I would say, ‘If it’s on the internet, it’s real,’ and it was a bit of a joke, because the internet used to be fake, and then it became real. Being able to detach from it and exist in your own head is really important.”

Poppy finds the in-between aspects of non-stop touring life difficult, a challenge she insists has prevailed “since the beginning of performing arts”. “I have to be offline when I’m on tour,” she explains. “It’s helpful for me to read books, write in journals, make collages and find expressive avenues that way. It feels a little bit dysregulating to be far away and looking at things through a screen where there’s a lot of fear, uncertainty or aggression online. I can’t look at that stuff. I’m too sensitive for that, so I have to go a bit more analogue on tour.”

Back home, you’ll find Poppy hibernating indoors for weeks, making up for lost time with her cat, who will accompany her on the road when she next tours North America. But this pace, this purple patch, is entirely on her terms. “I always have something to say,” she grins. “I’m always working… and when I don’t enjoy it anymore, I stop.”

This year marks one decade of Poppy, the musician. Her latest headline shows have heavily leant on material from ‘Negative Spaces’, 2019’s industrial effort ‘I Disagree’ and recent collaborative singles – effectively abandoning her other four albums. “I don’t really see those albums as much more than soundtracks to what I was doing at that time, and they’re not inspiring enough to me to bring into my present-day live show,” she elaborates.

That sky-high threshold remains Poppy’s driving principle. Teasing other projects “that will require my attention” imminently, she continues to quench any boredom with creativity, maximising that feeling of excitement that she craves. A workaholic, but first and foremost, a roamer – in the literal sense of globetrotting and the figurative sense of her imagination.

“The discontent drives the exploration, and I feel like that’s all I have, to continue to pose the question and ask myself what I want to do next. It’s not an open narrative with the outside; it’s about what I want to see myself do. If that is something that inspires or excites other people, then that’s exciting to me, and it works in a circular way, but quieting the noise to ask yourself those questions is really important”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Paris Mumpower

I will wrap up in a minute. However, I think I will sneak in another interview before a review. For Revolver, Poppy talked about her wildest album yet. An artist excited about what is to come for sure. She is proud of what she has created and produced in the past, yet the future is very much on her mind. If you have not heard Empty Hands then I would recommend that you do so:

“Was there a certain point where you actualized that power of saying no, or was it a more gradual shift?

I think it was gradual, and then all at once. There were a couple shifts that come to mind: One of them was around 2020, and then maybe another one was around 2022. Then I feel it again — being able to do this and release my seventh album. I think it’s my fourth or fifth record deal. I’m still excited about making music and doing this. Early on, I didn’t have a lot of tools to know how to trust certain people, how to not trust certain people. I was just thinking the best of everyone, then got served a reality that was pretty brutal, and then adjusted accordingly. I’m proud of what I’ve done in the past, but I’m excited about what’s happening now.

Were you afraid of not being liked?

I don’t think it was that, because I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong. I accepted that really early. I wanted to make friends. I had not very great friends for a while and not a very great team for a while. Most people have that because it’s part of growing up and learning about yourself.

Do you remember the first time some faceless commenter said something super toxic towards you online?

I don’t re­member the first time. But I know there’s some pretty horrific things out there, and people have horrific things to say. But I’m smiling. I’m smiling big. I’m dancing hard. I’m playing loud music. So you can keep saying it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Paris Mumpower

You came up in what i think was kind of the golden era of YouTube. What do you think of that world now

It’s not fun anymore. I thought YouTube at the time — before people knew how to use it — was so fun and uncharted. I feel very removed from the internet lately, actually. Every single time I go on tour, I try to not do the internet. I go analog and write and read books and draw… What I can hold. No screens — other than Animal Crossing. I will do that before bed. I will play Animal Crossing for at least an hour to get my Nook Miles up.

Back to the record — I like the way you say “Motherfuck­er” in “Dying to Forget.” You sound super pissed off but it’s also extremely over-the-top. Are those moments fun to do in the studio?

Absolutely. Yeah. Especially in the room. I think sometimes when Stevis [House of Protection singer-guitarist Stephen “Stevis” Harrison] and I are working on music together, I’ll read them something I wrote, and if I’m looking for the smile or the laugh, that makes me excited.

That one has the breakdown… Jordan bounced me the first demo, and it didn’t have the instrumental breakdown. I said, “Oh, we should just keep it vocal-only when I’m saying, ‘I want both eyes and your lying tongue.’” And he’s like, “No, we can’t do that.” I said, “It’s so hard, we should.” We went back and forth about it.

I don’t get the sense that you ever Googled how to scream properly. Your style always sounds really raw, emotional and real. And it always fits the song.

Yeah, I don’t watch YouTube tutorials for screams. I go based off emotion. I think it’s really corny when people have debates about technique. That’s the least hardcore-metal-punk-rock thing to do: worry about your technique. What happened to feeling anything and responding to it? I think it’s so corny. I hope you print this in bold letters: I think it’s so corny when people think about technique at the microphone, and they’re nerds.

“Ribs” feels particularly emotional. I’ve noticed that the way you write about feelings is often in relation to the body.

I’ve had this image in my mind for a while about keeping something pro­tected, and what’s the closest place to do so, and where it would land. And then what it’s like when you’re parting with someone, or there’s the end or dissolve of something. You still hold onto the experience — or the faintness of the memory of the experience — emotionally.

Or maybe someday if the weather is the right way, and the sun is shining, and it catches you off guard, and it kind of throws you back, and there’s that moment of this melancholy feeling that you can’t entirely place, but it’s been so many years, and it’s just a fragment now. It’s still in you somewhere. So, I was thinking about that”.

There are not a great deal of reviews for Empty Hands. That is a shame, as it is one of the finest albums from a modern-day queen. Someone who should be talked about a lot more. Having interview Poppy for Kerrang!, Emma Wilkes provided her take on the brilliant Empty Hands. It is a phenomenal album that I can imagine will sound epic on the road. You can see Poppy’s tour dates here. Poppy is in the U.K. next week. As part of her Constantly Nowhere Tour, she will get a lot of love here:

“On her last album, 2024's Negative Spaces, Poppy set a new bar for herself, but she’s evidently undaunted by the thought of clearing it. Rarely concerned with numbers and milestones, she’s chasing what excites her, which right now is the raw, unfettered energy that she finds when she unleashes her emotions live. It certainly helps that she’s got a huge well of rage stored, specifically for those in life who take and hoard and pile their trophies up with little regard for its impact, or how long it might last.

Stylistically, Empty Hands isn’t wildly removed from Negative Spaces, especially as alternative mega-producer Jordan Fish is at the helm once again. It both builds on its strengths and irons out its weaknesses, particularly where Jordan’s production style is concerned. Instead of crowding out Poppy’s own style with his, their palettes coalesce better, such as on the volcanic yet melodic Bruised Sky and the skyscraping sweetness of Guardian.

It’s varied but cohesive, never sagging even with a 13-song tracklist, with glints of some of Poppy’s most exciting ideas yet. Chief among them is opener Public Domain, a juddering industrial number flowing from mocking, robotic vocals – ‘Fuck your ignorant opinions / Maybe you ain't got a reason to live,’ she sneers – into something almost theatrical, representing Poppy at her most individual.

Some of the most attention-grabbing moments here will inevitably be the heavier songs – and they are incandescent on a level you've not quite heard from Poppy before. Dying To Forget’s shrapnel-like riffs are as merciless as its lyrics – ‘I resent the fact you’re living / Now the hate will keep me warm’ – while the scathing title-track is a seething finale bristling with visceral hatred, as well as a brilliant climax offering some truly eye-watering screams. Elsewhere, she twists that hatred into some acerbic sass across Eat The Hate’s jiving rhythms – ‘Eat the hate ’cause I'm the judge / God will throw an uppercut / You're celibate ’cause no-one wants to fuck.’

This is what it sounds like when Poppy is properly in her element. When she’s got something that lights her on fire, she’s unstoppable, and this is how she’s been able to write possibly her best songs yet.

Verdict: 4/5”.

I am going to end here. A fabulous, raw and memorable album from Poppy, everyone needs to follow her. Always fascinating reading interviews with her. An artist that I would love to interview one day, I feel this year is going to be one of the biggest years for Poppy. When it comes to the Boston-born artist, she is truly…

A modern great.

_________

Follow Poppy

Official:

https://impoppy.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/impoppy/

TikTok:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Poppy/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5mlbvTfWUOfDrUIK6dkNzv?si=XT15PS-3SmWg9XXiMb7i2g

YouTube:

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

FEATURE: You’re Taking the Fun Out of Everything… Blur’s There’s No Other Way at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

You’re Taking the Fun Out of Everything…

Blur’s There’s No Other Way at Thirty-Five

__________

EVEN if the track…

IN THIS PHOTO: Blur in May 1991: Alex James, Dave Rowntree, Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn/PHOTO CREDIT: DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

only has a few different words that are repeated throughout, there is something effective and timeless about Blur’s There’s No Other Way. Having released She’s So High in October 1990, There’s No Other Way was released on 15th April, 1991. I wanted to mark thirty-five years of this phenomenal single. Many don’t place it high in terms of the best Blur songs, though I feel that it is one of their best. The Leisure album does not get much admiration. That arrived on 26th August, 1991. The debut from Blur, it contains many incredible songs. I feel There’s No Other Way is the highlight. I am going to go into a bit more depth about this song. The first feature I want to come to is from Popmatters that was published in 2010. I was seven when this Blur track came out so I don’t really remember it first time around. When I became aware of Blur’s music around 1994/1995, I was listening to There’s No Other Way then. It is this fascinating song that was really unlike what was in the mainstream in 1991:

“Throughout the course of its storied career, Blur more often than not seemed to be playing a role. While the Britpop group’s incarnations as faux-Cockney punters (circa Parklife) and as the British Pavement (Blur) are most often hailed as the band’s high water marks, Blur’s early dabbling in the top trends of the British indie scene at the start of the 1990s—Madchester and shoegaze—on its 1991 debut Leisure is often referred to in less affectionate terms, if at all. In spite of the lack of love for that period, consensus is clear that the record yielded at least one top tune, “There’s No Other Way”, a groovy genre workout that outdid some of the better attempts at crafting danceable Madchester singles by actual Mancunian bands.

Surprisingly for a tune that unashamedly leapt onto the baggy bandwagon, the star of Blur’s second single (and first pop hit) is not any component of the rhythm section, but Graham Coxon and his deliriously sinewy guitar lines. If you ever wondered why some diehard metal musicians and even arch Blur-hater Noel Gallagher will wax enthusiastically about Coxon’s talents, here’s one of the best examples of why. Spooling out indelible riffs like they’re going out of style, Coxon’s playing is quite lyrical, sliding up and down the neck of the instrument with hammer-ons and pull-offs galore adding flair. Some of my favorite moments include Coxon pulling back tastefully after Damon Albarn sings “All that you can do is watch them play” in each chorus, his backward-sounding guitar solo, and the flurry of high-pitched licks that end the track with an ecstatic rush.

Not that the rest of the band are slouches. Listening to how well bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree groove together here, their efforts on Blur’s 1994 dancefloor-conquering megahit “Girls & Boys” sounds relatively staid. True, Damon Albarn’s lyrics from this period were maddeningly lacking in substance (this being a time before the future Gorillaz mastermind started immersing his work in the quirks and quandaries of the quintessentially English lifestyle), but this was also before he began acting (and singing) like his own exaggerated idea of a working-class football hooligan, which makes him far more bearable here than he is on much of the group’s mid-period material. Albarn is definitely cocky on “There’s No Other Way”, yet he also keeps a distance with his wispy phrasing, teasing the listener into submitting to the tune’s allure with his come-hither delivery.

Comparing this song to, say, the Charlatans’ 1990 hit “The Only One I Know” (which I love, by the way) or pretty much anything by Inspiral Carpets, and “There’s No Other Way” totally outshines those exercises in wedding rock stylings to acid house dance beats. In fact, it synthesizes the (to diehards on both sides of the fence) diametrically-opposed genre elements in a way that few others have matched. And to think, there are still people out there who maintain you can’t dance to guitar music”.

In years since its release, Damon Albarn has branded Leisure as awful. I think he puts distance from it as it was Blur starting out Maybe too much pressure from the label, Food, to release a single. There’s No Other Way the compromise. However, there is something enduring about Leisure. This post argues that there are some diamonds to be found on an album that deserves some new inspection and discussion:

“You’ve got the opener, ‘She’s So High’, the group’s very first single. ‘Sing’ is the somewhat experimental jam and one that people may know from Trainspotting. But the standout, least to me, is one of the album’s other singles, today’s subject, ‘There’s No Other Way’, which I think the band are proud ’cause they usually play it live at every opportunity.

My first experience with the song? Well, it’s a bit like a few others. One of those times when I saw the music video (above) for it on TV, but it was ending, so I wasn’t really aware of what was going on. If you want to what happens in it, Blur sit in with a family at the dinner table and have a three-course meal. Damon Albarn plays, I think, a moody teenager role, making death stares into the camera lens while sporting a ridiculous bowl haircut. Things get freaky when the massive trifle is brought out for dessert. And then the video ends. Probably afraid that the video was just a bit too British-looking, someone convinced the band to do another music video for the song specifically for American audiences. Which one’s better, I’ll let you decide. The original UK video would show up here and there every now and again, and the track’s chorus is repetitive enough that it’ll get stuck in your brain anyway. I got the band’s Best Of compilation, the song’s the third on there, and I’ve been able to listen to it whenever I wanted ever since.

I think I read that the track was written to appease either their record label owner David Balfe who was demanding they write a single to be included on the album. So, in response, the band wrote this upbeat, Madchester-inspired track with a chorus that’s repeated to death. The first line, “You’re taking the fun out of everything”, sums up Albarn’s feelings about this constant pressure forced upon him. He just wants to breathe without this presence breathing down his neck. It wouldn’t be the last time they’d write a tune made to wind Balfe up too. I think Graham Coxon is the real MVP of the entire thing. His riff starts it off, he brings in another riff during the verses, then there’s that little lick that plays after the choruses – all of which I find myself singing along to, sometimes more than Albarn’s vocal. They all go hand in hand. Plus, there’s the backwards guitar solo, which must have taken some time to figure out when writing it the right way round. And away from his guitar skills are his higher harmonizing backing vocals, “There’s no other way, ahhhh ahhhh ahhh” and others. You’ll know when it’s him singing. A very fun song, overall. It’s always a good time”.

Blur’s lyrics definitely became more sophisticated and observational. Maybe Damon Albarn feels There’s No Other Way is the band at a more simple and shallow level. They would shift their sound and improve, though it is unfair to dismiss classics like There’s No Other Way. I am going to finish with this article. The extract is from lengthy interviews conducted in May 1995 with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, Dave Rowntree, Stephen Street, Dave Balfe and Andy Ross:

“Blur’s intended second single, ‘Bad Day’, had been shelved after an unhappy session which saw Graham play bass in place of Alex, at the behest of the producer Steve Power. Stoned, ‘baggy’ beats were in the ascendant, and the period’s other main genre, ‘shoegazing’ (a term coined by Andy Ross), while commercially redundant compared to Madchester, was a cause celebre in the London-based music mafia, and at ‘indie’ establishments such as the Thursday-nights club Syndrome in Oxford Street.

To compete, Blur were pushed into an area midway between Madchester and shoegazing – where they could hear both trenches but see nothing – and encouraged to go easy on their art-school leanings, going instead for the floating voter with their upbeat ‘indie dance’ songs. ‘There’s No Other Way’ was a single that would unite both dance and indie factions. Yet Blur were, in truth, aligned to neither.

The band’s first recording session with ex-Smiths producer Stephen Street (still Blur’s producer of choice) was at Maison Rouge Studios in Fulham in the first week of January 1991. The session also yielded ‘Come Together’, which they held over for the first album. ‘There’s No Other Way’ had been written quickly by Damon and demoed by the band as a fairly throwaway, non-groovy prototype – until Street bolstered Dave Rowntree with a ‘Funky Drummer’-esqye loop.

Despite being a straightforward dance-pop number with meaningless lyrics, ‘There’s No Other Way’ is enjoyably dumb. Vocally, it recalls Syd Barrett when he was still enjoying himself, circa ‘See Emily Play’, 1967. Like Barrett on that song, Damon and Graham’s harmonized voice almost smile on the choruses, as if in a secret druggy joke. (The fascination of young bands with the 49-year-old, reclusive Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett is easily explained. Barrett – Pink Floyd’s founder, singer-songwriter and guitarist – was an attractive genius who lost his mind in 1967, aged 21. He is thus a sexy, mildly dangerous role model for easy-going, artistic, well-educated, white, English males. Also, trippy. Barrett-like music is fun to write and play.)

As well as the arresting, funky intro, Graham contributes another backwards guitar solo, for added trippiness, and Damon adds a two-note organ part. Alex, contemptuous of the bassist’s role of adhering to the root of hte relevant chord, soars out in counterpoint and has enourmous fun.

‘There’s No Other Way’ reached number 8, but its life is now over. It will never be played live again by Blur. Damon’s prosaic writing songwriting vocabulary, a key offender here, would be cruelly exposed later that yeat on the inner sleeve of ‘Leisure’. In 12 songs, the word “you” appeared 82 times; he used “day”/”say”/”play” rhymes on a shameless 35 occasions. His hazy, lazy, nihilistic thoughts were delivered in a Syd-like twang or a souped-down, southernised Ian Brown whisper. As for their performances on ‘There’s No Other Way’, while by no means disgracing themselves, Blur were about to marginalise themselves perilously on the ‘baggy’/FX-pedals cusp. With their next single ‘Bang’, they would come to be perceived as shallow and limited. In reality they were anything but”.

It is hard to believe There’s No Other Way is thirty-five on 15th April! Such a magnificent song and one of the standout tracks from a year that saw Nevermind by Nirvana released, I do have a lot of affection for Blur on their baggy, Manchester-inspired debut album. Things changed for 1993’s Modern Life Is Rubbish. We should not overlook Leisure and its importance. There’s No Other Way is this stunning song that I have heard hundreds of times and never tire of! The phenomenal second single from one of the…

GREATEST bands ever.

FEATURE: The Modern Queens of Pop: Reacting to the BRIT Awards Nominees

FEATURE:

 

 

The Modern Queens of Pop

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Dean received five BRIT nominations, including Pop Act, and Album of the Year for The Art of Loving

Reacting to the BRIT Awards Nominees

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WHETHER you see it…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lily Allen is nominated for several BRIT Awards, including Album of the Year for West End Girl/PHOTO CREDIT: Nieves González

as one of the more important and major music award ceremonies of the year or not, you cannot deny the importance of the BRIT Awards in terms of celebrating the best of British music. There are always takeaways and positives. One of the most interesting thing is that Jarvis Cocker attends an award ceremony that, thirty years ago, stirred controversy when he invaded the stage during Michael Jackson's performance and got a lot of heat from the press. Fortunately or not, there will be nothing as interesting or controversial this year. It will be a more muted affair, though it must be strange marking the thirtyish anniversary of a strange moment for the Pulp lead. In terms of the categories, there is gender balance in most of them. Group of the Year sees long-serving legends like Wolf Alice and Pulp set against newer acts like Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party. There are snubs here and there – which is what happens when you have to narrow things down -, but there is also nothing particularly controversial. However, as The Guardian note in this feature, there is still an issue. If the Group and Artist categories have addressed huge gender and there is a step forward, this observation caught my eye: “Of the 116 albums eligible for British album of the year – those that reached the UK Top 30 – only 41 were by female acts or mixed-gender groups, and of those 41, only 25 were solely female”:

“Olivia Dean and Lola Young have cemented their breakthroughs to the front rank of British pop by topping the nominations for the 2026 Brit awards.

The singer-songwriters earned five nominations each. Dean is nominated for artist and album of the year, pop act, and has two chances at winning song of the year for Man I Need and Rein Me In, the latter thanks to a guest spot with Sam Fender.

The 26-year-old Dean already had a good measure of success from her 2023 debut album Messy, but the follow-up The Art of Loving – featuring songs about the confounding and joyous business of being in love, in a sophisticated range of styles from bossa nova to neo-soul – has been a global sensation, topping the UK charts and currently sitting at No 3 in the US. Lead single Man I Need has barely been out of the UK Top 10 since its release in August and reached No 1.

Dean is the first announced performer at the awards ceremony, held for the first time in Manchester, at the city’s Co-op Live arena on Saturday 28 February and broadcast on ITV, with Jack Whitehall hosting.

Young, 25, is up for artist of the year, breakthrough artist (renamed from best new artist) and appears in two of the genre categories, for alternative/rock and pop, reflecting her deft grasp of different styles on 2025 album I’m Only F**king Myself: a charismatic and magnificently sweary portrait of addiction, romantic frustration and more. She is also nominated for song of the year for Messy, which was released back in May 2024 but continued its commercial success right through the awards’ eligibility period: it spent four weeks at No 1 and 60 weeks on the chart in total. Both Young and Dean are up for best new artist at next month’s Grammy awards.

As well as the nod for Rein Me In with Dean, Sam Fender is nominated three more times, including for artist and album of the year, thanks to his social-realist portraiture on UK No 1 album People Watching which won the 2025 Mercury prize.

Lily Allen caps one of the most remarkable re-entries into British pop with three nominations, including artist and album of the year. After four albums which had earned nine Brit nominations between them (including a 2010 win in the now-defunct British female solo artist category), she stepped away to focus on acting and podcasting, but returned in 2025 with West End Girl: a portrait of a failing open marriage, including huge resonances with her own personal life. The ultra-candid lyrics – featuring sex toys, hook-up apps and heartbreakingly toxic relationship dynamics – ensured it became massively discussed, and a commercial hit.

Also with three nominations each are two of the brightest talents in British rap. Dave is up for artist and album of the year, after releasing the typically self-searching The Boy Who Played the Harp in October, which went to No 1, as did its single Raindance. One of Dave’s regular collaborators rises out of the underground to join him: Jim Legxacy, a rapper, singer, songwriter and producer who co-produced Dave and Central Cee’s huge Brit-nominated hit Sprinter in 2023, and returned to work with him on The Boy Who Played the Harp. He is nominated for his own work, the mixtape Black British Music (2025), earning nods in th rap, R&B and breakthrough artist categories.

Rockers Wolf Alice round out the album of the year nominations on their way to three nods overall, and dance star Fred Again, who had a major hit with Skepta and PlaqueBoyMax collaboration Victory Lap and continued his sweatily received live sets, was also nominated three times.

Also in the running for artist of the year are Jade, Little Simz, PinkPantheress and Self Esteem: one demonstration of how well represented women are in this year’s nominations. There has been consternation in previous years at how male-dominated the Brit awards could be, including as recently as 2023 when all the artist of the year nominees were men. But this year, 70% of nominees are female or non-binary, or mixed-gender groups”.

What is clear is that there have been improvements. It has taken long enough, but I do think that a few things remain clear. The Hip-Hop/Rap/Grime category is still hugely male-dominated. It shows that the genre is very much guarded by and open to male artists. There are some incredible female British acts who should have been included, though for some reason there is only one female nominee of the four: Little Simz. The BRIT Awards is also not a ceremony that is going to dig dep or spend too much time with rising artists or name coming through. It is pretty mainstream for the most part, so all of the nominees for Hip-Hop/Rap/Grime are pretty established. Well, maybe Jim Legaxcy is the only exception. In terms of Pop, it is entirely comprised of female acts. One might say that this is as bad as a male-heavy category but the fact is that women have dominated Pop for years. The last year or two has been the first time when gender imbalance has changed and the BRIT Awards have addressed so many problems – though not all. I am excited that both Olivia Dean and Lola Young have five nominees each. Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving was one of the best of last year. Dean set records by becoming the first female solo artist in U.K. chart history to have four Top 10 singles simultaneously (late-2025) and the first British solo female artist to top the UK Albums and Singles charts together since Adele in 2021. Lola Young’s Messy has surpassed a billion streams on Spotify and is a huge song that continues to touch people. She is one of our best talents! The Album of the Year category is especially strong. Included is Lily Allen’s West End Girl. Lily Allen, JADE, Lola Young, Olivia Dean and RAYE are in the Pop category. Even if RAYE and Lola Young have not released a load of music in the past year, I guess their impact and popularity remains strong. It is a category that could have easily included a lot of other amazing women. It shows women are leading Pop and making the best music of the most commercial and popular genre.

It is a shame that there is still some gender imbalance here and there, though the BRIT Awards have done better. They had to! The categories are really strong, though I think that – quite rightly – most of the conversation will be around the women nominated. Especially Olivia Dean, RAYE, Lola Young and Lily Allen. I like how PinkPantheress, Self Esteem, JADE and Little Simz are also in the Artist of the Year category. Some of the finest artists in the world right now. We will find out who wins what on 28th February. I don’t think that we will get anything special at the ceremony in terms of controversy or any trouble. I am surprised that the BRIT Awards have not widened to include more categories. Especially when it comes to new artists and those coming through. Also, live performances and the best tours. Given how an Oasis nomination would have been huge, it is a shame there has not been expansion and consideration. However, I am sure Oasis will be nominated when NME host their awards. However, it is a positive year in terms of the calibre of artists and the fact that there is less gender imbalance. One hopes that 2027 is one where genre like Grime and Rap see more women nominated. It will be remarkable seeing these British and international artists honoured. In terms of International Artist, CMAT and ROSALÍA are in the mix. Such strong competition! I think the Breakthrough category is interesting, as some of thew artists can’t really be seen as breaking through – including Lola Young. It would have been nice to include more genuinely newer artists. However, I feel Skye Newman will win the award, as she is one of the best artists we have and is a star of the future. I am looking forward to the ceremony next month and especially keen to celebrate great Pop queens like Lily Allen, Lola Young and Olivia Dean. Steps forward being made, there is still a way to go. However, the nominations announced today show that British artists are very much producing some of the…

BEST music in the world.

FEATURE: Then Work Came and Made Us Free: Manic Street Preachers’ A Design for Life at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Then Work Came and Made Us Free

Manic Street Preachers’ A Design for Life at Thirty

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THIS is undoubtably…

IN THIS PHOTO: Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire (left), James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore in 1996, shot for the cover of Melody Maker/PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Sheehan

one of the most important songs of the 1990s. The lead single from Manic Street Preachers’ fourth studio album, Everything Must Go, this was the first without Richey Edwards. He went missing in February 1995. It was a huge shock for the band. Not only Manic Street Preachers’ lyricist and rhythm guitarist, he was also a dear friend. You can feel the stress and tragedy of his loss on Everything Must Go. Some of his lyrics appear, whilst other songs talk about the Welsh band making changes and dealing with this loss. On 15th April, A Design for Life was released. It is one of Manic Street Preachers’ greatest songs. This towering with the trio (James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore, Nicky Wire) credit as songwriters, it reached number two in the U.K. Everything Must Go was released in May 1996 and was a massive critical and commercial success. Its lead single is one of the best lead singles ever. Not only announcing this new direction and sound – a slightly shift from 1994’s The Holy Bible -, it is a song that is widely played to this day. Such stunning lyrics that are so thought-provoking. As this stunning song turns thirty on 15th April, I want to explore it and understand the background/history of the song. I am starting out with a 2014 article from God Is in the TV:

“Libraries gave us power/Then work came and made us free/What price now for a shallow piece of dignity?!” Hollers James Dean Bradfield impassioned with eyes closed, above a backdrop of tumbling arpeggios, cavernous drums and Spector-ish widescreen production that’s steepling strings sway, crescendo and sigh with sadness. This is the unforgettable intro to  ‘A Design for Life’ the Manic Street Preacher‘s definitive 90s statement. Tackling the theme of working class identity bassist(lyricist and chief dress wearer) Nicky Wire delivers a staunch defence of the community where he grew up and a belief in the importance of resilience, self-improvement and solidarity as political power attempts to oppress you at every turn– ‘libraries gave us power’ indeed. The memorable video is intercut with quotes and scenes like fox hunting and Royal Ascot to represent what the band saw as class privilege.

This was set against a backdrop of the decimation of their hometown Blackwood, as Thatcher destroyed its mining industry in the 1980s and the economic decline of the early 1990s and many think the miners scars are referenced here with the lines: “I wish I had a bottle/Right here in my dirty face to wear the scars/To show from where I came”.

The bizarre sight of friends arm in arm singing along to its key line ‘We don’t talk about love / We only wanna get drunk’ is an ironic one – are the Manics highlighting the hypocrisy of a working class that only wants to drink and fight, or are they defending its right to do so? I’ll leave that up to you. Regardless, it’s a powerful first statement from the band as a three piece and a epic first single with a elegantly bombastic rock chorus that at the time represented a surprising shift from a band who had musically up until that point dealt only in politically charged glam rock and incendiary proto post punk. It was rather like the shift from Joy Division to New Order…

ADFL bursts to number 2 in the hit parade in 1996, and broke the three Welsh fellas’ album (Everything Must Go) into the mainstream at their time of heaviest loss. Their lyricist and childhood friend Richard James Edwards went missing in 1994 and remains unfound.

In a scene dominated by slogans, crowd like chants and sometimes cartoonish flag waving, Carry on imagery, The Manics were in contrast a band plugged into their surroundings, the working class and their own mythology ‘A Design for Life’ was an epic political statement and stands toe to toe with Pulp‘s superlative ‘Common People’ as the most socially conscious statement of the era. Nicky Wire explained the song’s meaning in an interview with Q magazine April 2011: “It was originally a two-page poem. One side was called A Pure Motive and the other A Design For Life. The song was inspired by what I perceived as the middle classes trying to hijack working-class culture. That was typified by Blur’s Girls and Boys,” the greyhound image on their Parklife cover. It was me saying, ‘This is the truth. GET IT.'”

Drenched in magnificent strings arranged by Martin Greene, and shot with a regret, defiance and a kind of redemption of somehow getting through a tragedy so close to home, the Mike Hedges-produced Everything Must Go recorded in a Normandy Chateaux, was warm and cocooned in its own orbit and quite unlike any other release that year, yet for a very short period the Manics became mainstream, Nicky draped his amp in the Welsh flag at the Brits which was surprising given his views on Wales prior to that, they played a the classic Hillsborough tribute show and rubbed shoulders with Oasis and the like. James Dean Bradfield went onto produce the likes of Northern Uproar and Kylie lending this anthemic string tinged pop sound to them both,  the outsiders had become establishment.

The long player Everything Must Go was their most immediate work and struck a chord with a wider public in a way none of their previous albums had. Yet it was tinged with tragedy, regret and a new found functionalism(C&A jeans and t-shirts now replaced feather boas and eye liner)artwork now minimal, as they bravely soldiered on despite still dealing with the grief of the loss of their friend and creative driving force Richard James Edwards”.

There are a couple of interviews I am going to end with. Where Manic Street Preachers speak about A Design of Life and why it is so important. It is a song that must have been emotional to see released into the world after the disappearance of Richey Edwards the year before. I am going to move to this blog post and their examination of the sweeping, epic and wonderful A Design for Life:

“The song’s lyrics are usually thought to be themed around working class solidarity, and make specific reference to the value of libraries, which have historically allowed poorer people to learn on their own terms through books – by contrast, owning books has historically been the preserve of the educated rich (and books of course remain expensive today, particularly factual ones). This line was directly inspired by the band’s time in public libraries when they were young. The lines “we don’t talk about love / we only want to get drunk” are a play on upper class assumptions about poor people – the idea that the lives of “the proles” are dominated by idle pursuits like drinking and that they ostensibly don’t have a capacity for philosophy or independent thought. Naturally, the Manics rail against this narrow-minded idea. By contrast, the song was famously misunderstood by some at the time, who saw the song as a kind of laddish drinking anthem.

Like ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ before it, ‘A Design For Life’ began as two songs – one written under that title designed to play up the positive aspects of working class life and another, named ‘The Pure Motive’ which was about the darker side and was inspired by ‘To Be A Somebody’, a 1994 episode of Jimmy McGovern’s crime series Cracker. In the episode, Robert Carlyle plays a killer working to avenge the deaths of those who died in the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. This event would itself be the inspiration for a later Manics track, ‘S.Y.M.M.’, the closing track on This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Parts of ‘The Pure Motive’ were absorbed into ‘A Design For Life’, resulting in the final version.

Owing to its major impact on popular culture, ‘A Design For Life’ was memorably referenced in the final track of The Man Who, the very successful 1999 album by Scottish band Travis. The song, ‘Slide Show’ refers to the song in the first line of its chorus, which also alludes to ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis (which it is actually musically based on to some extent) and ‘Devil’s Haircut’ by Beck. Musically, ‘A Design For Life’ was also reflected in the Manics’ own much later single ‘Indian Summer’ – the band initially hesitated to release the song due to it sounding similar, but eventually decided to release it for exactly that reason.

Although it is arguably a little harder to enjoy now due to the enormous airplay it has received over the years, ‘A Design For Life’ is still undoubtedly one of the key Manics singles, a live staple, and a significant touchpoint in their discography”.

Before ending with a 2021 interview from the BBC, I want to flip to 2016 and this interview from The Quietus. They spoke with Manic Street Preachers in 2016, twenty years after the release of A Design for Life. I recall when the song came out. I was familiar with Manic Street Preachers at that point. I bought Everything Must Go and was completely fascinated by A Design for Life:

“I was really struck by seeing the video for ‘A Design For Life’ during the Royal Albert Hall gig, with the footage of Last Night Of The Proms, filmed in the same place, and thinking, ‘Here we are’, in the actual place…

“Here we are!” Wire smiles. “Entertain us… Yeah, the first time we played the Albert Hall, in 1996, I hated it. I was in a right old fucking mood, and I did not enjoy it one bit. But I loved it this time. The gig in Liverpool was amazing, really special, and we invited all the families of the Hillsborough 96. From the very first gig, in Tallinn in Estonia, it’s been spot-on, right through.”

A lot of the songs on the album have been in or around the setlist for years, of course.

“Yeah,” concedes James, “but there’s stuff like ‘The Girl Who Wanted To Be God’, ‘Removables’ we haven’t played that much, or ‘Interiors’, and we haven’t played ‘Australia’ much since the late Nineties, and ‘Further Away’ we haven’t played much. But you’re right, stuff like ‘No Surface All Feeling’, ‘A Design For Life’, ‘Everything Must Go’, ‘Kevin Carter’, ‘Small Black Flowers’, we’ve played the hell out of.”

“That album just breathes, sonically and lyrically,” says Wire. “It’s a communal intake with less intensity than some Manics gigs, if you know what I mean. But we ramp it up so much in the second set, with the production and the visuals which are fucking stunning. It has the scale that we always wanted. And knowing you’ve got that second set in your back pocket, doing ‘You’re Tender And You’re Tired’ which we haven’t done for fucking ever. and… ‘NatWest Barclays Midlands Lloyds’…”

When I saw ‘NatWest’ on the setlist for the second half of the gig, I thought ‘Really?!’ Of all the songs on Generation Terrorists, I’d never have chosen that one. But in the flesh, it properly rocks. I was surprised.

“I actually feel really proud doing that, as well,” says Wire. “Because you still get all these fucking idiots in the broadsheets saying ‘Oh it’s clunky…’ It IS clunky, because we’re dealing with a massive topic (the banking system’s ruinous effects on people’s lives), which we foresaw, and you didn’t!”

The choice of Mike Hedges as producer was crucial to the album’s sound. “We’d been through the thing of Richey’s disappearance,” James remembers, “and subsequently deciding that we needed to do something, so we wrote the song. ‘A Design For Life’, which started the ball rolling. Then we got in touch with Mike Hedges, who came to Cardiff with us. We’d wanted to work with him on The Holy Bible, but he wasn’t available. Meeting him was so brilliant, because he’d done so many records I loved. ‘Swimming Horses’ by the Banshees – what a fucking record that is! I remember there was a kid at school who was, let’s say, not unhinged but definitely on edge. And he’d gone goth-punk, and he brought a copy of ‘Swimming Horses’ 12 inch to school and I sat on it by mistake. And he wanted to kill me. And I remember thinking ‘You really care about that record. I’m gonna have to chase that record down…’ And Mike had also done the Associates and ‘Story Of The Blues’ by Wah!, I’m talking about the records he’d done with strings on. So it was a no-brainer that we wanted him to do Everything Must Go”.

In 2021, BBC spoke with Manic Street Preachers’ lead, James Dean Bradfield, about A Design for Life. How the song saved the band. It would have been incredibly tense releasing a single from an album that was released after the disappearance of Richey Edwardsd. How it would be received and whether long-term Manic Street Preacher fans would bond with it:

“We were just coming out of our own trauma at that point," Bradfield continues. "Design for Life was proving to be something that kept us going as a band, that validated us, that took us past the procedure of not knowing whether we could be in the Manics any more.

"It kind of solved a lot of really awkward emotional riddles for us. We were on our way to something, reaffirming ourselves and staving off having to think about really serious, damaging things with regards to Richey and his family."

'Snow globe moment'

A Design for Life is what Bradfield describes as a "Trojan horse Manics" tune - using epic radio-friendly rock to carry a political message.

Using similar tactics, they managed to subsequently smuggle If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and The Masses Against the Classes to the top of the UK singles chart. (The former tackled the Spanish Civil War, while the latter contained quotes from both Noam Chomsky and Albert Camus.)

On their 14th and latest album, their trademark big guitar sound has been largely replaced by Abba-inspired, piano-driven pop melodies. Bradfield, the band's main musical force, learned to play piano properly in lockdown after inheriting one from another Edwards - a 105-year-old Mrs Edwards in Cardiff, external.

"It felt like a special gift being stowed upon us", he says. And he soon began to find new joy in the old chords.

"I had that lovely experience on the piano of just tooling around and going, 'Oh my God, I have to call Billy Joel. If the band don't want this he will!'" he laughs.

A Design for Life for was only narrowly kept off top spot by Mark Morrison's Return of the Mack”.

On 15th April, it will be thirty years since A Design for Life came out. Though it should have reached number one, the fact it was kept off the top of the single chart by Mark Morrison is no shame. However, I do think that A Design for Life is a better song than Return of the Mack. A more important one. Released a month before Everything Must Go, a hugely acclaimed album, this song still stirs the soul and holds this incredible power. 1996 found Manic Street Preachers rebuilding and recalibrating after the disappearance of Richey Edwards. The trio figuring just…

HOW to move on.

FEATURE: Stuck Inside These Four Walls… Inside the Paul McCartney: Man on the Run Documentary

FEATURE:

 

 

Stuck Inside These Four Walls…

Inside the Paul McCartney: Man on the Run Documentary

__________

IT is always great when…

a new Paul McCartney-related project comes along. There seems to be one every year. That is a good thing. Most of the focus is on The Beatles. We have a big album anniversary later this year when the masterpiece that is Revolver turns sixty. I am sure there will be more Beatles documentaries and things from the archives released. Maybe new books and all sort of things. I feel this is going to be the case for many years to come. In terms of Paul McCartney’s solo career, there has not been a new album for five years, though you get reissues and there is always discussion. I do really hope that we see another Paul McCartney solo album at some point, as it is always a treat when he puts music out. The greatest songwriter ever always brilliant and different. However, there is probably less discussion around Wings. Forming the band must have been monumentally emotional. I think McCartney was the most dedicated and devoted to The Beatles. John Lennon perhaps a little more detached. Same with George Harrison. Ringo Starr speaks proudly about the band. However, you feel Paul McCartney is the biggest fan of the group. So going to a new group when The Beatles broke up would have been devastating and hugely challenging. On 7th December, their debut album, Wild Life, turns fifty-five. Perhaps not their most acclaimed and popular album, I think it is an amazing album. I am ending with a Wings playlist, and I will feature some songs from Wild Life. The seventh and final album was 1979’s Back to the Egg. About the same lifespan as The Beatles – in terms of their recorded output -, McCartney must have been bereft once more when the band split. However, he continued his solo career and released McCartney II in 1980.

There have not been that many documentaries and books around Wings. Most of the focus comes on The Beatles. However, the importance of Wings cannot be overstated. 1973’s Band on the Run is one of my favourite albums ever. Although the documentary premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on 30th August, 2025, Paul McCartney: Man on the Run will be released on Prime Video on 25th February with a limited theatrical release preceding it. I will come to the documentary soon. Though I would recommend people to pick up the book. Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run. You can order it here. Here’s what you need to know about a must-read for any fans of Wings and Paul McCartney:

“I’m so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book. Starting from scratch after The Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better I thought, ‘OK this is really good.’  We proved Wings could be a really good band. To play to huge audiences in the same way The Beatles had and have an impact in a different way. It was a huge buzz.”—Paul McCartney

As the Sixties came to a close, Paul was faced with the daunting prospect of being a solo artist for the first time. Wings’ ascension to the top of the charts with classic albums including Band on the Run, Venus and Mars and At the Speed of Sound, along with the band’s stadium-filling live shows would prove to critics and fans that not all great acts are impossible to follow. Wings:The Story of a Band on the Run is a rousing, stereophonic celebration of the songs, collaborations and performances that would shape the soundtrack of the late 20th century.

Drawn from over 500,000 words, based on dozens of hours of interviews with Paul and numerous key players in the band’s orbit, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run weaves together the improbable trajectory of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band (featuring co-founding members Linda McCartney and Denny Laine) across the technicolor 1970s until their dissolution in 1981.

Edited by the prize-winning historian Ted Widmer and organized around nine Wings albums, the oral history sheds new light on the immediate aftermath of the seismic global impact of The Beatles’ break-up, as the musical landscape and tastes began to splinter and diverge along with societal views. The narrative follows the various incarnations of the band as they survive a mugging in Nigeria, appear unannounced at UK university halls, tour in a sheared-off school bus with their children, while producing some of the most indelible and acclaimed music of the decade, including: “Mull of Kintyre,” “Live and Let Die,” “Band on the Run,” “My Love,” “Jet,” “With a Little Luck,” “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘Em In,” “Junior’s Farm” and more.

With more than 100 black-and-white and color photographs, many never seen before, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run is part of a larger reexamination and appreciation of the group and their catalog, including the 2024 theatrical release of the rare Wings live-in-studio performance film One Hand Clapping and its accompanying album; 50th anniversary editions of the Wings albums Band on the Run (released February 2024) and Venus and Mars (releasing March 2025); and a forthcoming documentary on Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings-related musical work of the 1970s from Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Morgan Neville”.

There will be a lot of new reviews when the documentary is released on 25th February. I want to move next to a review from IndieWire from last year. Though they do note it is a drawback that we do not see Paul McCartney sat down discussing the band – it is done in voiceovers -, it still manages to be for diehard fans and causals alike. It is fast-paced, informative but something that will definitely appeal to a wide spectrum of fans:

“But just as the Beatles loomed over everything McCartney did — a montage in the film features a succession of press audio snippets of “Beatles,” “The Beatles,” “Beatles” — “Man on the Run” can’t quite escape but be about the Beatles in its own way either.

We open in 1969, just five short years after the Sullivan performance, the band on the fritz, all off on their own. Speculation of a breakup is rampant but the news is not yet public. In this opening moment, McCartney’s voiceover recounts how he internalized the blame for the band’s breakup. We never see McCartney or any other contemporary interviewee onscreen as a talking head, a decision which opens up the wealth of archival footage from the era to take center stage. McCartney is seen in this footage, holed up on a remote farm in Scotland with his wife Linda and their kids along with some sheep and horses. An archival news report on the property highlights how strange a sight that one of the most famous and beloved pop stars of the ’60s now spends his days in a modest cottage with various structural elements in mild disrepair.

McCartney eventually bites the bullet and publicly acknowledges that the Beatles are in fact over. Expectedly, this leaves him with the lion’s share of the blame (“Don’t shoot the messenger” is an adage due to the frequency of prior shootings.) McCartney — who sat down for seven interviews with Neville for the film — mostly blames bandmate John Lennon as the actual instigator for the breakup, citing how Lennon privately told the bandmates in 1969 that he was leaving. However, he is clear to mention at any opportunity that he loves him as a brother, and also that when they fought, which was frequently, it was also as brothers.

The first act of “Man on the Run” takes its time laying the seeds for this breakup, a major part of which involves McCartney’s reticence about Allen Klein takin over as manager for the deceased Brian Epstein. McCartney recalls Lennon telling him that while “he is a son of a bitch, he’s our son of a bitch.”

McCartney was unmoved. Later, Lennon is seen publicly admitting on camera to press that McCartney was right about Klein all along — a clip you can’t help but sense McCartney feels vindicated is included in the final cut. But this realization came too late, and so each member embarked on their own solo musical journeys.

McCartney says he initially thought he’d never pick up a guitar again after arriving in Scotland at this moment when the future of the Beatles was in serious jeopardy. But, after a brief stint drowning his sorrows in scotch — a rare moment of darkness in the film — McCartney began noodling around on an old four-track (the lo-fi machine also makes an appearance in fellow Telluride world premiere, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere”), recording each instrument himself. His first solo album, made in collaboration with his wife Linda, quickly follows. Linda was a photographer, not a singer, but her lack of musical training intrigued him. Her voice felt raw and real to him. But fans could only view Linda as a direct replacement of Lennon, and she was mistreated in the press and by fans, showcasing an open misogyny that calls to mind Yoko Ono’s mistreatment.

McCartney views songwriting as the “ultimate therapy,” and this first album allowed him to process his complicated feelings at the time. Festival programs often contain loose thematic throughlines, and fellow Telluride world premiere “Hamnet” also examines artmaking as therapy — in that instance it works to alleviate grief.

The limited footage shown of an unfortunate Wings TV special from 1973 is more than enough to elicit second-hand embarrassment for all involved. McCartney and Linda’s “Ram” from 1971 was initially panned by critics, including by future Springsteen manager Jon Landau, whose particularly harsh words in “Rolling Stone” are splayed across the screen. Over time, the album has been reassessed as a masterpiece, and in an ironic twist, is even now included on “Rolling Stone”’s Greatest Albums of All Time list.

Archival movie clips illustrate a stark shift from the 1960s into the harsher realities of the 1970s. The times changed and McCartney’s “conservative” demeanor, as one interviewee describes him, was simply no longer in vogue. Meanwhile, Lennon’s willingness to be political endeared him to the press throughout his career. But McCartney’s inherent uncoolness affords his discography a timelessness, which accounts for that eventual “Ram” reassessment.

The chief draw of “Man on the Run” is the copious amounts of archival footage it delivers from this era, much of it being seen for the first time. Linda was a photographer, which meant scores of beautiful 35mm photos to feature, and McCartney always seemed to be wielding a 16mm camera himself. McCartney also took his own photographs and their similarity in photographic styles is presented as evidence of their unbreakable kinship. Every big moment in McCartney’s life from this period on seems to have been captured on film: Wings’ first rehearsal, their first scrappy college tour, their final show in 1979, recording sessions in a barn with a horse milling about, and so on. Documentaries often “cheat” by using archival or movie clips from an era to fill space where no footage of actual events exist, but “Man on the Run” need not lean on this technique for the most part, because they simply have the footage.

A documentary veteran, Neville’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar win for “20 Feet from Stardom” is now over a decade in the past. In the time since, the prolific documentarian has bounced from profiling Anthony Bourdain to directing an animated Lego documentary on Pharrell Williams (which, like “Man on the Run,” also premiered at Telluride). Made over four years, “Man on the Run” is made with a patience that allowed Neville to sit down with McCartney so many times, and it also leads to a final cut that is as well-made and polished as documentaries come. This sheen and attention to detail elevates it above your traditional music biodoc.

One question a post-Beatles film must answer is how much context a viewer requires on the Beatles. Truth be told, if you find yourself watching a Wings-era Paul McCartney documentary, you’re more than likely carrying a rudimentary knowledge of preceding events. “Man on the Run” still chooses to briefly tackle their history, not in some “let’s get this out of the way” perfunctory manner, but with real verve and invention. An animated montage consisting of collage photographs takes us through the broad strokes in rapid succession: Ed Sullivan, India, Sgt. Pepper’s rebrand, Yoko, and so forth. It’s a clear highlight early in the film, promising plenty more visual flair.

“Man on the Run” works best as a linear accounting of these post-Beatles McCartney years more than it does as a portrait of McCartney. More than once — so you know it’s a theme — McCartney reiterates the unusual circumstances of his life journey, which lead him to rural Scotland with his family. After his schooling, he joins a band which quickly ascended to the top of the world, and now at 27, that band is no more. He feels lost and is forced to finally “grow up” he repeats. Yet “Man on the Run” misses out on the opportunity to interrogate deeply just how he was forced to grow up. The presentation of his relationship to his wife and kids is seen as wholesome and genuine. That heavy drinking in the early days of the breakup is briefly discussed but not lingered upon. And while Wings went through a succession of different lineups over the years, the reasoning for members leaving is touched upon but only somewhat satisfactorily.

Despite having what one assumes is the pick of the litter with A-list celebrities willing to lend their insights on McCartney, Wings and the Beatles, Neville wisely chooses to keep the outside voices to a minimum. Mick Jagger pops up and lends a few thoughts. Lennon’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, lets McCartney off the hook for a rare bad press moment in which McCartney appears nonplussed discussing Lennon’s murder to the media. Like Nick Dunne’s poorly timed smile in “Gone Girl,” one imagines McCartney now regrets wildly chomping on gum while commenting on camera on the death of his best friend and former band mate. McCartney reflects that one of the “greatest blessings” in his life was that he and Lennon made up shortly before Lennon’s murder. The details of that reconciliation are disappointedly not included. But with otherwise such strong access to McCartney alongside this wealth of archival clips, the omissions or glossed over subjects — one assumes at McCartney’s behest — while present, never feel glaring.

Music documentaries often come with the promise of salacious, tell-all revelations, a trend which might be a lingering byproduct of VH1’s influential “Behind the Music” series. But that is largely absent in “Man on the Run,” for a few possible reasons. One is that McCartney is too guarded and media savvy to ever say something to the effect of: “Yeah, I broke up the Beatles! So what?” The Beatles were always experts at managing the press, even in their early days. And the other is that by all accounts, McCartney mostly appears to be a normal guy. His family-first Scottish farm-life doesn’t appear performative. This does not seem to be a man with skeletons in his closet and those hunting for them here will leave disappointed. It does lead to a documentary lacking a certain edge, and the pacing likewise begins to drag late in the film as Wings’ albums are covered, one by one.

The central question in a musical documentary of this nature is whether it is for the real “heads,” or if a casual fan can follow along. “Man on the Run” successfully satisfies both demographics. Longtime Beatles and McCartney fans will eat up the wealth of intimate footage of McCartney and Linda’s working and domestic life, and casual fans can track his career throughout this period with a newfound curiosity, coming out better informed on McCartney’s ethos more so as a musician than as a man. But when this man is Paul McCartney, one of, if not, the greatest songwriters of all-time, it’s a compromise that will certainly do”.

It is an important year. Fifty-five years since Wings released Wild Life, this documentary takes us inside the band and their career. I keep coming back to that time after The Beatles split and when Paul McCartney was lost. Stuck inside four walls. Like a bereavement, it must have seemed impossible to record new music, let alone with a whole new band! It is why Wings’ success, however brief, is amazing. This new project that was not The Beatles and there was not the same expectation and dynamic. I don’t think that Wings get the credit and attention they deserve. It is clear that Paul McCartney: Man on the Run will be…

FASCINATING to see.