FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Solomon/Isolde/Marion (The Song of Solomon)/Carmilla (Surrender into the Roses)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the filming of the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

Solomon/Isolde/Marion (The Song of Solomon)/Carmilla (Surrender into the Roses)

__________

THERE  are not many combinations…

IN THIS PHOTO: A young Cathy Bush/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

left for this series. I am going to end by pairing Moments of Pleasure from The Red Shoes with Them Heavy People from The Kick Inside. I will lead off with a song from The Red Shoes. I am then going to finish by discussing a character from a Kate Bush demo. The first character is another religious figure. Solomon is, of course, part of The Song of Solomon. I will look at who Solomon was, but there are other subjects to talk about. I will not repeat what I wrote previously about The Red Shoes. I shall come to the sexual urgency and explicitness in it. Not that it is a raunchy song. It is Kate Bush being bold. It depends how you approach the lyrics. It was definitely something new. Her music has always been quite sensual and sexy. She is an artist who talks about sex and fantasies. Someone who has never been conventional when it comes to love and desire. You can trace that all the way back to her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. By the time of The Red Shoes being released, there was change in terms of relationships and personal lives. The Song of Solomon, I assume was written sometime around 1992. The album came out in November 1993. Perhaps we can date it as late as 1993. Kate Bush married Dan McIntosh in 1992. Is this a song about her new husband? I have focused on this song before. Many have written it off as being an offcut from The Sensual World. In some ways, it fits more onto that album. This makes me think of songs that one would imagine are more suited to other albums. I think that about Moments of Pleasure. That is on The Red Shoes. I always think that it should have been on The Sensual World. I don’t think that was a holdover or offcut. Even so, there is something about Moments of Pleasure that slots into the ethos and tone of The Sensual World.

That idea of Bush embracing sensuality or at least exploring womanhood. You could fit Moments of Pleasure right by The Sensual World’s title song. I can appreciate how The Song of Solomon is also one that could appear on The Sensual World. That 1989 album has plenty of gold on it. In terms of how people react to the song and how Solomon connects with the rest of the lyrics. This tumblr post makes some interesting observations: “It fits well enough on The Red Shoes, an album in part about picking personal mythology out of the most patriarchal of stuff; but otherwise, it's pretty clear where it goes. The Trio Bulgarka, the Bulgarian vocal ensemble of Stoyanka Boneva, Yanka Rupkina and Eva Georgieva who had some solo albums but are mainly known for Bush's work, returns here -- curiously, on none of the The Line, the Cross and the Curve choices. Bush has called The Sensual World her most "feminine" album, and this is possibly among her most explicitly feminine songs, both in the delicate instrumentation, harps and vocals and sounds like chiffon, and in the lyrics: "here's a woman singing," Bush says, drawing boundaries like curtains. Everything's beneath a thick, suggestive haze. Too many people think this song is a joke, largely because of the chorus: "Don't want your bullshit -- just want your sexuality." The fact that dismissing female sexuality is exactly the sort of bullshit Bush doesn't want is lost on everyone, and the fact that there's nothing coquettish about it. Sure, she pores over her Bible for the first time this album (though, tellingly, not the really explicit verses, which is rather a feat with the Song of Solomon in pop culture); sure, she dwells and pauses upon lines like "his left hand is under my head, and his right hand -- doth embrace me" fairly suggestively. Sure, the bridge is pretty obviously supposed to be simulating an orgasm, with lines that either read amazingly dirty or oddly submissive. But none of this explains it all. The last time she sings it, it's out of pure frustration -- don't want your bullshit! -- and sounds almost defeated, as if there's a lot of bullshit to come”.

Let’s go back to the roots. The Song of Solomon. In The Bible, Solomon was the third (and final) king of the united kingdom of Israel. He ruled a golden age of peace and prosperity. The son of King David and Bathsheba. Best known for his unparalleled wisdom, his immense wealth, and building the First Temple in Jerusalem. I do wonder what influenced Kate Bush to explore this character. However, rather than her song being about this biblical king, it connects with a lyrical poem. This article explores The Song of Solomon:

“The Song of Solomon is a lyric poem written to extol the virtues of love between a husband and his wife. The poem clearly presents marriage as God’s design. A man and woman are to live together within the context of marriage, loving each other spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
This book combats two extremes: asceticism (the denial of all pleasure) and hedonism (the pursuit of only pleasure). The marriage profiled in Song of Solomon is a model of care, commitment, and delight.
Key Verses:
Song of Solomon 2:7; 3:5; 8:4 - “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”
Song of Solomon 5:1 - “Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.”
Song of Solomon 8:6-7 - “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.”

Brief Summary: The poetry takes the form of a dialogue between a husband (the king) and his wife (the Shulamite). We can divide the book into three sections: the courtship (1:1 - 3:5); the wedding (3:6 - 5:1); and the maturing marriage (5:2 - 8:14).

The song begins before the wedding, as the bride-to-be longs to be with her betrothed, and she looks forward to his intimate caresses. However, she advises letting love develop naturally, in its own time. The king praises the Shulamite’s beauty, overcoming her feelings of insecurity about her appearance. The Shulamite has a dream in which she loses Solomon and searches throughout the city for him. With the help of the city guards, she finds her beloved and clings to him, taking him to a safe place. Upon waking, she repeats her injunction not to force love.

On the wedding night, the husband again praises the beauty of his wife, and in highly symbolic language, the wife invites her spouse to partake of all she has to offer. They make love, and God blesses their union.

As the marriage matures, the husband and wife go through a difficult time, symbolized in another dream. In this second dream, the Shulamite rebuffs her husband, and he leaves. Overcome with guilt, she searches the city for him; but this time, instead of helping her, the guards beat her—symbolic of her pained conscience. Things end happily as the lovers reunite and are reconciled.

As the song ends, both the husband and wife are confident and secure in their love, they sing of the lasting nature of true love, and they yearn to be in each other’s presence.

Foreshadowings: Some Bible interpreters see in Song of Solomon an exact symbolic representation of Christ and His church. Christ is seen as the king, while the church is represented by the Shulamite. While we believe the book should be understood literally as a depiction of marriage, there are some elements that foreshadow the Church and her relationship with her king, the Lord Jesus. Song of Solomon 2:4 describes the experience of every believer who is sought and bought by the Lord Jesus. We are in a place of great spiritual wealth and are covered by His love. Verse 16 of chapter 2 says, “My beloved is mine, and I am his. He feeds his flock among the lilies” (NKJV). Here is a picture of not only the security of the believer in Christ (John 10:28-29), but of the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep—believers—and lays down His life for us (John 10:11). Because of Him, we are no longer stained by sin, having had our “spots” removed by His blood (Song of Solomon 4:7; Ephesians 5:27)”.

While The Song of Solomon is traditionally associated with King Solomon, scholars debate whether he is the speaker, the subject, or simply a thematic inspiration. Kate Bush has referenced The Bible and figures from it before. There is debate as to whether King Solomon is the focal point for The Red Shoes’ The Song of Solomon. Thought I look at the lyrics of her song and I do feel that she was thinking about King Solomon. In any case, there are a couple of avenues to explore before I finish with the lyrics. There is imagery and words from the song that could be seen as problematic today if they were in a song. Not least because they reference Israel. Even if we are talking about something very much rooted in history, there would be issues if The Song of Solomon came out in 2026. In thinking about Solomon today, we have chilling parallels between a figure from The Bible and a current Israeli regime. The fact that Song of Solomon does seem to have connections to that King of Israel gives it a tarnish. In terms of biography, here is more about Solomon: “The Bible says that Solomon consolidated his position by liquidating his opponents ruthlessly as soon as he acceded to the throne. Once rid of his foes, he established his friends in the key posts of the military, governmental, and religious institutions. Solomon also reinforced his position through military strength. In addition to infantry, he had at his disposal impressive chariotry and cavalry. The eighth chapter of 2 Chronicles recounts Solomon’s successful military operations in Syria. His aim was the control of a great overland trading route”. Rather than be haunted and scarred by what Israel is doing to Gaza and the Palestinian people now and connecting it to the time of Solomon, we can look at the poem between two lovers. You can read it as a couple who have doubts and their strength is tested, though they are resolved and connected at the end. I keep thinking about how Bush came to write her song and how it connects to Song of Solomon. Whether she was thinking about that poem and adding her take, or considering Solomon and assuming the male figure in the poem was him.

Few articles scrutinise the origins of Kate Bush’s song from The Red Shoes. Bush re-recorded it for 2011’s Director’s Cut. The vocals from the Trio Bulgarka remain, yet there were new elements. I wonder why Kate Bush reproached this song. Maybe she did not like the production. Or she wanted to strip the song down. If there is a title-link between The Song of Solomon and Song of Solomon, Bush’s reading and lyrics paint something more personal: “Don’t want your bullshit, yeah/Just want your sexuality/Don’t want excuses, yeah/Write me your poetry in motion/Write it just for me, yeah/And sing it with a kiss”. There is this blend of Bush being poetic and biblical. In terms of referencing the book and also blending in something quite lyrical and romantic: “Mmm, just take any line/“Comfort me with apples/For I am sick of love/His left hand is under my head/And his right hand/Doth embrace me”/This is the Song of Solomon/Here’s a woman singing”. Whilst I have discussed Solomon, there are two other characters that are more literal and directly references. These lines mention them: “I’ll be the Rose of Sharon for you/I’ll do it for you/I’ll be the Lily of the Valley for you/I’ll do it for you/I’ll be Isolde or Marion for you/I’ll do it for you”. The name, Rose of Sharon, first appears in Hebrew in the Tanakh. In the Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) 2:1, the speaker (the beloved) says, "I am the rose of Sharon, a rose of the valley". Interesting to wonder where Bush got inspiration to mention the Rose of Sharon. It is her referencing Isolde and Marion. Two particular options. Isolde (Yseult) is the tragic heroine of the Arthurian romance Tristan and Isolde, known for a powerful, consuming, and fateful love.  Marion (Maid Marian) is the steadfast, loyal lover of Robin Hood, famous for her rustic charm, companionship, and devotion. Both fateful and devoted lovers. Bush casting herself back in history. To legend and lore. Fictionalised lovers to an extent. It is the spread of these characters in terms of periods of history and their depiction. Solomon potentially tying into the man/king figure in Song of Solomon. What is Bush saying with this song? She is saying that she could be anyone for this lover. She can take different forms or be a variety of things. Is this her being subservient and submissive? She is definitely confident and brash when it comes to her demands. Though there is that contrast in terms of moulding into different forms, some of them tragic and ill-fated, when it comes to pleasing her lover. A fascinating song to unpick, it sounds more potent and striking as part of Director’s Cut. I have perhaps not done full justice to The Song of Solomon. In nay case, it is a song that warrants more investigation and affection.

Surrender Into the Roses is an early Kate Bush song. Although there is one character mentioned, there is also mystery in terms of their relevance. Camrilla is named in the song. Let’s look at the lyrics: “Last night you were on my balcony/You needn't try, know the whole story/Before it's too late I must get away/But both of us know you must stay/Oh, come on, Carmilla/Surrender into the roses/Go back home under the posies/Surrender into the roses/Carmilla, Carmilla, Carmilla”. There is a floral link to The Song of Solomon. Bush imagining herself as these flowers. Though there is biblical connection, we do have Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley. Here, there are the rose and posies. No stranger to bringing flowers and floral life into her song, many have connected Kate Bush’s Carmilla from Surrender into the Roses to a source that many might not think Kate Bush would have known about. Though, for anyone who knows about Bush (Cathy Bush, we should say, as she would have written this song before her professional career began. Dreams of Orgonon wrote about Surrender into the Roses, a.k.a., Carmilla:

“Felicity Toulson’s essay in the Bush-themed fanzine Homeground. Toulson makes the so-compelling-as-to-be-obviously-right argument that the song is an homage to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic Gothic lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, and frankly makes her case right away by pointing out that the lyrics are totally vampiric—the song literally mentions covering a room in garlic flowers. It’s a horror song in its tropes and atmosphere.

It’s also a lover’s quarrel gone horribly wrong. Carmilla is largely famous for its sapphic attributes, with the relationship between the characters Laura and Carmilla being an explicitly lesbian one (this is made explicit in the Hammer horror film adaptation The Vampire Lovers—a fun connection to a song we’ll cover here soon). This sexual-romantic tension is expressed in the song too: “before it’s too late I must get away/but both of us know you must stay.” It’s a mildly startling little recording, one that foreshadows Bush’s various engagements with intertextuality and queerness (bonus: it’s one of at least two Kate Bush songs to rhyme “roses” with “posies.” In the later song she even pronounces “posies” in a way that makes the rhyme parse on record). Our time exploring the Phoenix era is ending, so we may as well go out with lesbians and vampires”.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

There is a lot to examine there. Although Kate Bush does not mention Laura in the song, there is every likelihood that she was thinking about this novella when writing Surrender into the Roses. I love these lines: “Tying, dying, flowers around the room/It keeps me safe, but oh! the sickly perfume/Well, it makes me long for the good times/When you were really alive”. It is a very short song, through one of Kate Bush’s most intriguing. A wonderful demo that I feel should have got a bigger life. There is that Horror connection. An early example of Bush exploring the Gothic genre. You could say that Wuthering Heights, her 1978 debut single, was a classic example. The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw trying to grab Heathcliff. Hammer Horror, the first single from her second studio album, Lionheart (1978), has those obvious connections. Throughout her career, Bush explored and expanded on Horror/Gothic ideas. Bringing the dark and macabre into her music. Though I am not sure whether she wrote anything similar to Surrender into the Roses. When she was at school, Bush wrote poetry and her writing did explore less conventional forms of romance. If 1993’s The Song of Solomon is her perhaps at her most charged and sexually confident, there is also that ambiguity and blend. Between her making this demand, but also compromising or conforming. A lot to talk about. Surrender into the Roses is more straightforward in a sense, though it is no less unconventional. Perhaps the song was considered for The Kick Inside, but seen as too odd. Bush’s poetry referenced death. There was darkness to a lot of it. In terms of poetry that was mor sexually liberated and less conservative, her brother John would have exposed her to that. No shock that she would pen a song that is a vampiric lesbian love song!

I am writing this during Pride month (June). Bush writing a song that is about intersexuality. That would have been rare in the 1970s. Was there taboo about her releasing a song like this on her debut album, or was Surrender into the Roses seen as a demo that was not substantial enough to put on an album?! Like many of Kate Bush’s songs, you can connect to films, literature and television. The Song of Solomon made me think about Song of Solomon and The Bible. Exactly where Bush was drawing inspiration from. Surrender into the Roses goes to The Vampire Lovers. I do wonder whether a young Cathy Bush was allowed to watch The Vampire Lovers. A fan of Hammer Horror flicks, perhaps she was exposed to a risqué film at a young age. Her household was quite open, though you wonder whether Bush was simply referencing a film she had heard about or if she actually saw it. In terms of its quality, it doesn’t stand up today. This review shows that there are flaws: “The Vampire Lovers runs 91 minutes, or about an hour and a half. It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but it certainly isn’t the worst. It’s a solid “B” film, with a good story, good pace, and “titties galore.” It is a Hammer Horror film after all. The Vampire Lovers also plays heavily on the “lesbian vampire” angle, much more so than the original work. The lone drawback, the one black spot, is Forbes-Robertson’s character. While Pitt is far from a good thespian, and that takes away a little, this character takes away a lot. The character isn’t in Carmilla, and never gets explained in the film. We know he’s a vampire, and dressed in an aristocratic black suit and matching top hat, but also a “zombie green” makeup all over his face. The character just appears, says nothing, doesn’t really do anything, and we don’t know his fate at the end. The Vampire Lovers stands as a good “read, then watch” companion to Carmilla, and as a standalone film”.

IMAGE CREDIT: Precast reinforced concrete heart

If there were age restriction in terms of what children could see at the cinema, the 1970 film could have been shown on the T.V. Though I feel Bush read the 1872 novella, Carmilla. The fact is the novella was written by an Irish author, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and it was a foundational work of English-language vampire literature. Kate Bush’s mother was Irish, so perhaps a curiosity regarding Irish culture and literature. Though there would have been vampire films shown when Bush was growing up. A lot of them evolved from Carmilla. This amazing article explores Carmilla. I have written previous about The Gay Farewell (Queen Eddie), a song that very much explores queerness and a queer character. In the 1970s in the U.K., there was this struggle for L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ representation and equality. The first Pride march took place in London in 1972. This might have compelled Bush to think about the way she represented love. Less heteronormative. Though it is also the Gothic nature of the novella which would have fascinated her:

“The queer elements of this story are obvious in even a superficial reading, as are the sexually subversive and feminist undertones of Carmilla’s narrative. This is particularly true when the novella is set against the backdrop of the late Victorian era of its publication. While we often think of the Victorian age as deeply repressive of sexual desire outright, let alone homosexual desire, female platonic and even romantic love was in fact commonplace during this period (even if explicit lesbianism was not socially endorsed). You can read my other blog post on Boston Marriages to learn more about such 19th and early 20th century sapphic relationships.

Manifold interpretations of the novella’s text abound. Some focus on the intersection of feminist and lesbian themes. Elizabeth Signorotti opines in this vein that “Laura’s and Carmilla’s lesbian relationship defies the traditional structures of kinship by which men regulate the exchange of women”. She adds that Bram Stoker’s later work Dracula acts as a foil to Carmilla’s “reckless unleashing of female desire.”

Amy Leal emphasizes the “unameable desires” of Carmilla, suggesting that Carmilla’s anagram name games are perhaps a symbol of the closeted queer experience of the Victorian period. She notes, “[i]n every incarnation over the centuries, Carmilla must adopt an anagrammatical variation of her original name, each of which carries its own host of interpretations hinting at the forbidden same-sex desires in the text.”

Likewise, Marília Milhomem Moscoso Maia opines in her analysis that “Carmilla is a mysterious character and the same monstrous, who feeds on blood to the innocence of the young. It is a transgressive figure and a threat to the patriarchy of a society that lives under the aegis of the Victorian Era.”  She adds, “Sheridan Le Fanu sustains a perception of lesbianism in the book depicted in something torturant and codified in a double system of opposite binary significations such as pleasure/displeasure;  love/hatred; joy/rage and forbidden/desirable.”

Lindsey Vesperry expands on these themes of a female monster as a threat to Victorian heteronormative social hierarchy. She notes, “[t]he vampire Carmilla, who is a vehicle for the natural world, transgresses the boundaries of Victorian femininity by preying upon young women, and the male characters attempt to reestablish the patriarchal system by staking her. The ‘unnatural’ Carmilla certainly stands as a challenge against a male-dominated civilization by her mere existence.” She concludes that the novella itself represents masculine fear of “the monstrous feminine” which so boldly challenges patriarchy”.

What also could have compelled this young genius is how complex a character Carmilla is, as you can see from the article below. Carmilla is an underrepresented and underrated novella. How influential and important it is. I am sure Catherine/Kate Bush would have known about this as a child when she discovered the 1872 novella. Fascinated by so many elements, she wanted to bring this novella and its antagonist, into a song:

“Carmilla” is unusual for Le Fanu primarily in that its antagonist is a beautiful, young woman with no attitude of haughtiness or entitlement (at least that she lets on). Le Fanu’s villains tend to be corrupt and corpulent aristocratic men: judges, earls, squires, lords of the manor, demon lovers, etc. If they are females (and they rarely are), they are proud noblewomen who shine with beauty but reek with corruption, as in “The Child that Went with the Fairies” – a highly influential prologue to “Carmilla,” as it so happens.

While Carmilla often repels Laura, she is not an arrogant potentate – more like a sluggish, slightly depressed loner who is desperate to possess the heart of her friend. She even exhibits the effects of a variety of mental illnesses (most prominently, borderline personality disorder, a neurosis that causes people to demand affection when it is withdrawn but reject it when it is offered).

Best known as the book that influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula (though it was also heavily influenced by “Ultor de Lacy” and “Aungier Street” – more on that later), and as the one of the earliest uses of the lesbian vampire trope, “Carmilla” is woefully underappreciated as a Gothic powerhouse that stands among the best contributions to the genre of vampire fiction”.

I shall wrap things up here. In thinking of Surrender into the Roses, it makes me wonder whether people know about the Phoenix/Cathy Demos. You can read more about them here. In terms of what she was writing about and how she was developing as a songwriter, this Dreams of Orgonon article provides some guidance and great analysis. Perhaps I am overreaching or have got my perspectives wrong. Though I may also have not dug deeply enough. The Song of Solomon and Surrender into the Roses written years apart and are vastly different, though each traces back to some very compelling sources. Two intriguing songs of desire that are far from ordinary. The Song of Solomon was Kate Bush at arguably her most explicit. Surrender into the Roses was this curious and agile young mind exploring love in a way that was more like poetry than popular music. Each of these songs highlight that there is…

NOBODY like her.

FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Crimson: Light Became the Enemy…

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

 

Crimson: Light Became the Enemy…

__________

I  am completing…

the ‘red’ section of my look at John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow. This is quite a short section. The next part takes us to ‘orange’ and a few sections around that colour. It goes as far as Never for Ever and John Carder Bush photographing his sister around that 1980 album. And the music videos. Some of the brilliant shots he got from that time. Right now, we are sort of wrapping up. We are sort of looking at 1978. In his book, we learn that “In those days, both Kate and I were very much night people”. That is the magic time for composers and artists. Photographers get to enjoy the quiet and have less distraction. Writers like Kate Bush could draw inspiration from that stillness and time. John Carder Bush notes how “There is also that feeling that by not going to bed you are extending your time on the planet and living more”. Photography sessions often ran late through the note to the following morning. I can imagine Kate Bush being this night owl. When it came to recording when she started to produce, she would have sessions going late. I am not sure whether this is something that stemmed from her childhood. Wanting to stay up late and being fascinated by what that time of the day offered. In terms of its mystery and stillness. John Carder Bush observed how modern photographers can get a great shot. They have digital equipment, so there is less risk. When he was photographing Kate Bush, there was always that sense of jeopardy. Or making sure that you had a great shot before you left. “Before I would start to process the black and white shots into the early hours, I would put away all the camera equipment, take down the lights, roll up the background and dismantle the set while everyone else was packing up their things and getting ready to go home”. These are the more technical details of his process. I think it is important, as we look at these shots of Kate Bush he took in her early career and assume it was very fast.

“But every part of the analogue process I used was fraught with danger. Every stage was critical – one mistake and the whole process would be ineffective, and I wouldn’t necessarily know until after the film processing stage”. One of the standout lines, which we see on page fifty-seven is “Once the film had been exposed to the massive amounts of controlled light in the studio for each photo, light became the enemy”. He curses this “demonic, indifferent destroyer that could slip through the tinniest cracks”. I don’t know if we ever think about how these timeless shots look so natural and easy but, in reality, things are different for photographers. In the 1970s, there was not the luxury of having digital equipment, being able to edit everything and doing multiple shots easily. “With colour, the rolls went off to a colour laboratory I knew I could trust. But I processed the black and white myself”. I am going to skip some of what he says – as it goes so deep with the whole process -, however, it is worth reiterating the challenges he faced. “The unknown results of the whole process, from loading the film that morning, which now seemed like a week ago, could be looked at in negative, and with the first perusal would come excitement or disappointment, even dismay”. It must have been tense for John Carder Bush to see if the shots he took would be development and look good or the expression he hoped he’d shot would be released. Getting that control and of light and chemistry right was crucial. The route from the shot being taken to us seeing it is long and often brutal. In terms of how it could all go wrong. In the end, there would be a contact sheet with a row of black and white images, which John Carder Bush likened to “postage stamps of my sister”. There was a connection between the siblings that extended to photography and an instinctive eye. John Carder Bush would know which shot worked the best and which one was right. So did his sister. We throw forward. The trails and that experimentation. Such a pain for a photographer who wanted to get the best shot but was hampered by the restrictions of the time. Images of him  experimenting “with developers and bromide papers late night after late night”, “I almost poisoned myself using toners in the tiny bathroom under the stairs in my flat that I could convert into a darkroom when it wasn’t being used for its original purpose”, and “The result of this crash course in experimentation and chemistry was the first album cover I did for my sister: The Dreaming”.

Though we are pre-Never for Ever chronologically, there is that nod to 1982. I did not know about the details of what she wanted for the cover. She wanted a black and white shot, but one that had a “toned finish and hand tinting to give the suggestion of the photography of Houdini’s time”. That would be between 1874-1926. The cover sees Bush with a key on her tongue and a man’s head (Del Palmer, her boyfriend at the time) in the shot. It was depicting Houdini being fed a key by a kiss so he could escape a trap. Bush playing his wife, Beatrice ‘Bess’ Houdini. John Carder Bush writes how he loves the skin tones on the cover. They were achieved, as he says, “in natural light against the ivy that covered an eighteenth-century wall that had once surrounded a large fruit and vegetable garden, and were lovingly coaxed out of the alchemy of developers and fixatives and the loving, thorough purification with water before being committed to the bath of selenium toner where magic happened, or didn’t”. That image was then hand-tinted by his girlfriend, Vivienne Morgan Chandler. We get to know about this very important woman, as “it has to do with living inside the rainbow”. She and John Carder Bush had a child together. She is very relevant to the book, as Chandler (who died in 2013) was a fine art photographer who became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Photographers. It was, as we find out “her own research into printing methods, developers, toners and papers” that helped John Carder Bush the results he wanted for The Dreaming and The Whole Story (1986). One of the most surprising revelations of this section of Kate: Inside the Rainbow is that those early photo sessions were unenjoyable. Many shots had been taken to give to record companies and magazines “An aura of vague, undefined projection suffused the studio”. John Carder Bush does say that there were superb shots taken. But after having to go to dance rehearsals, practise, production meetings, interviews and the likes, the last thing his sister wanted to do was to project and be this other person. When she should have been relaxing and simply being herself. I can understand that. The single and album covers were different. They had “all the fun of the Cathy book photos but with make-up artists, hair stylists, costumiers, flashlighting, backdrops and the magical Hasselblad, the icon of the medium-format cameras”.

Kate Bush and her brother working on the emotional trappings and settings for these shots. “The music industry was convinced that image alone could sell the product”. The importance of getting the shot ‘right’. We learn from the photographer about the Hasselblad. If he takes a still from a video shoot thirty years previous, it is still crisp and looks great. The VHS copy of the final video looks lifeless and blurred. Colourless. That is why I have argued that so many of her videos need an HD upgrade. The video artform is explored too. How it was essentially a series of stills strung together. How expensive it was to make a video, with no guarantee it would be shown on T.V. Now – or when the book was published – videos seem easier to make. You could do a one-take video and it would be a lot less rigorous than what directors had to endure decades before. That excitement of taking a shot that would be used on an album cover. A piece of art almost. John Carder Bush writing how he would buy albums on the strength of the artwork. Less common when it came to the C.D. era. Artwork and the importance of the image not as paramount. We are in a digital age but one where vinyl is very important. Yet, there are few standout album covers each year. Where you get that phenomenal and memorable image. John Carder Bush looks back at promo shots from the past and why some were not used. It might be, as he muses, “Perhaps it’s that during the intensity of a portrait session a mood evolves, partly on purpose and partly because of the time, the place, the season, the currents of our lives, and that when we looked through the transparencies and contact prints we were probably looking for shot that best captured the mood”. A different case for album covers. Many exquisite ones that were never used, yet “the ones we did choose still stand out as the most appropriate”. John Carder Bush reminisces how his sister was getting a “healthy distance from the madness of fame”, though that didn’t allow much permanence. He was still based in the same flat he lived at for thirty years (where he was living at the same address as his sister); she would have to move to avoid intrusion and obsessive fans. Criminals too. Never really being secure or settled anywhere.

As a stills photographer on her videos, John Carder compared himself to a thief. One that crept among the shadows to find the right shot. Trying to get a different angle or perspective that the cameraman did not, whilst also trying to stay out of the way. Walking onto a video shoot would amaze John Carder Bush. How many people were involved. A comparatively small crew for a stills shoot. As Kate Bush was discussing choreography, what she wanted from the video and was being made up and prepared, her brother would navigate a labyrinth of cables and crew to get himself positioned to take a perfect shot. Almost like a sniper in plain view. The final analogue sessions he did with his sister was for 1993’s The Red Shoes. That was using the beloved Hasselblad. In 2011, for Director’s Cut, a Canon digital camera belonging to his son, Gavin, was used. John Carder Bush does not consider himself to be a professional photographer, despite the fact he produced images for magazines and albums. He shot his sister but very few people outside of that world. He did not usually look back but, when constructing Kate: Inside the Rainbow, he had to. He remembered fondly the Cathy photos. Those he took of his sister as a girl. Even though they “probably represent just an hour or so out of her childhood, their flavour still seems to linger in these photos that scan many years of adulthood”.  I like how he says, when selecting images for the new book, he was confronted by the passing of time and the date of the images. When he took the images of his sister, “there is a very personal sort of vortexing into the ‘soul’ of the shot that bypasses the details of the date – does it do to me for a split second what those photos I kept in my desk at boarding school did for me? Does the arrow strike its target? If it does, the passing of time is irrelevant”. In the end, however stages and constructed the photos are, nothing has changed. “Just look at her eyes…”. The final words before we reach 1980 and Never for Ever. Completing ‘red’ before go into the ‘orange’ of Never for Ever and beyond, I did want to highlight the limitations John Carder Bush faced. How light could be this great gift but also an enemy. How a shot could easily be ruined and there was this sense of nervousness when it was developing. The equipment he used and his memories from this early years. I guess that take us through 1978 and maybe into 1979. How he switched from black and white to colour at one point and analogue to digital later. Though things changed and evolved, other aspects stayed the same. Chief among them, the startling potency and beauty…

OF his sister.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Eaves Wilder

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Nick Scott for DORK

 

Eaves Wilder

__________

SIX months ago…

I spotlighted Eaves Wilder. It was an omission on my part to neglect her music to that point. Though I have been a fan for years. I wanted to revisited this incredible London-based artist. I am not going to repeat things I wrote in the previous feature. There are some great 2026 chats with an amazing and beautiful artist that is among our absolute best. I have so much respect and love for everything Wilder does. She plays London’s The Social on 24th June. One of our finest artists – as I think I acknowledged last time -, her debut album, Little Miss Sunshine, came out in April. I think that it should be shortlisted for a Mercury nomination. It is a perfect album for inclusion, as it is exceptional and worthy in its own right, though it is important we recognition artists genuinely deserving. I love Sam Fender, though he seemed dismissive last year when he won it for People Watching – even though the album was worthy. I am going to get to a couple of interviews around Little Miss Sunshine. I am ending with a positive review for the album. I don’t usually just dump in entire interviews without editing but, when it comes to some, I feel it is important to include the majority of what is said. In the case of Eaves Wilder, we get some explanation and background. In terms of why Little Miss Sunshine is important. Someone who, at one point, took a big step away from music. Why her debut album arrived this year and not sooner. DIY spoke with Eaves Wilder in April. Having hit pause until she had something to say, “with debut album ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, Eaves Wilder is learning to follow her instincts”:

“After releasing her debut EP ‘Hookey’ in 2019, London’s Eaves Wilder took a step back. “There’s so much noise in the world, and so many people making music, and I felt like I was one of them,” she explains, speaking from her living room over Zoom. “I thought: ‘I need to figure out if I’ve got something to say that I think I could add’.”

During what felt like a mid-life crisis (“well, hopefully not mid-life!”), Eaves decided it was time to throw in the towel and, if she ever wanted to move out of her parents’ house, get a more stable job - that, or she’d join a nunnery. “I still think it’s quite a good idea,” she grins, citing The Sound of Music as inspiration. “It’s free rent and free food; you get to garden, read and listen to music all day - it sounds lovely!” Unfortunately, her boyfriend pointed out that she’d have to give up beer, which put the plan firmly to bed.

Before calling it a day entirely, Eaves - who’d previously felt constricted by a pressure to produce radio-friendly, all-out pop - decided to try leaning into her own tastes. The result was ‘Mountain Sized’, which she describes as “basically a huge train of thought thrown up onto a song”; finally freed from writer’s block, the rest of her imminent debut album, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, soon followed.

“I’m really fuelled by the stuff in my gut. I think that’s why I’m drawn to certain sounds and why I love big, heavy distortion and loads of reverb,” she says. “It’s really instinctive now, rather than led by what I think I should be doing. It’s purely me and my stomach, and what I think sounds cool.”

Her comeback single of sorts, ‘Everybody Talks’ addresses the saturated online content farm that made her want to quit music in the first place, with her airy vocals growing more urgent over a spiralling chorus. “Everyone talks before they actually realise if they have something to say,” she explains. “We’re not meant to have this many opinions about everything. Our worlds are way too big.”

Right down to its name, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ is a rejection of the ever-cheerful, smiling woman Eaves felt expected to impersonate, packaging the anger, frustration and fear that felt truer to her experience of young womanhood within snarling guitars and massive instrumentals inspired by Wolf Alice, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots. Opener ‘Hurricane Girl’ reimagines the oft-mythologised troubled woman from a more sympathetic angle, while the thundering ‘Just Say No!’ recalls the intoxicating false praise of being taken advantage of.

It’s clear that being a young woman has consciously shaped much of Eaves’ relationship with the industry. She credits that to her mum, journalist Caitlin Moran, who would sit Eaves and her sister down in front of MTV “for hours” while pointing out how none of the male artists wore barely-there spangled leotards. “She’d say: ‘do you see how powerful he looks?’,” Eaves remembers. “‘He’s not having to do any of that shit - why are they?’”. That early education was formative; now, it pervades every facet of her musical life. “My view of the world has always been through a very feminist lens,” she nods. “It’s inescapable - once you see the world that way, you can’t go back”.

I do like this interview from Under the Radar earlier this month. Rather than it being the standard interview regarding promotion and getting insights into her debut album, instead, Eaves Wilder reveals her ‘firsts’. It is a great insight into a truly tremendous songwriter. I do hope that Little Miss Sunshine receives lots of award nominations, as it is among the best albums of this year. Women are ruling music, and Eaves Wilder is an example of queens on top. Little Miss Sunshine is an album you need to get on vinyl, as it contains music that draws you in. Even if there is a lot of her in the album, I think everyone can relate and understand. An experience that never excludes the listener. When I hear the album, I close my eyes and imagine myself in the songs. The feel and warmth of vinyl means it is an album you really need to get on this format:

“Wilder garnered attention and acclaim for her early singles and 2023 EP, Hooky, but considered walking away from music and even toyed with becoming a nun. But then she wrote and arranged Little Miss Sunshine in her shed and later co-produced the album with Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine; The Horrors; Black Country, New Road; Sorry).

“I remembered when I realized I’d written a concept album and that it was a whole self-contained world. It was like ‘Holy shit!’ And in that moment I realized that’s why I had almost walked away,” she explains. “At my lowest, I just wanted to be unhuman, unfeeling, and unmoved. Like a mountain or a tree. Or the sky. These are all things that have a purpose but I didn’t know what my purpose was. And so what I had to do was figure it out, song by song.”

Read on as she discusses the early influence of her dad, her love for a certain Time Lord, and unlikely first musician crush.

First record your parents played for you?

My dad was constantly playing records. I remember him playing [Nick Drake’s] Bryter Layter a lot, and also ELO a lot.

First album you bought?

Elastica, by Elastica.

First favorite band?

The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

First favorite song?

Everything in the Doctor Who soundtrack by Murray Gold.

First concert you went to?

My dad’s a music journalist, and my mum was away a lot, so he would take us with him for all the gigs he had to review, which was awesome. I saw Carole King when I was really little and I remember it really stuck with me. I don’t think I’d seen a band fronted by a woman on piano.

First instrument?

High School Musical microphone that lets you duet with Troy. I ran that thing to the ground until his voice was like all distorted and fucked up cos I think I had also kissed it a lot it and it fucked with the electronics.

First recording device?

I got a four-track little portable recording machine when I was about eight and would mysteriously walk around school listening to my demos waiting for someone to ask me about it.

First time you performed in public?

I had formed this band for the school”.

Prior to getting to a review of Little Miss Sunshine, let’s come to Rolling Stone UK and their interview with the remarkable Eaves Wilder. They spotlighted an artist who “turned anger and disillusionment into newfound power on the glorious and deserved second chance of debut album ‘Little Miss Sunshine’”.

“What did it feel like when you started to write songs again after the break? What sounds and ideas were coming out?

It started from a point of me being like, ‘I’m gonna quit music, so what would I make? I’m just gonna experiment a little bit and see what I would make’. I was really anti-music at the time. I was, like, over it. I was really into books, and it was all coming from a few books and a few movies that I loved. About half way through, I realised, ‘Oh, this is all coming from the same place, and these will tie in together. Maybe it could be a thing!’

I remember talking to my mum and my sister, and my sister knew I was having writer’s block. She kept on hearing songs by, like, Olivia Rodrigo, and being like, ‘You should write a song like that!’ I’d say, ‘Fuck off! I’m trying!’ I remember just being like, ‘I can’t write a banger right now. I just can’t’. I just wanted to write something really pretty, and she was like, ‘Well, you’re allowed to do that too’. That just clicked something in me. I was like, ‘Oh, I could just make something that I think sounds really nice and isn’t meant to have mass appeal’. I remember my mum playing me a Liz Fraser song, which I’d never heard before. I went straight to the shed in my garden and wrote the first song for the record.

You’ve said your album is about world building, and its song titles – ‘Hurricane Girl’, ‘The Great Plains’, ‘Mountain Sized’ – are very tied to nature. What does the world you’re building look like in your head?

It was the polar opposite of where I actually was, in this really rainy spring in the UK. Everybody was so depressed! I was thinking of really vast American landscapes. I was super into the Laurel Canyon scene, and then from that, I was reading Daisy Jones and the Six, and Little House on the Prairie has always been one of my favourite books. It all just seemed to be this place that was pure fantasy and escapism – just being a little girl on a ranch, not having to think about her phone or, like, having a job or joining a nunnery…

The album is called Little Miss Sunshine – did that film inspire the album?

It actually didn’t! I’ve watched it before, but [the title] was more of a joke to myself, because I was such a bitch at the time – I was really going through it. I wasn’t nice to be around. Really, I was quite unhappy and really angry at the world actually, I think. I liked the idea of it, especially when you’re a woman that’s my age, it’s really not hot to be really angry or kind of a bitch or annoyed, and you need to have this sunny disposition. That’s what’s encouraged. And I really want to have that! At first I present as having that, but then deep down, I’ve got all of this other shit that’s going on, and that’s songs like ‘Mountain Sized’ and ‘Hurricane Girl’. I tried to use weather to describe all of these different weather fronts that were coming in and out of me at the time. It started off as a joke, and now it makes me quite happy, because the point of the album was trying to find the light in things again. I guess I did that eventually”.

I want to end with a review from DIY. They gave some great insights into one of the most important debut albums of this year. In terms of getting this incredible young artist to a wider audience. A complete and arresting album from Eaves Wilder. I do feel that this album is worthy of being played on some huge stages. Let’s hope that Wilder’s summer is busy with festival requests and a load of dates:

“Despite its sound owing much to late-‘90s alternative – and that it’s coming two years on from her initial breakthrough – there’s something so beautifully ‘now’ about ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, this debut full-length from Eaves Wilder. Not the ‘now’ that one might imagine rapacious, cartoonish A&Rs to seek – that’s already been and gone, despite their efforts, if it even existed. But a ‘now’ that, among other things, has digitally-literate teens metaphorically crate-digging in a way that’s seen many a veteran act performing to audiences younger than their biggest hits; Olivia Rodrigo using her stage as a pseudo mixtape, Hayley Williams spilling her own guts across new material, and acts like Mitski, Wolf Alice and Wet Leg crossing over into pop spheres in various ways. That tangent is to say, there’s an audience ready and primed for a record like this, should it find them.

The scene opener ‘Hurricane Girl’ sets is one that contrasts Eaves’ saccharine vocals – exaggerated in their effect as to veer towards the sinister – and soaring guitars. To use a decidedly ‘90s reference point to match its result: it’s as if Alisha’s Attic had been reached by riot grrrl. Similarly, ‘Ropeburn’ continues in the ‘90s alt-pop vein, while that same intense vocal turn adds a dollop of intrigue to ‘English Tea’, its “…or we could go for a drive / Or you could sit with me” given multiple interpretations.

There’s a glorious oomph to ‘Just Say No!’, while ‘The Great Plains’ feels like a classic summertime radio bop, a hint of wistful resignation to its repeated “I wanna be a cowboy, mama”; closer ‘Summer Rolls’, too, whirls dreamily into being a classic, expansive final song. It’s ‘Daisy Chain Reaction’ that’s the true gem here, though; its witty title matched by an enviable ability to ooze ennui, an excitable, chugging pulse and an immediate sense of having already existed for decades, a song that’s not trying to be - but just is. Equal parts escapist and infectious, while simmering with if not rage then an itchy frustration, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ is, yes, the exact misnomer one would assume its title to be, and yet entirely suited to the coming months”.

I really love Little Miss Sunshine and everything Eaves Wilder releases. A quick follow-up from my Spotlight feature late last year, I am going to watch with interest what comes next from Wilder. She will want to take time to promote her debut. And not be rushed regarding a follow-up. If you are searching for an artist who is going to endure and be releasing music for many years more, then you need…

TO connect with Eaves Wilder.

_____________

Follow Eaves Wilder

FEATURE: Spotlight: Supergloss

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Supergloss

__________

I am excited…

that Supergloss is this amazing D.J. getting so much love and respect. Born in Germany, she is now this D.J. queen that is known and adored throughout the world. I will come to some interviews with her soon. However, I want to bring in a little bit of biography before moving on and going deeper with this incredible talent:

“Drawing inspiration from the timeless techno tracks of the 90s and 00s, Supergloss creates a highly danceable blend of energetic sounds that seamlessly combines the styles of the past and future. Her musical style sits between the genres of acid, trance and techno. With her music, she aims to activate the listener’s feminine energy through a selection of hip-moving tracks and playful beats. Born and raised in Germany, Supergloss began her musical journey at the age of 5 when she started playing the classical piano. Her musical interests and tastes continued to evolve as she grew up, moving from Hyperpop to Hip Hop before finally finding her passion in Techno after settling in Berlin.

Refusing to be defined by a single style or label, Supergloss offers a fresh adventure with each new mix she creates. Since her first gig in 2021, Supergloss has made a splash in the techno scene as a new, fresh face in the industry. Her unique style and infectious energy have set new tones and earned her a dedicated following. With regular bookings at established clubs and internationally renowned party series like Berghain, Basement, K41 or Fusion Festival, Melt and Boiler Room”.

I have put some social media links at the bottom of this review. You need to connect with Supergloss. She is coming to the end of a run of tour dates that has seen her have a pretty busy last couple of months.

The first interview I am coming to is from The Beat Asia. They spoke with Supergloss early last year as she was taking her sets to Asia and Hong Kong. They explained how “Asia embraces a true hustle culture; by night, we let our hair down and erupt in a magnificent energy to good crowds and good music”:

“How long have you been working in this industry?

The first club show I played was in 2021 in Berlin, so already four years ago. Time flies when you're doing what you love. For the past two years, I have been able to do DJing and producing as my main profession and fully focus on music.

I love your name Supergloss. How did you come up with it?

Thank you! The name was born after a fun night out when I kept teasing my friends by applying my lip gloss too often. I am a known gloss-addict in my friend group, so the name was my instinctive first choice when an alias was needed for me.

What got you started as a DJ and what do you love the most about it?

When I first started off, I never had the intention of starting a career. My best friend taught me how to mix and use the decks, and my curiosity and interest for music grew from there. I think that’s the most important part. Music is an endless resource, and I love to take it all in. Combined with the culture behind techno music, its roots and the clubs and festivals showcasing it – it’s a deep dive. I never get tired of this industry. There’s always something to discuss, ideas around how to take part in this scene, and people to connect with.

How would you describe your style of music?

To be honest, I prefer when other people describe my sound - because as the artist you never know how people interpret your style.

Speaking about my track selection, I usually go for Trance and Acid Music and glue it together with some classical Techno elements. Electronic music is really diverse and for me it’s too boring to stick to only one genre. So, I keep exploring new corners and niches and include them into my sets whenever I feel that it fits.

Can you tell us more about your creative process and how you curate your mixes?

Everyone has their own way of preparing their sets or approaching their productions. For me it works best when I wake up in the morning and feel hungry for music. It’s an intuitive feeling and I start to feel ideas spreading and a vision coming to life. I try to imagine being part of the crowd and visualize the dancefloor at exactly the set time and translate this into my preparation.

Which artists have had the greatest influence on your music?

Even though I was born in 1998 my strongest musical influences come from the 90s. Discovering artists like Laurent Garnier, Planetary Assault Systems, Thomas P.Heckmann or even Megamind and Cores was eye opening. I like bold, euphoric, melodic music with a strong bass line, it tickles something in brain that I try to recreate.

What has been your best experience so far in your DJ career?

After four years playing sets, I need to say that I appreciate the whole journey as one. It’s very hard to pick a favorite. Of course, there’s been sets that feel magical because everything seems right in this moment, like my shows at K41 in Ukraine, Fusion Festival or in Radion in Amsterdam. But the best experience is always seeing people enjoy the moment.

When I focus on single faces, and I see how they light up with the music, that's what makes it most special. In that moment, performing takes on a new meaning”.

I want to remain at start of last year, and this interview from Fizzy Mag. They spoke to the Berlin-based D.J. around the release of her E.P., Space Office. I have never seen one of her sets but, listening and watching to them on YouTube, you get a fraction of what the crowds feel. As an artist and producer, she is putting out this stunning music that you cannot afford to miss out on:

“You’ve described your music as activating listeners’ feminine energy with playful beats. How does this concept influence the way you approach producing or crafting a set?

Whenever I’m preparing a set, I try to envision what I would like to hear at that moment. I need music that moves me from inside, that makes me feel confident and cheerful – that’s when I really enjoy a set. So I try my best to translate that into my selection – anything that makes me feel like it can make me move the way I enjoy moving. And I see it translated on the dancefloor as well. Often the guys take a step back, and the front row is filled with women in groups just smiling and enjoying – that’s when I know I’ve got them right on the spot where I wished them.

Transitioning from classical piano at age five to spinning techno tracks in Berlin is quite a leap. Was there a defining moment that sparked your love for electronic music?

Definitely, the Berlin club scene started a fire in me. Before moving here, I was going to some festivals that had electronic music acts, like Nature One or Piknic Électronik in Montreal – but I don’t think I really understood it at that point in my life. The nightlife in Berlin really taught me the concept and the community behind this music – and I instantly knew I wanted to become part of it. Having a musical education is very helpful because it shows that, even though techno music is quite repetitive and technological, it’s deeply theoretical – just like playing the piano.

Berlin is a mecca for electronic music. How has the city’s vibrant club culture shaped your identity as a DJ and producer?

I feel pretty blessed that I made my first steps as an artist in this city. When you attend club nights in the highly respected venues of this community, you can actually hear the quality. I understood what it means when the DJ is able to read the crowd, the window blinds open up after a few hours, or what it means to stay impatiently in the toilet queue because you don’t want to miss a second of the DJ set. I learned from these experiences – and I try to bring this vibe to other cities now. Being a techno fan living in Berlin is a privilege, and not every country has access to this level of quality. So I try to enrich my own selection, way of working, and especially my expectations for myself from this.

Your performances are known for their infectious energy and fresh perspective. Can you share a particularly memorable gig where you felt the crowd fully connected with your vibe?

Last year I was touring in South America for the first time – also my first time visiting. I felt like the people were really waiting for my set, and from the first moment I played in Santiago, nobody left their spot. Sometimes, as a DJ, you have these moments when you lock eyes with almost everyone on the dancefloor, and they all look satisfied – that’s the best feeling in the world. My mission is to make people happy, and it’s my goal – I felt like I accomplished that there.

When someone finishes enjoying one of your shows or listens to your music, what’s the lasting impression or feeling you hope they take with them?

Joy – not the hands-in-the-air type of joy, but the feeling that everything was fine in that moment. I believe that even in the darkest underground clubs, it’s possible to transport some kind of bliss.

Your first solo EP is set to release in January on Noom Records—congratulations! Can you share what this project means to you, the inspirations behind it, and whether we can look forward to more solo work in the near future?

Thank you! I’m so excited about it – I can’t believe I’ll be releasing on my all-time favorite label. I’m already working on new music since I’ve found a new passion for it. It makes the DJing part feel so much more intense and meaningful when you can play your own tracks – it’s a bit magical.

Supergloss is proof that techno can be both a celebration of its history and an exploration of its future. With her first solo EP and an ever-expanding tour schedule, her journey is just getting started—and we can’t wait to see where she goes next”.

I will end with an interview from this year. However, last June, KALBLUT. were in conversation with this amazingly passionate D.J. and artist. Someone who lives and breathes for what she does. There may be some repetition in terms of the information here, as some of the questions were sort of asked in other interviews. Though I have tried to find some different takes and angles:

“You mentioned moving through different genres, before settling on techno. What about techno resonates with you the most, and how did that transition happen?

I got involved with techno music when I picked up my first student job at 18 in a Comedy Bar in Hamburg. Sometimes after my shift I needed an outlet. I was still awake after working during the night, so I decided I wanted to go to a club to dance on my own. People recommended I go to Waagenbau in Hamburg. It was exciting to go alone- I think I didn’t even change my dirty clothes after work. I stepped foot into the club and it was intimidating; the toilets were flooded and I saw high people for the first time in my life. It was a bit of a shocker, but I enjoyed the music so much. It felt like my secret for the next months, that I sometimes went there for 1–2 hours after work. But then I moved to Berlin and my flatmate showed me around the Berlin nightlife. I started to listen to techno music in my daily life and since then never stopped. Berlin’s nightlife was magical before Covid and I am so grateful I still got to experience it with people that are 10 years older than me – people who taught me the etiquette of nice ravers and always invited me to the coolest events and festivals. We traveled together to Bassiani, K41, or Garbicz Festival in Poland – that really shaped my musical taste and spirit.

How do you approach the creative process when mixing different styles? What elements do you think are essential in creating a highly danceable track?

When DJing and selecting tracks, I always try to combine the old and the new. Sometimes a 20-year-old track has something that a track released yesterday is missing- and vice versa. It can be the pumpier kick or the more complex 303. While producing, I always try to create a specific kind of acid bassline that lifts you up a bit from your heels when dancing to it, or at least lifts me. I’m trying to keep a static energy flow with a dramatic pit. That sometimes stops people from dancing, but I can see how some people close their eyes, just vibe, and wake up again after the drop. I love that.

Who are some of your musical influences, particularly from the 90s and 00s, that have shaped your sound?

From these years, I reference the tracks from the catalogues of Noom Records and Bonsai Records a lot – when I go harder, I also look to UK labels like Stay Up Forever. I love the acid from this era- it’s so dirty and raw. Other than that, I admire the Love Parade trance music and sets. The music is individual, ecstatic – everything seemed so free-spirited and raw. I’m sometimes sad that I wasn’t there.

Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for your music career, and are there any specific goals you hope to achieve in the next few years?

I always aspire to be better with every set – and by better, I mean more pleasing for the crowd. It’s my main goal to always make people happy when I play. I accepted for myself that this is what I can deliver best with my music. I stopped overthinking if my music is not hypnotic or trippy enough, and this acknowledgment put me on another level of understanding the stuff that I play. I have this dream of introducing more people to this sound again. It’s a sometimes forgotten spirit that I want to try to reintroduce.

What advice would you give to young, aspiring DJs and producers trying to carve a niche in the music industry?

If you want to carve a niche, you need to build one for yourself. Try to understand your taste as if you have never heard a popular electronic music track before. Rinse away the idea that what the successful DJs are playing is the ultimate thing. You need to stand behind what you do and protect it. And then you can hope that other people like it as well. You cannot force the majority to like what you do, but you also can’t force people to try to introduce themselves to it”.

DJ Mag featured Supergloss for Recognise 108. Where they salute and highlight the best D.J.s around. Providing an incredible mix as part of her interview, it is fascinating learning about Supergloss. Her background and path into being a D.J. Why she chose the genres and sounds she has. I think that she will have a very busy and eventful summer. Going to lots of great places. She has a few more dates in her current run, though you know there will be festivals and other dates coming soon. You cannot keep Supergloss down, as she has this drive and determination to bring joy and togetherness to people around the world. Bonding people through music:

“Her ongoing love affair with trance and acid techno, and her desire to reinterpret those genres for new audiences, is driven by the “drama” of it. “The melodies, the build-ups and the long drops – this is what brings the attention back to the dancers, you know? There’s space to breathe; to drink something, to hug each other, to kiss their partners. This is the perfect music for it.”

“People come to the clubs and they bring their free time,” she adds. “This is the most valuable thing we have right now, in this economy. They take the time to listen to your music, and in those two or three hours with my audience, I want to give them a little bit of relief.”

"It’s fascinating how far apart clubs and scenes can be, yet still share so many codes and values. It feels like everyone across these scenes could be friends. There’s something really beautiful about that.”

Just in time for summer, Supergloss’ mix for DJ Mag’s Recognise series is packed with those carefree, escapist atmospheres. Here, Supergloss blends contemporary acid and trance producers with a handful of genuine underground classics as anchors, including Kai Tracid's definitive 'Acid Phase' remix and Blu Peter's cult favourite 'The Pictures in Your Mind (Arabesque Mix)'.

It also happens to be “the earliest in-the-morning mix I’ve ever recorded,” she says. Recorded while wide awake at 5AM due to jetlag, it contains “all of the tracks that I didn’t get a chance to play on the tour”.

“Mixes can sometimes feel a bit more artistic than when you’re in a DJ booth,” she says. “I always feel like a painter with a blank canvas when recording a mix at home. You can really think about what you’re doing with patience and care.”

When it comes to making her own music, Supergloss credits Omon Breaker for “basically teaching me how to produce”. “I was, again, very curious, and you can only get so far with YouTube tutorials,” she says. “I needed someone to sit next to me and explain things. I’m also a very quick learner. And I think we inspired each other – he inspired me because I learned so much from our EP, and I had really fresh ideas because I was very naive.”

Her debut solo efforts come in the form of the ‘Space Office’ EPs, with tracks like the euphoric ‘Unshame’ offering a thrilling blend of nostalgic ‘90s acid, trance flourishes, and functional, modern percussion. This month, she shared another new track, ‘Astral Body’, a vibrant Goa psytrance anthem, which featured on RAW's 'Summer Hits 7' compilation.

She has another solo EP on the horizon, set to be released on X-IZE in the summer. Landing in the midst of a packed festival schedule, you’d wonder where she finds the time to finalise a new release on her own label, but the truth is that she feeds off this restless energy. “Summer is my favourite season,” she smiles. “I wish it could be summer festival season all year long.”

This summer, she’ll play events including Terminal V Croatia, London’s Junction 2, Ukraine’s Ickpa and Belgium’s XRDS. What, we ask, is her favourite part of being a touring artist? “I’ve always loved travelling. Even before I became a DJ, I was constantly backpacking and exploring. I know what it’s like to save up for a whole year just to afford a flight ticket. So this feels like a privilege.”

“The most interesting thing for me is observing people in different countries,” she continues. “It’s fascinating how far apart clubs and scenes can be, yet still share so many codes and values. It feels like everyone across these scenes could be friends. There’s something really beautiful about that.”

Those connections extend all the way to what Supergloss describes as “the most southern techno club in the world” in Chile. She played there in 2024, in Puerto Montt – “almost in Patagonia” – at a party hosted by the local collective XRave.

“Even surrounded by all those mountains, it felt like a party in Berlin because of the people, their energy and their love for the music. It’s a symbolic memory for me. You can be in the most southern techno club in the world and still feel welcomed, because everyone sees you as part of something bigger.”

As Supergloss’ summer schedule gathers pace, those moments of connection are what she values most, and that sense of belonging stands as the most rewarding part of her journey so far”.

If Supergloss comes to London in the future, I would love to interview her. Her story and path is really compelling and inspiring. One of the greatest modern D.J.s, do make sure that you connect with her on social media. Here we have…

A universal sensation.

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Follow Supergloss

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Jae Stephens

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Jae Stephens

__________

I spotlighted…

PHOTO CREDIT: Bradley Meinz for NME

Jae Stephens in November. I wanted to come back to her music, as I feel this year is a big one for her. You can see where she is touring later in the year. There are some big dates in Stephens’s diary. I am glad that she is coming to the U.K. in October. She was here last year, but I was unable to go and see her perform. Her incredible album, TOTAL SELLOUT, came out last November. Since then, there have been singles released. I waned to explore some of the newer chats with an artist that people should definitely seek out. Such an amazing sound and this enormous confidence and power as a singer, you know that Jae Stephens is going to be making music for years to come. Before coming to something newer, the NME feature from November is worth reintroducing. Getting a lot of love from the U.K. press, there is this urgency about her music. Someone who means business! I feel that the next couple of years are going to be massive. In terms of where Stephens plays. I feel she will get some headline slots and collaborate with some major artists:

“London is where I became a woman,” says Stephens, who upped sticks from her balmy Californian home to the grey skies of Blighty straight out of high school, aged 18. “I was obsessed with it by way of One Direction, I’m not gonna lie to you,” says Stephens, whose fandom fixation garnered her a Tumblr-famous following of over 200,000, for whom she would also post cover songs. “From there, it snowballed into wanting to understand a whole other culture [and] music scene. I just think it was really meant to be.”

It didn’t take long for her to fall in love with British dry wit and offbeat fashion, and the chaos of the Tube, while she also met her management and participated in her first-ever songwriting sessions in the city. “It definitely felt like my coming-of-age movie,” the 27-year-old says of the two years she lived in the UK. “Then I started dating a British guy, and I was living my Wattpad dream!”

Even after moving back to LA, Stephens would return to the UK each year to hone her songwriting chops, writing for herself and others including Bryant Barnes, Sharylen, and Khamari. It wasn’t long before she found herself in the studio with superstar songwriter MNEK, whom she’d first heard on BBC Radio 1 during late-night essay-writing stints. Starstruck, it was one of the first times she felt out of her depth as a young artist in the studio.

“Back then, it was very hard because I wanted everybody in the room to think, ‘Wow, she’s really good, she came up with the concept, the melody, the title and this crazy bar, then she got on the mic’. I wanted to be the valedictorian of the studio.” Penning her first song aged eight and self-releasing music in her teens, Stephens’ headstrong resolve came from a “fuck it, I’ll do it myself attitude” that was born from necessity, meaning she had to learn to trust others creatively and process her self-imposed pressure to perform as a rookie.

And while ‘F**k It I’ll Do It Myself’ was also the befitting title of her self-produced debut EP, nowadays she’s happy for others to take control or chime in as the mood dictates. “I’m really happy to play either front or backseat driver,” says Stephens, whose trajectory has seen her since pen tracks for artists like Jennifer Lopez, Normani and Sinéad Harnett. “Like, this is not a real job; we should be having fun. We’re just writing fucking songs – it’s not that deep!”

Watching how other people work in the studio slowly led her to ‘Body Favors’, the second track taken from ‘Sellout’. Underpinned by a sludgy bassline, honeyed vocals and playful melody, the track’s mischievous lyrics (“Sour on top but it’s sweet below / But how many licks til you reach it though?”) encapsulate what had come to be Stephens’ quintessential sound after struggling to find her own on the electro-tinged R&B of her first EP and its contemplative successor, ‘High My Name Is’.

“I just felt like [‘Body Favors’] was me personified. That doesn’t make sense,” she pauses. “Songified? It had so much character and spunk and was a little sexy and a little sweet and was tongue-in-cheek, and it was mildly appropriate without being vulgar. It was upbeat but wasn’t too squeaky; it had edge but wasn’t too dark. It walked such a specific line, and I remember thinking ‘I have no idea who we would send this song to, I can’t think of anyone who fits all of these opposing boxes… but I can!”

Hitting that perfect recipe pushed Stephens to refocus on herself and intentionally pursue a career as an artist. “When I wrote that one, it definitely made me feel like I had an identity, because I was definitely strung [out] with that a bit, musically,” she says. “I’m not the smooth and sexy seductress with R&B songs – bitch, I’m goofy! And I like to have fun!”.

I guess Jae Stephens might call TOTAL SELLOUT a ‘project’, rather than a debut album. We learn from this interview that there is a debut album coming. The past year has been very busy and productive for Jae Stephens. She has achieved so much. Though you feel she is only just getting started. The Texas-born artisat has released a series of E.P. and played some amazing shows. However, things are gearing up to a debut album:

“YouKnowIGotSoul: It’s been a year since our last interview. At that time last year, you were opening up for FLO and you were on your first tour. Just talk about what this year has been like since then. You dropped the full project, you’re headlining your own tour now and also have your own  podcast.

Jae Stephens: Oh my gosh, it’s been so busy. I feel like this has been the year of a lot of realized goals and things that I really wanted to accomplish. It’s been really exciting releasing my project and just some of my favorite songs ever including “Afterbody” and “Boyfriend Forever”. And just really seeing how people have responded to those songs because I always had a good feeling about them. Just the response since then, off the back of the whole project, to now enabling me to do my own tour has been really great. It’s been a really busy year since then and the following year is about to be even busier, so I’m so excited.

YouKnowIGotSoul: Could you have imagined all of this happening last year? Was this all part of the plan?

Jae Stephens: We make plans and God laughs. But I definitely had in my mind that I wanted to release a full body of work and I wanted to go on tour, and I feel like that has absolutely happened because we worked for this. Me and my whole team, we’ve just put in a lot of time and effort into making sure all the  music has been very intentional and giving the fans what they want to see, what they want to hear. So it makes me really happy that it’s paying off and everybody is receiving it so well. I think we’re doing what we’ve set out to do.

YouKnowIGotSoul: And the entire “Sellout” project, like you mentioned, is finally out now. I love seeing how much your songwriting has evolved from the first part up until now. What did you enjoy most about the entire creative process of this project?

Jae Stephens: I think for me it was really a process from the beginning to the end. I think that you can hear and even see in the visuals me kind of figuring it out as I go along, getting more comfortable, finding my sound, finding how I want things to look, how I want things to feel. So it’s been a real process of just finding myself, learning my style. I really enjoyed finding the people that I love to work with and just finding my footing and finding out how to have fun in this process. It can be a lot, it can be overwhelming, but I’m at a point now where I’m really having fun, and I think that is the “Sellout” way. So I’m really happy to have gotten here to this point. And yeah, that was definitely the result of this project.

YouKnowIGotSoul: Right, for sure. Now, of course, you had a big moment with “Body Favors” last year, and now the new record “Afterbody “is another viral moment for you. Did you foresee this happening for you to have these type of moments?

Jae Stephens: I definitely know which songs I feel special about and which ones I hope the fans will gravitate towards and resonate with. So yeah, “Body Favors” and “Afterbody” were definitely both examples of that. I knew when I was writing them that they were special, that they felt very uniquely me. You never really know what’s going to happen, but you can always have a feeling. So I’m really glad that the audience has gravitated towards those songs because it definitely validates my gut feeling about what I want to hear in my music and what the fans want to see.

YouKnowIGotSoul: So, after this tour, you’re going to head off to Europe with Khalid?

Jae Stephens: Yes. Oh my gosh. In October. I mean, that feels so far away, but my summer is going to be jam packed. I’m going to be at Pride, I’m making my festival debut at Lollapalooza, and then I’ve got a whole album to roll out, so there’s a lot going on, but I’m so excited. I’m super excited to tour Europe with Khalid, who is just so sweet and so iconic, and I haven’t performed in Europe except for my show in London last year, so I’m really excited to experience that, bigger venues, different kinds of crowds and see what the European crowds are giving. It’s going to be really exciting.

YouKnowIGotSoul: And then finally, we just talked about your new album briefly, your debut album that’s going to be dropping. Just talk about maybe some of the differences and some of the similarities that we’ll hear from Sellout versus this new project.

Jae Stephens: I mean, it’s definitely been a different process in the sense that I had a good idea of what I wanted it to be from the very beginning, and I’ve started it with that foundation. I think that it’s still going to be very female focused, female-led, femininity, fun, and just very grounded in that confidence, just like “Sellout” was. I do think maybe a difference here will be I’m a bit more focused on telling a story and showing a bit more sides of myself across this album than maybe I was on “Sellout”. So it’s always going to feel very confident, but I do think that there will be some songs that you listen to and you’ll get another side of that confidence, or you’ll hear another side of the story, and it’ll make you wonder a little bit about who Jae Stephens really is. So I’m really excited about that. But yeah, it’s always going to be fun, confident and fresh”.

I am going to end with this live review from Howard University News Service. Even if she has been in the industry for a while now, I think this year is her most important so far. In terms of how she is going from strength to strength and getting into the ears and eyes of so many new people. These upcoming tour dates will confirm Jae Stephens as one fo the most important voices of her generation. A wonderful artist:

“Under the fluorescent lights of the Songbyrd Music House, Jae Stephens graced the stage for the third show of her latest tour. The vivacious singer, who blurs the lines between Pop and R&B music, certainly showed listeners why her name shall not be forgotten.

For nearly one leisurely hour, Stephens delivered numerous self-assured anthems and hypnotic club hits. Songs from projects like “Total Sellout” were particularly crowd favorites during the sold-out performance on April 9. Aside from the underrated newcomer herself, Haitian pop star Sarina Désir initially served as the night’s opening act.

In just 7 songs, she asserted herself as another musical force to be reckoned with. Though as a woman above all, the Maryland based artist also reaffirmed her worth in the vocal proclamation, “What U Didn’t Know.” The track, originating from an EP with the same title, addresses what she is looking for in a partner and how she refuses to neglect her boundaries in pursuit.

Like this one, other tracks were heavily reliant on tempos and sounds heard exclusively in Haitian music. “Kiwi,” on the other hand, provided attendees with a brief change of pace. The single from her 2020 EP, “Glass Paradise,” showcased Désir’s technicality. Melodic runs were common as she alluded to being undeniable, often irresistible – rather similar to the mentioned fruit.

Impromptu dance breaks kept the momentum high while “Rina” finished the remainder of her set. Before her final note landed, she eagerly treated the audience to a snippet of her anticipated song “PAPI,” which was set for release the following day.

Out of what appeared to be enjoyment, murmurs about downloading the song and supporting Désir’s other music were heard as Stephens was next up.

After an intermission was taken, a call to the fictional station, “SELLOUT FM,” projected from the surrounding speakers. A gentleman called in to seek advice about his partner. Stephens, staying true to her witty, flirtatious personality, answered just before hitting the stage with her two dancers.

The crowd engagement tool paid homage to “The SELLOUT Podcast,” a platform that Stephens provides for fellow emerging artists to gain further exposure.

Welcomed by a multitude of cheers and claps, the Dallas-raised, Los Angeles-based futurist opened with a shortened rendition of “Body Favors.” Sporting a Chicago-house-inspired bassline, its fast-paced rhymes got the audience off their feet and amped from the second half of the show.

“10/10” was another solid exemplification of Stephens’ word play. She confidently mused, “I’m the tea, not a trend, to the T, ten out of ten.” The ambiguous statement sparked a popular “clock it” social media motion from fans and the artist herself.

Several “Jae Baes,” as her supporters are called, appreciated the sense of connection that the moment rendered. Some even attributed Stephens’ personality to their increased consumption of her music. There were also assertions about her ability to go mainstream.

“She’s a Black pop diva,” Nevaeh Boone, age 19 exclaimed. “People say we need more Black pop artists, [but] we have them right here.”

Marcus Phillip, age 19, had similar sentiments, insisting that “she’s a really great artist.” He felt inclined to support Stephens after friends shared her music with him. The concert was his first time seeing the creative in person, but it won’t be his last.

Stephens is Raedio and Def Jam’s first major label artist. Founded by Insecure creator Issa Rae, Raedio prides itself on music publishing and overall supervision. Stephens’ ties with the label date back to 2022 when she was one of the winners of its Creators Program with Google.

Songs such as “Better Boy,” “SMH” and “Boyfriend Forever” were additionally heard. Jae and the Baes, as she jokingly named herself and her dancers, performed choreographed numbers that even required further on-stage audience participation.

“Afterbody” was sung prior to the end of the show. In the high-energy 2025 dance track, Stephens discusses being the main attraction amongst everyone else in the room.

Themes such as unapologetic feminism and independence can be interpreted within her music. Bryce Newby, age 29, supported this argument by sharing his thoughts once the show ended.

After recently being let go from his job, he decided to attend the concert, feeling invigorated despite the sudden circumstances.

“Seeing somebody like Jae who loves her art, who cares about her art, just makes you want to go hard [yourself],” Newby said.

“I love people that are themselves, true and through,” he later added.

Newby referenced Stephens being the same way she is on stage in comparison to how she is on Twitter.

It is safe to say that after D.C.’s show, Stephens should not be gatekept. The self-proclaimed “SELLOUT” possesses the rare ability to harness her individuality within an industry where conformity is common.

As opposed to compromising who she is, as the name suggests, the 28-year-old is changing the game, taking her artistry into her own hands”.

If you are new to Jae Stephens, I would urge you to listen to TOTAL SELLOUT and the singles she has put out. If you are able to see her live, you are guaranteed to get this amazing show. A phenomenal performer, it is going to be exciting to see how far Stephens can go. a stunning and hugely original artist who is at the…

TOP of her game.

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Follow Jae Stephens

FEATURE: Spotlight: JELISA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Zsofia Bodnar

 

JELISA

__________

IT is a shame that I missed…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tess Letort

JELISA when she recently played in London. Jelisa van Schijndel is a multi-talented artist and singer-songwriter from Amsterdam. With her raw and authentic sound, she effortlessly blends alternative soul, R&B, indie, funk, and more into her unique musical expression. From an early age, JELISA has expressed herself through various art forms. Her talent hasn’t gone unnoticed; she has been discovered by radio stations such as Sublime, Veronica, NPO Soul & Jazz, BBC Extra, and more. Her latest E.P., Melancholia, in January. I am taking some of that biography from JELISA’s YouTube page. This is an artist I am new to but an instantly a fan of. One of the beautiful and strongest voices in modern music, I think. I cannot see a lot of press and interviews from this year, so I am going back to last year for the most part. I do want to start out with Crisp Sheets and their interesting conversation. Part of a series of women who inspire them, we get to know more about the wonderful JELISA:

“Can you tell us where and how you grew up?

I was born in Amsterdam, moved to a small village next to Amsterdam with my mom, dad and brother. Loved playing outside by the water and trees. I had a lot of hobby’s and went to a dance academy at an early age. I was very ambitious trying to achieve my passion as a dancer/ singer.

Where did your passion for music came from?

I’ve always been sensitive to sounds, my dad used to go to a lot of concerts and also because I danced I was always surrounded by music.

Also watching music video’s and listening to different kinds of music, also my brothers music.

Who or what inspires you?

Lots of different forms of art inspire me, from paintings to architecture, culture, people, clothes, emotions and situations

What’s your latest song about?

A song that has not yet been released is about not giving up but continuing with what your doing, keep on trying.

What do you like most about what you do?

I like that I get to write feelings down and share it with other human beings. Create projects, being on stage, being in the moment with the magic of the music.

And what are the downsides?

That everything is work, it never stops. I'm always thinking about what’s next. You have to push yourself, if I’m not going to do it, nobody will.

What’s your biggest dream?

Performing on big and small music festivals, giving concerts all over the world. And creating more music for the people.

Do you have any advise for beginning artists, creators or freelancers?

Just create, keep on going, bad days will always be there. And celebrate achievements.

Best place in Amsterdam to enjoy music?

Paradiso, Cafe alto, at my house haha”.

I want to go back to her debut E.P., Do you feel the same?, that came out on 25th January, 2025. It is a remarkable E.P. that I would urge everyone to listen to. You immerse yourself in the world of the songs. I do hope that JELISA comes back to London and plays again soon. The amazing c-heads spoke with JELISA in February 2025:

“Can music heal? Can a song hold all the weight of love, longing, and transformation? Jelisa’s voice makes you believe it can. With a sound that blends the depth of alternative soul with the richness of jazz, blues, and psychedelic influences, her music carries a wonderful warmth, intensity, and sincerity. With her new EP Do You Feel the Same?, she invites listeners into a deeply personal journey of love, longing, healing, and transformation.

To visually interpret the heart of her EP, she teamed up with Amsterdam-based photographer Zsófia Bodnár, who has Hungarian roots, for a stunning editorial, capturing the essence of each song through intimate, evocative imagery. Every frame captures the vulnerability and strength embedded in her music.

“I want listeners to know that it’s okay to feel, and that we’re all on this journey together,” Jelisa shares in this conversation, reflecting on the healing power of music. In this interview, she opens up about the inspiration behind her songs, the emotions that shape her sound, and why love remains the most important force in her life.

Your upcoming EP is a deeply personal project. Can you share more with us about the inspiration behind it?

I think I get a lot of inspiration from life and its emotional shifts, both the good and the bad. My upcoming EP Do You Feel the Same? reflects on these transitions. I guess I’m exploring a lot of love, sadness, confusion, healing, and growth. It’s a deeply personal project that, for me, embraces vulnerability and inner strength. Musically, I think I’m influenced by a wide range of genres like jazz, indie, blues, soul, R&B, funk, psychedelic, African rhythms, different cultures, different kinds of art, and time periods. But in the studio, I just let my intuition guide the creative process, which makes the sound feel pure and authentic to me. Hopefully, the listeners connect with the journey and find their own emotions in the music.

Which song on your EP is your favorite, and why?

For me, it really depends on my mood. The song I’d Rather Live in My Dream really reminds me of a memory that I cherish. But sometimes I feel like I want to experience the depth of the song and get lost in Hurt, while other times, I gravitate more toward something uplifting like Flying Away or This Body. Each song brings its own story and emotion. I guess I love them all for different reasons.

Music often has the power to heal and connect. Is this the message you hope your listeners take away from this EP?

Yes, definitely. I’ve always felt that music has the capability to heal and bring people together, and that’s something I really hope comes across in this EP, Do You Feel the Same? For me, music is a way to express how I feel and what I sometimes can’t say or am not aware of. Writing music feels like therapy sometimes. Getting it out and making art from it feels really fulfilling. If it can help someone feel less alone or more connected to their own emotions, then that adds extra purpose to me and to the music. I want listeners to know that it’s okay to feel and that we’re all on this journey together.

Soul music has such a rich history of storytelling and emotion. How do you see your music fitting into that tradition, and how do you hope to push the genre forward?

I mean, I’d love to carry the soul tradition with me, but I’ll do it in my own way. Soul music is about storytelling and deep emotion, which I connect with naturally. While I try to honor those roots, I guess I also bring in my own voice and experiences. My music will always be centered around stories and emotion, but I hope to stay true to my creativity and intuition while continuing to blend more genres into it.

Where do you see yourself in around 10 years?

Oh, that’s a tough question! In 10 years, I hope I’m still joyful and deeply connected to my passion. If that’s still music, that would be amazing, and I’d love to still be writing music that feels authentic. I’d love to be touring, playing at festivals like North Sea Jazz, Montreux, or Glastonbury, and sharing my music with people who truly connect with it. (Manifesting haha.) Collaborating with other musicians and continuing to explore new sounds. But most of all, I just want to keep growing, stay true to my creativity and intuition, touch people with my music, and explore and enjoy life in general. And I’d love to be a mom someday. (smiles)”.

I couldn’t find too much else in the way of interviews, so I will leave things there. This is someone who I feel should get more attention and love. With an E.P. released earlier in the year and tour dates under her belt, I wonder what the next few years hold. This is a truly wonderful artist that everyone…

SHOULD listen to.

__________

Follow JELISA

FEATURE: You Put Light in My Life: Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Put Light in My Life

 

Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart at Fifty

__________

I wanted to mark…

fifty years of a true classic song. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is a duet between Elton John and Kiki Dee. It was released on 21st June, 1976. Written by John with Bernie Taupin, they used the pseudonyms Ann Orson and Carte Blanche, respectively. It was their pastiche and tribute to Motown duets, especially those between by Marvin Gaye and artists Tammi Terrell and Kim Weston. It was unusual in the Elton John catalogue, as we associate him with his solo work. Not known for his duets. In April 1976, John was between albums. His tenth studio album, Rock of the Westies, was released in October 1975. His eleventh studio album, Blue Movies, came out in 1976. That latter album was not one of his best. Though 1975 was a successful year. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy came out in May 1975. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was this standalone single. The song was offered to Dusty Springfield at the time, but the offer was withdrawn. Her partner Sue Cameron said Springfield was too ill when the song was offered to her. I want to explore Don’t Go Breaking My Heart further. It reached number one in the U.K. and U.S. Last September, the track surpassed a billion streams on Spotify. I am keen to come to a few features around Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. In 2019, Ultimate Classic Rock illuminate the story behind a tremendous and hugely popular song:

“Elton John and Bernie Taupin used the pseudonyms Ann Orson and Carte Blanche – a bit of wordplay on the phrases "a horse and cart" and "carte blanche" – for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," just as they had done on Rock of the Westies. According to producer Gus Dudgeon, John came up with the music first and then had Taupin pen the words, a different process from how they traditionally worked.

“Elton didn’t have a lyric for it," Dudgeon said, according to John's official website. "It was so weird to see him writing a song in the studio with no lyric. I’d never seen him do it before. And all he was singing was ‘Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart…’ That’s what he sang all the way through!”

For inspiration, they looked to Marvin Gaye's run of hit duets with Tammi Terrell and Kim Weston ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "It Takes Two," "You're All I Need to Get By"), which combined uptempo R&B with an orchestra. With the help of percussionist Ray Cooper, John's keyboardist James Newton Howard was given the opportunity to write the arrangement. He came up with a chart that used 20 strings (12 violins, four violas, four cellos).

"I wrote the arrangement on piano and then wrote it down on paper: the old-fashioned way," Howard recalled to EltonJohn.com. "There were no sequencers back in the day. Well, there were, but there was no way to sync them to tape. So, I just plunked it out on the piano, wrote it down, sent it to the copyist and that was it. ... The one thing I remember Elton saying is, ‘You should do a string solo.' The solo in the middle is full orchestra, so that was kind of fun."

John and his band recorded the track in Toronto during the sessions for Blue Moves and sent it to London for Dee to add her contribution. “I remember getting a copy of it with Elton singing his vocal," she also told EltonJohn.com, "and also doing my part in a high voice! I worked hard on my parts. Elton had already stamped the song with his vocal, which in a way is quite good, ‘cos it gives you a groundwork on how you’re gonna sing it. The precedent has already been set by him, and the writing and production of the song. I seem to remember working quite hard to get the right attitude. Good vocals are always hard work.”

She continued: "It was pretty informal. It’s interesting how something you approach with such a casual attitude – like the video (which was done in a couple of takes for a TV show), who would have thought that would have been played so much over the years?”

Released as a standalone single in June 1976, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" went to No. 1 in both the U.S. (four weeks) and the U.K. (six weeks). That ranked as his sixth song to top the Billboard Hot 100 in four years, it was also Elton John's last until 1986, when he sang on Dionne Warwick's charity single "That's What Friends Are For." One of John's own compositions wouldn't reach No. 1 until another duet, George Michael's live remake of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" did so in February 1992.

In honor of their success on "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," John gave Dee a gold heart necklace with the song's title engraved on it; as of 2011, she said she still had it. And even though he's revisited "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" on several occasions, including singing it in high-profile situations with Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show, the Spice Girls, Minnie Mouse, RuPaul and actor/comedian Steve Coogan, John has never forgotten his original duet partner. They recorded a cover of the Four Tops' "Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever" for her 1981 record Perfect Timing, she joined him onstage at Live Aid for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and they interpreted Cole Porter's "True Love" for his 1993 Duets album”.

There are a couple of features on the Elton John website worth highlighting. This one gives us ten fun facts about Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. As it turns fifty on 21st June, I hope there is new celebration and articles written about the song. Even if people associate Kiki Dee with the one song, it is clear there is a lot more to her than this. I remember hearing the song as a child and instantly being hooked. It is so infectious and uplifting:

“1. Today in 1976, Elton had the No. 1 song on the Billboard Top 200 chart for the sixth time in just four years.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart spent four weeks at No. 1, eight weeks in the Top 10, 15 weeks on the Top 40, and four and a half months on the Top 100. It wound up at No. 2 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles chart for 1976 and was Elton’s last No. 1 release in the US until Candle In The Wind 1997.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the duet became Elton’s first No. 1 single in Britain on July 2 – its 4th week on the UK Singles Chart. It spent six weeks at the top and a total of 14 weeks on the chart.

2. The song was written differently from almost every other composition in the Elton John/Bernie Taupin catalogue.

Elton uncommonly came up with the title himself whilst creating the tune at Eastern Sound Studios in Toronto, Canada. He then called Bernie, who was not at the Blue Moves sessions during which this song was recorded, and asked for a lyric to go with that title.

The original lyrics Bernie wrote had very little to do with the final version – only one line (and the title) remains in the song we know today.

3. The track was recorded two days after Elton’s 29th birthday.

Elton played electric piano on the session, with band member James Newton Howard on acoustic piano, Elton’s usual instrument. Other band members included Caleb Quaye (guitars), Kenny Passarelli (bass), Roger Pope (drums), and Ray Cooper (congas and tambourine).

Kiki’s vocals were tracked later in London, using as a guide the demo tape that had Elton singing her lines in a higher voice than his own part.

4. There are three uncredited backing vocalists on the hit single.

Cindy (now Cidny) Bullens, Ken Gold, and Jon Joyce, the backing vocalists on Elton’s 1976 tour, recorded their background parts to Don’t Go Breaking My Heart in London, in May 1976 after Kiki’s vocal had been done. The backing vocals, arranged by Bullens, can be heard along with Elton and Kiki on the “Woo-hoo”, “Nobody knows it”, “Don’t go breakin’ my…” and other parts.

5. ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ was the 143rd song producer Gus Dudgeon worked on with Elton between 1970 and 1976 (roughly 24 songs per year).

After finishing on Elton and the band’s parts, Gus returned to London to record Kiki’s vocal. “I worked hard to make [my vocal] happen,” Kiki recalled. “But I think I probably felt quite comfortable because I’d already done I’ve Got The Music In Me with Gus – and that was a hard vocal for me to get. So, we had trust with each other. And that’s hugely important, I think, because confidence is everything in the studio.”

6. The song was not part of any album at the time of its release.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was Elton’s third stand-alone single, after Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1974) and Philadelphia Freedom (1975), and later appeared on Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume II and subsequent compilations… most recently, Diamonds (2017).

It has also been included as a bonus track on the reissued versions of Rock Of The Westies, even though it was not recorded during that album.

7. The single won Elton two awards in 1977.

Ivor Novello for “Best Pop Song” and “Best Male Vocalist” American Music Award.

8. 19 official versions of the song have been issued:

  • 1976: Elton John and Kiki Dee’s original single, released on June 21 in the US and July 2 in the UK.

  • 1993: Elton John and RuPaul, from the album Duets, with 13 additional remixes and dub versions by Giorgio Moroder, Serious Rope, and Roger Sanchez.

  • 2000: A live version with Kiki Dee from Elton’s One Night Only album.

  • 2018: Q-Tip featuring Demi Lovato covered the song on Revamp: Reimagining The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin and was that album’s pre-release single.

  • 2018: Sherlock Gnomes version – PNAU built the new dance track using elements from both the Kiki Dee and RuPaul recordings.

  • 2019: Rocketman Official Sound Track (Interlude) version, sung by Taron Egerton and Rachel Muldoon.

9. There have also been a handful of TV and film renditions, with assorted duet partners, after the original promo video:

  • The Muppet Show with Miss Piggy (“a wonderful lady that I’ve always wanted to work and sing with”) in 1978.

  • With an animated Minnie Mouse (voiced by Russi Taylor) on the Totally Minnie NBC musical television special in 1988.

  • The BRIT Awards broadcast on Feb 14, 1994, with RuPaul.

  • With the Spice Girls on the An Audience with Elton John ITV special, in September 1997.

  • The British Comedy Awards in December 2000 with Steve Coogan (in his Alan Partridge character).

  • Taron Egerton and Rachel Muldoon partially recreate the 1976 video in this year’s Rocketman film.

10. Elton has performed ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ live both with and without a duet partner, including:

    • May 14, 1976: According to reports, Elton surprised the audience at Baileys nightclub in Watford when he brought Kiki out on stage to perform the song almost two months before its release.

    • With Kiki at Chicago Stadium, and other scattered shows during the 1976 Louder Than Concorde tour, including the final run of seven shows at Madison Square Garden.

    • A solo version at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Sept 17, 1976.

    • With Kiki at Live Aid on July 13, 1985.

    • At the One Night Only concerts in Wilkes-Barre, PA (without Kiki) and New York City (with Kiki) in October 2000.

    • At the Stonewall Equality Show on July 2, 2006 with Kiki at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

    • With Demi Lovato at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on January 13, 2016.

    • On February 4, 2016, as part of a medley while donating a piano to the Kings Cross St Pancras station.

    • Also… Elton was a surprise guest on the song during at least three Kiki Dee concerts in the mid-1970s and at two Ed Sheeran shows in 2015”.

I am going to end with this feature. It tells how Don’t Go Breaking My Heart dominated during the summer of 1976. I still think that it sounds tremendous, even though I have heard it dozens of time. A delightful song that you can tell was a pleasure to record, it would be great for Elton John and Kiki Dee to reunite and perform this number again:

“As detailed by fans caught up in the “summer of Elton” 40 years ago, much joy was found from seeing Elton in concert, following him in the media, and listening to his songs on radios and record players across America, Britain, and the world at large.

One song especially – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart:

“That was ‘my’ song that summer.”

“The perfect summer song.”

“Our theme song.”

“We sang it all summer.”

“It seemed like the radio stations were playing it every ten minutes.”

“I think I drove the local radio stations crazy repeatedly requesting it.”

“My sister’s cell phone plays Don’t Go Breaking My Heart when I call.”

These are just some of the enduring attachments that have been made to a 4 and-a-half-minute song that captured the attention of Elton lovers on both sides of the Atlantic like none before it. It not only was the first of Elton’s singles to reach Number One in the UK charts, but it also stayed on Billboard’s Top 40 in America for 16 weeks…six of them at Number One and ten in the Top 10.

But it wasn’t just a defining moment for fans during the summer of the American Bicentennial and a British heat wave, it also made a lasting mark on the lives and careers of those who worked on the recording…most notably Kiki Dee and James Newton Howard.

While Kiki was a known entity before she was asked to duet on the track (having already done two albums on Elton’s Rocket Records label and enjoying chart success with Amoureuse and I’ve Got The Music In Me), her visibility rose considerably following its release. To this day she honors the song by including it in her live sets with guitarist Carmelo Luggeri.

People have got a lot of fondness for that song. I did a guest spot at a big music festival…and when the other acts were playing I went out into the audience. A lot of people told me how much the song meant to them. One was an Indian guy who’d come over in 1972 and 'Don’t Go Breaking My Heart' was his favorite song ever. It was very, very sweet.

Kiki Dee

James had been a member of the Elton John Band less than a year when Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was recorded. He had previously done some arrangements for Melissa Manchester but the prominence of his string charts on an Elton John hit single most certainly laid the groundwork for his becoming one of the premiere film composers working today.

James: I didn’t study orchestration in school, I kind of just learned by myself. I was a classical piano student, so I knew how to read and write music. And I just sort of knew that I would be able to arrange for strings. That song was one of the first things I’d ever done.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart‘s backing tracks were recorded at the end of the Blue Moves sessions in Toronto, Canada, in early 1976. Having completed one of his most adventurous albums to date, Elton took hold of a very catchy musical idea and ran with it…eventually asking Bernie Taupin to write lyrics around the melody and title phrase.

Song producer Gus Dudgeon: Elton didn’t have a lyric for it. It was so weird to see him writing a song in the studio with no lyric. I’d never seen him do it before. And all he was singing was ‘Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart…’ That’s what he sang all the way through!

The songwriting credit went to pseudonyms that Elton had devised for himself and Bernie during the Rock Of The Westies album, “Ann Orson and Carte Blanche” (a mash-up of the phrase “A horse and cart” and “Carte Blanche”, the name of a prestigious credit card at the time). During its writing and recording, the song was nestled firmly in the warm embrace of the Tamla/Motown sound – a sort of nine-year-old follow-up to the 1967 classic Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and other duets by Marvin Gaye with female artists on the Detroit-based label. A label, by the way, which had signed Kiki Dee as its first white artist in 1970.

Kiki: Elton and I are both the same age (three weeks apart), and we grew up on Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Kim West and the Tamla/Motown duets.

James: It definitely had a lot to do with the tradition of Motown strings and things like My Girl. The one thing I remember Elton saying is, “You should do a string solo.” The solo in the middle is full orchestra. So that was kind of fun.

James’ transition from second keyboardist in Elton’s band to orchestral arranger came about with the help of percussionist Ray Cooper.

Gus: I remember clearly, Ray just suddenly turned to me one day and he said, “You know, you really ought to give James a chance to do some orchestral arrangements…he’s really good. He knows his stuff.” And a good thing too…it’s a bloody good arrangement.

James: When I first joined the band Ray kind of took me under his wing. He was a classical music guy and we talked a lot about orchestration and classical music in general. I think I expressed to him my ambition to be able to do that with Elton. Having been a huge fan of Paul Buckmaster – he wrote the greatest string charts ever for Elton, in my opinion. And Gene Page’s extraordinary orchestration. Del Newman was great. So there was a tradition of great orchestrations in his records and it was something I was excited to attempt to do. And I went to Elton and asked him if he’d consider letting me do it on the Blue Moves album. He said, “Well, let me think about it.” And he must have conferred with Ray at some point. He came back to me and said, “Yeah! You can do it.”

Kiki’s path to the project was with a bit less direct involvement: Elton had produced my first album for Rocket (Loving and Free) in 1973, and we toured together in 1974. So perhaps when they came up with this song they thought “Well, it’d be nice to get Kiki on this”…’cos I was in his life. It was pretty informal. It’s interesting how something you approach with such a casual attitude…like the video (which was done in a couple of takes for a TV show)….who would have thought that would have been played so much over the years?

After Elton and the band were done in Toronto, Kiki was given an unfinished recording and ultimately taped her vocals to the backing tracks in a London studio: I remember getting a copy of it with Elton singing his vocal, and also doing my part in a high voice! I worked hard on my parts. Elton had already stamped the song with his vocal, which in a way is quite good, ‘cos it gives you a groundwork on how you’re gonna sing it. The precedent has already been set by him, and the writing and production of the song. I seem to remember working quite hard to get the right attitude. Good vocals are always hard work.

The finished song is one of the denser that Elton had done to that point. In addition to the two vocalists (each doing multiple tracks and heavily reverbed) and seven band musicians, there was an orchestra of 12 violins, 4 violas, and 4 celli. This left little breathing room, especially in the pre-CD days where vinyl singles had to survive the test of transistor radio speakers. This could have been intimidating to the new kid on the conductor’s podium, but James was not daunted.

James: I just completely ignored all of that. I wrote the arrangement on piano and then wrote it down on paper: the old-fashioned way. There were no sequencers back in the day. Well, there were, but there was no way to sync them to tape. So I just plunked it out on the piano, wrote it down, sent it to the copyist and that was it.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was released in June 1976 and quickly lived up to its pop potential, reaching the top of the US Hot 100 chart on its sixth week. In the UK it leapt up to #1 on the UK singles chart in just three weeks.

Gus: It gave me a buzz because you could tell straight away that the song was really commercial. Really vibey and up.

Kiki: I remember hearing it on the radio for the first time and thinking, “Wow.” ‘Cos some records, especially in those days, they have to sound great on the radio…and this was one of those records that did. I remember thinking, “Oh, this could do okay…this could go.”

And “go” it went…

James: It was exciting! I remember on the cover of one of the bigger music magazines there was a review and it mentioned my string arrangement, which I was very excited about. That was really a fun time.

Kiki: I was terribly proud for my mum and dad…’cos they’d stuck with me. I started professionally when I was 17 years old, and this was over ten years later. So I was so pleased for them. And Elton was chuffed. He had a little gold heart necklace made for me, which said, “Don’t go breaking my heart.” I’ve still got that.

Elton John and Kiki Dee: 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'

Since that time, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart has continued to thrive in popular culture in any number of ways: Elton himself has recorded versions with Miss Piggy, Minnie Mouse and RuPaul…and self-confessed Elton fanatic Valerie Bertinelli sang as Elton (with Mackenzie Phillips playing Kiki) on an episode of the popular television sitcom, One Day at a Time the winter after the single’s release”.

Fifty years after its release, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart still sounds full of life and wonder. Though there is some bittersweetness to the lyrics, this is a song that always lifts me! Such committed performances from Elton John and Kiki Dee. It is why Don’t Go Breaking My Heart…

CAN never be broken!

FEATURE: Stronger Than Me: The Legacy of the Wonderful Amy Winehouse

FEATURE:

 

 

Stronger Than Me

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in January 2004/PHOTO CREDIT: Karen Robinson

 

The Legacy of the Wonderful Amy Winehouse

__________

IN October…

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse photographed in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Broomberg & Chanarin

the world will mark twenty years of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Her second and final studio album, it was a magnificent final release from an artist that we lost too soon. Back to Black is one of the most remarkable albums ever released. Amy Winehouse’s debut album, Frank, arrived in 2003. On 23rd July, 2011, we received the news that Winehouse had died. She was twenty-seven. Rather than make this a morbid feature, I did want to remember Amy Winehouse fifteen years since she died. Celebrate her music. You can see the artists today who clearly have been influenced by her. Including RAYE, Winehouse’s legacy is huge. Olivia Dean, Sienna Spiro and Jorja Smith either have cited Winehouse as an influence or have been compared to her. In terms of her voice and the gravitas it held, there has been nobody like her since. I don’t think there ever will be. Winehouse was also so honest and real. I will end this feature with a mixtape feature songs from her two studio albums and some other selections. I do want to start off with this article that discusses the legacy of Amy Winehouse. It is not just her impact on the overall music scene. People who met her and recall her fondly. So funny and always memorable, she had such humour and character. Whilst many will associate Amy Wineouse’s legacy with controversy and addiction issues, we need to remember her phenomenal music. Someone who left an impression on everyone she met:

“What would the music world look like today if we had never been introduced to Amy Winehouse? Would artists like Adele, Florence Welch, Elle Goulding, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey and Halsey have experienced the same rise to prominence? Amy’s unconventional style and incredible voice showed that female pop artists didn’t need to look or sound a certain way. Like Amy, they could be whoever they wanted to be and still be successful.

As well as her amazing vocal range, modern female stars have also taken inspiration from Amy’s authenticity. Amy never once shied away from talking about any personal struggle and she always told the heartbreaking truth in her music, no matter how tough. We see this a lot today with female stars singing their own truth and relating to so many othersaround the world. Artists are using their music as the same type of outlet that Amy did, and listeners are relating more to this honestly and individuality.

When Amy released her debut album Frank she was only 20 years old, but showed that she had talent beyond her years. The album was the only one she ever made while completely sober and it was so well received it earned her an Ivor Novello Award for composition and songwriting. It was also the first and last jazz album she made. Amy never wanted to confine herself to one genre and instead used all of her musical inspirations to combine multiple genres and create a sound so unique it would stay relatable and adored for years.

Her second and final recorded album Back To Black won her six Grammy’s, making her the first British woman to do so in just one night. The album combined R&B, soul, funk and rock elements to produce mega hits such as ‘Rehab,’ ‘Love Is A Losing Game,’ ‘Tears Dry On Their Own,’ and ‘Back To Black.’ All of which documented her personal struggles with substance abuse and toxic relationships. Back To Black has been regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time and the most personal of Amy’s work. The album told her story in a raw and beautifully troubled way that made the world really understand just who Amy Winehouse was. Strip everything else away and you find that she was just a broken girl who loved too much, and there’s something admirable in that.

There are many things to remember about Amy. Her powerful voice, her lyrical poetry, her symbolic thick winged eyeliner and beehive hairdo. Although her musical career was short, she definitely made an impact on the world. An impact that you can still see today with female artists. Amy was more than extraordinary. She was a visionary who used her truth to create something memorable. Her life was filled with many different tragedies but perhaps the biggest of all was that it took her death to make the world realise just how incredible she was”.

In July 2021, NME ran a feature ten years after Amy Winehouse died. They spoke with family, fans and celebrity peers about this hugely missed icon. They recall and pay tribute to a “force of nature with a fierce sense of humour”:

“Along with Winehouse’s ‘Frank’ collaborator Salaam Remi, Ronson produced half of Amy Winehouse’s landmark second album, 2006’s ‘Back to Black’. Together, they made for a formidable pairing – from the parping ‘Rehab’ to the smoke-stained regret of ‘Love is a Losing Game’, they forged a pop sound that dabbled in retro influences, and would influence the entire musical landscape after the album’s release.

Though Winehouse counted ‘60s girl groups, Motown and classic soul as influences – and enlisted Sharon Jones’ band The Dap-Kings to back her – the record veers away from being derivative, instead centring around Winehouse’s unmistakable vocal and vibrant lyrical voice. “He left no time to regret,” she sings in the opening lines of the title-track, her voice cracking with anger. “Kept his dick wet / With his same old safe bet.” It was cutting, fiercely witty, and unmistakably Winehouse – and across ‘Back to Black’, the searing one-liners kept coming.

“I can sometimes hear ‘Back To Black’ in some restaurant in the background and it does nothing, and then I’ll hear it on another occasion in, like, the lobby of a hotel, and it has a really heavy effect on me,” Mark Ronson told NME in 2019. “She kinda put me on the map, so all of my success and everything I’ve had since is somehow linked back to this thing.”

“‘Valerie’ doesn’t feel like it’s our song any more; it’s its own world” – The Zutons’ Dave McCabe

Though ‘Back To Black’ was Winehouse’s masterpiece, her slightly lighter debut album ‘Frank’ still established Winehouse as a fearsomely talented songwriter. ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ finds Winehouse’s narrator bluntly defending infidelity with increasingly creative twists of logic: “​​Baby, you weren’t there,” she insists, “and I was thinking of you when I came”. And the matter-of-fact ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ is both biting and hilarious, meticulously mocking a woman and her garish shoes.

“Her legacy is beyond comprehension,” singer-songwriter Laura Mvula tells NME. “I think people will still be unfolding it for decades to come.” The Birmingham artist, who recently melded her love of soul, jazz and blues music with bright, disco-tinged pop on latest album ‘Pink Noise’, cites Winehouse as a huge influence – “particularly her vocal style”.

Mvula explains: “I think I was subconsciously imitating her when I was younger and first started to sing – not even as a solo artist, but just when I was learning what my voice was. If you listen to ‘Frank’, that’s the music that raised me, this neo-soul expression that she managed to birth in the UK and give its own identity. That is huge – no one’s done that since; not as authentically, transcending and also celebrating race at the same time.”

Enormously influenced by a huge number of Black musicians, Winehouse covered the likes of Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and The Shirelles. ”You could say that it’s inherently Black music,” Mvula says, “but to me she is her music. 100 per cent.”

While forging a new kind of neo-soul, it’s also fair to say that Winehouse rarely minced her words – and had little patience when she was compared to less innovative artists releasing music around the same time. Case in point: her slightly tongue-in-cheek dislike of Dido – which culminated in the singer pelting a billboard for the singer’s album ‘Life for Rent’ with an apple during an appearance on Popworld in 2004. When Amy Winehouse did feel passionately about a new artist’s talent, however, she supported it relentlessly.

“She was really supportive,” says singer Dionne Bromfield, Winehouse’s goddaughter and a MOBO-nominated singer. “I think she really saw a lot that I didn’t really see in myself at that age.” The best advice Winehouse gave her? “Be true to yourself,” Bromfield says. “Amy was someone who wore her heart on her sleeve. I think that is probably why she connected so well with people: people felt like they were almost talking to their friend or hearing their friend talk when listening to Amy.”

Bromfield has been working on a documentary about her relationship with Winehouse: Amy Winehouse and Me: Dionne’s Story airs on MTV UK on July 26. Though various other tributes are set to come out to mark 10 years since Winehouse’s death – the BBC are releasing Amy Winehouse: 10 Years On, while her mother Janis Winehouse has also made her own film, Reclaiming Amy – Bromfield hopes that her own personal celebration of a friend and mentor can show her own unique relationship with the singer.

“Amy was a very very funny person and I really wanted that to come across,” she says, adding with a laugh: “She was a really good cook if you could actually manage to get her to finish what she was cooking, because she always used to want to potter around a bit. She was really good at meatballs, and she used to do a really banging chicken soup. I mean, that’s a proper Jewish woman there with her chicken soup.

“She loved comedy stuff: when I watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air now I actually just remember all of the times watching it with her, and can almost actually hear her laughing at certain gag lines. And – oh my God – she would kill if I didn’t call her ‘Auntie Amy’. Jesus Christ! I really wanted to allow people to see this side to her.”

Bromfield sang with Amy Winehouse on several occasions, but their final performance at London’s 3,000-capacity Roundhouse – just a couple of days before the singer tragically died in 2011 – stands out as a treasured moment: “It was the last time that I actually saw her, and the last time that she was seen by the public. I really wasn’t expecting her to be there. She was at the side of the stage, and was just like: ‘I wanna come on and dance’. It was just really nice. It was the first time she’d ever actually seen me perform properly, but it was also the last time that she’d see me.”

Pondering why Amy Winehouse continues to be so influential a decade after her passing, Bromfield puts it down to one rare quality that so few artists have in such staggering abundance. “I just think it’s the honesty,” she says. “Her personality came through with her music, and I think that is really what people love about her. I honestly don’t think we’ll ever get another Amy”.

There is another feature I am keen to come to, before finishing up with an interview with Amy Winehouse. One of the biggest and most important parts of her legacy is the Amy Winehouse Foundation. “The Amy Winehouse Foundation helps thousands of young people to feel supported and informed, so that they are better able to manage their emotional wellbeing and make informed choices around things that can affect their lives”. I think that there is this distortion when it comes to remembering Amy Winehouse today. Some associating her only with her death and her darker moments. Far bigger than her relationship troubles, Grazia published a feature in April that explored Winehouse’s true legacy. How her voice, music and fashion has influenced so many. “Following Blake Fielder-Civil’s tell-all interview about his marriage to Amy Winehouse, her friend Naomi Parry sets the record straight”:

“Amy and I had a sisterly bond. While I was there for her during her darkest moments, she was there for me, too. When I left my partner, Amy put me up at her house. When my niece was being badly bullied, she suggested we go and talk to her school (can you imagine?). And when I walked into a lamppost and gave myself an almighty black eye, Amy threatened to track down the offending lamppost and give it a piece of her mind. She was sharp, compassionate, and had a mouth on her that she’d use to defend others.

She supported me in my career too, giving me a foothold in a tough industry and championing my work as a stylist. That was typical of her – she lifted up those in whom she recognized talent. Every show, she would introduce her band one by one, giving everyone their moment to shine. She sent her goddaughter and protégé, Dionne, to the Sylvia Young Theatre School and later performed as Dionne’s backing singer on Strictly Come Dancing. She spotlighted lesser-known artists and wore pieces from emerging designers because she understood how much that visibility meant.

Ultimately, Amy was a normal person who happened to become extremely famous. She had loving friendships and some unhealthy relationships, and fame magnified both. Every shady character and every bad decision was exacerbated by her circumstances – and the ripple effects were felt by all of us who loved her.

So when I saw headlines about her ex-husband claiming in a recent interview that he and Amy had discussed reconciling in 2009, I wasn’t surprised. Not because there was ever any real chance of it happening, but because it likely reflected how low Amy felt at that time. If she had truly wanted that reconciliation, it would have happened, but it didn’t. And who hasn’t, in a dark moment, thought about going back to an ex?

What I do know is that by 2011 she was in a very different place. I remember her sauntering into the kitchen at her Camden Square home one morning while I was staying with her, singing to herself as she made breakfast. She told me how good she felt and, when I asked why, she said, “You know that feeling when you’re completely over someone and it doesn’t hurt when you hear their name anymore?” She followed it up with something along the lines of wishing him well.

Recently, Mark Ronson paid a beautiful tribute to Amy at the BRITs. He honoured Amy’s role in his success and highlighted the positive, creative force she truly was. That’s exactly how she should be remembered. For me, she’ll always be my little friend with the big voice and the hair to match – the one who gave the best hugs, who loved fiercely, encouraged relentlessly, and never stopped championing the people around her”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Naomi Parry attends a mural unveiling to mark the Design Museum's Amy Winehouse exhibition announcement in Camden on 14th September, 2021 in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

I am going to end with a 2004 interview. This was right near the start of her career. Paul Du Noyer chatted with Amy Winehouse in a London café. Frank had come out by then and was well received, though this huge fame and focus was not on her at this time. You can feel and hear a less incumbered and a more natural person coming through. You get to see this humble and very honest young woman. Winehouse at her best:

“Winehouse came into the Big Top of Pop following a stint in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. She signed at 17 to a branch of Simon Fuller’s management empire and after that to Island Records. But she was already a showbiz kid, whose turbulent education had taken in a few stage schools. One of these was the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone: it’s almost the Eton of the Pop Idol generation, giving us sundry Spice Girls, Appletons, S Clubs and Busteds. Winehouse, one is unsurprised to learn, got expelled.

Did stage school make you a performer, Amy?

“Well,” she ponders, “that school is not a shit school, the Sylvia Young. They’ve got a reputation because they are the best. It’s not a pop star factory, they channel your creativity and you learn to use it. That’s what I did. For every precocious kid there were kids who really worked. They sent you out to work. Stage school is a job. You learn how to get the fuck on with it. I learned a lot of important things.”

But you didn’t get along with it?

“No, but I’ve never been to a school that I came away happily from, ever. With Sylvia Young’s it wasn’t a monstrous, call-my-parents-in, scream the school down thing. It was quiet and under-handed. I was devastated leaving there. Of all the schools, I would have stayed there happily.”

Winehouse was raised in the north London suburb of Southgate. Her mother is from Brooklyn and her father, a taxi driver, is an East Ender. Her parents separated when Amy was nine, though her father remains in close touch. “He’s a great man, my Dad,” she says. “I love him. I love my Mum, but me and my Dad are two peas in a pod. We’re really impulsive people. It’s good that my Dad moved out when I was growing up, or we would have had some terrible clashes.”

On her American mother’s side of the family she has relatives in Miami and Atlanta, though she rarely had the chance to visit: “We didn’t have that kind of money. I’m sure the family would have paid for us, but we’re proud people.”

It’s the norm now for young musicians to be weaned on their parents’ record collections. But Winehouse denies her jazz buff Dad was a formative influence. “Not really. There was what he had in his car. And there were tapes at home. I would go to sleep listening to things like Sinatra and James Taylor. But that’s as far as my parents went. You discover music the most when it’s music that no one tells you to listen to, that you find out for yourself.”

So you weren’t sat down and told, Listen, this is good for you?

“Ha! I’d have told them to fuck off. I’ve always been a rebellious person. The only music that truly spoke to me was jazz and hip hop.”

It’s often said that first novels are autobiographical. People use up their life’s experiences. Did you do that with your first album? Could that be a danger for the second?

“Yeah but… I dunno. Life is inspiring, regardless. I don’t want to make a second album talking about record companies and stuff. The thing that always drove me with Frank was human interaction and that will always drive me. Relationships and how fucked up they can get. I guess that’ll always inspire me.”

I like the way that CDs are used as reference points in your lyrics. (There is even a photo of her collection on the album’s artwork.) Is the title Frank a reference to Sinatra? In Take The Box you’re splitting up with a boyfriend and dividing the spoils.

“Yes. When I say ‘Frank’s in there and I don’t care,’ that is literally a Frank Sinatra CD. He bought me it for Christmas and I was putting all his stuff in a box, like his T-shirt that I used to sleep in. He bought me Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours – ironically, cos it’s one of the classic heartbreak albums of all time. Frank as a title for the album is a good word, It is frank… Dunno. Maybe with more time I would have come up with a better title.”

Well, if you have to name your album after someone, who better than Frank Sinatra? (I intend this in the blandly upbeat way you adopt to keep your interviewee on side. She’s having none of it.)

“I don’t agree. There’s a whole mess of people better than Sinatra.”

Are there? Really?

“Sinatra had an emotional connection with music. That was his thing. He had the tone in his voice. But singers? I know a hundred singers that piss on Frank. And musicians. And just as a person: he was an arsehole. But he had an emotional connection to songs that touched everyone, women, men, soldiers. So… Er, sorry, I’ll have to write down a lyric or I’ll go mad.” (She delves into a little pink handbag – keys, fags, mobile, make-up – and rummages for notebook and pen.) “I’m always getting ideas for concept albums!”

If you had to give up either singing or songwriting, which would it be?

“I’d cut my throat out. Singing is singing. If I couldn’t sing a song, and express it, which – ” (her expression darkens) “ – which I haven’t been able to for the past five months but that’s OK it comes from me, I understand that – if I couldn’t do that, I’d be fucked. Singing and writing go hand in hand for me, it comes from one place.”

Do you enjoy singing?

“Yeah, I’ve always sung. I always assumed that everyone could sing, that that’s what they do when they’re happy or sad. And when I was growing up and having the pain and suffering that teenagers do, when you think the world hates you because you’re 15, I could sing like a little bird. I can’t sing like that no more. I’m too complacent. They gave me too much free shit…”

(She sighs deeply and stares at her tapas.) What do you mean, they gave you too much free shit?

“They put it all on a plate. I feel like I’ve got nothing to work for sometimes, even though I’ve got lots to work for.”

(She lights a cigarette.) Of course you have, surely.

“Yeah. Anyway… Amy, chill the fuck out. I’m sorry.”

Do you feel pressurised by all the weight of expectation around you?

“A little bit. But that’s myself. No one could be a harsher critic than myself. I am feeling that pressure. There are days when I wish I could just take a break from my own head.”

What are you up to with your new music? Have you started yet?

(She sulks like a 12-year-old. Blows out hard, hot cigarette smoke.) “Not at all. Writing the album seemed hard but once it was done I thought, that wasn’t hard. It’s doing all this promo shit that is the really hard work. The only thing you have to remember when writing is, Be honest, always. But with promo it’s always, Shut your mouth, Amy! Smile!”

(She suddenly seems 65 years old.) “There’s nothing real in it, nothing real. Which really drains me. But you know what? It’s gotta be done.”

This year’s girl gives me a tired, trouper’s smile and walks back out into Camden Town”.

23rd July will be a sad day. It will be fifteen years since Amy Winehouse died. However, more than see it is a black and tragic thing, we need to look back and remember her warmly. The incredible music she left behind. Her true legacy. How she impacted the people she met. How her music has transformed lives. Artists today who are influenced by her. Back to Black turns twenty later in the year, so there will be a lot of attention around that. Truly, there was nobody quite like Amy Winehouse. We will never see another. This Camden queen was…

A true original.

FEATURE: Mama Tells Me I Shouldn't Bother… The Cardigans’ Lovefool at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Mama Tells Me I Shouldn't Bother…

 

The Cardigans’ Lovefool at Thirty

__________

IN June…

The Cardigans played at London’s Eventim Apollo. Led by Nina Persson, there is hope that the Swedish band will play more shows in the U.K. Not only because they are an amazing band who have released so many brilliant albums. Their acclaimed third studio album, First Band on the Moon, was released on 6th September, 1996. The third album from the then-quintet, I think it would be great if they came back and did some thirtieth anniversary shows. I think the London show was a celebration of that album, but such a huge record deserves more focus. There are so many great moments on First Band on the Moon. However, its lead single, Lovefool, is the standout. One of the defining songs of the 1990s. I was at high school when Lovefool came out, and it is a song I instantly fell in love with. I still get shivers when I hear the song! Written by Peter Svensson and Nina Persson, it is a beautiful, lush and wonderfully performed song. Perhaps a little dated now, you cannot fault the majesty of this gem. Reaching number two on the U.K. chart, I wanted to celebrate thirty years of this song. It was released on 5th August, 1996 (that was its European release date). It is interesting looking at the reviews and impressions of Lovefool. The retrospective reviews about Lovefool are interesting. There was a lot of praise for Lovefool in 1996. Although some felt it was sugary and a little too kitsch, many proclaimed Lovefool as a catchy and instant classic track. I think it is among the finest songs of the 1990s:

“Justin Chadwick of Albumism said "Lovefool" is "one of the more exciting straight-ahead pop songs of the contemporary era", calling it "pure, exquisitely produced pop perfection." John Bush of AllMusic deemed it a "depressing lament of unrequited affection". Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club described it as "giddy". Dave Fawbert of ShortList wrote, "It's one of the best things in life when a song comes along, you listen to it, and you just think: "Well, that's perfect isn't it?" Every little bit of this three minutes and 14 seconds is absolutely, utterly unimprovable, from the little bllllrrrrring guitar intro, all the way through to that gorgeous ritardando and final chord at the end. Impossibly stylish, groovy and ice cool, this is, you'll be unsurprised to hear, still brilliant, fully 20 years on. The Swedes, they build things to last—Volvos and 'Lovefool', two sides of the same coin.” Sal Cinquemani of Slant called it a "tongue-in-cheek smash", writing that "Lovefool" "criminally crowned the band as one-hit wonders in the U.S." Treblezine wrote, "it's not difficult to understand the effect of this song. It's got that certain quality that digs right down into your being and glows with a precise sense of rhythm and pleasure”.

Prior to getting to some other features around Lovefool, I want to focus on American Songwriter and their 2024 feature around and indelible ‘90s classic. They say how The Cardigans “had every intention of rocking out in a way they hadn’t done on previous records. But one song required a subtler, slinkier approach. It’s a good thing they took that approach, because the song in question, “Lovefool,” turned out to the most successful of their career”:

“Fool” Me Once

The Cardigans formed in Sweden in the early ’90s, and they were distinguished early on by the dreamy vocals of lead singer Nina Persson and an eclectic musical bent. They began the process of collecting material for their third album First Band on the Moon while they were still touring the album Life, which they had released in 1995.

As a result, it was in an airport where guitarist Peter Svensson first played the song to the rest of the band. He had the first part of the chorus (Love me, love me, say that you love me) in place. Persson didn’t think the song should be quite so syrupy, so she countered with Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me. She explained to The Guardian what went into her lyrics:

“It’s a song about how it’s very human to bend over backwards when it comes to getting love. The character is very calculating, aware that what they’re going to get isn’t real but that it’s better than nothing.”

Booting the Bossa Nova

When Svensson initially wrote the music, he envisioned the song played with a bossa nova rhythm. Needless to say, that slightly antiquated style wasn’t exactly in demand on the various radio formats of the time. The band’s producer, Tore Johansson, gave the band a hard time about the song, suggesting they switch it up.

Johansson convinced The Cardigans to throw more of a disco feel behind the song, without revving up the pace so much that it would lose the prettiness of the melody. That’s when “Lovefool” came together into a version that did well right off the bat in countries all over the world.

But the song’s exposure went into overdrive when filmmaker Baz Luhrmann reached out to the band. He was looking for just the right pop songs for his modernized version of Romeo + Juliet, and “Lovefool” caught his attention. Once the song appeared in the film, The Cardigans found themselves hitting new heights of popularity.

What is the Meaning of “Lovefool”?

The portmanteau title of “Lovefool” hints at the song’s duality. The narrator is clearly in love with the person she’s addressing, but she can feel him pulling away: Dear, I fear we’re facing a problem / You love me no longer, I know, she sings to begin the song. But she explains that she can delude herself as long as he sticks around: I don’t care if you really care / As long as you don’t go.

The narrator receives advice from others she ignores: That I ought just stick to another man / A man that surely deserves me / But I think you do. She also neglects all the logic that tells her she shouldn’t subject herself to this anguish anymore: Reason will not reach a solution / I will end up lost in confusion.

I can’t care ’bout anything but you, Persson sings to close out the song, but her voice sounds far more quizzical than decisive. “Lovefool” suggests we’ll put up with all manner of indignities to be with the one we love. The Cardigans dressed that somewhat sour message in a chirpy sheen to make it accessible, and the rest is ’90s pop history”.

I will finish with a piece from The Guardian. Before that, I do want to source a 2016 interview from Billboard. Looking back on Lovefool at twenty, Nina Persson shared her thoughts. It was a massive success and one that most have grated the band to a degree. Maybe being associated heavily with a song they were weary of, in retrospect, they were pleased of its success and play it live. I do hope the band have some upcoming gigs where they play Lovefool. I am writing this ahead of their date at the Eventim Apollo (27th June), so I am not sure if that was in the set:

“Lovefool” — the uber-earworm from the band’s third studio album, First Band on the Moon — swiftly became a hit in Europe but didn’t debut internationally until Oct. 5, 1996. “We put out that song and record and embarked on a long tour, so in one way, nothing changed for us,” frontwoman Nina Persson told Billboard recently over the phone from Los Angeles, where she was preparing to play a show with Local Natives. “Then the movie came out” — that would be Baz Luhrmann‘s ’90s-defining Romeo + Juliet — “and the U.S. caught on tremendously.”

After Romeo + Juliet was released on Nov. 1, 1996, “Lovefool” debuted on the Adult Pop Songs chart dated Nov. 30 at No. 39. It then hit the Radio Songs chart the following week, peaking at No. 2 and staying there for eight nonconsecutive weeks. It spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Pop Songs airplay chart, beginning with the Feb. 22, 1997-dated tally. (The song did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, because at the time, non-commercially available songs — like “Lovefool” — were not eligible to chart on the list.)

As Persson recalls today, “Lovefool” felt like an odd fit for The Cardigans. “We definitely were aware that it was a single and a catchy song when we wrote it, but the direction it took is not something we could have predicted,” Persson says. “It wasn’t necessarily our character; it felt like a bit of a freak on the record — which, objectively, it still is.” The song’s upbeat feel wasn’t the band’s initial intention. “Before we recorded it, it was slower and more of a bossa nova,” Persson says. “It’s quite a sad love song; the meaning of it is quite pathetic, really. But then when we were recording, by chance, our drummer started to play that kind of disco beat, and there was no way to get away from it after that.”

The band had already shot a different music video for the U.K. and Europe — “much more bleak, much more our original style,” Persson says. “We had an actor playing a sort of handsome-man-love-interest of mine, and he was supposed to be a kind of gangster and the band played his gang members.” But thanks to the success of Romeo + Juliet, another video debuted and became ubiquitous on MTV, cementing Persson’s public image as a flaxen-haired pixie floating at sea, a message in a bottle in human form. Watch the MTV staple below, as well as a side-by-side comparison of the two videos:

Persson acknowledges she and her bandmates weren’t initially thrilled by the success of “Lovefool.” “It took over our whole existence, and it wasn’t something we totally identified with,” she says today. The Cardigans played it on Beverly Hills, 90210 and on the morning talk show circuit; Persson remembers being “freaked out” when she’d see the video on screens in American clothing stores. “We were kind of snobs,” she acknowledges. “We felt like these things were glitzy, and we felt like, ‘No, no, we’re a rock band!'”

But today, with the distance of two decades, she’s able to look on the song a bit more kindly. “Now, we see it from the other end, and we’re proud and thankful,” she says. The band happily plays “Lovefool” in concert. And as Persson herself wrote on her Instagram on the anniversary of the song’s U.K. release: “We love you, sweet nuisance!”.

In 2023, The Guardian spoke with The Cardigans’ Nina Persson and producer Tore Johansson about the best-known track from the Swedish band. I think there are those who heard it first in 1996 and it has stayed with them. Some have changed their views and now like a song they were a bit cold towards. Those who were spellbound by it and still are. Others who are discovering it now. I do think it is one of those tracks impossible to dislike. It has a simple heart. Rather than – as some feel – it being cloying or too sickly, it is this seductive and wonderful song that is rightly hailed as one of the standout songs from the 1990s:

“Nina Persson, singer and co-writer

In 1995 we had just released our second album, Life, and were touring a lot. We were in an airport somewhere waiting for a flight and were looking at material Peter Svensson, our guitarist and songwriter, had written for the next record. He played this song on guitar: it was a bossa nova at that point. I thought it was beautiful, but found the chorus “Love me, love me, say that you love me” too cliched, so I tried to offset its sweetness by adding: “Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me.” It’s a song about how it’s very human to bend over backwards when it comes to getting love. The character is very calculating, aware that what they’re going to get isn’t real but that it’s better than nothing.

Our producer Tore Johansson would break our balls. He couldn’t stand that it was a bossa nova and immediately had our drummer play a disco beat. Disco wasn’t being used a lot then and it helped the song stand out. The first time we released Lovefool, in 1996, it did well. We didn’t think it could be any bigger. Then, a year or so later, Baz Luhrmann asked us for a song to use in his film Romeo + Juliet. It felt really nice that he personally got in touch. We offered him a different song that was way more romantic but then he heard Lovefool and said: “No, that’s what I want.” We were invited to the premiere but were away on tour at the time. I still haven’t met Leonardo DiCaprio. I never got my chance, before I turned 25, to have my moment with him.

The culture verged on pornographic. There were shoots of me licking an ice cream, while Peter made guitar mag covers

After that second release, I was in a Nike store in New York one day and the video came on their big screen. The salespeople were all singing along. “Oh my God!” I thought. “This is big.” I had to go outside – I was freaked out. I loved music but I had no intention of being famous. I also had a problem with how women were presented. At the time, there was this horrible culture that verged on pornographic. There were photoshoots of me licking an ice-cream, gross stuff like that, while Peter got to be on the cover of guitar magazines.

Lovefool has definitely come back around, with the 90s being so hot right now. My 12-year-old son and his friends know it through things like TikTok. Young girls ask me if I’ve met Justin Bieber, because of his song Love Me, which borrows the chorus from Lovefool. We thought it was bullshit at first. Let a 15-year-old use our song? No way! But our manager said: “You guys want to think twice because people say this kid is going to be really big.” We’re happy we did.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

Tore Johansson, producer, played bass

My friends and I were hobby musicians. We built Tambourine Studios in Malmö just to have a place to record. We started recording other bands to make money. One was the Cardigans. I never really wanted to be a producer but I ended up recording all of their albums except one and having an amazing, almost full-time career with them for many years.

When they came to me with Lovefool, I thought: “Yeah, it’s really good, but we’ve made so many of these indie bossa nova songs. Couldn’t we try something a little funkier?” Latin rock and disco were the big inspiration, the organ was inspired by Oye Como Va by Santana.

We bought a restaurant. That was fun. But in a very Malmö way. Not much cocaine going on

We recorded it totally analogue. Our studio was like an authentic 1970s studio: it’s an easy way to get that kind of retro sound. We worked hard on every instrumental part to get it perfect. I think I played bass on the chorus and Peter on the verse. Nina is super good at doing vocals. She had a sound and she had a style.

The Cardigans are very down to earth, so Malmö was a great town for them to be famous in. We had this weird double life, of being pretty normal at home while all this crazy stuff was happening around the world. There was so much money coming in to the studio, we started a record label and we bought a restaurant. That was fun. But in a very Malmö way. Not much cocaine going on.

I went on to produce Franz Ferdinand’s first album, as well as lots of other bands. But Lovefool is definitely my claim to fame. If I’m at a wedding or something, meeting people who don’t know me, I can tell them: “You know that ‘love me, love me, say that you love me’ song? That was me.” I can do that and be proud”.

It is hard to believe that Lovefool turns thirty on 5th August. To me it still feels recent, as I think about the song and have good memories. Though those memories are from three decades ago, so it is also distant. Glad that The Cardigans are still together and they are not a band to dismiss a massive hit and refuse to play it. It means new generations of fans can discover a song that turned them into international superstars in 1996. Also go and listen to First Band on the Moon, as it is tremendous album. However, when you think of its standout moment, few can argue against…

THE mighty and divine Lovefool.

FEATURE: Expecting: The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Expecting

 

The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells at Twenty-Five

__________

IT seems like a lifetime away…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jack and Meg White (The White Stripes) in 2002/PHOTO CREDIT: Kelly Ryerson for FADER

when you consider Jack White today. He announced a new album, Frozen Charlotte, on 10th July. He has put out so much work since The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells came out on 10th July, 2001. I wanted to recognise twenty-five years of a fabulous album. One of the very best the dup of Jack and Meg White released, a Deluxe edition came out in 2021 for its twentieth anniversary. I will come to some reviews around The White Stripes’ third studio album. It was the biggest step forward. Their 1999 eponymous album is a raw and Blues-heavy record. With 2000’s De Stijl, there was a broader palette. Maybe not as sludgy or heavy, you can feel different colours and sounds. Even so, it was not a massive shift. Just enough to show that De Stijl was its own thing. I feel White Blood Cells is a different beats to anything they produced before. Jack White’s songwriting at its very best. Recorded at Easley McCain Recording in February 2001, it was recorded quickly. That is how the duo operated. Lo-fi but always nuanced and astonishing, White Blood Cells is my favourite album from The White Stripes. So many standout moments, people associate it with songs like Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hotel Yorba and Fell in Love with a Girl. Their most varied and accomplished album to that point, White Blood Cells was not a big commercial success. It charted quite lot but the reviews were very positive. That mix of rawness and sweetness. The bond between Jack and Meg White. I want to explore some features around White Blood Cells. I cannot find any online interviews from 2001 around the release of the album. However, there is one from 2002. FADER put The White Stripes on their cover. Speaking with them after the release of White Blood Cells as their stature and celebrity was growing, it is interesting reading what they had to say:

“But the White Stripes are big, and famous in that tired-ass latter half of the 20th century way. Famous enough to have a reported $1,000,000 dangled in their faces to appear in a massive celebrity-driven Gap ad campaign—a payday they turned down after Jack had already sang on their third album, last year’s White Blood Cells: Well you’re in your little room/ and you’re working on something good/ but if it’s really good/ you’re gonna need a bigger room/ and when you’re in the bigger room/ you might not know what to do/ you might have to think of how you got started/ sitting in your little room…

Why would they want to be successful? You can’t even ask that question in America, at least not in the new America of the New Economy and the Internet and necromantic politics and weekly record sales updates and outposts of mall culture around the world. Perhaps this is why the idea that the White Stripes might not want to blow up and go pop hasn’t really been the dominant narrative flying off the rock and roll desk over at New America Media, Marketing and Promotion, Inc. It’s probably more a function of capitalism than a simplistic matter of race, but journalists are patented suckers for white people digging into their own souls through music forms of black American origin, like the blues, jazz, rock and roll, and hip-hop. This makes for both good copy and good business sense: writers and editors love that shit, because they love to build ’em up so they can tear ‘em down—maybe because there’s nothing more dangerous to the collective than a man or woman who simply doesn’t give a fuck and takes chances. who tries to reach out and break to the other side, whatever that side may be. (“I like putting myself in other people’s shoes,” says Jack.) Here are the White Stripes, the standard brief goes, a guitar/drums duo from Detroit who say they are brother and sister and has released three noisy albums of blues-based garage rock with touches of Zeppelin and the occasional Bob Dylan or Marlene Dietrich cover. They always wear red and white. The guy is really pale and scrawls the name of obscure bluesman like Blind Willie McTell on a white T-shirt, and get this: the girl bangs the drums with a deliberate kid-like thrashing!

“There’s different things we love: we love country music, we love the blues, we love rock and roll, we pretty much love anything American, from the South. So we have all these different influences,” explains Jack. And so naturally because the White Stripes tried and actually succeeded at an honest visceral music that smells like cigarettes, tastes like old motor oil and hits like an alcoholic girlfriend, they have provoked the usual media hateration. Time’s Benjamin Nugent went all out, putting his J-school diploma on the line and dong a bit of tidy investigative work. “In 1996, John (Jack) Gillis and Megan (Meg) White, got married, and Jack took Meg’s last name,” reported Nugent diligently. “Jack says he grew up with ten older siblings in the southwest Detroit house he currently shares with roommates, and this is rumored to be true. Meg, he claims, grew up in the suburb of Grosse Pointe… Last year they divorced, but the band remained intact…” The British press has mainly ignored this. They’re pissing their pants because the White Stripes are the best new big thing since, well, the Strokes.

Of course, one country’s dampened knickers are another nation’s legacy of blacks and blues (or something like that), and that’s not a new story either. White people have always been obsessed with the blues, at least since John and Alan Lomax made their famous Southern field recordings (the ones Moby sampled for Play) a couple of decades before an adolescent Mick Jagger sent away for sides from Chess Records in Chicago. A lot of folks both black and white might write the whole thing off as a rinky-dink taboo attraction to the forbidden “other”—with the thinking being that the “other” is the entire black American nation. That’s not entirely accurate. Black as they are, the blues are also part and parcel of America’s outlaw ethos: the first bluesmen were primarily jobless, itinerant musicians whose lyrics and lifestyle were an obvious liability to black America’s emergent race-building consciousness in the late 19th and early 20th century. The bluesman was not pulling himself up by the bootstraps, and the music would not or could not be considered “a credit to the race” until decades later. Today, of course, famous bluesmen open tourist traps in Times Square.

“The blues are completely honest. It’s just perfect to me,” says Jack, matter-of-factly. “Every song can only be one man’s story against everybody’s.” One man’s story against everybody else’s! Jack White says he grew up poor and white in a neighborhood called Mexicantown and that he first started listening to the blues when he was the only white kid at his mostly black high school that didn’t wig out. But who knows if he’s telling the truth? Just what, exactly, did Jack White do to be so black and so blue?

This identity politics line of questioning is for squares and comes out of the cross-roads where the basic American obsession with authenticity meets the country’s central personality trait of near-pathological lying. It’s also patronizing racism, American-style, that the king of the Delta Blues can sell his soul to the Devil in legend but Jack White of Detroit can’t call his ex-wife his sister. The White Stripes—like the blues—are unconcerned with such a trick bag and so they exist squarely outside the matrix. Outside that system, honesty is urgency as much as it is truth-telling, and Jack White sings like there’s things about him and Meg and they peoples that they desperately want you to understand, even if he can’t or won’t make it exactly plain for you. And if you listen to their albums and can’t tell what’s a White Stripes song and what’s a cover, that’s the interstitial space in which the blues have always existed. At their best, the blues themselves are a question, a sort of black American koan that take a long time—perhaps a lifetime or just the 70-some odd years between the first recording of Son House’s “Death Letter” and the White Stripes version—to really understand just one man’s story. It looked like ten thousand people gathered ‘round the burial ground/ I didn’t know I loved her ’till they began to lay her down.

And if the White Stripes are a little self-aware, as they were when drawing parallel between the blues and Holland’s De Stijl art movement for the title of their second album, they are not self-consciously so. Detroit as a city is almost completely unself-conscious. The girls there eat red meat, drink dark liquor and chain-smoke Camels, and the guys are probably still cool with their moms, have day jobs and girlfriends and peculiar ways of handling cigarettes and the smoke they produce. No one seems to have a cell phone and when you go to the record store there’s no Latin section and there are actually street signs that point the way to Mexicantown. As late as last November the White Stripes were playing $5 shows ($1 for students) and when the band records some songs for a local PBS station and “The Big Three Killed My Baby” is cut from the program because General Motors sponsored the show, no one blinks twice.

“We never set out to say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna be a garage rock band and that’s it—we’re gonna use the same three chords over and over again. We’re gonna make six albums and then we’re gonna stop.’ We never said that,” says Jack. “We never wanted to play for the same 50 people all the time.”

“And that’s what you could say about these last few years in Detroit: a back-to-basics look at what music means.” Jack continues, “What does it actually mean? With all its faults and fakes and videos and clothing and album covers, what does it actually mean? It’s just looking towards getting back to what it really was, not looking back and reminiscing as much as getting things back to normal again.” There is no irony in Detroit. When the White Stripes can turn down a million dollars from Gap and Jack still says there’s no hope in the city, it calls to mind something Detroit techno DJ Mike Banks said or wrote somewhere: No hope No dreams no love My only escape is underground”.

I found a review of White Blood Cells from Pitchfork. If their first two albums had some high points among some less-than-spectacular songs, everything on White Blood Cells clicks and stays with you. A song as short as Little Room as memorable as a bigger one like I Can Learn. The sweetness and charm of We’re Going to Be Friends together with the snarl and punch of I Think I Smell a Rat. Such a hugely listenable album that you will revisit time and time again:

“Virtually all of these songs address a distanced lover. Sometimes he's coming home to see her; other times she's done him some permanent wrong. The lyrics are succinct and direct, and poetic like an aged bluesman. On "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," he sings: "If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall/ If I could just hear your pretty voice, I don't think I'd need to see at all." He concludes the song with, "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most/ And you know why you love at all if you're thinking of the Holy Ghost."

On the country hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the Stripes reflect the grit of early Railroad Jerk-- a glee-filled boogie with Jack's voice breaking and whooping, almost on the verge of a yodel. "Fell in Love with a Girl" is frenzied and rollicking (the album's best), complete with Yardbirds-type "ahhaa's" and a joi de vivre tempered by the admission that trouble is sure to follow: "My left brain knows that all love is fleeting."

Indeed, many of the songs admit that the love is lost. On "The Union Forever," Jack White mourns, "It can't be love/ Because there is no love." The song is a riff on Citizen Kane, including a strange breakdown with sampled dialogue from the film. Here, the White Stripes are the most experimental they get, which is to say "not very," though the song reminds me of the ragged power of Royal Trux without the pointless artiness. Certainly, it would be nice to hear the White Stripes take this music in a new direction, but this band is all about the songs, and the songs are good enough to stand alone, sans-flashy effects and tape editing.

"The Same Boy You've Always Known" is another high point. For a ballad, it rocks harder than most bands' hard-rockers, yet it wrenches in its emotional impact. Jack White repeats certain key lines, straining his voice to impart meaning and feeling. Again, the state of the relationship in question is uncertain. The song ends uncommitted and terribly sad with, "If there's anything good about me/ I'm the only one who knows." How many bands have failed with entire albums of moroseness to only express the alienation of those two lines?

The closest thing to a dud on this record is "We're Going to Be Friends," a gentle, nostalgic ditty of innocent love and childhood. It's a little too pleasant, lacking any of the fear and confusion of those pre-double-digit years, but its softness gives the record's midpoint some time to inhale before another six exhalations of fire.

Finally, at the close of the album, Jack sits alone at the piano for "This Protector." Though its message is vague, there are implications of religion and loss: "You thought you heard a sound/ There's no one else around/ 300 people out in West Virginia/ Have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within you/ But now... now... now, now, now, NOW!" Now what? It's the floating resonance of the moment, the intensity of the feeling, that gives these words meaning.

White Blood Cells doesn't veer far from the formula of past White Stripes records; all are tense, sparse and jagged. But it's here that they've finally come into their own, where Jack and Meg White finally seem not only comfortable with the path they've chosen, but practiced, precise and able to convey the deepest sentiment in a single bound. It's hard to know at this point in the game where they'll head from here, but what matters is right now. And right now, I want to listen to this album again”.

I will end things with Stereogum and their twentieth anniversary feature around White Blood Cells. I first heard it around 2003. That is when its follow-up, Elephant, was released. Although most critics and fans would say Elephant is a superior album, I have always had more love and fascination with and for White Blood Cells. Twenty-five years after its release and no other group have tried to replicate the sound of The White Stripes. Some have maybe tried, but none have been able to elicit this kind of majesty and brilliance:

“In the beginning the White Stripes had consciously entered themselves into Detroit's lineage of noise-bombed rock 'n' roll, a continuum of feral howlers stretching from the Stooges and MC5 to the Gories and Detroit Cobras. They might have been happy to remain in that world forever, but their twist on the ragged Motor City tradition was too compelling for the rest of the world to ignore. Jack and Meg built up a mythos -- adhering to a strict red-and-white dress code, pretending to be brother and sister -- and a small but potent catalog, culled from the rough 'n' tumble corners of British and American music history. Their sound was deeply familiar but utterly peculiar. And just when nostalgia and backlash against garish late '90s trends opened up a window for back-to-basics rock bands to become real-deal superstars, they put out the strongest front-to-back statement of their career. White Blood Cells catapulted the White Stripes from the dive bar circuit into superstardom. By the end of the following year, they had appeared on the cover of Spin, accepted an MTV Video Music Award from the Olsen twins, and toured arenas with the Rolling Stones.

It's easy to look back on the hype surrounding the retro rock revolution and laugh -- and the idea that these kids in Converse were here to rescue rock 'n' roll from Fred Durst's clutches is admittedly silly. But in hindsight, getting excited about the best of these bands made perfect sense. The Hives, if one-dimensional, were a total powerhouse. The Strokes, if derivative, were pop-songwriter geniuses with the kind of swagger you can't teach. And listening through White Blood Cells is a reminder that the White Stripes were so much more than gimmick and persona. The album is a staggering outpouring of creativity, a reminder of how stridently unique a mishmash of uber-authentic influences can be. The sense that you're witnessing a Mojo editor's wet dream is quickly overshadowed by all the fun you're having. These songs are catchy as hell. They rock. Sometimes they hoot and holler too.

All those dusty blues, country, and garage rock records informing the White Stripes' ethos had been filtered through Jack White's twisted imagination, yet even his wildest ideas were grounded in Meg White's less-is-more simplicity. And really, both of them were about serving the song above all else. Underneath all the idiosyncrasies, White Blood Cells is a pop record that at times rocks extremely hard. For all the volatility animating these songs, melody rules all. Even the hooks Jack stuffed away at the end of the album are stunners, from "I thought you made up your mi-i-ind!" on the scathing rocker "I Can't Wait" to "You thought you heard a sound!" on the haunting piano-led closer "This Protector." The noise Jack wrangled from his guitar tended to imprint itself on your brain, too, as if he couldn't separate his most fiery impulses from his pop pedrigree. And for two people who had fallen out of sync, romantically speaking, he and Meg sure had a telepathic ability to pivot from quiet to loud and back.

"Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" was a transcendent example of this chemistry in action, but White Blood Cells covered so much ground beyond that initial blast. The album's other singles -- the unhinged hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the rampaging punk-rocker "Fell In Love With A Girl," the precious twee fantasy "We're Going To Be Friends" -- were proof of how many ways Jack could write about being smitten. And he had much more than infatuation on his mind back then. A wordless hard-rock anthem called "Aluminum"? Yes, definitely. A discordant Citizen Kane homage about how love does not exist? Absolutely. He's the same boy you've always known, but he's finding it harder to be a gentleman every day. He thinks he smells a rat. You send him to Toledo. (Toledo? Toledo!)

These sidelong sentiments were threaded into many kinds of rock music -- tunes that, despite their throwback feel, were nearly as inventive as the Lego-animated Michel Gondry music video that got the band on TV. The same artisanal touch Jack brought to his upholstery day job played out in songs that shared a sensibility but never a mold. This had been the White Stripes' M.O. since they started, and it reached its apotheosis in the winter of 2001. In just four days of harried recording, before this batch of songs could calcify into rote muscle memory, Jack and Meg wrangled their inspiration and nervous energy into a tour de force. Clearly they had some inkling that they'd captured something intoxicating because both the cover art and the album title hinted at an influx of unwelcome attention. Still, some part of them relished the prospect of expanding their empire beyond the confines of the dingy rock 'n' roll subculture that raised them, or else they would have ended the band for good before it had a chance to make them famous. This stuff was really good; they were gonna need a bigger room”.

On 3rd July, it will be twenty-five years since the release of White Blood Cells. I hope that Jack White shares some words about the album. Meg White is no longer in music, so I don’t feel she will post anything about White Blood Cells. Even so, anyone has never heard of this album seriously needs to hear it now. It is a lo-fi, high-quality offering…

FROM The White Stripes.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Saidah

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Liam James

 

Saidah

__________

I am spending some time….

with the incredible Saidah. This is an amazing D.J. that everyone should know about. This Amsterdam-based queen has London roots. I want to lead off with Nowadays Magazine and their interview with Saidah. This acclaimed and hugely respected D.J. draws inspiration “from the birthplace of garage to bring high-energy four-to-the-floor beats to her sets. Blending UKG classics with underground gems across garage, house, and bassline genres, she offers a fresh sound and perspective to open up the UK scene to new audiences. A resident at Amsterdam’s Radio Radio, she hosts her monthly radio show Sweet Like Chocolate, dedicated to UK dance music soundscapes, and a quarterly club night inviting personal inspirations to join her on the program”:

“Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got hooked on music?

I grew up in a household where music was always playing. I had a heavy UKG influence from my mum, who was into that scene, and grime from my older brother, who rapped and had Channel U on the TV at all times. I also love to sing, so I was involved in bands and choirs from a very young age. As soon as I was old enough (and even when I wasn’t quite...), I couldn’t get enough of clubbing, and that opened up a whole new way of experiencing music for me.

What inspired you to become a DJ?

I’ve honestly wanted to learn how to DJ from the moment I saw someone do it. The idea that you could be in control of the music, play all of the songs you want to hear, and experience everyone in the crowd loving the music as much as you do felt like the coolest thing ever to me. But I didn’t learn until I moved to Amsterdam and one of my besties had decks and taught me how to use them, which I’m forever grateful for. I fell in love with it immediately, and spending hours on end discovering music, learning techniques, and developing my own style inspired me to share that with people on dance floors”.

What challenges did you face while breaking into the industry, and how did you overcome them?

I think the biggest challenges came from within, to be honest. You have to continuously believe in yourself and what you’re doing- if you don’t, then it’s very hard for anyone else to. I struggled with imposter syndrome a lot at the start, but I think the only way to overcome it is to continue to challenge yourself to do things outside of your comfort zone. Then, when you achieve those things, you can look back and say, "That was something I didn’t think I could do, and I did it, so I’m definitely capable of doing this next hard thing.". It’s also about letting go of perfection and not being too hard on yourself when things don’t go as expected. Learning to be comfortable with discomfort and imperfection is a huge superpower, and it allows you to enjoy every moment so much more, which is what it’s all about really.

Where do you see yourself in five years, both musically and professionally?

I’ll be releasing some of my own music later this year, and I’ve been working on tracks both as a producer and a vocalist. So I’m excited to see what new opportunities that brings and to contribute to the scene. I hope that I’ll get to travel to cool places, meet even more amazing people, and mature as an artist and performer. So much has already happened that I would never have imagined a few years ago, so I feel really hopeful about what comes next”.

There aren’t many interviews available with Saidah. Her E.P., takeme2, is out. It is phenomenal. I would urge everyone to listen to it. I think that can’t stop is the best track on the E.P. Like all of the tracks, it has such energy. It is a work that really gives you a boost and a lift. I am going to end up with DJ Mag and their interview from last month. They spent time with Saidah ahead of the release of takeme2. The “fast-rising Amsterdam-based, London-born DJ, producer and vocalist opens up about finding her feet as she surfs UKG's new wave”:

“Having studied music at school, Saidah turned her attention to production shortly after starting DJing. Initially, she shadowed peers and played around on her own, then did a course with Parisian house producer Julien Chaptal. "That was less about how to use Ableton and more about how to be experimental in what you create," she reflects.

A keen collaborator, she’s also featured on several tracks with friends in recent months. In April, there was 'NICE + SLOW', a link-up with Lamsi released on Nervous Records, which blends UKG with Afro-diasporic rhythms beneath Saidah’s sensual, stripped-back vocal. Before that, in January, came 'Tears', a festival-ready slammer that doubles as a deeply personal track for Saidah, which revealed something important about where her music could go.

It came about after an invite to the studio from producer friends Freddi and Milion, who were building tunes ahead of Lowlands and were in need of some vocals. Saidah had come straight from London after a final conversation with a partner of almost seven years. Despite that, she didn't expect to fall apart. "I just thought I'd go into the studio and be like, ‘OK, let me just do some vocals, and it's gonna be okay’. But I was very emotional."

Keen for her to tap into something real before singing, the producers asked, ‘What are you going through right now?’ It broke Saidah open. "I just burst into tears, and I was like, ‘I feel like this is what I should talk about on this track, so you guys can just leave, and I'm just gonna talk into the mic and talk about what's going on’." She poured everything out, then left before she could listen back. When she finally heard her words on the finished track, she understood. "This is it. This is what it's about. It's about putting stories and emotions into the music."

The experience clarified something that has become central to her sound: she's a singer who has spent years in choirs and bands, but what she's really interested in is speaking. "I actually much prefer my voice on tracks when I’m talking rather than singing," she says. "It adds this extra layer of storytelling."

"I try to just think about it as if it's me playing at home. Because when I'm playing at home, I'm dancing like crazy."

Saidah was born and raised in South East London. Her mum had been a garage raver and "pretty much the source of my musical upbringing,” she says. “Some of my earliest memories are just being in the car with her and listening to these UK garage compilations. We would be singing along to them. I knew all the words to every single track."

Growing up in that particular pocket of the city, with an older brother who kept Channel U on the TV at all times, and who spent his evenings rapping and making beats, meant that Saidah was plugged into the musical landscape on her doorstep. Garage and grime mixed with Erykah Badu's neo-soul and the R&B of Destiny's Child, before university years in Manchester led her to the Warehouse Project. The ingredients were all there. The opportunity to do something with them wasn't.

"It felt very inaccessible," says Saidah on the idea of DJing at that point. "There were all these dudes who ran their parties and DJ’d and booked each other. It was never a case of, like, ‘Oh, maybe you might like to try this’." So she never did. Instead, she built a serious career in advertising. Keen to experience living somewhere new, she applied for jobs in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona. It was the Dutch capital that ultimately came calling. Six years later, she's still there, but everything has changed.

Now that her debut EP is here, there is much more music to come, and the sound has already evolved. Her producer tag is the sound of her laughing, and it feels like an intentional signpost of what’s to come. "This lightness, this joyfulness through the music: I think the future stuff is leaning much more heavily into that."

The people she's previewed demos with have struggled to name what genre they belong to: garage drum patterns are layered beneath trance-inflected synths, house vocals and tempos that don't fit the mould. "I hate the idea of using a reference track," she says of a common practice for many producers, especially early on. "You're literally using a template to create music, and that's not what it's about at all. You should go into it and just figure out what sounds good to you."

Saidah quit her corporate job last year after signing with management, a characteristically impulsive move that served as a sort of “now-or-never” moment. "I can't have regrets in life. I have to just do it," she says. Though her diary is now full all summer long, the nerves haven't entirely gone just yet. Big shows still bring them, but she's learned to manage the moment.

"I try to just think about it as if it's me playing at home,” she says. “Because when I'm playing at home, I'm dancing like crazy." It’s an energy you can really feel in her mix for DJ Mag’s Recognise series – a blazing 70-minute set packed with all manner of UK club heaters, her voice and solo productions unmistakably peppered throughout the tracklist.

Connecting with the crowd, as though inviting them into her home, she says, is everything: eye contact, smiling, jumping around with people. "That makes me feel part of the experience rather than a performer with a barrier between us”.

I am going to advise everyone to follow Saidah. You can see here where she is playing. A busy summer of festivals ahead. If you do have the opportunity to hear a set from Saidah, it will be a phenomenal experience. With a debut E.P. out and this momentum behind her, there is a lot of love around Saidah. I think that everybody should check out…

THIS remarkable D.J.

____________

Follow Saidah

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Frank Ocean - blond

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

 

Frank Ocean - blond

__________

EVEN though…

he has only released two albums, they are both masterpieces. I am focusing on Frank Ocean’s second and most recent album, blond. Released on 20th August, 2016 and recorded between Abbey Road Studios, London, Electric Lady, New York and Henson Recording Los Angeles, blond received sweeping acclaim. It is considered one of the greatest albums of the 2010s. Ahead of its tenth anniversary, I wanted to explore the album. I will end with some reviews for blond. I am starting with Vice. They spotlighted Frank Ocean’s words about the album:

“Minutes after releasing his new album, Blond, Frank Ocean shared a post on Tumblr explaining the inspiration behind the record. You can read it in full below and listen to Blond here.

Two years ago I found an image of a kid with her hands covering her face. A seatbelt reached across her torso, riding up her neck and a mop of blonde hair stayed swept, for the moment, behind her ears. Her eyes seemed clear and calm but not blank, the road behind her seemed the same. I put myself in her seat then I played it all out in my head. The claustrophobia hits as the seatbelt tightens, preventing me from even leaning forward in my seat. the pressing on internal organs. I lean back and forward to release it. Then backwards and forward again. There it is—I got free. How much of my life has happened inside of a car? I wonder if the odds are that I’ll die in one. Knock on wood-grain. Shouldn’t speak like that. We live in cars in some cities, commuting across space either for our livelihood, or devouring fossil fuels for joy. It’s close to as much time as we spend in our beds, more for some. The first time I did shrooms, my manager had to come rescue me from Caltech’s ‘Trip Day.’ As I got into her car, I swear to God the aluminum center console in her Porsche truck looked like it was breathing, like the throat of something. On the freeway, leaving Pasadena, we spoke and I looked away, outside, at the wheels and tires of cars doing that optical illusion thing they do where it looks like they’re spinning backwards, which, according to Google, happens because our brains are assuming something completely wrong and showing it to us.

Staring, I was transfixed by all the indicator lights oscillating and throbbing against the wind. We drove thru downtown LA headed west, flying on the same freeways I used to run outta gas on. Welcomed in by the perennial creatures, imperial palm trees and climbing vines living their lives out just off the shoulder. The feeling familiar enhanced, on the 10. I used to ride around in my sinewy crossover SUV, smoke and listen to rough mixes of my old shit before it came out, or whatever someone wanted to play when they hooked up their iPhone to the aux cord. A few years and few daily-drivers later I’m not driving much anymore. It’s been a year since I moved to London, at the time of writing this, and there’s no practical reason to drive in this city. I ordered a GT3 RS and it’ll keep low miles out here but I guess it’s good to have in case of emergency :) Raf Simons once told me it was cliché, my whole car obsession. Maybe it links to a deep subconscious straight boy fantasy. Consciously though, I don’t want straight—a little bent is good. I found it romantic, sometimes, editing this project. The whole time I felt as though I was in the presence of a $16m McLaren F1 armed with a disposable camera. My memories are in these pages, places closeby and long ass-numbing flights away. Cruising the suburbs of Tokyo in RWB Porches. Throwing parties around England and mobbing freeways in four project M3S that I built with some friends. Going to Mississippi and playing in the mud with amphibious quads. Street-casting models at a random kung fu dojo out in Senegal. Commissioning life-size toy boxes for the fuck of it. Shooting a music video for fun with Tyrone Lebon, the genius giant. Taking a break/reconnaissance mission to Tulum, Mexico, enjoying some star visibility for a change. Recording in Tokyo, NYC, Miami, LA, London, Paris. Stopping in Berlin to witness Berghain for myself. Trading jewels and soaking in parables with the many-headed Brandon aka BasedGod in conversation. I wrote a story in the middle—It’s called “Godspeed.” It’s basically a reimagined part of my boyhood. Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years. It’s surprisingly my favorite part of life so far. Surprising, to me, because the current phase is what I was asking the cosmos for when I was a kid. Maybe that part had its rough stretches too, but in my rearview mirror it’s getting small enough to convince myself it was all good. And really though… It’s still all good”.

A number one album in the U.S., U.K. and beyond, the California-born artist perhaps topped his incredible 2012 debut, Channel Orange. There were very few promotional interviews around Blond. I want to come to The New York Times and their conversation with Frank Ocean. There is debate whether you call Endless a studio album and place it among his discography. Endless is a visual album released on 19th August, 2016, as an exclusive streaming-only video on Apple Music, and preceded the 20th August release of Blond:

“Control is often at the forefront of Mr. Ocean’s mind. When he was on tour, his concerts would be recorded each night, and he would watch the tape, type up notes and email them to his team to prepare for a morning meeting. When “Blonde” and “Endless” were being recorded, he carried the hard drives with his music in his backpack, and the backups, too: “I’d rather the plane goes down in flames and the drives go down with me than somebody put out a weird posthumous release.” When he answers questions, he takes meaningful pauses, mulling over premises, before answering in expansive stories paired with precise bursts of logic.

After bouncing around hotels in London, he moved into a furnished apartment that he eventually stripped bare of all but the essentials: “I just wanted to be able to walk around and not run into an end table or some useless piece of furniture.” He rode electric bikes around the city, made new friends — “which is not as difficult as celebrities make it sound” — went on dates. He recorded in a handful of studios, including Abbey Road, where he asked for the studio, too, to be decluttered, removing furniture and bringing in flower arrangements.

Piece by piece, the music that would become “Blonde” and “Endless” was coming together, though up until then, it had been slow going. He’d begun recording at Electric Lady in New York, but after he took a pause away from the studio, the rhythm of writing was gone. “I had writer’s block for almost a year,” he said. During that time, he would go to the studio, “stare at the monitors and come up with nothing, or nothing that I liked.”

That dry spell broke only after he reconnected with a childhood friend from New Orleans who was going through difficult times. That conversation, he said, “made me feel as though I should talk about the way I grew up more.”

He decided that he wanted “Blonde” and “Endless” to be more autobiographical than his earlier releases. “I wrote ‘Channel Orange’ in two weeks,” he said. “The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.”

So he turned inward, and backward, telling stories about his childhood, family life, and romantic relationships — some frivolous, like on “Nikes” (“He don’t care for me/but he cares for me/and that’s good enough”); some meaningful, like on “Self Control” (“Wish we’d grown up on the same advice”): “That was written about someone who I was actually in a relationship with, who wasn’t an unrequited situation,” he said. “It was mutual, it was just we couldn’t really relate. We weren’t really on the same wavelength.”

In places, like on “Ivy,” he manipulated his voice to sound younger, to better capture the time he was evoking. Many of the new songs have two or three competing narratives — different points of view participating in the same story. “That was my version of collage or bricolage,” he said. “How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.”

On “Blonde,” especially, you used a lot of different voices.

Sometimes I felt like you weren’t hearing enough versions of me within a song, ’cause there was a lot of hyperactive thinking. Even though the pace of the album’s not frenetic, the pace of ideas being thrown out is.

Are they always multiple points of view, or are they multiple Franks interrupting each other to be heard?

It’s the same thing — to me — because my point of view from one emotional state to another is a different point of view. Sometimes I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

Were you working toward a fixed idea on these albums? Or was it mutating and evolving as you went?

When I was making the record, there was 50 versions of “White Ferrari.” I have a 15-year-old little brother, and he heard one of the versions, and he’s like, “You gotta put that one out, that’s the one.” And I was like, “Naw, that’s not the version,” because it didn’t give me peace yet.

You were reaching for something ineffable?

They’re just chords, just melodies. I don’t know what combination of those objects is gonna make me feel how I need to feel. But I know precisely the feeling that needs to happen.

Regaining Control of Business

At the same time he was chasing a perfect-feeling sound, he was trying to regain control of his business relationships. He replaced his team — new management, new lawyer, new publicist. And he began negotiations to free himself from his contract with Def Jam, the label that had signed him in 2009 and effectively shelved him until his self-released debut mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra” caused a stir online in 2011. “A seven-year chess game” is how he described the process of buying himself out of his contract and purchasing back all of his master recordings — using his own money, he said.

As a condition of the arrangement, he said, Def Jam took on distribution of his next project, “Endless,” which is available only as a streaming video album on Apple Music. Then, less than two days later, came a big surprise: “Blonde,” released independently by Mr. Ocean. (Apple Music paid to host the premiere of “Blonde,” but Mr. Ocean said there was no ongoing relationship with Apple.) This was Mr. Ocean’s checkmate, an album wholly his own that took center stage: “Blonde” debuted atop the Billboard album chart with the third-biggest opening week of the year, behind only Drake and Beyoncé.

When releasing “Endless” and “Blonde,” he took his time: “I know that once it’s out, it’s out forever, so I’m not really tripping on how long it’s taking.” He described his mood after the release of “Blonde” as “postpartum.” Rather than going on a promotional tour, playing radio festivals and making the usual rounds, he spent about a month traveling: “China, Japan, Oceania, France, just around. Casual”.

Let’s finish with a couple of reviews for blond. I am dropping the ‘e’, as the album cover says ‘blond’. I am not sure why everyone adds the ‘e’. Even so, I will move to The Line of Best Fit and their 9/10 review for Blond. In the header of their review they say how “Since disappearing from the public eye, Frank Ocean’s aroused more intrigue, generated more content and provoked more discussion among fans and critics than some of the most visible and productive artists - churning out material, hits and media appearances - could even wish for. It makes you wonder. Maybe Frank Ocean’s been with us all along - as a mirror for ourselves”:

“On the 45-minute long visual album Endless, we watch numerous Frank Oceans stalk the interior of a large industrial warehouse as they proceed to construct – in between breaks to check a smartphone – a tall wooden spiral staircase. The staircase is effectively destroyed as he ascends to its summit (around the 38-minute mark), before Frank resumes silently building from scratch all over again. It would be easy to view the whole thing as a metaphor for the creative process (the “endless” formation, evolution, destruction and/or revision of ideas) – if the warehouse is Frankie’s brain. But it might be too easy. Endless might actually be a statement on the art of patience. Which might feel somewhat incongruous in what are unequivocally urgent times; but there’s a hell of a case for slowing down - as consumers, dreamers, creators. As people. To view the piece in its entirety - to begin to understand it, and the artist who made it - requires patient and undistracted reflection. And, it would seem that since his spectacular debut-proper Channel Orange left its indelible mark on the pop landscape, Frank Ocean’s been learning the value of these lessons, too.

Blonde is at once both complicated and understated, invoking the very best of Channel Orange and rendering it even more fragmented and porous. Channel Orange was effortlessly subtle and moving in its approach to imagery and storytelling – combining a photographic eye for detail and a close attention to minutiae (the fingertips and the lips burning from the cigarettes on "Forest Gump"; the newborn baby reaching for the nipple on "Sierra Leone") with trippy surrealism and flights of sheer fantasy (the aliens watching live from the purple matter on "Pink Matter"; the condo on the cloud in "Pilot Jones"). It was a world in which the hyper-real and the pure imaginary were collapsed into one another and remolded anew – where time slowed, and where nothing and everything was true. But Channel Orange played out in scenes and sketches – albeit delicate, incomplete ones – which we were able to step into and step out of: we’re on the roof looking out across Ladera Heights with our character in "Sweet Life"; we’re right there in the taxi at rush hour on "Bad Religion". Blonde lacks these obvious entry and exit points. They’re there, for sure, they’re just not so easy to find.

Blonde is anchored in the same closed universe as Channel Orange and, to an extent, Nostalgia-Ultra: cars, drugs, pool parties, sex, love, loss, sunsets and moonlight; characters speeding through a blurred existence, unsure of where they’re heading, finding truth and meaning in only the most ephemeral and transitory highs. We’re there from the off: "Living so the last night / Feels like a past life", he sings on the opening track "Nikes". But on Blonde our proximity to these characters and their world is magnified. Frank gets right to the surface of his subjects, right up close to the flesh. This close up it’s hard to see the entire picture; we’re so close to the image it flinches, retracts, becomes something different altogether: "The markings on your surface / Your speckled face / Flawed crystals hang from your ears / I couldn’t gauge your fears / I couldn’t relate to my peers". There’s a line of argument that says one of the problems of living in late capitalism is that it’s all empty surface-level. If anything, there’s less and less real tangible surface-level experience. We’re lost in our own bodies. Like James Blake’s (and Blake’s influence is felt all over this record – as is Frankie’s all over Blake’s, The Colour In Anything), Frank Ocean’s art often reflects and tries to work through these tensions: "Where I cannot / Where I cannot / Less morose and more present / Dwell on my gifts for a second / A moment", he sings on "Seigfried".

We drift throughout the majority of Blonde, orbiting these fragile points of contact, points that feel constantly under threat; we hover precariously over moments of indeterminacy and confusion – the feeling of not knowing how to feel, where lack and desire merge, and become the same. It’s in his style of delivery, in the way he occasionally murmurs, trips off the edge, attenuates, languishes, dissolves (see "Good Guy", or "Close to You"). And it’s there in the writing, too: "Is this the slow body / Left when I forgot to speak / So I text to speech, lesser speeds / Texas speed, yes / Eventually, eventually, yes / I only eventually, eventually, yes" ("White Ferrari"). The writing isn’t always suspended precariously at this trembling threshold, though. There are times when it boasts a brilliant photomontage-like quality – whole scenes cut with sharp details, transitioning frame by frame with a flicker, and then opening up before you. Take this, for example, from "Skyline To": "Gliding on the five / The deer run across / Kill the headlights / Pretty fucking / Underneath moonlight now / Pretty fucking / Sun rising, sand, comes a morning / Haunting us with the beams". Elsewhere, the writing feels like it's buckling under the weight of its own mad potential. Take this piece of Beckettian hopscotch from "Siegfried": "Dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought / That could think of the dreamer that thought / That could think of dreaming and getting a glimmer of God / I be dreaming a dream in a thought / That could dream about a thought / That could think of dreaming a dream".

It would be wrong to suggest, however, that Blonde plays out entirely in a state of dizzy disillusionment, or in a tangle of philosophical windings. When it needs to soar proudly, when it needs to shout, it does exactly that. Blonde is a work of supreme confidence and assurance, one that bounds assertively between genres and styles. It sounds delightful. Between the vague cracklings of sad-boy electronica – a modification of an aesthetic pioneered by the likes of Radiohead and James Blake in the UK – there are big, expansive moments of defiant pop ("Ivy") and impressive flourishes of avant-gardes soul ("Pink + White"). These are enjoyable moments, but they're not without the weight of history either, which cuts into the soft flesh of the album when you least expect. Even as we’re sliding amorphously through these melting snapshots of intimacy and desire and nakedness, the full horrors of American racism still clatter terribly and immediately into the fold. The album’s sense of sadness and alienation (and terror) takes on a whole different import and resonance in the middle of "Nikes", with Frank paying tribute to the life of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African American boy murdered on the walk home from his local store by George Zimmerman, in 2012. It’s a simple, devastating one line: "R.I.P. Trayvon / That nigga looked just like me". Elsewhere, the nightmares of Hurricane Katrina flash traumatically across Blonde, like unexpected forks of lightning. And when Frank sings "this is summer / Keep alive, Stay alive", on "Skyline To", it’s not hard to read as a tragic reminder that America’s hottest months are invariably its most deadly.

For an album that is at times intentionally difficult to follow - for all its vague and indistinct meanderings between subjects, between minds and bodies, between place and time, Blonde remains a highly accessible album - and not just sonically. Frank Ocean writes and delivers in a way that makes peculiar sense to those of us inheriting a world bound by so many mad contradictions and discrepancies; one that places us – the young - at its "centre", while remaining incapable of responding to our realities and our grievances. It’s as if those who were brought up living with the Internet are often presumed to have unconditionally assimilated all the manifold perplexities of digital media, past a point of no return. Which is partly true, but it’s not that simple. We’re looking for truth and goodness just like every other generation of seekers, and we’re doing our best to cling to it whenever we recognise it, however fleeting. His music speaks to these fraught and complicated urges: "It’s hell on earth and the city’s on fire / Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven", goes the hook on "Solo". But there’s also a quiet confidence underlying the uneasy melancholia that dominates Blonde, a feeling that when real change eventually comes, it’s going to be on our terms: "We’ll let you guys prophesy / We gon’ see the future first". We might be fucked up, but compared to “them” we’re doing just fine: "You’re tired of moving, your body’s aching / We could vaca, there’s places to go / Clearly, this isn’t all that there is / Can’t take what’s been given / But we’re so okay here, we’re doing fine".

Blonde is a strangely pertinent album. But it never screams its message – if you can really call it that. It’s never didactic or instructional or overbearing; importantly, it never treats its listeners as stupid. Frank Ocean shares our doubts and our anxieties – you can sense it in his writing, in its trepidation, in its ambivilance. Blonde’s not about telling us how to live (it’s decidedly ambiguous on hedonism and materialism, for example.) Rather, Blonde allows its listeners to make their own minds up, and to take what they need from it - to live. It’s this same kind of assurance – allowing the art to speak for itself, and a faith in his audience to listen and to respond - that kept him tinkering away for so long at this project in near total secrecy, until it was properly ready for release, until it was right. After all, there’s no rush. Not really. He might even disappear again soon. It shouldn’t matter to us; because Blonde is a work of art that will stick with us all for way longer than four short years”.

DIY praised the astonishing 2016 album, blond. They note how Frank Ocean “doesn’t have all the answers, and ‘Blonde’’s brilliance comes from how content it is not knowing an absolute truth”. There is no doubt that blond is among the finest albums of this century. I have listened to it more in preparation for this feature. It never fades or loses its magic:

“When music and meaning don’t fully click together like a neat stack of Lego bricks, ambiguity steps in. If a record is billed as being “open to interpretation’, that’s often code for “there’s not a great deal to see here, guys.” That’s not the case for Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’, an album that will be poked and prodded at by deep-thinking fans for years to come, and for good reason.

Searching for ‘Blonde’’s true meaning is like fishing for treasure in the Great Barrier Reef. There’s bound to be something down there somewhere, but you’ve got to get past the infinite, beautiful distractions. In truth, the follow-up to ‘Channel Orange’ thrives in its own uncertainty. Its best moments play out like a lucid dream. And it works because it’s so content with not knowing an absolute truth.

Fluid and curious, the record explores like there’s always something else to see. Strict song structures are scarce, save for the dazzling ‘Ivy’ and ‘Pink + White’. Instead, flooring split-seconds and sudden jolts of life step in out of nowhere. Andre 3000’s show-stopping ‘Solo (Reprise)’ verse gives way to ‘Pretty Sweet’’s white noise and a fitting Outkast-nodding beat frenzy. ‘Nights’ splits into two parts - from disjointed, N64-on-steroids playfulness to a twisted, after-hours purple haze.

There are funny contradictions everywhere, like how an anti-drugs speech from Frank’s Auntie (‘Be Yourself’) is immediately followed by ‘Solo’’s opening line, “Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancing by myself / Gone off tabs of that acid.” Right up to the record’s title - it can be called ‘Blonde’ or ‘Blond’ - there’s no certainty. Each song is like a story with a dozen alternate endings. But there’s something refreshing in not having the answer. Especially in 2016, when one opinion can be gospel while everything else is void, when you’re told to be aware of everything while barely anyone knows the reality.

Big name cameos from the likes of Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are so subtle, they’re barely audible. The former can be heard in the background of ‘Ivy’, while Kendrick is reserved to a couple of accentuations. More airtime are given to a joke interview recorded by Frank’s brother when they were kids, on ‘Futura Free’. That’s less his way of hogging the spotlight, more proof of ‘Blonde’’s unpredictability and how split-seconds stay in the memory rather than specific songs. The way ‘Self Control’ clicks together - with the help of Yung Lean - from a disjointed love song into an emotional juggernaut. The way Frank employs Elliot Smith lyrics (“This is not my life, this is a fond farewell to a friend”) when he’s in the middle of pouring out his soul. The way ‘Ivy’’s vinyl-crackle notes bend out of shape.

It’s been a year of sudden-releases and snap judgements. But few records need to be unpacked as slowly as ‘Blonde’. It will take months for the dust to fully settle on 2016’s most long-awaited album. For ‘Channel Orange’ purists, the record’s more outward-thinking moments will understandably frustrate - Frank’s rich sense of storytelling is still here, it’s just fragmented. But once ‘Blonde’’s ambiguity begins to piece together, it becomes something remarkable”.

However you stylise the album title, I do feel that blond is among the greatest albums of the century. In terms of what comes next for Frank Ocean, I am not too sure. There have been single releases (such as 2017’s Provider and 2019’s DHL), but nothing in the way of a third album. As we await that – if it will ever come -, we should marvel at blond ten years after its release. We mark thar anniversary on 20th August. A decade later, and blond remains…

A heavenly release.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Your Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love)/Beelzebub (Kite)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the premiere of Hounds of Love at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

 

Your Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love)/Beelzebub (Kite)

__________

I have….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky

talked about God and Jesus in this feature run, and I have also mentioned a historical embodiment of The Devil, Adolf Hitler. Characters in Kate Bush songs that have taken me in different directions. Bush is no stranger to incorporating religious figures and iconography into her songs. The same regarding historical figures. Joan or Arc mentioned in more than one song. I will come to a devilish mention in a song from The Kick Inside that has an interesting history. Before getting there, it is worth discussing animal characters from perhaps Kate Bush’s greatest song. I will come to the argument as to whether Hounds of Love is her finest achievement. Many consider it to be Kate Bush’s best song. I could have also mentioned the fox that is referenced in the track (“I found a fox caught by dogs/He let me take him in my hands/His little heart, it beats so fast/And I'm ashamed of running away”). I always think of that fox as a metaphor or symbol of the heart. Being torn by the hounds of love. The album title, perhaps, not referencing actual dogs. Even though Kate Bush is photographed on the cover of her 1985 with her two Weimaraners, Bonnie and Clyde, I don’t think the ‘hounds’ in Hounds of Love’s title track are canine. More spirits or a dark energy that is chasing her. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to this iconic track. I shall come to the question as to whether it is Kate Bush’s highpoint. There are some features that rate it number one. In terms of the characters, Your Hounds of Love, I see this a cross between actual hounds and a spiritual evil. We do find Bush stop to take a fox in her hands. One whose heart is beating so fast. Does that fox represent her own heart, or is it courage dying? Are they literal hounds capturing an actual fox? I think it is open to the listener. Before I explore subjects relating to the song and those hounds, Kate Bush explained the meaning behind that epic title track. The third single from Hounds of Love, it reached eight in the U.K. Even if Bush said in one or two interviews it was about love in general or relating to someone else, I think this is a song about her. One of her most personal to that point (1985). Kate Bush did explain her thoughts behind Hounds of Love:

“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985

When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought ‘Hounds Of Love’ and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna… when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of… being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good.

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

If not literal dogs that are tearing apart Bush, I do feel that they are characters in the song. In the video, we do see Bush and her male compatriot running. There is this chase. I shall come to that. Even though Hounds of Love is arguably her finest song, some critics were sharp and sexist. To show how tinned-eared, misogynistic and insulting journalists (male mostly) were in 1986, here are two examples of reviews for Hounds of Love:

“All mock, muted orchestration and thumping mock-tribal drums, this is Kate simply being Kate, and whether that makes you want to roll around in sandpit is strictly up to you.

Jim Reid, Record Mirror, 22 February 1986

Bush has always strived to be different, but this quest has often led her astray – an olive stone in the ashtray of life. ‘Hounds of Love’ eschews the lentil nightmare as Bush reaches notes most groups never even dream of.

Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 22 February 1986”.

I do think that Hounds of Love is this fascination song. In it, we hear Bush actually make yelping/barking noises. Giving the impression that there are dogs chasing her. In terms of the concept and idea of the song, this was very different to what other artists were doing. They were more literal regarding fears, the terror of commitment and being chased by love. Rather than go down this route, Kate Bush gave the idea that these hounds of love, who you might feel were warm, benign or would be loving, are actually frightening! Or that she had built that into her mind. Perhaps they would catch her and be all friendly and lick her. There is darkness and horror in this track. At the start, the line “It’s in the trees!/It’s coming!” is quote from a line spoken in the film Night of the Demon by Maurice Denham. Although the plot of the film (an American psychologist who tries to combat an evil cult leader who can sentence his enemies to death through the use of a runic scroll, given to his victims without their knowledge) cannot be connected to Hounds of Love and its meaning, Kate Bush did reveal it was one of her favourite films. Another occasion of films making their way into Bush’s work. This was not new. So many examples through the years. Though there does seem to be this horror element. Bush playing with ideas of possession and the spiritual. Something she did in Wuthering Heights (1978). 1986’s Experiment IV is about a machine that is built that could kill people with sound. Hallucinations, spirits and the macabre can be found elsewhere on Hounds of Love. Mother Stands for Comfort and Waking the Witch are examples.

Even though Kate Bush often referenced Horror and films in her work (Get Out of My House from 1982’s The Dreaming was inspired by Stephen King’s, The Shining), she didn’t bring in actual audio from someone else. That Night of the Demon exert is a great way to start the song. I keep thinking about the hounds and whether they are physical bodies. Kate Bush saying it is less literal, I tend to find myself coming on the side that she may have had dogs in mind. Bonnie and Clyde were her dogs. Looking and thinking of them when writing the songs, what if they turned on their master? Dogs seem to embody love and devotion. Turning them into these possessed things chasing down a woman is very scary. Though it could be Bush’s mind manifesting this anxiety into a nightmare situation. The video for Hounds of Love was the first Bush directed solo. She assisted and collaborated on other videos. This was her first solo credit. Influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, there is a supporting artist in the video that is meant to be Alfred Hitchcock. That is a reference to the director cameoing in many of his own films. Bush was now the director. Gow Hunter is Bush co-lead in the video. He is seen dancing alongside her while the pair are handcuffed together in a dramatic, Night of the Demon-inspired sequence. Bush said that the late Gower was "a lovely man" with "the face of a great film star".  Even if you feel the hounds of love are spirits or not real, there does seem to be this idea that they can be seen and have a real form: “Among your hounds of love/And feel your arms surround me/I’ve always been a coward/And never know what’s good for me/Oh, here I go!/Don’t let me go!/Hold me down!/It’s coming for me through the trees/Help me, darling/Help me, please!/Take my shoes off/And throw them in the lake/And I’ll be/Two steps on the water”. Even though the words are quite heavy, the cello by Jonathan Williams and percussion from Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott gives Hounds of Love this lightness. The percussion acts as a heartbeat, but the cello has this sense of grace. Or is it meant to be stabbing? I feel there is something more romantic and classical mixed in with this blackness. Bush’s vocals and playfulness also balances out the sense of fright and impending attack. Her production work is also startling and brilliant. It is like this cinematic production.

As much as I have theorised about the tangibility and physicality of Your Hounds of Love that is mentioned in the lyrics, is the song actually Kate Bush’s best? For a while, there was a consensus that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – the lead single from Hounds of Love – was her best track. Wuthering Heights had that honour for a time. MOJO ranked her fifty best songs in 2024. They placed Hounds of Love at number one: “No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”. The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles in 2018 and placed Hounds of Love in fourth. They did say this: “The moment when its mood of pregnant fear finally shifts into one of gleeful surrender – “don’t let me go, hold me down” – is one of the most jubilant in Bush’s catalogue”. As foreboding as I have made the song sound, in the end, Bush/the protagonist surrenders to what is chasing her. That is when you get that literal sense of hounds actually wanting to show affection and love. Seeing them as snarling and in search of blood, it is only Bush’s doubts and fear of commitment that is creating this paranoia and fright. By stopping running and showing trust, she actually embraces what is chasing her. It might be a representation of Hounds of Love as an album and this huge project she undertook. Some of the doubts and bad sides of doing that. Taking so much on. However, she was the master and in control. Someone who could more than handle the hounds of love!

From a 1985 contender for Kate Bush’s very best song to a track from her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Kite is one that a lot of fans know, yet it is rarely talked about. Not viewed as up there with her best, though it is a wonderful song. Again, rather than perhaps a physical manifestation of a character, perhaps something more internal or non-literal. Though Kate Bush does name-check Beelzebub, so I am counting that. It is an interesting reference, in terms of how he fits into the song. There are comparisons with Hounds of Love. In the sense that there are these intense feelings inside. Both I think relate to Kate Bush, though she says in interviews how they are not personal. If Hounds of Love is about a fear that then turns into embracing this and seeing that it is good, Kite’s struggle is the need to get high. I sort of imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and The Beatles claiming it is not about LSD. Kite is very much a weed song (Kate Bush’s version of the Paul McCartney-penned Got to Get You Into My Life from Revolver, perhaps? A song very much about that desire to get high). One I feel has more of Kate Bush in it then she lets on. The Beelzebub name-check gets me wondering. Why select that particular character and figure as a starting point? If it is a casual and almost goofy reference to Beelzebub, I do think that this Devil in her stomach is this desire to be pushed upwards. “Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o/My feet are heavy and I’m rooted in my wellies”. For Music Talk in 1978, this is what Kate Bush said about Kite: “In the song, the character starts to feel that he is rooted to the ground, but there is a force pulling him up to the sky. A voice calls out, “Come up and be a kite”, and he is drawn up to the sky and takes the form and texture of a kite. Suddenly he’s flying “like a feather on the wind”, and for a while he enjoys it; but the longing for home and the security of the ground overtake these feelings”. There is something in those lyrics. I wanted to focus on Beelzebub, as that was an interesting choice. Maybe it was a stream-of-consciousness inclusion from Kate Bush.

It is another case of religious imagery coming into Bush’s songs. Jesus has made an appearance. God most memorably, in 1985’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). That was probably the most serious or grand use of a religious figure. In the case of Kite, this is basically a song about Bush getting high. She may say that it is about a man who is pulled from the ground and then needs to be rooted. Taking a leap, I am going from Beelzebub to The Beatles. To come back to them. They were no strangers to experimenting with music. And drugs. Although weed did not hinder or help their creative process, it was definitely a part of their world. Not that Bush was following them. I think, for The Beates, it might have been a sign and norm for the time (the 1960s). For Bush, there was this communal and bonding aspect. Though I think it was also to help with nerves. Take the edge of. I have said before how Bush occasionally would be told to leave the weed alone when recording. Almost like taking sweets from a child! Donald Sutherland, who worked with Bush on the Cloudbusting video, definitely had a word with her about her smoking. Bush started smoking cigarettes as a young child. Many see her as this middle-class girl who was quite spoiled. She was well off. Cigarettes and weed was not rebellion. She grew up in a very artistic and free household. Though there were rules and boundaries, the Bush household in the 1960s and 1970s was not over-strict. It is interesting that Kite does nod to smoking. Though it also has a story behind it. I think the Beelzebub reference is about The Devil creating anxiety and rumble. This need to rise above him and get rid of that feeling. Kate Bush has said how Kite was her attempt to write a Bob Marley song. Not one of her biggest idols, you can see why Bush was intrigued and struck by his music. Surely, in 1976, she would have known about Rastaman Vibration. Exodus came out in 1977. Huge albums from Bob Marley and the Wailers. Maybe a young Cathy Bush heard 1974’s Natty Dread when she was sixteen.

If there was nothing unusual about white artists in the 1970s attempting Reggae songs, I feel Kate Bush lyrics and her delivery is different to other artists. Dreams of Orgonon talked about Kite. Though it has this Reggae vibe and is quite laid back, it also has Progressive Rock elements. You could write Kite off as this light and filler song. It is far from that. If you look at the documentary I have included below, where Kate Bush and her band/crew are preparing and rehearsing for 1979’s The Tour of Life, you can see her rehearsing Kite. I can only imagine the reaction the song got from the audiences. A number I feel would be stronger and more impactful live than on record:

“Kate Bush makes her television debut in a disused railway depot in Germany. Behind her stands the KT Bush Band, the musicians she chose to play her music, in front of a backdrop of green land and a volcano, apparently the German realization of a Yorkshire moor. Bush begins her idiosyncratic mime-shaped dance and the music follows her in a jumpy, facetious rendition of “Kite.” Bush uses her full body as an instrument, using shakes and poses to fill the stage.

It’s unsurprising “Kite” should be the runway Bush launches her television career on. The track is the B-side to “Wuthering Heights,” and a chirpy enough deep cut. “Kite” responds to “Wuthering Heights,” sharing its A-side’s fascination with stepping out of ordinary human experience; visualizing this process as a skyborne anabasis.

“Kite” is a dance song in a different fashion from “Wuthering Heights”; whereas “Heights” is famous for the dance retroactively applied to it, “Kite” actually depicts a sort of radical bodily movement. “Kite” depicts an Icarus-type character: a person being drawn from the ground and towards the air. Over the course of Kite’s run time, Bush expresses ennui on the ground with quite possibly the silliest opening lyric of all time — “Beezlebub is aching in my belly-o/my feet are heavy and they’re rooted in my wellios” — swoops through the air like “a diamond kite,” and finally gets sick of her flight with “I’ve got no limbs/I’m like a feather on the wind.” Bush puts herself through a odd contrapasso (indeed, directed by a sort of god in the shape of eyeball in the sky) where a desire to ascend quickly becomes a descent into the fear of “shit, how do I get down from here.”

Which is to say that “Kite” is a psychedelic rock song. The track’s metaphor isn’t exactly subtle — indeed the song is constructed around an unspoken pun about being high. Bush has an out-of-body experience she’s been aching for and finds the force drawing her upwards won’t let her down again. A taste of the divine is inherently terrifying.

There’s a taste of prog rock to this — bands Bush enjoyed such as Genesis, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson were similarly enamored with playing surreal melodies and writing about off-beat, ethereal subject matter. “There’s a hole in the sky with a big eyeball” sounds like a missing lyric of “21st Century Schizoid Man.” The chorus inviting the listener to “come up and be a kite/and fly a diamond night” is about as blunt a nod to mid-Seventies prog as one can write. Bush wears her prog influences on her sleeve in the early days, and surprisingly “Kite” is one of the songs which heavily showcases this.

Leave this alone and you get a psychedelically tinged prog rock song about the hubris of transcendence. Nothing to write home about, but perfectly enjoyable fluff. Yet “Kite” moves into curious dissonance by playing itself as eccentric reggae (something acknowledged by Bush herself, who called it “a Bob Marley song.”) On its own merits, this isn’t a idiosyncratic move — every white rock artist in the Seventies was attempting and failing to do reggae songs in a fatigue (a trend perhaps most prominently realized by Eric Clapton’s nauseating rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff.”) But with its moderato tempo and time signature shifts, “Kite” isn’t straight reggae. It utilizes the trappings of the music for its own ends to create conflicting juxtapositions, such as the bass’ cannabis-like rumble under Bush’s acidic vocals. In the end this doesn’t save “Kite” from being silly faux-reggae, but Bush is good at enough at dazzling her listeners to keep the tracks’ seams from showing too much”.

Religion and history were present right through Kate Bush discography. I think about Bush’s name-drop of Beelzebub. Rather than him being another form of The Devil, Beelzebub is instead “known in demonology as one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell, Beelzebub representing gluttony and envy. The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebub as a being capable of flying, known as the "Lord of the Flies", "Lord of the Flyers", or the "Lord of the Flying Demons”. That element of flight and flying. Connecting to kites. Even though we know weed is very much at the heart of the song, I do feel that Kate Bush was thinking deeper. Nodding to some of her favourite Progressive Rock artists. There was always the danger, when you consider the lines and that opening line of Beelzebub being in her belly, it is one of her most parody-worthy songs. She was at the mercy of impressionists and satirists in the 1970s and 1980s. Faith Brown among those who took her off. Bush did find it funny. But for an artist trying to be unique and true to herself, seeing this reflection of occasional mockery and insult, that must have hurt too! You feel like Kite is an open goal for comedians of the times. If you look at the Nationwide documentary, Bush is taking the song seriously. Drilling her band so it sounds right. Kite is not just an album track on The Kick Inside. The cover sees Bush pinned to a kite with an eye behind her. That was a reference to Pinocchio. The scene occurs near the climax of the 1940 film. It takes place in Sequence 10: The Whale's Belly, right when Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket first go into the ocean to search for Geppetto. You can read more about it here. Kite almost an unofficial title track. The Kick Inside’s cover was shot by American photographer, Jay Myrdal. It is a striking cover, though Bush is very small in the mix!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs Kite live on The Tour of Life in 1979. The famous cordless headset microphone she wears was invented by Bush and her sound engineer, Gordon 'Gunji' Patterson

I think the cover that we see for the Japanese release of The Kick Inside, with Bush in a pink leotard, is the correct choice. It should have been on the U.K. cover, as it says so much more and is more representative of her debut album and who she was. I did write a feature about The Kick Inside’s cover shoot. Even so, you cannot knock a song like Kite. It is still in places and sort of suggests some piss-taking or parody. I love how loose Kate Bush is on the song. Letting her voice fly and zip here and there! You can feel the energy and movement of the song. Bush dropping in Beelzebub makes me think about emotions; a weight in her stomach and a deeper emotion. Though it also compels investigation and further reading. How Beelzebub featured in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), and G.I. Gurdjieff’s esoteric 1950 philosophical text, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. No doubt Bush would have read Lord of the Flies as a child. She was born four years after it was released, but it would have been in here orbit. She name-checked Gurdjieff in The Kick Inside’s Them Heavy People, so no coincidence that this connection takes us to Kite. Her brother John was a poet and introduced his sister to poetry and his writings. I feel he or Paddy (her other brother) would have had a copy of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. One of these texts stayed in her mind and she placed it in a song. In The Gospels, Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons by the power of "Beelzebub, the prince of demons" (Matthew 12:24). All intriguing to consider. This compelling figure that is essentially at the start of a silly line. Though this is the genius of Kate Bush: dropping in something heady and heavy with levity and whimsy. If critics saw these as carte blanche to attack and belittle, it was and is a strong and wonderful facet of her music. That imagination and use of language. Not always appealing and memorable, I think that Kite has many strengths. It has been a pleasure exploring Hounds of Love’s eponymous demons. Snarling and angry, perhaps less than actual canines, they are spirits that go through the trees. Though they are then embraced. This fear of love and commitment transforms into this bold embrace. A Bob Marley attempt for a song on her 1978 debut album, this historical (as opposed to religious, I guess) figure appears in the opening line. Such a joy to examine two…

TERRIFIC songs.

FEATURE: There’s Light in Love You See: Kate Bush and Her Impact on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community

FEATURE:

 

 

There’s Light in Love You See

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

 

Kate Bush and Her Impact on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community

__________

AS it is Pride Month…

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

I wanted to revisit a subject I have covered before. In terms of Kate Bush and her L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. When we think of major artists who have this enormous following within the community, our minds go to someone like Madonna. Maybe Kate Bush is not as vocal when it comes to backing and shouting out her L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. However, as an artist, her songs did not strictly stick to the heteronormative ideal. I think it was hard for artists to bring queerness into their music. Seen as controversial or inappropriate, thankfully things have progressed since then. Even today, there are artists who are perhaps hesitant about expressing their sexuality, in case it splits their fans or creates any sort of backlash. Things are easier today for L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists today - and yet things are not perfect. Think about Kate Bush and her music. I do love how she was not restricted or felt the need to be rigid regarding sexuality and what she discussed through her music. I am going to come to articles I have sourced before. Even some of her earliest demos featured queer/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ characters. The Gay Farewell is an example. Kashka from Baghdad. That song appeared on her second studio album, Lionheart (1978). Wow is also on that album and there is reference to homosexuality. The line “He’s too busy hitting the Vaseline”, where Kate Bush pats her bottom in the video, is pretty unequivocal! That is a song about showbusiness. It is a song that partly addresses the music industry, but its lyrics concern actors and luvvies. Last Pride Month, I ran a feature saluting Kate Bush as this ally. Someone who has always been very open regarding sexuality. A fluidity through her work, at times in music where many artists who were queer could not talk about it. Even though she is someone who very much speaks to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, there has been critique of her work. Whether, when writing about homosexuality, Bush checks her privilege and it is written about as a positive thing, and not a spectre.

I am saying that because Dreams of Orgonon spotlighted Kashka from Baghdad and wrote this: “This makes her treatment of Kashka’s gay life as a matter of secrecy distressing. The polite heterosexual audience needs its eyes shielded from the gay sex it’s teased with. Yes, remaining in the closet is a safety measure for many if not most gay people. But it takes a severe toll on one’s mental health. In “Kashka” the closet is a place where great, magical events happen (“at night they’re seen laughing”). The difficulties of closeted life don’t enter the equation. Bush reduces Kashka and his partner to an instrument of pleasure and titillation”. As I recently wrote about The Gay Farewell (also know as Queen Eddie), even Bush’s earliest songs had empathy and understanding. Where she was very open to bring in queerness. Coming to another Dreams of Orgonon article. It concerns the beautiful Queen Eddie (or The Gay Farewell as it is also know). When Bush wrote this song (around 1973), gay rights in the U.K. were being challenged. Even though it never made it to an album, a song like The Gay Farewell was very brave and bold for someone who was barely a teenager: “Bush’s music often displays a strong interest in the feminine side of men, and this is the earliest musical manifestation of her concern. Eddie is someone with no time for masculinity. Everything from the effeminate adjective of “pretty” to the fact he’s saying goodbye to “his boy” points to that (who’s his boy? Is he breaking up with a boyfriend, or is he transitioning?) Even the song’s varying titles, in all probability not penned by Bush, point to a queer reading of the song (“The Gay Farewell” is a pretty wretched pun even by my standards). There’s an element of fetishization here — Eddie is denied an identity outside of his gender and sexuality in a way that’s genuinely harmful. For all that the empathy on display is genuine, so is the singer’s privilege. Yet for this song’s flaws, it feels like something that needed to be written in 1973, even if it wasn’t heard outside 11 East Wickham. An LGBT rights movement was booming in the UK at the time — The Gay Liberation Front was new and alive, and the First British Gay Pride Rally had been held in London, not too far from the Bushes, a year previously. But these movements were responded to by things like the Nationwide Festival of Light, a puritanical attempt by notorious professional bigot Mary Whitehouse and others to suppress the existence of gay people, as well as any expression of sexuality that didn’t pertain entirely to procreation. The LGBT community needed some allies, and Kate was willing to step into the ring early on. Kate’s complex championing of the queer community has begun. Thus we get “Queen Eddie,” her first camp song”.

There is quite a lot to unpack and examine. Although her allyship and empathy is perhaps not completely without fault or some naivety, this was an artist writing these songs very young. In a British society where gay rights were often attacked, ignored and stigmatised. Although she had some L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists that she looked up to, such as Elton John, there was not a music scene promoting and spotlighting them in a way that is more familiar today. I guess David Bowie had this fluidity and androgyny that was also appealing to her. But think of music in the 1970s and how often queer love was being written about. Not as much as you’d like. That sense of stigma for artists did not end for decades. Some would say it is still a barrier. So we cannot mark Kate Bush down. I am going to end with a recent article in The Guardian, where a writer reveals how Kate Bush’s music was so powerful and resonant when it came to coming out as a trans woman. The trans community among the most pilloried and abused today. They are often vilified and marginalised, and yet it was music written many years ago by this incredible artist that broke through. I do want to get to writings where Bush is spoken about as an ally and idol. Kate Bush’s music has always been very open and free. In the way she talks about desire and sex. Which must have been liberating and inspiring for many who lived on the fringes. In 2018, forty years after her debut single, Wuthering Heights was released, Attitude wrote how “the queen of quirk left a lasting impact on the gay community“:

“Queer people identified with Kate Bush because of that otherness, because of her bravery and defiance, her fearless examination of previously ‘taboo’ themes, and her often high-camp performance style. As Rufus Wainwright told The Guardian in 2006: “She is the older sister that every gay man wants. She connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world. She is one of the only artists who makes it appear better to be on the outside than on the inside.”

The magnificent, lushly exotic ‘Kashka from Baghdad’ from 1978’s Lionheart, is one of the prime examples of Kate’s celebration of the joy of the outsider status. “Kashka from Baghdad,” she sings over sensual piano chords, “lives in sin, they say, with another man – but no one knows who.”

Kate fixes her gaze firmly on an outcast couple, the music alternately romantic, enigmatic, and menacing, as male backing vocals chant aggressively behind her as she shrieks “at night / they’re seen / laughing / loving” but, by the time the narrator observes that “they know the way to be happy,” the aggression has subsided into regal elegance.

It’s a powerful statement of approval, and Kate herself put it simply when she told Interview Magazine in 2011: “I just liked the idea of this couple. Nobody really knew much about them—and they’re obviously having a great time.”

Observational songs like ‘Kashka’ highlight Kate’s keen eye for detail and empathetic lyrical style; her warm, graceful acceptance – and endorsement – of homosexual desire marked her out as an LGBT advocate from the outset.

Her frank openness and recognition of a gamut of gender norms and of the reality of sexual fluidity became a recurrent theme in her work; ‘Wow’, a biting satire of the theatrical business, finds Kate singing “He’ll never make the scene / he’ll never make the Sweeney / be that movie queen / he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline.” If we were in any doubt as to her underlying meaning, her performance in the video removes all doubt as she taps her buttock on the payoff line.

Kate’s deep and thoughtful understanding of men in her songs is an underrated value in her arsenal; there are the men sent to war in ‘Army Dreamers’, or the kindly but increasingly distant father figure in ‘The Fog’, the misunderstood mathematician in “Pi,” and, most of all, the exquisite ‘This Woman’s Work’, where she sings about parenthood and birth from the male perspective. And no one could inhabit Peter Gabriel’s lyric as the voice of reason and comfort in ‘Don’t Give Up’ better than Kate Bush.

Perhaps most poignant of all, the father-son narrative of ‘Cloudbusting’ climaxes with the Shakespearean pun “your son’s coming out.” The rush of hearing Bush equate positivity, happiness, open-mindedness, and the promise of good things with the emergence – sexually or otherwise – into the world at large remains a profound thrill.

“Kate Bush is an LGBT icon for several reasons, not least because she built a successful career, without compromise, on her own terms, with thorough originality, ingenuity, and, crucially, trueness to herself. She did, and continues to do, things her own way, and is undaunted in her distinctiveness and navigation of the peculiarities of life.

Who else could make a song about intercourse with a snowman (‘Misty’) seem plausible? Who else would find both eroticism and melancholy in the humdrum as Kate does in ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’?

Anohni Hegarty told The Guardian in 2005 that her first glimpse of Kate, singing ‘Wuthering Heights’ now forty years ago, was a seminal experience.

“She was so magical: the world she inhabited was, especially poetically, a sort of fairyland. It was very sensuous and very pagan, and she sang so high – it was madcap,” she said.

And it is that sensuality, magic, and poeticism, that otherness and courageousness, that has carried Kate Bush, for forty years, through the choppy, murky waters of pop music and carved a firm place in our hearts.

She is, and always has been, herself, with no apologies. And for that, we salute you Kate Bush”.

At its roots and at heart, it is Kate Bush’s empathy, and approach to gender expression that means she is this icon. There was never a hesitation around avoiding queer relationships through fear of attack. Even though she is heterosexual, here is a writer who observes all humans and wants to include them. Always writing positively and with great investment and interest, that was instilled into her from a young age. You feel like, as a child, she would have been fascinated by people as a whole, regardless of sexuality and gender. More orthodox or mainstream artists are either hesitant about discussing queer love or, if they are queer themselves, feeling like they had to keep that hidden. I guess there is privilege and a lack of pressure from Kate Bush, but there is also that bravery and boldness. Something that continued. Even a song like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has been adopted by the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. A song about understanding and swapping places to better relate to someone else. Its use in Stranger Things so powerful for a number of reasons. DIVA used this as a starting point for their 2022 love letter to an eternal queer icon:

“Teenagers across the world are now discovering her magic for the first time, with the track experiencing a rapid increase in Spotify streams since it featured in cult Netflix series Stranger Things. With Season 4 premiering in May 2022, this season’s storyline features a much-darker hook as teenagers across Hawkins perish in eerily similar circumstances. The gang quickly decipher this as the work of demon of the upside-down, Vecna, finding that the only way for an infected victim to fight off this fate is to play their favourite song. This is where Kate Bush comes in.

After eternally beloved Max Mayfield finds that she has been cursed by Vecna, experiencing headaches, jarring nightmares and haunting visions, she dazes into a trance and rises six feet into the air one afternoon. Recognising this as Vecna’s murder method, the gang scramble for her Walkman. “What’s her favourite song?” they scream at Lucas, Max’s ex-boyfriend. With his hand landing upon the bluish hue of the Hounds of Love cassette, Running Up That Hill quickly comes blaring through Max’s ears. Caught in an eerily realistic, trance-like dream, Max escapes Vecna’s chokehold and sprints through the upside-down, dodging falling boulders and debris alike, moving towards the white, cloud-esque image of real like. Seeing herself floating above her best friends, she flashes back on all the happy memories she’s enjoyed with her friends and family alike. Tumbling through the vision back into real life, Kate Bush quite literally saved Max’s life. What a beautiful metaphor that is.

Kate Bush is the ultimate queer icon. Her music has always been a home for misfits, though Running Up That Hill is arguably her most mainstream, tame track. Wearing an armour-like costume for the Babooshka music video and red dress for Wuthering Heights, she has relied on costume and dance alike to express herself. With a multi-dimensional approach to creativity, her music isn’t just a collection of notes: it’s an experience. Drawing heavily on techniques employed by visionary mime artist Lindsay Kemp – who personally taught her – Kate Bush has always used her body and her dance routines to express emotion, and to tell a story. The video for Running Up That Hill is deeply symbolic of that fact, pairing with dancer Michael Hervieu to create an intricate, storyboard-like performance that was vastly aheadof its time, playing on Bush’s background in ballet.

Creative aesthetic aside, Kate Bush famously sang about anal sex in 1979 track Wow, which featured on her second album Lionheart. Singing about an actor who will never be a “movie queen” because he’s “too busy hitting the Vaseline”, in the video, she winked and patted her bum to ensure that her message of allyship was truly disseminated. What an icon. And, of course, the music video was censored by the BBC, which is always a good sign of a forward-thinking bit of art. Think Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

All in all, Kate Bush’s music has been a critical source of comfort and, by extension, an expression of identity for LGBTQI people for decades now. Ginny Lemon lovingly referenced her by dragging up as the Wuthering Heights-esque young Kate on Drag Race UK for the gay icon category. And that very sentiment is true: Kate Bush is the ultimate queer icon, and forever will we applaud her for her deeply unique, kooky ways of being. Music wouldn’t be the same without her”.

I am surprised there have not been newer articles written about her music and how it connects to L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people. Last October, Alexandra Diamond-Rivlin wrote a very personal and moving article for The Guardian, where she talked about Kate Bush’s music, and how it helped her come out as a trans woman. I want to include the whole thing, as I feel it would be a disserve to cut bits out, lest the impact and full picture by distorted, dampened or diminished. Before getting there, I would urge people to support and check out the Trans Journalists Association, and support L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ charities and organisations like the LGBT Foundation. Mind Out. Stonewall is another incredible resource. Mermaids supports trans, non-binary and gender-diverse children, young people and their families. You can find more here:

“It wasn’t safe for me to discover The Sensual World, the eponymous track on what Kate Bush described as her “most female album”. The song was intended to be a rejection of the masculine influence that had unwittingly shaped the artist’s previous work, and an ode to something taboo within the female experience. Based on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses – a stream of consciousness in which the character reflects on her experiences of nature, sex and love – Bush wanted to celebrate the experience of life inside a woman’s body, and the ways it gives her spiritual and sexual pleasure. I knew that, for someone like me, who was already being bullied, to openly love a song like this could make me an even more obvious target to those who saw femininity as a sign of weakness. More daunting than that, it might force me to confront my own repressed desires.

By the time I was around 17, I had already spent most of my teenage years in a constant state of survival. I wasn’t yet out as a transgender woman; this was a part of me I could keep secret, unlike my effeminacy. I had a naturally high voice, which I tried and failed to deepen. “You sound like a girl,” was one of the daily taunts aimed at me by pupils at my school, even as I strained my vocal cords. My camp mannerisms and the way I walked were other noticeable crimes to the boys around me, who enjoyed mocking my “sassy” stride. Growing up in an environment such as this meant I never saw my femininity as something to embrace. That I was soft and girlish was a sign of a defective self. Still, it felt safer to be a feminine boy than a boy who wanted to become a woman.

Her ode to womanhood invoked all the things I knew I could be: euphoric, audacious and free.

The school I attended in Plymouth was single sex, but high-achieving girls were allowed to enter its gates at sixth form, something I was grateful for. Some of the new students lived near me, by the forests surrounding the city. One morning, while we ambled along the grassland, one of the girls shared her headphones with me and played her favourite music. That’s when the discovery was made.

For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bush’s ethereal voice. On my solitary walk home, I listened to her song again under the shelter of leaves and the furry limbs of trees. I listened carefully, but most of her words appeared formless – lines sung breathlessly behind an orchestra of uilleann pipes and other traditional Irish instruments I remembered learning about in class. In certain moments, her words’ sharpness broke in again like splices of light along my trail: “to where the water and the earth caress … now I’ve powers of a woman’s body.” Moments such as these were laced throughout, often referencing nature, and culminating in postcoital bliss: “Mmh yes.” I pictured Bush dancing among trees in a state of synaesthetic ecstasy, her body lit by a neon green glow. My body swayed instinctively to the rhythm. It didn’t bother me that I must have looked like a girl doing it. I followed the flickers of emerald to the forest’s end.

Something shifted in me that day. Bush’s ode to womanhood felt like an invocation of all the things I knew I could be: euphoric, audacious and free. I started to view my femininity not as a flaw, but as an affirmation of life; a way of indulging in the intense pleasure of the world, nature and my body.

It still wasn’t safe to be my natural self in my final year of school. My transition came a couple of years later, when I moved away for university. But, from this point onwards, I knew there was a place in my mind to escape to whenever I wanted – the lush, fevered universe Bush had created – where I danced in recognition of my own sacred womanhood. And waiting patiently for that reverie to become my everyday reality, I was able to refuse the voices that told me it never would”.

From gay clubs and spaces playing the music of Kate Bush and providing this safe and loving space, through to major artists discussing Kate Bush, to those who have been given this new life and strength thanks to Kate Bush. I have probably not done full justice to her music and how she has affected, infused and enriched conversation around L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people! Though I felt compelled to write about Kate Bush…

THIS Pride month.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: 2026 D.J. Queens

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Belgian D.J. and producer Amelie Lens releases her debut album, AURA, on 4th September/PHOTO CREDIT: Amelie Lens

 

2026 D.J. Queens

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QUITE recently…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olive F/PHOTO CREDIT: Olive F

I have saluted some amazing D.J.s. All phenomenal women. These queens of the decks. Including Carly Wilford and Olive F, these incredible talents also put out their own music. I wanted to bring together music from D.J. queens of 2026 (not all the tracks will be from this year. Some are from last year; the odd track with a male collaborator). In terms of gender equality across Electronic music, there is still a way to go. Female D.J.s still under-represented. The playing field not being level yet. DJ Mag highlighted a recent report that shows there is a lot of work to be done. The industry needs to do more to ensure that there is faster and bigger steps towards equality. Something that applies right across the industry:

“Findings from a new report unveiled at the International Music Summit (IMS) suggest that female DJs account for only 15% of AlphaTheta users.

The statistics, published in the annual IMS Electronic Music Business Report, which assesses the current state of the global electronic music industry, indicate that this is an increase of 2% from 2023's 13% and 1% from 2024's 14%.

The IMS report — which did not account for non-binary or gender non-conforming DJs in its statistics – has been authored by MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan and draws on AlphaTheta’s account data to highlight the gender disparity.

Alongside the stats, Mulligan wrote: "Female DJs are accounting for an increasingly large share of headliner slots but there is still a long way to go for the wider base of DJs. AlphaTheta's registered userbase shows that females are growing their share every year, but the pace of change is still slow. Female DJs now have more role models than ever, but the industry needs to do more to unwind decades of ingrained behaviours and biases to ensure there is a truly level playing field."

Elsewhere in the 12th edition of the annual report, it was revealed that the global electronic music industry grew overall by 7% in 2025, going up from $14.2 billion in 2024 to its current value of $15.1 billion. Download a free copy of the annual IMS Electronic Music Business Report here.

AlphaTheta, the parent company of Pioneer DJ, launched its Equal Beats podcast in 2025, which aims to celebrate "the women and non-binary people driving electronic music forward". Podcast guests so far have included Sama’ Abdulhadi, Lady Shaka and more. It's part of the company's wider Equal Beats mission to "champion diversity and create a more inclusive electronic music community".

The long-standing issue of gender diversity across club and festival line-ups in the UK continues to inspire action, with UK collective NOT BAD FOR A GIRL (NBFG) publishing an open letter earlier this year. The collective's research looked at the line-ups for two major UK festivals due to take place in 2026, and found that the bookings for one festival were made up of 80% male acts.

“If you’d asked us early on to predict when there’d finally be 50/50 representation, we would have said hopefully by 2030. Here we are, and we’re further from that goal than ever,” the group wrote in the letter. “Female artists prove their worth time and time again — engaging huge fanbases, dominating awards shows and contributing to billion-pound live revenues in the UK — yet line-up diversity is getting worse.”

“Diversity is not a trend or a bonus,” the letter continued, “it is fundamental to creativity, community and fairness.”

Meanwhile, the Missing Voices of Women “mini-report”, published around the time of the 2026 GRAMMYs in February, revealed that female recipients took home less than a quarter of awards at the this year's ceremony. Significantly, between 2017 and 2026, women accounted for approximately one in five GRAMMY nominations and wins”.

I am going to end with a mixtape of incredible tracks from some of the best female D.J.s. I have said before how there should be a massive festival exclusively featuring women. Awe-inspiring D.J.s across the world combining for this wonderful festival that spans multiple genres. Whilst many play tracks from other artists, there are those D.J.s that write and produce their own music. I have included songs from some of the best D.J.s in the world. It is angering that there is still massive gender inequality and sexism. Reiterating the urgency that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Carly Wilford/PHOTO CREDIT: Carly Wilford

MORE needs to be done.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Phoebe Bridgers

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Davis Bates/The Guardian

 

Phoebe Bridgers

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THIS is an artist…

who I have been a fan of for years now. Her debut album, Stranger in the Alps, arrived in 2017. Punisher came out in 2020. Two remarkable solo albums. Phoebe Bridgers has also worked with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker in boygenius (they are on hiatus rather than split up), and they released the boygenius E.P. in 2018 and 2023’s album, the record. They also released the 2023 E.P., the rest. Bridgers joined Conor Oberst as Better Oblivion Community Center for their eponymous debut album in 2019. At the moment, Bridgers is preparing for a new tour. She has insisted people do not use their phones. This is something more and more artists are asking of their fans. Madonna doing the same. The California-born artist is one of the world’s greatest songwriters. I will come to a review of her sold-out benefit concert at Madison Square Garden earlier this month. NME provided their take:

“Phoebe Bridgers performed a communal and surprisingly intimate no-device gig at New York’s Madison Square Garden as part of her ‘Spring Pop-Up Tour’ – using the gig to call out ICE and raise funding for immigrants.

The show came after the singer-songwriter played her first live solo live show in three years last month in Roswell, New Mexico, where she debuted three new songs and strongly suggested that a new album is on its way.

Announced on Monday (June 1), tickets to the NYC arena show were made available via Tidal and randomly allocated to fans who registered to attend, with options to pay $1, $5, $10, or $20 and all proceeds from ticket sales going towards Community Justice Exchange’s Immigration Bond Freedom Fund, which provides aid and bail to those in ICE detention centres.

Before the event on Thursday night (June 5), those planning to attend were made aware of the strict no electronics, cameras, phones, Google Glass, Apple Watches policy – and journalists were told not to bring pens, pencils, or paper because lyrics had leaked online during previous shows. Upon arrival, guests were given Yondr pouches for their cellphones and devices, and black paper tickets to find their seat numbers.

A small platform, staged to look like a ‘70s basement and decorated with a small couch draped in a vintage blanket, lava lamps, blacklight posters, and a small boxy television playing video clips in between scenes of static, was set up in the large venue, with Bridgers joined by keyboardist Nick White and longtime collaborator Christian Lee Hutson on guitar for the acoustic set.

Bridgers walked onto the stage by shouting a cheerful “surprise” before performing a stripped-back and meditative rendition of her hit ‘Motion Sickness’, with the sold-out venue completely silent outside of Bridgers’ voice. She acknowledged the rarity of the evening, saying, “It’s weird not having a phone, isn’t it?” adding that she herself hadn’t been to a no-phone show.

She also told the crowd, “I appreciate you allowing this to be an internet-free zone,” before jesting, “If any of you stuck an Apple Watch up your ass to record this, please don’t post it on the internet,” opening her arms and then sharing with a grin, “I trust you.”

The trio then performed fan favourites, ‘Waiting Room’, ‘Kyoto,’ and ‘Moon Song’, before rolling into seven new tracks — many of which continued the singular sound Bridgers built on her acclaimed second album, 2020’s ‘Punisher’ — melancholy lyrics made up of astute observations of the state of the world and relationships, backed by slow strumming guitars and orchestration that oscillates from Americana to indie folk.

However, some of the songwriting harkened back to the unabashed candidness of her debut album, 2017’s ‘Stranger in the Alps’. A new nunber she announced with “This song is about the past, though I’m told all of my songs are,” came with a crushing, crescendoing chorus that saw her and Hutson strumming emphatically as she alluded to an ill-fated engagement. Elsewhere, she enlisted keys, shaping a sparkling melody around Peter Pan metaphors that seem to shine a light on men with arrested development.

There was also a twangy, upbeat, rootsy track she presented with the words “Here’s a country song,” that came complete with a pre-chorus “woo”. Before a final new song, she performed ‘Scott Street’ and ‘Graceland Too’, with fans taking part in the classic rock practice of holding up lighters during the latter, which she called “unbelievable.”

Throughout the set, Bridgers took the opportunity to thank fans for raising funds to support the release of immigrants from ICE detainment, sharing “I hate those fucking ICE idiots,” and calling them “cops squared”. At one point, she also asked the crowd how many of their parents were conservative, before thanking them for being  brave and “defecting.”

Towards the close, she gave streaming platform Tidal a shoutout for hosting the event and “paying artists more than any other platform. She also shared “we’re going on tour” pointing to her announcement of ‘The Lost Tour’. Bridgers’ first solo tour in three years kicks off in September, with dates spanning North America, Europe and the UK. Support acts will be Alex G in North America and Isaac Wood in the UK/EU. According to Bridgers’ Instagram, the upcoming dates will also be device-free. She captioned the tour announcement, “I’m going on tour no phones”.

Phoebe Bridgers is embarking on The Lost Tour later this year. You can see the dates on her website. Starting in September, she comes to Ireland and the U.K. Included in the run is a date at The O2 on 1st December. That will be a huge gig. One of the absolute finest voices and songwriters we have ever seen in my opinion. As a solo artist and as part of boygenius and  Oblivion Community Center, we have been gifted with so much beautiful music this part decade or so. There is something wonderful you get with Phoebe Bridgers that you do not get with other artists. Her morals, humour, intelligence and down to earth quality. It explains why she has such a devoted fanbase. This L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artist and idol is in my thoughts as it is Pride Month. Below are twenty songs from Phoebe Bridgers. Most are solo, though a few are from her collaborative projects. Proof that she is a rarefied talent…

WE are so lucky to have.

FEATURE: Turn Off Your Mind, Relax and Float Down Stream… The Beatles’ Revolver at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

Turn Off Your Mind, Relax and Float Down Stream…

 

The Beatles’ Revolver at Sixty

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THERE is always that debate…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in Abbey Road Studios during filming of the Paperback Writer and Rain promotional films/PHOTO CREDIT: Apple Corps

as to which album by The Beatles is the best. People switching between Abbey Road (1969), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and Revolver (1966). The latter was released on 5th August, 1966. I am casting ahead to its sixtieth anniversary. It was certainly an important album from The Beatles. By 1966, they were touring less (this fascinating article from June of this year explores their final gigs in 1966) and pushing the limits of the studio. On 30th May, over two months before releasing Revolver, The Beatles released Paperback Writer. It contained one of the all-time best B-sides, Rain. I think Revolver was their biggest leap in terms of sonics and songwriting. If you consider tracks like Tomorrow Never Knows, this was biggest and bolder than anything they had recorded before. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band found them expand their horizons and redefine Pop music once more. Though Revolver is one of their most consistent albums. Everything on it is amazing. Opening with the brilliant Taxman, there are so many Beatles classics on Revolver. Eleanor Rigby, Here, There and Everywhere, And Your Bird Can Sing, and I’m Only Sleeping. I wonder whether Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will share memories of Revolver as it turns sixty. Revolver was accompanied by the double A-side of Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine. Reaching number one in the U.K. and U.S., The Beatles’ seventh studio album has regularly been voted one of the greatest albums ever released. I am going to bring in some features about Revolver. There are a lot of features around Revolver, so I am selecting carefully in terms of what to include. Cambridge Audio marked fifty years of Revolver in 2016. Before discussing it, they laid out some facts. Three-hundred hours of studio time were devoted to this album. It was recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio 3. Spending seven weeks at the top of the U.K. album charts, early title options for Revolver were Abracadabra, After Geography, Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle and Beatles on Safari:

“Following the release of the rushed yet still fantastic Rubber Soul the year before, The Beatles were due to make their third film but shelved it as they couldn’t agree on a script. The three months down time however wasn’t wasted as it allowed the band to develop their song writing ability and try out some very different ideas for their next studio album Revolver. The term ‘studio album’ in particular holds weight, as the band were looking to put the touring part of their career on hold, giving them the chance to try out ideas where they didn’t need to worry too much about recreating the tracks in a live setting. John Lennon himself noted: “One thing’s for sure, the next LP is going to be very different…Paul and I are very keen on this electronic music.”

And he was right. Revolver was the start of a turning point of sorts for the Fab Four. Many music enthusiasts have noted that their seventh studio album is a sort of marker, separating two sides to The Beatles. The earlier half consisting of pure pop classics that kicked off Beatlemania worldwide and the second demonstrating the evolution and maturity of their song writing craft, where their psychedelic experimentation lies. It’s Revolver and onwards that has helped us perceive what we see as the 60s to this day.

Changing a Winning Formula

What’s noticeable is that the regular guitar, bass and drums Beatles line up known the world over was being invaded by a range of new instruments and influences. In fact, Eleanor Rigby was the first track none of The Beatles actually played instruments on. It used four violins, two violas, and two cellos composed by the late George Martin. It was also the lyrical content that took a huge departure from conventional upbeat love songs, as the track told the story of a lonely woman and her eventual death. Something the screaming fans weren’t used to! Love You To and Tomorrow Never Knows take an even further stride from the norm with their clear psychedelic and multi-cultural influences. In particular the closing track Tomorrow Never Knows was John Lennon’s way of transferring a three minute LSD trip into song form. Although drug experimentation had started to become a catalyst for inspiration (Doctor Robert was about a New York physician that helped rock stars obtain ‘exotic’ drugs…), the band agreed that the recording studio wasn’t the place to be under the influence.

Backmasking Pioneers

A particular encounter with marijuana led to a recording technique called Backmasking being included on the album. Backmasking is when sound or a message is recorded backwards onto a track that is intended to be played forward. Lennon under the influence accidentally played the tapes to the earlier released single Rain backwards and liked what he heard. You can hear the technique used in particular in the guitar solo of Tomorrow Never Knows. This wouldn’t be the last time backmasking would be linked to The Beatles, as during the time of the 1968s White Album there were rumours that Paul McCartney had died, with evidence hidden using backmasking in tracks on the album. The technique has gone on to be quite controversial over the years fueling plenty of musical urban myths, especially in the realm of rock music.

Even More Sonic Experiments

It wasn’t just John, but the entire band that began to take home tapes and recorders to experiment with. Playing tracks backwards, sped up, slowed down, loops and the invention of ADT (Artificial Double Tracking). This was where The Beatles really began to exploit the ever evolving recording technology. Going back to Tomorrow Never Knows, Lennon wanted a vocal effect that gave the ‘sound of a guru on a mountaintop’. George Martin ran the vocal track through a rotating speaker called a Leslie Spinning Speaker. As it span, it produced a strange sound similar to the Doppler effect (the effect on frequency and wavelength in motion, think of a passing ambulance as an example) Combine this with the ADT, tape loops and reversed instruments and a truly unique song was born. Many of these techniques can be heard across the entire album if you listen closely enough.

For its wild creativity, daring studio experimentation and use of eclectic influences, Revolver wasn’t only a career defining moment for The Beatles, but an album that helped change the industry both musically and in recording technology for good”.

Of course, there was a lot of retrospection around Revolver in 2016. There will not be as much written for its sixtieth anniversary. There is always going to be that debate whether Revolver is their peak. The BBC published an article in 2016 where Greg Kot explained why Revolver is the crowning achievement from The Beatles. It is an album that still blows the mind. It doesn’t matter how many times you have heard it. The sheer eclectic nature. The fact that Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby sit alongside Tomorrow Never Knows. And yet it all slots together perfectly. The genius of The Beatles:

“All The Beatles’ previous albums had been rush jobs – their debut was recorded in four hours. But in 1966, the quartet pulled off the road for good to devote themselves to songwriting and record-making. Lennon and McCartney were still closely collaborating and pushing each other to new levels of innovation, and Harrison was emerging as a formidable third songwriter and voice in the band. Now, with the luxury of time to tinker, edit, re-edit and experiment, The Beatles were poised to record a masterpiece.

Tomorrow Never Knows set a high standard for an album that moves from one peak to the next: Harrison’s corrosive guitar lick and McCartney’s commanding counterpoint bassline in Taxman made for one of The Beatles’ toughest-sounding tracks, the brisk strings on Eleanor Rigby presaged the chamber-pop feel and emotional tenor of She’s Leaving Home on Sgt Pepper, and Harrison’s plunge into Eastern mysticism and modalities on Love You To set the stage for the similarly inclined Within You Without You on the later album.

The melancholy beauty of Here, There and Everywhere answered the challenge of Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys masterpiece Pet Sounds, Doctor Robert and And Your Bird Can Sing achieved jingle-jangle guitar-pop perfection, and the horn-fueled Got to Get You Into My Life channeled Motown and Stax soul. Even a relatively lightweight track such as Yellow Submarine presaged the sometimes fanciful, almost child-like wonder of Sgt Pepper tracks such as Lovely Rita.

Sgt Pepper proved to be a prettier package, with its elaborate Peter Blake cover art of the satin-suited, newly bearded Beatles among images of cultural icons ranging from Karl Marx to Mae West. The Beatles spent 700 hours in the studio crafting it, but despite its unassailable high points – the staggering A Day in the Life, the acid-rock fantasia Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – it’s also riddled with the cute and lightweight (When I’m 64, Lovely Rita) and the drab (Within You Without You).

Revolver was preceded by Rubber Soul, recorded in 1965, in which the band had achieved a new level of sophistication in its songwriting. The evocative wordplay in Norwegian Wood and In My Life aspired to the pop poetry of Dylan and Smokey Robinson. Song for song, it matches up well with Revolver, but it’s not nearly as sonically ambitious.

By the time of the 1968 White album, The Beatles were splintering and essentially turned the sessions into a series of solo recordings with the rest of the band members acting as session musicians.  It contains some brilliant music – including Lennon’s caustic Happiness is a Warm Gun and McCartney’s civil-rights hymn Blackbird – and at least a side’s worth of filler (sonic collage Revolution 9; juvenile Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?; blues parody Yer Blues; and the music hall pastiche of Honey Pie).

Abbey Road marks The Beatles’ final recording session, and it planted the seeds for progressive rock by stitching together 11 half-finished songs into a sublimely sequenced suite. Its closing line – “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make" – is a career capstone worthy of The Beatles’ legacy. The first side of the album contains Harrison’s finest Beatles moment, Something, and Lennon’s metal precursor She’s So Heavy. It’s the album in The Beatles discography that comes closest to the majesty of Revolver.

Revolver wasn't always so highly regarded. A few months after it was released, The Beatles began recording Sgt Pepper, an event that was chronicled with great fanfare as the band sequestered themselves in Abbey Road studios. Its magnificence seemed a fait accompli. In contrast, the release of Revolver was overshadowed by Lennon’s infamous and widely misinterpreted ‘more popular than Jesus’ comments. But time has affirmed the enduring worth of Revolver. It now stands as The Beatles’ greatest album”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews for Revolver. In 2022, when discussing the Super Deluxe edition of Revolver (which was hugely adored), Giles Martin discussed the wonders of Revolver. In this article, the son of The Beatles’ producer George Martin gave some insight into an album of insights and discoveries. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary inspired albums there has ever been. It is clear that more time in the studio was the right call. If the band continued to tour endlessly, would we ever have Revolver? It is interesting to consider:

“Martin started listening to the sonic potential to bring the original Revolver to a new audience, with the addition of extensive previously unreleased material. That augments a listening experience as arresting in 2022 as it was 56 years ago. “I found the outtakes really entertaining, especially as I’d been working on Get Back,” he notes. “The analogy is, I’m listening to a band unwrapping their presents, as opposed to a band that have all their presents around the floor, and they’re just basically ignoring them.

“Revolver is an album of inspiration and discovery, [whereas] Let It Be was a period of time where they were being retrospective and wanted to back to how they were before they had all these gifts they got given.”

Even committed Beatles devotees have been surprised at the depth of unissued recordings served up in the new editions, which run to 28 early takes from the sessions and three home demos. But Martin says he only ever finds out what is available to each project from the expert archivists on the reissue team. “I didn’t know anything honestly, not until I start[ed] doing it,” he confides.

“People ask me about outtakes on Rubber Soul. I don’t really know until we start looking into it. I’m not the curator of The Beatles. I’m the person that, I suppose, makes decisions and does these things. But there’s really clever people that know everything, and I have to tap into them, Mike Heatley and Kevin Howlett, and there’s Matthew Cocker at Abbey Road, who’s the archivist. They’re brilliant.

“A package like this has to work on many different levels,” he goes on. “You have the fans that obviously want everything. There’s the people that love Revolver, they want a deeper dig, and then there’s people who’ve never heard Revolver before, like my kids, for instance, that will listen to on a streaming service. It’s multi-layered.

“As far as outtakes go, and that world, it’s a bit like going to a gallery and looking at paintings and discovering the pencil drawings and sketches they did in the early versions of the works they did, before the masterpiece comes. That sounds pretentious, but that’s the ethos of it. So I try and tell a story with the outtakes that shows the roots behind the album, and more so, the humanity behind the record.

“People look for the secret of The Beatles, how did they do this? Was it my Dad? Was there a magic button that was pressed at Abbey Road? It was the combination of humans together, and that’s what you begin to hear. You can’t replicate it, because it’s like replicating a relationship. It’s different between the different people involved. Everything is unique, and the relationship of the four of them, and the relationship they had with my Dad, was completely unique.”

Often, the fascination in the new extras comes in the ingredients yet to be added: the early takes of “Got To Get You Into My Life” before the augmentation of the magnificent horns that transformed the track, for instance, and, in one version, with guitars where those horns would be. There’s George Harrison’s “Love You To” pre-sitar, and the elegantly forlorn “For No One” without French horn.

“It shows you how they made the right decisions,” agrees Martin. “You hear these developments of songs, and you go, ‘OK, I can see where you’re going with this.’ We kind of know that there’s going to be horns ending up on it, but it’s interesting hearing the pathway to that decision.”

As always, Martin was acutely aware of the younger audiences who will consume the new Revolver from a very contemporary perspective. “For me, it’s like time travel. The band are 25, and they will always be 25 on this. It shouldn’t be an album from 1966, because kids don’t listen to music like that any more. We did, because we were sifting through records in our parents’ or our friends’ record collection or our own record collection, which had time and date and images attached. Kids don’t. They just listen to songs now.

“Like my kids will say, ‘Listen to this, it’s great. This should be used for a TV theme.’ And it’s ‘The Chain’ by Fleetwood Mac. [I’ll say] ‘Well, it was used for the Grand Prix.’ ‘Oh, right, OK, that’s a good idea.’ It’s that sort of conversation. I remember I was with one of my 15-year-old’s friends in the car and I said ‘What are your favorite bands?’ and she goes ‘Fleetwood Mac and Bob Marley and the Wailers.’ Fair enough. If I asked her when did they happen, she would have no idea. It would be like a ridiculous question. It’s just a song. So to turn Revolver into ‘Songs that I like for kids,’ great.”

Working versions of later household sounds from Revolver reveal new layers, as on an initial take of “Tomorrow Never Knows” which comes across like prototype grunge, decades ahead of its time; or the version of “Rain” with John Lennon’s vocal at the correct speed – not slowed down as it was on the B-side of “Paperback Writer” – that has shades of the Byrds. “Yeah, obviously, the Byrds had suddenly become an influence like lots of other things,” says Giles. “George was really into other guitar players, as you know, as all of them were.”

An often under-discussed element of The Beatles’ genius, which is very much to the fore on Revolver, was their harmonies. “When they could do, they were singing together. On “Taxman,” for instance, that is George lead vocal, and Paul and John singing at the same time as George. One take.”

Of his own favorite moments and discoveries from the album, Martin particularly enjoys “some of the quieter songs, like ‘For No One’ and ‘Here, There And Everywhere.’ I didn’t realise Ringo was playing drums on ‘For No One,’ but you can suddenly hear a kick and snare drum, to tie it down, if you like. It’s mainly being able to move the drums into the center, that made a big difference to the whole mix. What’s enjoyable is the ability to do things that they couldn’t do, and hopefully doing things that they would have done if they’d had the technology.”

Martin also eulogizes about the extraordinary track that closed the album while opening doors of musical experimentation previously unknown. “‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was the first track recorded for Revolver,” he says. “They’d all been on holiday, they’d also discovered pot, they came back in and John had this song which was just a single chord of C. He played it to my Dad and was like, ‘I want to sound like I’m singing from a Himalayan mountaintop.’ This is someone from Liverpool.

“To the band and my Dad’s credit, they were like, ‘OK.’ And the early versions you hear on the outtakes are very loopy, trancy. The whole idea was very progressive. There’s very few songs on albums like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ still. Someone said to me ‘It must be fun to mix, there’s so much going on.’ There isn’t. There’s bass and drums, there’s a bit of tambora which is an Indian drone instrument, and there’s tape loops. But it creates this world, and they did create this spiritual mantra from a mountaintop. At Abbey Road.”

Among the greatest revelations in the package, especially as few fans even knew of their existence, are the “songwriting work tapes” of “Yellow Submarine,” in which the sing-song jollity of Ringo’s familiar lead is replaced by John’s maudlin, acoustic introspection.

“I always thought it was a Paul song,” says Martin, “and we found this demo. I think Sean Lennon sent us this demo of John singing it at home. It’s ‘In the town where I was born, no one cared, no one cared…’ John’s version is like a Woody Guthrie version of the song. It’s that classic Lennon and McCartney thing where they they come from two different worlds, and those two worlds are colliding to almost to produce the perfect planet”.

In 2009, Pitchfork reviewed Revolver. As they spent more time in the studio and experimented, we did get this 1966 album where The Beatles’ “individual voices and confidence continued to grow, resulting in the sonic landmark Revolver”. I wonder how people will look back on the album for new features. Sixty years later, and have we seen anything like it at all? It is a monumental statement from the greatest band of all time:

“Like any band, the Beatles' recording career was often altered, even pushed forward, as much by external factors as their own creative impulses. The group's competitive drive had them, at times, working to match or best Bob Dylan or Brian Wilson; their drug use greatly colored the musical outlook of John Lennon and George Harrison in particular; and the death of former manager Brian Epstein ushered in a period of distracting and poor business choices and opened the door for individuals such as the celebrity guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Yoko Ono, and businessman Allen Klein to penetrate, alter, and, some would say, disintegrate their inner circle.

The most important of these external shifts in the Beatles narrative, however, was a series of changes that allowed them to morph into a studio band. The chain of events that ushered in the band's changing approach to studio music began before Rubber Soul, but the results didn't come into full fruition until Revolver, a 35-minute LP that took 300 hours of studio time to create-- roughly three times the amount allotted to Rubber Soul, and an astronomical amount for a record in 1966.

Bottom of Form

Longtime Beatles producer George Martin, justifiably upset that EMI refused to give him a raise on the back of his extraordinarily profitable work with the Beatles, quit his post with the label in August 1965. Martin used his clout to create his own company, and the group and producer used theirs to effectively camp out at Abbey Road Studios for whatever length of time suited them rather than being forced to comply to the rigid and economically sound schedules demanded by labels at the time. The Beatles could now work both in and out of the studio, taking full advantage of new advancements in sound recording that allowed them to reflect upon and tinker with their work, explore new instruments and studio trickery, and refine their music by solving problems when they arose.

This new approach not only greatly altered their work environment, but drove the Beatles to value the flexibility of emerging technology. They also cashed in some of their commercial capital to abandon the mentally and physically sapping practice of touring-- and the glad-handing and public relations requirements that went with it. Exceptionalism became the watchword for the band, and it responded by using its freedom to push forward its art and, by extension, the whole of pop music. Musically, then, the Beatles began to craft dense, experimental works; lyrically, they matched that ambition, maturing pop from the stuff of teen dreams to a more serious pursuit that actively reflected and shaped the times in which its creators lived.

Revolver was also the first record in which the impression of the Beatles as a holistic gang was disrupted. The group had taken three months off prior to Revolver-- easily its longest break since the start of its recording career-- and each band member went his own separate way after years of moving around the world as a unit. Even without the break, it's possible that the group would continue to explore individual concerns: After starting to do just that on Rubber Soul, it was only natural that the Beatles wished to continue to highlight their individual strengths on its follow-up, and they did by listing each song's lead singer on the record sleeve.

The first, surprisingly, was George Harrison, who kicks off the record with another stab at politics on "Taxman", and then later offers philosophical musings on "I Want to Tell You" and the Indian-flavored "Love You To". Over the next year or two, Harrison's guitar played a more background role in the group's recordings-- fortuitously, then, that time also corresponded with the years in which the Beatles were pleased to bunker down in the studio and most explore the dynamic tension between their individual interests and their final stretch of camaraderie and mutual respect.

Lennon's primary interest throughout much of this time was himself, something that continued throughout his career-- he was always suspicious, even dismissive, of Paul McCartney's character songs, but once he and Yoko Ono joined forces, her Fluxus-rooted belief in art-as-subjectivity became orthodoxy in his mind. Lennon's early explorations of self and mind that began on Rubber Soul continued on Revolver, as the suburbanite spent much of his time at home indulging his zest for the exploratory powers of LSD. He contributes five songs to Revolver, and, indeed, each is concerned with drugs, the creative mind, a suspicion of the outside world, or all three.

Each is also uniformly wonderful, and together they provide a tapestry of Lennon's burgeoning art-pop, which, along with Martin's inventive arrangements and playful effects, would peak the next year with the triumphs of "I Am the Walrus", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "A Day in the Life". The gauzy "I'm Only Sleeping" and rollicking 1-2 of "She Said She Said" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" aren't nearly as demonstrative as the songs he'd write in their wake-- as a result each remains oddly underrated-- but they function as some of Lennon's most purely satisfying pop songs.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is another thing entirely. While "Doctor Robert" or "She Said She Said" touched on drug culture playfully or privately, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was a full-on attempt to recreate the immersive experience of LSD-- complete with lyrics borrowed from Timothy Leary's *Tibetan Book of the Dead-*inspired writings. Remarkably, though, much of it due to Martin's experimental production, tape loops, and musique concrète-inspired backdrop, the song is lively and giddy instead of self-serious or preachy. Even Martin's primitive psychedelia could have been thudding and ponderous, and yet more than four decades later the entire thing seems less a clear product of its time than not only most art or experimental rock, but most Beatles records as well.

Despite that triumph, however, Revolver was McCartney's maturation record as much as Rubber Soul was for Lennon. While Harrison was learning at the feet of sitar master Ravi Shankar and Lennon was navigating heavy use of psychotropic drugs, McCartney was refining his compositional chops by exploring classical music, training an eye for detail and subtlety in his lyrics, and embracing the orchestral work of Brian Wilson.

McCartney's optimism and populism resulted in the most demonstrative songs he created for Revolver-- the brassy "Good Day Sunshine" (which delightfully toes the line between schmaltz and heartwarming) and "Got to Get You Into My Life", and the children's music staple "Yellow Submarine", an inventive and charming track too often derided as camp. (It's also an early indication that it would be McCartney who would hold tightest to the impression of the group as a unit-- the image of the band all living together here was, for the first time in years, untrue.)

The understated qualities of McCartney's lyrics began to be misconstrued as simplistic in his ballads, but he provides three of his best here: "For No One", all the more affecting because it's slight and difficult to grasp, "Here, There and Everywhere", a model of sepia-toned sentimentality, and "Eleanor Rigby", which in its own way was as groundbreaking and revolutionary as "Tomorrow Never Knows". Virtually a short story set to music, "Rigby" and its interwoven descriptions of lonely people was and is a desolate and altogether mature setting for a pop song.

Revolver in the end is the sound of a band growing into supreme confidence. The Beatles had been transformed into a group not beholden to the expectations of their label or bosses, but fully calling the shots-- recording at their own pace, releasing records at a less-demanding clip, abandoning the showmanship of live performance. Lesser talents or a less-motivated group of people may have shrunk from the challenge, but here the Beatles took upon the task of redefining what was expected from popular music. Lest we forget it, the original flashpoint of Beatlemania remains the most influential and revolutionary period in the Beatles career, but the creative high points of 1966-67 aren't far behind. It's worth remembering as well that what had been demanded or expected from them as entertainers and popular musicians was something they'd challenged from their first cheeky, flippant interview, but just a few years later they were no longer mere anomalies within the world of pop, no longer potential fads; they were avatars for a transformative cultural movement”.

I will end by going back to 1966. On 15th August, Edward Greenfield reviewed The Beatles’ Revolver. The Guardian published the original review in 2016. It must have been mad getting an album like Revolver in 1966. It was a real explosion in terms of what a Pop band could achieve. Those who felt The Beatles were this simple band who wrote love songs and had this particular style were in for a shock in 1966. There were still elements of their earlier work, though Revolver was this new exploration and peak. Things had different changed:

“Turn off your mind; relax and float downstream; it is not dying. Lay down all thought; surrender to the voice: it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within: it is being.”

A curious sort of poetry, and the Beatles devotee might detect the hand of John Lennon. These are the words of the most remarkable item on a compulsive new record, the Beatles’ latest LP (Parlophone stereo PCS 7009; mono PMC 7009), called in typical punning way “Revolver.” The song quote, “Tomorrow never knows,” is musically most original, starting with jungle noises and Eastern-inspired music which merge by montage effect into the sort of electronic noises we associate with beat music. Then Lennon moaning out the words above, which in their sinister way define the real point of the song: pop-music as a substitute both for jungle emotions and for the consolations of religion. After all, teenagers are not the only ones who through the ages have “turned off their minds” and “surrendered to the voice,” whether to the tribal leader, the priest, or now the pop-singer. Thank goodness Lennon is being satirical: at least one hopes so.

In studying Beatles philosophy one does of course have to distinguish between the natural acquisitiveness of George Harrison in “Taxman” and Lennon and McCartney and their rather lefter-wing views. But all three creative Beatles habitually (as serious artists always must) in specific feelings and specific experiences. “Dr Robert,” for example, is a brilliant send-up of an expensive doctor-psychiatrist (which Beatle went to him one wonders?). “Well, well, well, you’re feeling fine,” the doctor is made to say, and the link with what the Beatles think of as prepackaged religion is underlined by the Victorian hymn-tune accompaniment below.

Even the already ubiquitous “Yellow submarine” is specific in its simplicity, and a number like “I’m only sleeping” brings a vivid picture of the pop-world: the late-sleeping Beatle being jolted into consciousness – nicely illustrated in the repeated jolting back to life of the music. “Eleanor Rigby” (with “square” string octet accompaniment) is a ballad about a lonely spinster who “wears the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” and about Father McKenzie “writing the words of sermon that no one will hear,” the verses punctuated by wailing cries of “Look at all the lonely people: where do they all come from?”

There you have a quality rare in pop music, compassion, born of an artist’s ability to project himself into other situations. Specific understanding of emotion comes out even in the love songs – at least the two new ones with the best tunes, both incidentally sung by Paul McCartney, the Beatle with the strongest musical staying power. “For no one” uses Purcellian tricks to hold the attention, gently-moving, seamless melody with characteristic descending bass motif, over which half way through there emerges a haunting descant, beautiful by any standards, Alan Civil, no less, playing the French horn.

It is not just a question of the Beatles and Paul McCartney in particular paying lip service to classical values. “Here, there and everywhere” brings yet another Beatles tune that like “Yesterday” or the best of Ellington, Cole Porter or Sandy Wilson (taking highly contrasted examples) can be demonstrated by the most hide-bound analysis to be a good melody. After the unexpected success of “Yesterday,” I shall be interested to see whether this new “sweet” number with its rising fifths and sevenths (forbidden interval in “pop”) again vindicate the perception of popular taste. The Beatles’ whole success, based demonstrably on musical talent, is fair vindication in itself”.

On 5th August, Revolver turns sixty. I really love the album. Whilst Rubber Soul (1965) is my favourite from the band, I cannot deny the genius of Revolver. You can see the legacy of Revolver here. There was this time when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was seen as the defining Beatles album. The conversation changed. In terms of books about Revolver, I would recommend this one from Robert Rodriguez. I shall leave things there. Revolver brought the underground to the mainstream. It changed popular music and culture and, with it, confirmed The Beatles’ God-like status. Sixty years later and Revolver…

CONTINUES to stun.

FEATURE: Feel the Beat from the Tambourine: ABBA's Dancing Queen at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Feel the Beat from the Tambourine

 

ABBA's Dancing Queen at Fifty

__________

ABBA themselves could claim…

IN THIS PHOTO: ABBA’s Benny Andersson, Frida Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

to have written a few contenders for the best Pop song ever. Among them would be Super Troupers and Mama Mia. However, Dancing Queen is at the top of that list. Released as a single in Sweden on 16th August, 1976, I wanted to celebrate fifty years of this classic. The lead single from their fourth studio album, Arrival, Dancing Queen got a wider release and soon was hailed as ABBA’s signature song. The legacy of this track is immense! I am going to come to some reviews and features. Written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, and Stig Anderson, it has been covered multiple times. Though nothing matches the ABBA original. In 2021, Produce Like a Pro provided some lead-up and background to Dancing Queen. How the Swedish group hit Pop perfection with this 1976 anthem:

“Dancing Queen” was written by Benny and Björn, and manager Stig Anderson. They credit George McCrae’s 1974 disco hit, “Rock Your Baby” as a major inspiration. Under the working title of “Boogaloo”, Benny played the instrumental track for his wife Frida who was brought to tears by the sound. She recalled: “Benny came home with a tape of the backing track and played it for me. I thought it was so enormously beautiful that I started to cry.”

From the shimmery keyboard slide at the song’s start, listeners are transported into an joyous, almost magical sonic space. The track is pop perfection, brilliantly opening with a half chorus. Vocally, the chorus is exuberant and full of energy. The vocals on the verse pull back, although the infectious groove remains strong. This vocal phrasing mirrors the storytelling of the lyrics, setting the scene of a night club:

Friday night and the lights are low

Looking out for a place to go

Where they get play the right music

Getting in the swing

You come to look for a king

The low range of the melody on ending phrases like “you come to look for a king” creates a tone of anticipation. Further preparing for the glorious excitement which comes at the return of the chorus. The first verse is a double verse, whereas the second is shorter and quickly returns the listener to the highly anticipated chorus. The song is perfectly unbalanced; it is chorus heavy, and centered around the satisfaction of hitting the chorus’ final phrase.

Like many pop songs that describe dancing, there is a parallel between the joy and addiction of the song’s hook, and the physical motion of dancing to the music. “Dancing Queen” epitomizes that experience, bringing in a sonic color and energy that mirrors the experience of a night dancing the night away under the mesmerizing and brilliant lights of a night club.

“Dancing Queen” was recorded at Glen Studios, located in a suburb of Stockholm. On August 4, 1974, Björn and Benny entered the studio, along with some session players, including Rutger Gunnarsson on bass guitar and Roger Palm on drums. Gunnarsson had known and been working with Björn since the sixties with the Hootenanny Singers.  Palm was a local session musician who had been working with ABBA since 1971. It was in these sessions on August 4 and 5th, that they laid down the instrumental backing tracks and melody which had so moved Frida.  The rest of the track took several months to record. Even as late as December of 1975, Benny and Björn were still refining the recording. The track was produced by Benny and Björn, with Michael B. Tretow as the engineer.

“Dancing Queen” was completed around the same time as another one of their major hits, “Fernando”.  The group wanted to release a single in March of 1976, but there was disagreement about which one to release. Anderson insisted that the group go with “Fernando,” a ballad which would contrast the group’s previous release, “Mamma Mia.”  His choice was a strong one, and “Fernando” became one of ABBA’s best selling tracks. It remains one of the best selling singles of all time. Still, the group was confident that “Dancing Queen” was destined for success. Agnetha recalled: “It’s often difficult to know what will be a hit. The exception was ‘Dancing Queen.’ We all knew it was going to be massive.”

While the song had to wait another five months after “Fernando” to be released as a single, it got an early start in performance, including a January 1976 TV special in Germany and another television performance in Australia in March. And then in Sweden, the song was introduced at the televised wedding gala for King Carl XVI and Silvia Sommerlath on June 19, 1976. On August 16, 1976 “Dance Queen” was released as a single in Sweden.  The response was massive, as it took the number one spot on charts all over the world – including in the US, when in April of 1977, it became the group’s first and only US number one hit.

And it remains their most popular and iconic hit. It is the quintessential ABBA recording, showcasing the band’s pop perfection.  In 2015, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. ABBA, as a group, remains one of the world’s best selling artists, and in 2010, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”.

In April 1977, Dancing Queen reached number one in the U.S. It provided Stereogum the opportunity to write about Dancing Queen for their The Number Ones feature. They awarded this perfect Pop song a perfect ten. How could it score anything less?! Fifty years later and it remains this flawless thing:

“You're John McCain. When you were 21 years old, you were flying a bombing mission over Hanoi, and a missile shot your plane down. You ejected from your plane, broke two arms and a leg, then landed in a lake and almost drowned. The soldiers who took you prisoner crushed your shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted you in the groin.

You were interrogated, beaten, denied medical care. You spent two years in solitary confinement. When your father was named commander of all the American forces in the Vietnam war, your captors tried to send you home. But adhering to the military code of conduct, you refused release, since other soldiers had been kept prisoner longer than you. So instead, you were tortured for years, beaten at regular intervals. And after five and a half years, when the war finally ended, you returned home to a country that had fundamentally changed.

You missed the cultural upheavals of the '60s. While they were happening, you were being tortured. You're unmoored, not sure how to return to American life. You remain in the Navy, go through physical therapy, take command of a training squadron. You cheat on your wife, who you married before your capture.

You don't pay a lot of attention to music. Music has changed, and you weren't around while that was happening. But one day, you hear a song. Two Swedish women are singing, in imperfect but somehow also perfect English, about a 17-year-old girl on a dancefloor. The music is bright and effervescent, and the voices are almost rapturous with joy. But there's an undercurrent to them, too, a sort of bone-deep melancholy. Those voices celebrate youth even as they mourn its loss. They stack melodies on top of melodies, rising on the music like currents of air. You love this song.

More than three decades later, you are running for president, and somebody from Blender magazine asks you to name your favorite songs. You oblige, and you name that song, ABBA's "Dancing Queen," as your favorite song of all time.

A few weeks later, the historian Walter Isaacson tries to snark-attack you about your pick. He asks you, "What were you thinking?" You're John McCain, and you're not going to take any of this shit from Walter Isaacson. You allow that your cultural experience is pretty particular: "If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life. I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again."

But you also know that ABBA rules, and you're happy to tell Walter Isaacson this: "Now look, everybody says, ‘I hate ABBA. Oh ABBA, how terrible! Blah blah blah.' How come everybody goes to Mamma Mia? Huh? I mean really, seriously, huh? ‘I hate ABBA, they’re no good, you know.’ Well, everybody goes. They’ve been selling out for years."

You're John McCain, and you are catastrophically wrong about so many things. But you are goddamn motherfucking right about ABBA.

"Dancing Queen" is a puzzle. It's about dancing, but it's not really a dance song. It's about loving rock music, but it's not a rock song. It's a party song and an elegy. And it's perfect. It's not the only perfect ABBA song. But perhaps thanks to that same sense of snobbery that John McCain encountered, it's the only ABBA song that ever hit #1 in the US. If we had to pick one ABBA song, we picked the right one.

To be fair, nothing about ABBA's genesis suggests that the group ever had a shot at conquering America. The four members of ABBA were all songwriters, and they'd all had Swedish hits, either solo or with their old bands, before they started the group. But they came from distinctly European musical traditions. They'd absorbed English glam and the '60s pop of Phil Spector. But as this Guardian piece points out, they'd also absorbed Italian balladry, Swedish folk music, and the sentimental German music-hall genre known as schlager. They sang in English, but English was very clearly not their first language.

Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA's two chief songwriters and producers, had been making hits in Sweden since they were teenagers in the '60s -- Andersson with his imitation-Beatles rock group the Hep Stars, Ulvaeus with his skiffle group the Hootenanny Singers. One singer, Agnetha Fältskog, had hit #1 in Sweden at age 18 with a schlager song that she'd written. The other, Frida Lyngstad, was also releasing schlager singles from a young age, but she didn't have a big hit until she started working with Andersson and Ulvaeus, who'd started writing songs together.

Eventually, Fältskog married Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad married Andersson. They all got together and formed a group, naming it ABBA -- the first letters of all their first names mashed together. (Abba was also a brand of pickled herring in Sweden; the group had to license the name from the company.) In 1972, ABBA entered a song called "Ring Ring" into a Swedish song competition, hoping that the song would go on to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest. The judges shot it down, but the track still went to #1 in Sweden.

The next year, ABBA entered another song, the glam-influenced "Waterloo," into the contest, and they made it in. ABBA won the Eurovision contest, and it became a European sensation, hitting #1 in three different countries, including the Eurovision host nation of the UK. Even in America, where nobody pays attention to Eurovision, "Waterloo" was a hit, peaking at #6. (It's a 9.) And by some grand cosmic coincidence, the same day that ABBA debuted "Waterloo" at Eurovision, their countrymen Blue Swede hit #1 in America with a cover of BJ Thomas' "Hooked On A Feeling." Blue Swede were the first Swedes ever to hit #1 in the US. ABBA would eventually be the second.

After "Waterloo," ABBA became global sensations. They were huge all over Europe, of course, but they were huge elsewhere, too -- Australia, South Africa, Japan. But after "Waterloo," America was largely immune. The ABBA songs that dominated the rest of the world charted in the US, but they didn't make the top 10. "Mamma Mia" peaked at #32. "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "SOS" both peaked at #15. "Fernando" peaked at #13. But "Dancing Queen" went all the way. "Dancing Queen" was undeniable.

"Dancing Queen" isn't a disco song, but it has disco somewhere in its DNA. Andersson and Ulvaeus, who wrote and produced the song, were inspired by the beat of George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby." But where "Rock Your Baby" is thin and propulsive, "Dancing Queen" is slow and lush and dramatic. Andersson and Ulvaeus, notorious studio perfectionists, piled sound on sound, melody on melody. The first thing we hear, a finger running down a piano keyboard, is a total Elton John flourish. When the song kicks in, it's absolutely piled with instruments -- keyboards, strings, something that sounds like a choir of backing vocals even though I think it's just a synth.

Ulvaeus and Andersson listened to that backing track again and again until they started to see the image of a girl losing herself on a dancefloor. The lyrics that they wrote are clumsy and strange. They're words that no native English speaker would ever even think to combine: "Getting in the swing / You came to look for a king." "With a bit of rock music, everything is fine." "The music's high." "You can dance. You can jive." But those words do their job. They conjure an image. When you close your eyes, you can see that girl, too. Maybe you can be that girl.

When Andersson played that backing track for Lyngstad, she broke down in tears. She hadn't heard how she'd sound on the song yet. She just knew. Years later, Lyngstad told The Guardian that she cried "out of pure happiness that I would get to sing that song, which is the absolutely the best song ABBA have ever done."

You can hear that. "Dancing Queen" only works if Lyngstad and Fältskog put everything into the song. You can't be neutral with "Dancing Queen." You have to belt it, and you have to put feeling into it. "Dancing Queen" isn't a song about apocalypse, or even about romantic desolation. It's just a night out in a nightclub. But if you're 17, if a nightclub is the only place where you really feel at home, then the importance of that night is massive and all-consuming. It obliterates everything else.

Something similar happens on 50 Cent's "In Da Club," a song that will eventually appear in this column, though the dynamic is different. On "In Da Club," there's no urgency in the vocals. 50 is calm and casual, babbling in singsong, telling you to come give him a hug. But the beat sounds like what's playing on a James Bond soundtrack when the train with the nuclear bomb is about to crash into the station and Bond has five seconds to defuse it. Clubbing can be epic, and the best songs about clubbing treat it as such.

Early on in "Dancing Queen," Lyngstad and Fältskog are ebullient, dramatic, incandescent with happiness: "Friday night, and the lights are low / Looking out for a place to... gooo." But when they hit the chorus, there's a sort of desperate longing in their voices. They remember being that girl, and they miss being that girl. They love that girl. They want nothing but the best for her. They're happy that the girl exists, that the nightclub exists, that the girl gets to feel like she does. But there's a devastating sense of loss somewhere in there, too. It's unstated, but it's there in the way those voices soar and crash together. They need you to feel the beat from the tambourine. It it absolutely vital that you feel that beat.

"Dancing Queen" is pop music operating on its highest possible level -- when everything is working in concert with everything else, when the meaning is so bold and bright and powerful that it doesn't even have to state itself. ABBA never made another song quite like it, but a lot of people tried. This Guardian piece notes some of its echoes. Elvis Costello, who once said that "Dancing Queen" is "manna from heaven," took the piano part and used it on his 1979 single "Oliver's Army." Chris Stein of Blondie, a band who will soon appear in this column, acknowledges that Blondie were trying to come up with their own "Dancing Queen" when they recorded their 1979 "Dreaming." MGMT took the languid, dreamy "Dancing Queen" tempo and intentionally replicated it on 2008's "Time To Pretend," the best song they've ever written”.

I will come to another feature soon. However, I found this one from 2016 that argues why Dancing Queen is the saddest record ever made. A song that sound joyous, if you dig deeper, you notice something a little darker. A song that could almost be turned into a short film, such is the richness of its lyrics. How it provides dissection and discussion:

“The basic point, the important point, here is this: you have spent your entire life believing “Dancing Queen” is a song about a 17 year old girl, dancing. And to a point, it is. Yet, have you ever thought about the song’s vantage point?

You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen

Make no mistake. This song is about the dancing queen, but it is most definitely not sung by her. Herein lies the tragedy. Our narrator has realized that she is no longer the Dancing Queen. She is no longer young, no longer sweet, no longer 17. Now, instead, she watches from the bar; the dancefloor a maelstrom of lost faith, memories, and missed opportunities. She was once 17, and as such was totally oblivious that the moment would ever end.

“Dancing Queen” is a song about this end. Or at least, edging ever closer towards it. It is a song that respects the truth that the passing of time only moves in one direction. That the second after the greatest moment of your life, it is as far behind you as it will be forever. Fuck your inner child, fuck ‘you’re only as young as the woman you feel’. You are young once, it happens, and then the rest is a slow slide towards something both inevitable and unknown. Of course, that’s not to say that the slide into adulthood can’t be a rich and bountiful experience. For many youth is an uncomfortable project, full of Muse albums and matted pubes, and as such something they are glad to watch it turn to ash over their shoulder. That’s fine, I get that. There are, however, a large percentage of people who only make sense when they are young. People who find a home away from home in the shimmering reaches of nightclubs. A lot of cynics would have you believe that nightclubs are only good for trying to pull women, or that those who purport to love them are merely extending some juvenile urge to deny ‘the real world’. Sadly, for all their wisdom, the truth is they don’t understand the confidence, the place, many people find when they go out—and just how out of place they can feel once those halcyon days are over. As soon as that moment passes—that moment when they were walking on air through the thick, black promise of the night—as soon as the sun starts to come up on the rest of their lives, they are destined to spend forever stewing on what has ended, or simply pretending it hasn’t.

To every wrong-side of thirty year-old still stubbing cigarettes out on coffee tables at 6 the next morning, everyone who has ever spent entire evenings listening to their terrible teenage CD collection, every aching back on a premature night-bus home: this one’s for you. This is what it’s all about. Watching the Dancing Queen flood the floor with light, a floor you used to own but now creaks under other feet. It’s a beautiful scene, sure, but also an inescapably sad one. Yes, it sounds happy, but that’s the point. The thick melancholy in every piano chord, the unmistakable, immediately singable nature of the chorus are all part of its power. Sometimes when I listen to “Dancing Queen”, around the 2:57 mark, I’m sure I can even hear someone scream. This isn’t joy. This is agony.

ABBA have been fucking depressing on many other occasions. They basically live-blogged their respective divorces via disco ballads. “Slipping Through My Fingers” captures, with devastating effect, the slow trickle of child ageing away from their parent. “The Day Before You Came” details the oblivious mundane existence that precedes a life-changing encounter. And “S.O.S.”—your Aunty Mary’s favourite—horrifically masters the point of total disembodiment from somebody you thought you’d spend forever with. Pretty much everything they have ever recorded is imbued with a wistfulness. A constant interplay between pop sensibility and twisted mentality.

Yet for my money, none of their hits come anywhere close to “Dancing Queen” in the longing stakes. It is a song that says the best has been. The best now belongs to somebody else. The best you can now do is watch the best and remember when you were the best. It’s a song for the moment when the value of your memories outweigh the value of your ambitions. “Dancing Queen”, a song now most commonly preceded by a function DJ slurring the words “get yer dancing shoes on” into a low quality microphone or belted at West End audiences, is in fact a song about watching the party from the other side of the glass, knowing you’ll never be on the list again”.

In 2016, The Guardian named Dancing Queen the best Pop song ever. They wrote how this classic “has won over everyone from punks to royalty and almost caused a riot in New York. So how has the song’s low-lit Friday night managed to last for ever?”. It is an interesting question:

“What is it that elevates Dancing Queen above so many other beautifully produced, catchy, euphoric songs? Pete Waterman, who knows a thing or two about writing a hit, believes it exemplifies how the best Swedish artists are able to soak up popular trends and regurgitate them as something fresh: “Listen to Dancing Queen and you can hear Elton John straight away, you can hear the Beatles, disco is coming along with the Bee Gees, and you can hear that,” he says. “It’s also got what all great pop songs have – a great first line. ‘Friday night and the lights are low’ … boosh! You’re away. All great records start with a bang.”

Indeed, the record starts with such a bang that, after that initial piano roll, it catapults you straight into the middle of the chorus: an explosive opening before the song has even officially started.

It could have all been quite different. An early version opened with the less immediate line: “Baby, baby you’re out of sight/Hey, you’re lookin’ alright tonight.” Back then, the song was called Boogaloo, too, before the band’s manager Stig Anderson earned his fee by suggesting an alternative title.

The music – which updated the laidback disco groove of George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby with Abba’s sparkling pop panache – was finished before the lyrics were considered, which was how most of Abba’s songs were developed: “I would play the songs over and over again,” Ulvaeus told me in 2014, “and I would literally see images of things coming up.”

In Dancing Queen’s case, these images told the story of a 17-year-old girl on a nightclub dancefloor – lost in the music and the moment. The sonic euphoria mirrors the freedom that the dancefloor can bring, although, as with all Abba songs, there’s a hint of what Ulvaeus called “that Nordic melancholic feeling” to it. The teenage girl isn’t the narrator, after all, so is the listener really just an observer, looking back on their lost youth? Ultimately, the song seems less concerned with making you gaze forlornly back than it does with bringing the abandonment of your teenage years into the present, at least for four glorious minutes.

IN THIS PHOTO: Agnetha Fältskog arrives in The Hague, Netherlands to record the T.V. programme. Eén van de Acht, in 1976/PHOTO CREDIT: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns

No wonder, then, that it’s such a wedding disco staple (there are only two kinds of wedding discos: ones that open with Dancing Queen, and terrible ones). No wonder that other artists have tried to channel its evergreen properties: the band may have been the definition of uncool at their peak – perma-smiling europop stars in sequinned jumpsuits – but that didn’t stop their more critically adored peers from borrowing from them. Chris Stein admitted to trying to replicate the song for Blondie’s hit Dreaming, while Elvis Costello – who once admitted he viewed Dancing Queen as “manna from heaven” – famously was inspired by the descending octave piano chords for his hit Oliver’s Army. More recently, MGMT told the podcast Song Exploder how they purposefully stuck to Dancing Queen’s relaxed 101 BPM tempo for their breakthrough hit Time to Pretend.

Australian/Swedish twin sister duo Say Lou Lou have a particular affection for the 70s pop/disco sound (their latest release is a cover of Saturday Night Fever) but believe much of Dancing Queen’s magic rests in the lyrics: “Dedicating a whole song to a girl wanting to dance without it necessarily having to be about romance made us feel excited and thrilled,” says Elektra June Kilbey-Jansson. “Crowning a 17-year old girl in a nightclub a queen feels so dramatic and attention-grabbing. They would find great song titles and work it through the song with memorable keywords – in this case swing, jive, rock, king and queen.” (Let’s be thankful once more that the band didn’t stick with Boogaloo).

While these artists have all helped Dancing Queen live on, there’s another, stronger force that’s kept it at the forefront of public consciousness: the musical Mamma Mia!. Judy Craymer, who conceived the monster hit stage show and film, believes its success has helped pass the music of Abba on from generation to generation. “An 89-year-old would say ‘that’s our song’, but children can learn it, too, almost like a nursery rhyme, and it’s very attractive to them,” she says, pointing out how countless parents have told her that the soundtrack’s version of Dancing Queen is one of their school-run staples.

Craymer credits the way the song “explodes from the stage or screen” for its prominent role in the musical and film. She also recalls the runup to opening Mamma Mia! in New York back in 2001, when the cast were due to perform Dancing Queen as part of a free concert in Times Square. “But the police had heard that it could cause a euphoric frenzy in the crowd!” she says, laughing. “They had heard about the reactions the song had got in San Francisco, with people getting up out of their seats, and in the end I don’t think we were allowed to perform it”.

Spending fourteen weeks at number one on the Swedish charts, Dancing Queen dominated in 1976. Fifty years after its release, and it still sounds utterly perfect. Here is a brief snapshot of its legacy, and how this astonishing song is regarded: “In 2000, "Dancing Queen" came fourth in a Channel 4 television poll of "The 100 Greatest Number One Singles”. It was chosen as No. 148 on the Recording Industry Association of America's Songs of the Century list. It was ranked No. 171 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", the only ABBA song on the list. That same year, it made VH1's "100 Greatest Dance Songs in Rock & Roll" at No. 97. Also in 2000, editors of Rolling Stone with MTV compiled a list of the best 100 pop songs; "Dancing Queen" placed 12th among songs of the 1970s. Billboard and Rolling Stone both ranked the song number one on their lists of the greatest ABBA songs. In 2023, it was ranked No. 2 on Billboard's list of "The 500 Best Pop Songs". On 9 November 2002, the results of a poll, "Top 50 Favourite UK #1's", was broadcast on Radio 2, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Official UK Charts Company. 188,357 listeners voted and "Dancing Queen" came out at No. 8”. This article also talks about the legacy of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. I am going to come back to The Guardian for the final piece. In 2020, when deciding the U.K.’s best number one singles, Dancing Queen came in ninth. It is amazing to think eight other song were deemed better number one! In any case, it is clear this dazzling Pop song remains untouched:

“It takes 18 seconds for Dancing Queen to drop into one of the greatest moments in pop. It speaks volumes that the 18 seconds preceding it are pretty wonderful too: that song bursting into life on that impossibly joyous piano glissando, before eight bars of sparkling, effortless mid-tempo pop.

Then Agnetha Fältskog and Frida Lyngstad start to sing, effectively bringing us into the middle of a chorus. Their lyrics should scan as simple, bouncy instructions (“You can dance / You can jive / Having the time of your life”) but the women’s longing harmonies transform them. Stretched over two yearning notes, the word “you” is delivered to the listener as if Agnetha and Frida are trying desperately to fill them with confidence. As they sing “having the time of your life”, the melody takes a downward, melancholic turn, and the bassline follows. A moment of enjoyment turns into something sadder, more reflective, perhaps one of nostalgia.

We’re then told to switch our perspective – “to see that girl, watch that scene” – to imagine ourselves as the Dancing Queen, only 17, feeling the beat of the tambourine. Maybe we once were. Maybe we still can be, even if only in our wedding disco-lit memories, or our glittering imaginations.

Dancing Queen was the lead single from Abba’s fourth album, Arrival. Released in the summer of 1976, it got to No 1 in 15 countries including the UK (where it stayed at the top for five weeks) and the US. It first came to life a year earlier, when Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson were in their tiny songwriting cabin on the Swedish island of Viggsö, trying to craft their own take on early disco. They loved the loose, languid drumbeat of George McCrae’s 1974 hit Rock Your Baby, and used it as an inspiration (it was even played in the studio before Dancing Queen’s final recording for them to capture its atmosphere).

They initially called the song Boogaloo, but Abba manager and co-writer Stig Anderson suggested a different title. When Benny Andersson played Lyngstad (then his partner) the instrumental demo, she burst into tears.

The dense arrangements in Dancing Queen’s final mix make it especially magical. Their Phil Spector-obsessed audio mixer, Michael B Tretow, talked through the layering of the song in a 2001 BBC pop music series, Walk on By. Multiple tracks of percussion, stuttering guitars, synthesised strings, clavinet and vocals filled every second of the song with nagging pop hooks. In the same documentary, Nile Rodgers said he was hugely inspired by this approach to songcraft (in 1976, he was in the early stages of putting together Chic).

Dancing Queen was premiered in June 1976 in a suitably regal setting: a gala to celebrate the wedding of Sweden’s King Carl XVI. By the autumn, it was an international smash, with even smirking music press critics recognising its brilliance. “Any band that can make even disco sound like the Ronettes can’t be all bad!” crowed Robot A Hull in Creem. “It’s fodder for the masses in its least derogatory sense,” wrote Tim Lott in Sounds. New wavers loved Dancing Queen too. Elvis Costello cribbed its piano line for Oliver’s Army and Chris Stein admitted that Blondie’s Dreaming was “pretty much a copy of Dancing Queen”.

Although some of its lyrics have dated (“You’re a teaser, you turn ’em on” might not pass muster today), the bulk of them capture a sense of boundless possibility. Our dancing queen is looking for someone to dance with, but “anybody could be that guy” – the thrilling mystery of the future from the perspective of youth gleams in those words. A verse later, we’re told “anyone will do / You’re in the mood for a dance”. Even in the less progressive mid-1970s, having someone to dance with was far less important than the dancing itself.

“And when you get the chance,” we’re told, we become the dancing queen – that small word “and” positing this transformation as an inevitability. Today, the song’s legacy still delivers this message. Its way of bringing people together was underlined in the Abba film, Mamma Mia, as an ever-growing crowd gathered to sing it while roaming the streets of the fictional Greek island of Kalokairi. (This montage was revisited, with even bigger crowds, in its 2018 sequel.) Theresa May’s arrival to the song on stage at the 2018 Conservative party conference also showed us its transformative power: the right-wing press briefly turned in her favour in the midst of Brexit negotiations because of it (the Daily Mail said she’d “danced her way back to authority”).

Covers of the song also kept coming in lockdown. US alt-pop artist Elliot Lee released a fragile ukulele version. Lewis Capaldi covered it for an American coronavirus fundraising campaign. It made regular appearances in online social-distancing singalongs too, telling us all that we can dance, we can jive, even when we’re not allowed to look “out for a place to go”. Dancing Queen reminds us that having the time of our lives is something that’s always there, and that’s always possible”

On 16th August, it will be fifty years since Dancing Queen was released. Initially released in their native Sweden, ABBA’s masterpiece then spread to the world. One of the greatest songs ever written, it is impossible to not feel uplifted and inspired by this song. In 2018, CRACK asked six artists to name their favourite ABBA song. Quiet Luke picked Dancing Queen and explained why it is so enduring and powerful: “I think the music has lasted because it’s so wholesome. People sometimes just want something that feels good, is fun for the whole family without context and decade-tested. I think they’re definitely misunderstood, being Scandinavian and all. It adds another layer to their interpretation of the wall of sound, of the disco trend happening, of pop music in general. I think most people probably assume they’re just American or something. If you look at the pop music coming out of Scandinavian countries today, I think you’ll see Abba’s influence from Max Martin to all the celestial, atmospheric rock that comes out of there. Abba runs deep”. I hope there is proper celebration of this flawless masterpiece on its anniversary. Even though it has inspired so many people, no other song has reached quite the same heights in terms of endurance and brilliance. The supreme Dancing Queen will continue to reign…

FOR all of time.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sofia Camara

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

Sofia Camara

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AT the moment…

Sofia Camara is touring Europe. She is an artist that I really love and have not yet spotlighted. Hard to Love was her E.P. from last year. Her latest single, The Last Encounter, came out recently. This is someone who needs to be on your radar. I am going to come to some interviews with this wonder. Born in Portugal but raised in Toronto, Canada, I do hope that she plays in the U.K. at some point, as there are a lot of her fans over here that would love to see her perform. I am going back to last year for the interviews. Though Sofia Camara is definitely among artists from this year that are coming through - and are seen as ‘rising’ - and helping to shape and define its sound. I think she will have a very busy summer. I am going to start with The Lunar Collective and their chat. Speaking with Sofia Camara around the release of her single, Girls Like You, it was one of those big summer songs that helped push her music and name wider than ever. One of the most consistently brilliant young artists in the world. I do think that she has a very long future in music:

“LUNA: You teased “Girls Like You” online and during live shows. Did that initial response have any influence on how you approached the release?

CAMARA: My idea was to bring it to the live show and see how people react. When you’re in person, it’s a whole different vibe. You see the crowds chanting and dancing and having fun—that’s the exact type of reaction you want for a song like this. I think the key to posting online and teasing songs is being genuine and honest. So if that means propping up your phone and dancing and singing out your car window, then that’s exactly the type of energy I wanted to have.

LUNA: The videos have that exact energy. In the lyric video and visualizer, it’s super laid back.

CAMARA: When you think about summertime, hanging out with your friends, and enjoying time with your girls, it’s always laid back. In the summer, I remember sitting in the car with all of my friends with the windows down, the wind blowing in your hair, and there isn’t a care in the world. There’s no destination. You’re just driving to drive around, and listening to music. When we were writing the song, we wanted to capture that emotion.

LUNA: What are you listening to this summer?

CAMARA: “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter. I also feel like there’s still so much time [for summer releases.] I’ve been listening to my songs (laughs). I’m wrapping them up so I’ve been locked into the world of finishing songs!

LUNA: Speaking of summer, you’re going to be playing Lollapalooza. How are you feeling about that?

CAMARA: It is so overwhelming. I try not to think about it so ahead of time because it’ll really make me anxious leading up to the show day. It’s so crazy to even be able to be there. It’s something that I feel like every artist dreams of doing. It’s really exciting.

LUNA: Are you hoping to catch anyone’s performance while you’re there?

CAMARA: I know that Sabrina Carpenter is going to be there. I’m on the same day as Gracie Abrams for Osheaga in Montréal. She is someone I really look up to right now. I’m excited to watch both those artists live.

LUNA: Are you much of a festival goer yourself?

CAMARA: I get really anxious in crowds! Even performing, I just worry. It makes me nervous as an artist because I’m like, “Wait, everyone, space out!” I always worry about safety issues. It’s so cool to bring such a big community of people together to listen to  music, which is really beautiful in so many ways, but it makes me a little anxious!”.

Sofia Camara’s E.P., Hard to Love, came out late last year. She were interviewed around this incredible released. Principle Magazine spent some time with this amazing artist. It is revealed during the interview that she is working towards an album. Last year was a particularly productive year for Camara. Someone who has this deep and intense passion for music. What she is producing at the moment is her very best work. With every release, she grows stronger and more astonishing:

“The Portuguese-Canadian pop star began writing songs at the tender age of 13 and later created buzz after she shared performances of herself covering familiar songs online. Now, as a more mature 23 year old, Camara is officially on the rise – and there’s no stopping her. She’s selling out headline tours, racking up millions of streams, and has already played huge shows with Dean Lewis and Stevie Nicks.
On Friday 10th October, Camara dropped her second EP of the year, Hard To Love, a six-track release which further proved that she isn’t afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve and bare her emotions. The era was led by the single “Girls Like You,” which marked a bright, energetic turn to her ballad-heavy discography. Meanwhile, its follow-up, “Parking Lot,” showcased her raw vocals and positioned her alongside contemporaries like Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae.

You are back in Europe right now. How does it feel to be back? I know it holds a special place for you.

Yeah, I love it here. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve been here, but it always feels like a second home. It’s where I did my first headline show, which has always been an unforgettable experience. So it’s really nice to come back to somewhere that feels familiar.

You just released your second EP, Hard To Love, this year. How are you feeling about this one? You’ve been very vocal about the emotional process.

Not to take away from the first EP I did, but with this one, the vision was more clear. We wanted to be honest and vulnerable. The story we wanted to tell was about wearing our hearts on our sleeves. I feel really connected to each of these songs—they’re all very special to me. It all happened quickly, which makes it even more special because it felt natural. We didn’t have to go into too much detail about things. It all just flowed out of us one by one. 

It’s been a busy year of shows for you. That said, you’re about to embark on your first headline tour across Europe. How are you feeling?

It’s insane. I’m so excited and happy. There are so many things I didn’t think you had to plan, and now that we’re here, it feels so real. I feel like I didn’t have enough time to process that we were going on tour, and I won’t until the first show. It doesn’t feel real until I’m on stage and see the fans. I haven’t really experienced what it’s like to be in front of people who came just for me. I’ve always been the opener, hyping up the crowd for someone else. So I’m excited to see what that’s like, and I feel like everyone else is on the same wave.

How do you deal with songs not performing as well as you hoped?

It’s hard. There’s pressure from your team because you want to impress them, make them feel like you’ve got this. They do their best to remind me not every song has to be “it,” but after “Who Do I Call Now?”, I definitely felt like, “This next one is it, I swear.” But each song has been successful in its own way. “Girls Like You” had a totally different kind of success than “Who Do I Call Now?” They’re all different, but each has its own win.

How have you felt about your rise in the industry so far?

In the beginning, I thought it would happen a lot quicker. But I’ve learned you have to be patient. There’s still so much I’m learning—as an artist, a songwriter, even just being in the room. I have to trust myself, trust my gut. Patience is key.

Have you started to think about an album yet?

I’m really excited to start a new body of work and work on the album. But to write music that feels like me, I have to experience life. I don’t want to write about something I feel disconnected from. I need time to do the tour and not think about writing. That’s how I wrote this EP—I took a break from writing for four months. Then I did a week in LA and we wrote “That’s Just How You Feel.” I didn’t do anything for two months after that. Then we wrote the rest. Giving myself time helped me figure out what story I wanted to tell, what visuals we wanted. I know it’s different for everyone, but I just haven’t put too much thought into the next album yet because this tour is the biggest dream of mine. Right now, that’s the most important thing”.

There is actually a new interview I found from Rolling Stone Canada. That move from Sofia Camara performing covers to telling her own story. That truly changed everything. This is a really exciting point of her career. If you do not follow her already, then do go and seek out Camara. I think that she has one of the most astonishing voices in music right now. Her songs are so powerful and distinct:

“There’s a clarity to Sofia Camara’s rise. Not the kind built on display, but one that’s come from steadily showing up, first through covers, then through songs that feel far more personal.

She first gained traction online with covers, building an audience before breaking through with her original single “Who Do I Call Now? (Hellbent)”, which went viral across platforms and charted on Spotify’s Viral 50 in multiple countries.

Since then, the Toronto-based artist has steadily built momentum. Her single “Girls Like You” reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Canadian CHR/Top 40 chart and crossed onto the Canadian Hot 100, marking her first major radio breakthrough. Her 2025 EPs Was I(t) Worth It? and Hard to Love further established her as one of Canada’s emerging pop voices.

Her growth has extended onto larger stages too. She has performed at major festivals including Osheaga and Lollapalooza, delivered the Canadian national anthem at the CFL Grey Cup, and was nominated for Breakthrough Artist or Group of the Year at the 2026 Juno Awards, where she also performed.

Now, as part of a new generation of Canadian artists finding global audiences early, Camara is still figuring out what to hold close and what to share. It’s a process that sits at the centre of her music, and one she’s not rushing.

You’ve grown in the public eye, in real time. What’s been the hardest part of that kind of visibility?

There’s definitely pressure, but I don’t think it’s from the public. You create that pressure within yourself because you want to be enough. I feel like I’m constantly searching for validation, whether it’s from the audience or somewhere else. Especially with my own music, because it’s so vulnerable and real, you just want people to like it. So there’s definitely that pressure of just being enough.

What do you think artists in your position today have to navigate that didn’t exist even a few years ago?

Artists today navigate a lot of marketing on their own. Working with a label is incredibly helpful, but now a lot of artists are responsible for much of that themselves, posting online and constantly showing up. It adds another layer, and it can sometimes feel a bit uninspiring when your main focus should be the art and your craft. Social media being such a big part of how music is shared definitely adds another level.

When everything is moving this fast, how do you know what’s actually you versus what’s just working?

It depends on who you surround yourself with. When things feel overwhelming, I try to lean on people I trust and care about to keep me grounded and remind me who I am and where I came from. Having that helps guide my decisions.

Is there something you’ve consciously pulled back on sharing, even though the internet rewards openness?

Yeah, for sure. The most heartbreaking things are the scariest to talk about because they come with a whole other level of pain and heartache. There are definitely layers I haven’t shown the world yet, but that’s something I’ll get more comfortable with as the years go by.

What are your thoughts about the Future of Music in Canada?

There’s so much talent here. There are so many artists with the inspiration and motivation to work really hard. It’s all here, I just think more people need to be aware of it”.

I am really looking forward to a Sofia Camara album. At the moment, she does have those tour dates. Promoting her latest work. I guess there will be some additional dates later in the year The U.K. would love to welcome her. Connect with Sofia Camara on social media, as this is an artist that you cannot miss out on! A simply phenomenal songwriter, we are going to be hearing about her for a long time to come. She is impossible to forget. This Portuguese-born treasure is…

TRULY astonishing.

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Follow Sofia Camara

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Paganini (Violin)/Old Lady (Jig of Life)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Glasgow in October 1980 signing copies of her album, Never for Ever/PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix

 

Paganini (Violin)/Old Lady (Jig of Life)

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BOTH of these Kate Bush songs…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

connect her to family and her early life. The first track offers a few characters up, but I am discarding Nero and Old Nicky. The second provides me an anonymous character, but it does provoke some discussion points. I am not going to be interrogating Your Little Girl and Your Little Boy. I will focus on a character that is mentioned right at the start of the song, and it is one that refers to Kate Bush herself. I think. I have always been fascinated. The second song I am featuring takes me to Ireland and Bush’s connection to the country. It is Jig of Life. A song infused with Irish instruments and players. Appearing at a pivotal point of Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave, there are subjects and angles to explore. I want to take things back five years earlier. On 1980’s Never for Ever, there is an underrated jewel called Violin. Paganini is the first character. I am not sure who the ‘Old Nicky’ is on the song. Nero could provoke some intriguing paths. However, Paganini is the character I am spotlighting. I know he is a real person, but he is depicted as a character in Violin. For a fan newsletter in September 1980, Bush did say this about the song: “‘Violin’ is for all the mad fiddlers from ‘Paganini’ to ‘Old Nick’ himself”. I am fascinated by the lyrics in the song. The verse where Paganini is mentioned: “Paganini up on the chimney/Lord of the dance/With Nero and old Nicky

Whack that devil/Into my fiddlestick!/Give me the Banshees for B.V.s/Give me the Banshees for B.V.s”. Although Kevin Burke played violin on the studio version of Violin, I wonder whether Kate Bush ever considered it. This is an instrument that she was supposed to learn at school. Never really enjoying the experience. I took music at high school, but we never got taught how to play instruments. A lot of it was about theory and writing our own songs. I can’t remember ever being expected to play an instrument.

What strikes me is the way Kate Bush bonded with the piano but not the violin. I guess the sound of the latter was jarring compared to the beauty and grace of the piano. The violin is more extreme and less poetic in a way. It might be easier to play, though I wonder how far Kate Bush got with her practice. I think the violin was something she was instantly proficient at, yet it never provided satisfaction. That screech and sense of anguish. There is some psychological insight from this song. A slight terror instilled in her: “Filling me up with the shivers/Filling me up with the shivers and quivers”. Then this: “Get the bow going!/Let it scream to me:/Violin! Violin! Violin!/Get the bow going!/Let it scream to me:/Violin! Violin! Violin!”. Are those words about an unappealing sound the instrument makes, or is there a raw power and energy that appeals to her? One cannot say Bush was averse to the violin. She was a Horror fan, and she admired the work of Alfred Hitchock. She also would have bonded to some of the best scores. How crucial the violin was in eliciting suspense and terror. The violin would make its way into her albums. Paddy Bush played violins on Hounds of Love’s closing track, The Morning Fog. Although Kate Bush played multiple instruments through her career, she was happier to include the violin as part of the palette, rather than play it herself. Nigel Kennedy played violin on The Sensual World’s The Fog. He appeared on The Red Shoes and played on Top of the City and Big Stripey Lie. I wonder why those particular albums required violin and not others. I can appreciate why it did not appear on her first two, 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart, and why it was not used more on Never for Ever. It would have been great for it to come into Aerial. Though there are strings on that album, so the violin would have been included. What we get from Violin is a kinship. Not one of love and ease. The anxieties and difficulties associated with learning the violin. How unforgiving it can be. I will come to Paganini and some facts about him. It is obviously Bush knew the instrument was an important and effective conveyer of tones and emotions required. It was not something she wanted to use too much.

I am coming to Dreams of Orgonon, as they are so useful and informative when it comes to insights about Kate Bush’s songs. In terms of her relationship with the violin at school: “Bush’s chief enemy at St. Joseph’s was the violin. Unlike the piano, she didn’t discover it at home and learn to enjoy playing it for its own sake. She encountered it in (horrors) lessons. Everyone knows that the sound of a violin in the hands of an inexperienced player isn’t quite the same as the sound a piano or guitar makes with a new student. It’s not hard imagine this infuriating eternal perfectionist Bush”. In paying tribute to a mad old fiddler – that sounds wrong written down, but you know what I mean! -, she takes her voice to new places. In terms of how she was perceived by the press in 1980, Bush was still seen as this immature or child-like singer. Stereotyped as squeaky and high-pitched. Not Punk or New Wave. Violin arguably sees her pioneer Folk-Punk. A meeting of the anger and urgency of Punk, but married to lyrics that are more indebted to Folk. Few people talk about Bush’s voice as an instrument. She almost imitates the violin at stages. Violin provided that Bush could match the most revered Punk singer when it came to using her voice as this powerful weapon:

“Bush sounds positively deranged in the song, taking the human voice as an instrument to its zenith as she zips between the highs and lows of her vocal range (she hits her highest note on record here, an astonishing F6, with characteristic literalness as she whoops the note on “filling me up with,” which she immediately follows with an extremely low G#3 at “the shivers”). Her vocal is a roller coaster, slightly holding back over the “four strings,” becoming slightly giddier over “the quavers, drunk at the BARS” (deliciously emphasizing the violin pun and metaphor of the violin as intoxicating) and moving “out of the realm of the orchestra.” In the chorus Bush completely lets herself go, gutturally howling “get the bow going/let it SCREAM to me” in her most punk moment ever, a massive departure from her previous singing. Is it any wonder John Lydon is a Kate Bush fan when she does songs like “Violin,” with vocals closer to Never Mind the Bollocks than Pink Floyd’s Animals?”.

Kate Bush is playing a character herself. A version of herself. There is that reluctance to embrace An instrument hard to play. Yet there is a playfulness and eccentricity that is so exciting to inspect and interrogate. I will end this section by looking at the language and lyrics. Though this section fo the Dreams of Orgonon article is worth spotlighting:

“Some listeners might interpret the song as being enthusiastic about the violin—I wouldn’t read it that way. I think it’s about a person who’s had the violin imposed on them for far too long going over the edge. There’s an tinge of unreality to the song—it makes the violin a mystical object. Given the events leading up to the song’s creation, it’s unlikely Bush was feeling terribly positive about the violin while writing “Violin”. She isn’t one to push autobiography into her songwriting, but it’s hard not to read “Violin” as an expression of personal anxieties.

That’s not to say “Violin” is lacking in Bush’s trademark love of artifice and character acting. She clearly relishes singing these words, particularly as she namechecks violin players (“Paganini up the chimney/lord of the dance/with Nero and old Nicky/WHACK THAT DEVIL”). Her playful approach to language and music is as prevalent as ever. She’s anxious about the violin, but her character is far deeper into a violin obsession than she could ever have been. It’s a folk song about a hedonist in a chaotic spiral, which is always more interesting than the didactic ending of a folk tale where the hedonist is punished for their joy. Think “The Red Shoes” minus the unhappy ending.

So we have a song about a quasi-mystical addiction with undercurrents of school-resentment accompanied by howling vocals and a wailing electric guitar. Yes, this all feels a bit like The Wall but more creative and less misanthropic, but that’s not what we’re going to signify here. The aesthetic surprise is that “Violin” is that it’s Kate Bush inventing folk punk”.

IN THIS IMAGE: Niccolò Paganini/IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

Niccolò Paganini lived between 1782 and 1849. Part of The Golden Age, he sat alongside Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, David Oistrakh, and Yehudi Menuhin. The final two born in the previous century. Paganini is often considered one of the greatest violinist ever. I think Bush identified with him because of his playing. More frantic and frenetic. We often think of the violin as mournful or romantic. It is a versatile and dexterous instrument that, in the right hands, can elicit dervishes and devilish colours. This article called Niccolò Paganini ‘The Devil’s Violinist’. That is a vivid image. I would love to see that as a painting! Bush was no stranger to bringing something darker into her music. Even by 1980. You can feel why Violin name-checked Paganini. His life and career arc would have fascinated her. Beyond the stuffier and more upper-class image of a trained violinist. Maybe an elitist or limited view. If Robert Johnson selling his soul to The Devil at a Mississippi crossroads is a myth, you do feel that  Niccolò Paganini might actually have made a deal with The Devil:

“Niccolò Paganini earned the moniker "The Devil's Violinist" due to the astonishing prowess of his violin playing, which was often attributed to an otherworldly source, the devil himself. He was particularly known for performing recitals without sheet music, memorising everything instead, and could play up to 12 notes per second. People believed he had made a pact with the devil... how else could he play the violin like no one before?

The Devil's Violinist's fortunate beginnings

Born on October 27, 1782, in Genoa, Italy, Paganini was always destined to a gifted musical life. Taking up the violin at a really young age under his father’s influence, Paganini quickly became a child prodigy. His musical talents were recognized and praised, earning him scholarships and violin lessons with famous violinists such as Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa. Following such prominent training, he made his first public appearance at 11. Aged 15, Paganini embarked on a tour of Italy, making a reputation for himself.

However, this premature independence took a turn for the worse as he suffered from a mental breakdown and started drinking and gambling excessively. Quickly overburdened with debts, his name became associated with his reputation as a gambler and a womanizer. Once, the struggling musician is even believed to have pawned his violin in order to settle his debts. To play a concert, he was then lent a Guarneri violin by a wealthy merchant, who eventually gave it to him after hearing him play”.

Violin was one of the last songs that started life as an early demo. Bush was recording more ‘new’ songs by Never for Ever. Though Violin was one that was adapted from a demo. After this album, there would be no looking into the archives. How Bush had this song written long before going into the studio. I do love so many of the lyrics on Violin. I forgot to mention that Paddy Bush plays the Banshee on Violin. “Four strings across the bridge/Ready to carry me over/Over the quavers, drunk in the bars/Out of the realm of the orchestra/Out of the realm of the orchestra”. These are words that open Violin. A song she performed live on her 1979 Christmas special to hugely memorable effect, it was also included in 1979’s The Tour of Life. People hearing this song on stage and T.V. before it was included on Never for Ever. The language and lyrics of this song make it one of her best earlier works. I have not heard many people talk about the song. I know Catherine Anne Davies is a fan of the song and loves how unhinged Bush’s voice sounds on it. It is hard writing a song about violin greats and how she sits alongside them. Bush is imposed into the song. The first reading – Bush hating the instrument and this being her striking out against out – might be wrong. Dreams of Orgonon had another theory. One that poses how “the singer has been driven mad by their violin playing. They’re an inverted Pied Piper or Erich Zann, leading themselves astray with their own music”. Such a wonderful angle for a song. I am not sure anyone in music before or since has written about the violin in this way. A song demoed in 1976 at 44 Wickham Road is an underrated highlight of Never for Ever. One critics never really loved. Alongside Egypt, it is seen as one of the lesser cuts on Never for Ever. I feel Violin is important, as we get to hear Kate Bush unleashed and this raw for the first time. She would exceed herself for The Dreaming’s Get Out of My House. Violin is this early glimpse into how wild she could be. Anyone who misogynistically attacked her and saw her as this squeaky--voiced singer was not excepting what Violin had to offer! In 2011, the film, Paganini’s Daemon: A Most Enduring Legend, was released. Although Kate Bush was keen to pay tribute to the virtuosic Niccolò Paganini, his darker side perhaps, ironically, meant he was connected to The Devil in another way. This article considered the real story behind Paganini’s genius: “The violinist’s fame slowly turned him into a heavy gambler, drinker and a serial womaniser. A rumour even spread that Paganini had murdered a woman, used her intestines as violin strings and imprisoned her soul within the instrument. Women’s screams were said to be heard from his violin when he performed on stage. One thing was for sure: Paganini’s skill on the violin was unparalleled. He was one of the first solo violinists to perform publicly without sheet music, choosing instead to memorise everything”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for The Ninth Wave, which forms the second half of her 1985 album, Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I am going to move to the second song. From Jig of Life, there is this character of the Old Lady. The lyrics at the start of the song are these: “Hello, old lady/I know your face well/I know it well”. The Ninth Wave is a protagonist swept into the sea from a ship. It is about her experiences on the water as she awaits rescue. By the time we get to Jig of Life, the woman has dreamt of sheep and how she yearns for home and her bed. She has wrestled with almost dying and being trapped under ice. Hallucinating and tussling with waves. The antepenultimate song on The Ninth Wave, Jig of Life then leads to Hello Earth. That is when we get a view from above at the water and storms coming in. The Morning Fog is the rescue of the woman. I think the whole suite is this great psychological drama. The terror of the ocean and what is underneath. Whether the woman dies in the water or is actually rescued. How there is this moment, around Under Ice, where she could have lost her life and everything after is a dying dream. I like to think that the woman is rescued. Jig of Life is the moment when she is roused back to life. I will talk about the Irish elements of the song. I forgot to say how the violinist on Violin, Kevin Burke, is an accomplished Irish musicians. He was at the forefront of Irish traditional and Celtic music, performing and recording with the groups The Bothy Band, Patrick Street, and the Celtic Fiddle Festival. Violin replaced with fiddles for this song. If the violin put fear into Bush and it is something she struggled to bond with, you cannot say she felt the same about fiddles and Irish instruments. Something that connected her with her mother’s lineage and home. John Sheahan plays fiddles on Jig of Life. Is Old Lady autobiographical? If this is Kate Bush in The Ninth Wave, fighting to stay float and alive, then this older version of herself compels some questions. It seems, then, that she was alive by this time. The vision of herself in the future willing her present self to keep going.

I will talk about why Jig of Life was such an important part of The Ninth Wave, why the Old Lady is this important and spiritual guide, and how her family plays a role in the song. I will, of course, discuss Ireland. When speaking with Richard Skinner in 1992, this is what Kate Bush says about Jig of Life:

“At this point in the story, it’s the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it’s about time they have a bit of help. So it’s their future self saying, “look, don’t give up, you’ve got to stay alive, ’cause if you don’t stay alive, that means I don’t.” You know, “and I’m alive, I’ve had kids [laughs]. I’ve been through years and years of life, so you have to survive, you mustn’t give up.”
This was written in Ireland. At one point I did quite a lot of writing, you know, I mean lyrically, particularly. And again it was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside. And this was one of the tracks that the Irish musicians that we worked with was featured on.
There was a tune that my brother Paddy found which… he said “you’ve got to hear this, you’ll love it.” And he was right [laughs], he played it to me and I just thought, you know, “this would be fantastic somehow to incorporate here.”
Was just sort of, pull this person up out of despair”.

If the Old Lady is not a different character, more an older version of the heroine from The Ninth Wave, she appears at a crucial moment. Jig of Life is about staying alive. The sense of this spirit or ghost almost. On Watching You Without Me, which precedes Jig of Life, friends/family of the heroine are waiting for her to arrive. The sense that her spirit if in the room but her physical being isn’t. The following song brings in this almost ghostly visage of the woman’s future self. On Hello Earth, perhaps a spirit floating above the water and looking down. There is that blend of future life and possible death. The spirit of the woman now combined with her as an older woman.

What strikes me the hardest about Jig of Life is its energy. On a suite of songs that provides a mix of chills, terror and potential death, here is a song of survival and life. I think the fiddles give Jig of Life this rush of wind and weather. If the violin from the song of the same name elects this feverish and chaotic feel, there is this romance and vision of the Irish countryside from the fiddles. The instruments are the same thing, though they are played differently. They evoke separate colours and dynamics. I feel the violin is like a voice and character on that astonishing Never for Ever song. I get the sense the fiddles on Jig of Life evokes the spirit of Kate Bush’s mother, Hannah. Her blood and spirit coming through the instrument. The strings on the violin and fiddle give separate sounds. This interesting article explains some key differences: “That being said, classical violins will most often have synthetic strings, while Irish fiddles tend to opt for steel strings. There are several reasons for this. In order to compensate for the gentler volume of low action playing, you are likely to find steel core violin strings fitted in an Irish fiddle. Steel-core strings produce a bright and sharply focused tone, one that can cut through the mix when playing in an ensemble (or an overly loud music session). Classical violins with a higher action tend to use synthetic core violin strings which produce a rich, warm sound. Steel-core strings typically stay in tune for longer and can better endure the sometimes exuberant and energetic playing that fiddle playing requires”. I love how the instruments whip up this mood and magic. It is not only the instruments that rouse energy and summon this sense of clinging to life. I feel Kate Bush’s vocals on this song are superb. It is one of her greatest performances.

Her family is key on this song. Her brother John Carder Bush reads a poem in the song. He adopts an Irish accent. There are some truly evocative and incredibly memorable lines: “Can’t you see where memories are kept bright?/Tripping on the water like a laughing girl/Time in her eyes is spawning past life/One with the ocean and the woman unfurled/Holding all the love that waits for you here/Catch us now for I am your future/A kiss on the wind and we’ll make the land”. Paddy Bush plays didgeridoo. I think that her mother’s influence is heaviest. How Bush wrote Jig of Life in Ireland. Her mother was Irish. We speak about Kate Bush as being an English artist. She is half-Irish, and there was this Irish influence running through a few of her albums. Night of the Swallow from The Dreaming features Irish players and instruments. So too does The Sensual World from the 1989 album of the same name. Liam O’Flynn, Dónal Lunny and John Sheahan working beautifully together. Is Jig of Life her most ‘Irish’ song? There are those musicians. John Carder Bush and that Irish accent. Hannah Bush seems to be in there. The older woman looking at her younger self. I think Bush was thinking of her mother and channelling her. The hallucination on Jig of Life is the third occasion on The Ninth Wave. Each hallucination is something different. If previous ones were more devilish and scarier, this one is sanctuary. Less dark than those that came before, the woman’s older self appears. There are a couple of thought-provoking sections from Leah Kardos’s Hounds of Love book for the 33 1/3 series that comes to mind. When she says this: The starting point for ‘Jig of Life’ took inspiration from the ceremonial music of Anastenaria, a centuries-old ecstatic dance and fire-walking ritual performed during religious feasts in Greece and Bulgaria. The music, inspired by a rare recording that Paddy Bush had found and shared with his sister, is characterized by repetitious, deep rolling rhythms and whirling figures performed on violin and tsabouna (Greek bagpipes). I think of Jig of Life as a purely Irish song. There is this mixture of cultures and countries. Greece and Bulgaria. Such a rich and incredible combination.

There is another section of the book that sticks in my mind. Where Kardos write how “the mention of ‘the place where the crossroads meet’ evokes once again the image of Hecate, the goddess in Greek mythology who is often depicted flanked by two dogs and sometimes shown with a triple-formed face that sees the past, present and future simultaneously”. On the Hounds of Love cover, Kate Bush is joined by her two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. A coincidence, but I do like this idea of Bush being like Hecate. That idea of the face seeing the past, present and future. We get that in Jig of Life. The Old Lady represents the future and past. How she was this child who now has children of her own. Speaking to the woman in the sea. The present. I am going to finish off soon. One of the highlights from Hounds of Love, Jig of Life is this stunning song. Many consider it to be quite dark and haunting. I see it as full of light and hope. Kate Bush brought Jig of Life to the stage in 2014 for Before the Dawn. I was not at those shows, so I am not sure how it was visualised. There was pure creativity when recording Hounds of Love. As Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, those who worked on the album felt there was this magic. Mystical, Bardic and Druidic, there was something truly special coming together. “Bush wanted to add another layer of rhythm to ‘Jig Of Life’, and handed Charlie Morgan an array of Irish percussive instruments – the lambeg, the bodhran – and asked him to fill all 24-tracks with the clacking, beating and booming. “Each verse a bit more of me came in, until we ended up with 24-tracks of me playing different drums”, says Morgan. “I came back from that thinking ‘What have I done today?.’ Just on cloud nine from being thrown the gauntlet and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to do something completely different here.’ I think Stuart (Elliott) and I did some of our best stuff we ever did with Kate, because there were no rules or barriers. It was pure creativity”. I will finish up here. From Niccolò Paganini among legendary violinists mentioned in a Never for Ever standout, to this Old Lady – an older version of Kate Bush/the heroine – on The Ninth Wave’s Jig of Life, it again shows the sheer breadth and wealth of Kate Bush’s imagination and brilliance. That is why I love this series…

SO much.