FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Tracks from the Best Albums of 2025 So Far

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: The Last Dinner Party/PHOTO CREDIT: Rachell Smith

 

Tracks from the Best Albums of 2025 So Far

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I wanted…

IN THIS PHOTO: The cover of Perfume Genius’s Glory

to look back on the very best albums of this year so far. I know that we are almost through 2025, and I will name my favourite albums in December. However, there have been some remarkable albums released so far and I am keen to combine songs from them. You would have heard most of the albums in the mixtape at the end of this feature. However, there might be some that you have not discovered. I am including a few of the albums that were shortlisted for the Mercury Prize this year. I think that 2025 has been one of the strongest years for music in a very long time. So many albums that will endure and be talked about a long time from now. I hope that you enjoy the mix of songs from the…

IN THIS PHOTO: The cover of Oklou’s choke enough

BEST albums of the year.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott – Get Ur Freak On

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

 

Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott – Get Ur Freak On

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LAST month…

PHOTO CREDIT: The Gap via Getty Images/Getty Images

Rolling Stone published their list of the two-hundred-and-fifty best songs of this century so far. It is an interesting list, but I wanted to spend time with the song that topped that feature. It is Missy “Misdemeanour” Elliott’s Get Ur Freak On. You can see what they had to say about the song here:

“Missy Elliott dropped “Get Ur Freak On” just in time to rule the radio in the long, hot summer of 2001 — and nothing was ever the same. It was more than just the latest mind-bending Missy smash — it was a challenge, a dare, the sound of Miss E and Timbaland defying everyone else to keep up with the future or get left behind. The dynamic duo from Portsmouth, Virginia, were music’s most radically innovative team, ever since they flipped hip-hop upside down with their 1997 debut hit, “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly).”

But “Get Ur Freak On” was one step beyond, riding a crazed space-bhangra beat. Timbaland warps a tabla hook into head-spinning Dirty South avant-funk, playing the six-note motif on the tumbi, a one-string Punjabi guitar, while the party people go off in Japanese and Hindi. Missy yells her epic “Hollaaaaa!,” commands all freaks to the dance floor, hocks a loogie, and boasts, “I know you dig the way I sw-sw-switch my style!” It was a nonstop freak manifesto that made the musical future sound limitless. And after more than two decades, “Get Ur Freak On” still sounds like the future — everything vibrant and inventive and cool about 21st-century pop is in here somewhere. Holla, forever. —R.S.”.

Released on 13th March, 2001, this classic was written and produced by Elliott and Timbaland for her acclaimed third studio album, Miss E... So Addictive (2001). What makes Get Ur Freak On so different and timeless is that the song utilises Bhangra elements. This is a music and dance form from the region of Punjab, India. Get Ur Freak On is this mix of Hip-Hop and Bhangra. Something that was not common at the time, it was a bit of  revolution. Last year, the BBC published an article that looked inside the making of a game-changing song. It definitely changed the career of Missy "Misdemeanour" Elliott:

“Switching things up had definitely been Elliott's intention. By then in her late 20s, she was already a savvy businesswoman, had founded her own offshoot (The Goldmind) from major label Elektra, and was conscious of the industry pressure surrounding her next move. There was also a sense that while Timbaland's distinctive productions were proving widely influential, they weren't yet getting their mainstream due.

In a 2001 Vibe feature (written by Marc Weingarten), Elliott explained that: "I wanted to do what everybody else is scared to do." She and Timbaland had actually created Get Ur Freak On as an impromptu late addition for what would be her third album Miss E… So Addictive; first, though, she intended to let the track "marinate in the clubs for a while, get a street buzz going". This buzz would blossom into a crossover storm; Get Ur Freak On channelled serious hip-hop caché, worldly flavours, and an instant, all-encompassing pop appeal, as Elliott insisted: "It could be about dancing, the bedroom, whatever. You're cleaning your house? Get your freak on!"

It's also impossible to separate the vivid music from its eye-popping visuals. Elliott had already established a reputation for outlandish videos directed by Hype Williams; the '90s had proved a creatively febrile, increasingly big-budget period for US hip-hop and R&B, but Elliott presented alternative, fuller-figured and fearlessly surreal statements. For Get Ur Freak On, she turned to a new collaborator, video director Dave Meyers, and together they conjured a murky-glamorous world that projected the avant-garde into the prime-time. Meyers told Fortune in 2019 about his initial connection with Elliott: "She reached out to take me to dinner and then took me to see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. We just vibed about perspectives of the world and weird stuff and developed a trust… There are no limits with Missy. The crazier, the better. She tends to respond to interesting movement."

Reaching the mainstream

Get Ur Freak On's urgent dance moves were created by another of Elliott's regular collaborators, visionary choreographer Nadine "Hi-Hat" Ruffin. Elliott's dancers throw shapes in some kind of industrial underworld – crouched on concrete blocks, hanging upside down like bats. The video also spotlights an array of Elliott's established and emerging peers: Timbaland, Busta Rhymes, Eve, LL Cool J, Jah Rule, Nicole Wray. Elliott herself is both queenly and cartoonish: craning her head from her body; swinging from a chandelier; and in one memorably trippy, Matrix-like effect, spitting long-distance into a male dancer's mouth.

The track received international airplay, scoring Platinum success on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, Elliott was emerging as a cover star across publications that had rarely afforded such attention to hip-hop – although she had already been a mainstay in acclaimed street culture and music magazine Touch. "Get Ur Freak On was the song that really took Missy to the mainstream, although R&B fans already knew her from her earlier band Sista, and had the two albums prior to this," says Lawrence Lartey, former contributing editor of Touch, now creative director at Ravensbourne University. "I liked the track, though I did think that everyone was playing catch-up; they'd finally seen how good she is. And it immediately sounded and looked different in the national charts; this wasn't Oasis or S Club 7! It was the age of bling, but also a time where the mainstream was opening up to the offbeat in other acts like Outkast. It was also a precursor to the UK really projecting its own identity in hip-hop and R&B”.

Music Radar published a detailed feature about Get Ur Freak On. It is a song that almost didn’t happen. However, twenty-four years after it was released, it is has gone down as this groundbreaking work of genius. The Bhangra-sampling song is an enduring moment in music history. Small wonder that it was crowned the best song of this century by Rolling Stone. You can feel its influence in music that followed.

“Though instruments like these may not be unfamiliar to today’s listeners, when Timbaland dropped these into a mainstream, major-label hit, it was a groundbreaking decision, opening up the charts to a kaleidoscope of international sounds. “It felt like a watershed moment where, sonically, you feel like the world would never be the same again," DJ and broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake told the BBC last year.

"Certain sections of the press had leaned towards an esoteric orientalism when it came to Asian music," Arthanayake continues. "Then this guy [Timbaland] was African-American, and one of the biggest producers in the world, along with one of the most exciting rappers on the planet, and they incorporated the beats in a way that was commercially viable, not just exotic. It kind of gave Asian producers, and people who used Asian beats, a validation.”

Though the tumbi and tabla hail from Northern India, that’s not where Timbaland discovered Get Ur Freak On’s boundary-pushing sounds. According to WhoSampled, these were lifted from a slightly more pedestrian source: Spices of India, a sample pack from British company Zero-G.

Released in 1995, the library features a “selection of Bhangra rhythms, instruments and vocals”, among them Classic Tumbi Loop 03 and Tomi Tablas 07, two samples that Timbo chopped up, rearranged and pitch-shifted in Get Ur Freak On’s pioneering production.

It wasn’t only Get Ur Freak On’s instrumentation that pushed the envelope, but its melody, too. The song makes use of the Phrygian scale, a musical mode with roots in Ancient Greek music. Though it’s central to Middle Eastern, Indian classical and even flamenco music, the Phrygian mode doesn’t make frequent appearances in Western pop. (When it does, its colourful intervals are often employed to convey a vague sense of darkness or mystery.)

While Get Ur Freak On ultimately became by far the most popular cut from Miss E… So Addictive, the song very nearly didn’t happen. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Elliott revealed that the track arrived at the very end of the recording sessions for the project, when Timbaland believed they already had everything they needed. “I had completed my album, but I kept saying I didn’t feel like it was all the way complete. I felt like a song was missing,” Elliott recalled. “But Timbaland, he kept saying: ‘no, your album is dope. We’re done!’”

Visibly tired and ready to head home at the tail end of a studio session, Timbaland started “bamming” the keyboard, just “hitting anything”, Elliott says. “He was ready to go, and he felt like the album was done, but he hit something and I was like: ‘that’s it, right there.’ He was like, ‘what? What you talking ‘bout?’ I was like, ‘whatever that sound is that you just played’. He just went down the keyboard again and then he finally hit it. I was like: ‘that! That right there!”

Timbaland continued to protest, Elliott says, but eventually she persuaded him to pursue the idea. “He was like: ‘I don’t know why you’re saying this, because your album is done. Your album is hot.’ But I was like, ‘no, let’s work on that’,” she says.

Timbaland eventually relented, looping the tumbi melody with a basic kick pattern for Elliott to record some scratch vocals over. “He just put a kick and the sound in there, and I just went in the booth and did the record," she recalls. "Then he added all the other stuff later when the song was done.”

While we might have Timbaland to thank for Get Ur Freak On’s forward-looking production, it was Elliott’s ear for a hook – and her dogged determination – that brought the song into being. And whether or not you agree with Rolling Stone that Get Ur Freak On is the best piece of music that the past 25 years has produced, there’s no doubt that it’s a landmark release”.

Written and produced with Timbaland, Get Ur Freak On is the standout from the phenomenal Miss E... So Addictive. A chart success around the world, in the year s since it was released, it has been named as one of the best songs ever. Multiple publications have hailed this song as the work of greatness that it is. I hope that this feature gives you more of an insight into Get Ur Freak On. A genius cut from Missy “Misdemeanour” Elliott. I remember when it came out in 2001. It was like nothing I had heard to that point. In the years since, I have lost none of my affection for the song. Rolling Stone naming it the century’s best song is…

FULLY deserved.

FEATURE: Spotlight: ALT BLK ERA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

ALT BLK ERA

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IF you do get the chance to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley

see the Nottingham duo of Nyrobi Beckett-Messam and Chaya Beckett-Messam, then I would thoroughly recommend it. They are known as ALT BLK ERA. One of the most exciting acts and sensational live propositions around, you can check any live dates here. There are a lot of great interviews from this year. I am going to end with one from Music Week, where the duo won the New Artist prize at Music Week’s Women in Music Awards 2025. They have already been recognised by the MOBOs. Rave Immortal was released earlier in the year. I am surprised that the album did not get a Mercury Prise nomination. It has won a score of positive reviews. I shall end with one of them. I am going to start out with Kerrang! from February. They highlighted how the duo won awards and have taken to big stages before their debut album arrived. Also, they discussed “Nyrobi’s experiences of chronic illness, and why their sisterhood is stronger than ever”:

“Since that initial performance in skyscraping footwear, ALT BLK ERA have been on an upward trajectory. Aged just 17 and 20, they’ve already dominated stages at Glastonbury, Download and beyond, and have just dropped their debut album Rave Immortal, which hit Number One on the UK Rock & Metal chart. Rather than being riddled with adolescent angst, however, Nyrobi reveals the record “is about the journey of my disability and coming to terms with it.”

Opening track Straight To Heart deals with “the feelings of isolation that I felt when I first became disabled and noticed that my friends had moved on and left me”, the singer explains, adding that the song, “is about being abandoned”.

Usually songwriting late into the night (as that’s when Nyrobi is most active), putting pen to paper proved to be quite the cathartic experience with lines like, ‘Save me, they left me in the dark / Wasting away under the stars.’

But putting the song out into the world was an even more powerful experience. Despite the older sister initially being in tears when the single was released, she was soon inundated with messages from from fans offering support or telling her how they resonated with the message.

“The release, emotionally, was a little bit daunting, but the support was overwhelming in a positive way,” Nyrobi reflects. “It was worthwhile.”

Symptoms like exhaustion don’t always show up in a way that can be seen, so it can be hard for people who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome to get the support they need from the people around them.

“I still feel like people don't view me as disabled, because it's not a visible disability, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not a good thing,” Nyrobi explains, acknowledging that it can be difficult for those with symptoms like exhaustion to get the support they need. “It's a good thing when they treat me just like a human being and not a different entity, but it's a bad thing when they don't acknowledge that I do have needs and I do need help.”

The second track on the album, Come On Outside, is a brighter follow-up to Straight To Heart – a sister song in both senses – that recounts how Nyrobi’s health improved with Chaya’s support. She says the song is, “about my journey to health and how Chaya helped me through that. So I say Come On Outside is really about our bond as sisters. [We] have a really good relationship, and I'm not sure how rare that is, but it seems to be pretty rare.”

Bandmates are there to share work and ideas, but for Nyrobi, it’s all the more important that she has someone to rely on.

“I think I've been really fortunate in the way that I have my sister… She does a lot of the admin or the day-to-day work. For instance, yesterday, I was just out of it. I was so terribly ill, I didn't get any work done. I just slept the whole day. And it's really unpredictable like that,” she explains”.

There are a few more interviews I want to bring in. Nyrobi Beckett-Messam and Chaya Beckett-Messam spoke with PRS for Music in the summer about bonding with their fans, playing the illustrious and prestigious SXSW, and the importance of funding. They are an inspiring and stunningly talented duo (they play live with a drummer) who are going to go from strength to strength and have a massive year next year:

“Behind the scenes, the pair have become masters at transforming harrowing personal memories and moments of self-doubt into shimmering spectacle. Nyrobi lives with chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition that means pushing herself to be physically or even mentally active can lead to a crash. While touring, she and her sister make adjustments — such as carving out time for Nyrobi to catch up on sleep, staying in 24/7 contact with their team and arriving at venues with ample time to spare — to ensure they can give their all on stage.

Rave Immortal is the result of intense introspection and healing; the record highlights how Nyrobi has spent a long time sitting with her pain and worked to feel peace with herself. The band have performed to rapt festival audiences at the likes of Download, Reading & Leeds and Glastonbury, as well as being selected to represent the UK for the British Music Embassy at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

With a stacked season of summer festivals on the horizon — and an illustrated book project in the pipeline — M caught up with Nyrobi and Chaya for the latest edition of our On The Road series to discuss, in their own words, what it takes to thrive as a live act in 2025.

Nyrobi: ‘At the start of our tour, it was a little overwhelming having a room full of fans singing our words back to us night after night. It's such an odd feeling, especially when you consider how much some of the songs mean to those people in the crowd. The music doesn’t just belong to me and Chaya any more. On the album, we speak about everything from my struggles with my hidden disability to changing friendships, and wanting to go crazy in a rave but not being able to. It just feels surreal seeing how these stories have resonated.

‘The one moment that really stuck out for me, however, was when I spoke with someone who was in a wheelchair, and they just broke down. I was trying not to cry while she was talking about what the album meant to her. Even though it was emotional, I felt really at peace knowing that our music was getting to those that need to hear it. Knowing that our album has potentially changed other people's lives — as well as ours — is amazing.

‘In a way, we learned that we actually need to carve out more time after shows to chat with fans. Connecting with the people who make up the ALT BLK ERA community has become such a big thing for us. Most people can do this while touring day after day, playing back-to-back shows, but there is no chance I would be able to tour if we didn't have days off in between.

‘The funding that we got from PRS Foundation allowed us to do two days of shows and then have a two-day break, so I could actually reset my body and get on with my therapies. It was a privilege to be able to tour knowing that this was an option.’

Chaya: ‘During this downtime, we had to make more [friendship] bracelets because the fans loved them! They sold out by our second show, so we spent hours [in our hotel rooms] making more of them. We even had our band members and their partners getting involved. Otherwise, we spent time on vocal rest and ensuring that Nyrobi got lots of sleep to help combat her chronic fatigue.’

Nyrobi: ‘We mean it when we say that PRS have supported us at every stage in our career, from our first EP [2023’s Freak Show] through to the album, SXSW and even our first ever book. Without the funding we get from PRS Foundation, there would be no tour. They have helped us lay the foundations for our big moments, all of which would probably look a bit shaky without them. If you were to go back in time and we didn't have PRS, ALT BLK ERA would not be the same band we are today.’

Chaya: ‘I remember being shocked when we had the call from PRS Foundation asking us if we wanted to go out to SXSW. That was really big for us, to be able to showcase ALT BLK ERA on an international stage — especially in America! It was amazing to see the fans that had travelled to see us, as well as enjoy shows from artists that we wouldn’t be able to catch otherwise.’

Nyrobi: ‘Crucially, we learned so much at SXSW beyond enjoying the music. We wanted to go there not just to perform, but to really engage in the community and culture of the festival. Part of that meant attending seminars, particularly as we got to Austin ahead of time in order for me to adjust with my chronic fatigue. We learned so much about marketing and different industries that we never thought we could be a part of but aligned perfectly with us”.

I want to head back to January and an interview from Left Lion. They spoke with ALT BLK ERA about Rave Immortal. How this incredible debut has launched into the world and it has been taken to heart by so many. I love how they end the interview by looking ahead to the rest of this year. Could they have imagined they would achieve so much in 2025?! The sky is the limit for them! Make sure they are on your radar:

“I want to talk about Straight To Heart, which is of course a very personal track for you Nyrobi, bravely sharing your battles with chronic illness in recent years. Was writing that song a cathartic process for you?

Nyrobi: I think when we were writing the song, it felt really healing, just to acknowledge this is how I felt and that my feelings were valid… because you can start blaming yourself for things. And we’re not ‘outside people’, so not many people knew in the outside world - it was just me, my sister and my mum in the build-up to the release.

I think on release day, it really hit me that the song was out. It was one thing to put it on Spotify and work on it within the comfort of my own home, but when it released, my heart kind of dropped. I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s actually out and people are actually going to see a side of me that I’ve been hiding for so many years.”

But I think now it's healing knowing that other people can connect with the song as well. Even now, fans will come up and speak to me like, “Oh I heard about your chronic illnesses, I also suffer with them.” So, I was shocked and in bits on release day, but I am glad it’s out now looking back.

I feel you’re one of the bands right at the forefront of this wave of great Nottingham artists getting national exposure at the moment. What would you say it is about the Nottingham music scene that has made it such a successful breeding ground for musicians in recent years?

Nyrobi: I guess I would say it’s the genuine love and support. I never grew up anywhere else so I can’t speak for other places, but there’s just something about Nottingham that feels genuine. Like people speaking to you after the show – it’s just so real.
Chaya: There’s a lot of festivals like Dot to Dot, Hockley Hustle, where you can catch new artists too…
Nyrobi: Yeah, I think it’s that exposure as well. Nottingham allows new artists to start out, grow and be seen regularly. You know with all the venues that we have here at different levels, you can always find someone, which I think is really important. I also just think the people here are nice!
Chaya: They genuinely are!

So you have the album release and the launch show at Saltbox – but what else is on the horizon for 2025?

Chaya: Well, we have a record store signing / acoustic set-up that we’re going to be doing across the UK. Then around April time we have a UK tour that I’m very excited about, which will be our first UK tour!
Nyrobi: A lot of collaborations coming up for 2025 – a lot of big ones as well, like huge! So loads more new music in 2025 – we’re not stopping. We’re not disappearing for three years, we’ll still be here dropping new music throughout 2025, mixed in with festivals. Then we’ll probably be getting ready for album two… but that’s another story!”.

Game-changing women who are making a real impact in the music industry, ALT BLK ERA were richly deserving of the New Artist award. Music Week spoke with them to get their reaction and look back at their path so far. With some new music perhaps arriving very soon, it is an exciting time. Make sure that you get involved with this amazing duo. It does seem a bit baffling that there was no Mercury nod. Maybe they were not submitted. Anyway, I am sure they will be scooping plenty of awards very soon. Nyrobi Beckett-Messam and Chaya Beckett-Messam are phenomenal musicians and role models:

“Congratulations! How does it feel to win?

Nyrobi Beckett-Messam: “Really, really honoured. We know that Music Week and the Women In Music Awards are so respected in the industry, so it feels like a win, not just for us, but for everyone else who's been supporting us on this journey. So it's massive.”

It's tough out there for new artists at the moment – what has your experience been like in terms of trying to break through and make your way?

NBM: “It's been really mixed. We've always been the type of people who march to the beat of our own drum. Coming into the industry, we didn’t know if we would be allowed to continue to do that.”

You won Best Alternative Act at the MOBOs back in February. It’s only the second year that category has existed. How important was it to you to be recognised and that the music you make is represented at events such as the MOBOs? What do you think it says to the industry?

NBM: “First of all, it means so much to already be winning awards [at events] as prestigious as the MOBOs and Music Week's Women In Music. That kind of recognition, so early on in our careers and while we’re still quite young, is not lost on us at all. We really respect that our peers, fans and industry professionals are seeing us and rooting for us, and it makes us even more determined to work hard and show that people were right to back us.

PHOTO CREDIT: Panni Renner

“With respect to alternative and rock music, people often forget that these genres have deep Black roots. Recognition from the MOBOs is powerful because it pushes back against that historical erasure, it reclaims the space, and it broadens what Black music representation can look like. It’s the same way artists like Beyoncé are reminding the world that Black people were always part of country music and culture. It feels like we’re in the middle of historical shifts, and the MOBOs are leading the way in the UK. To be a small part of that through our win in the Alternative category feels incredible!

“For the industry, we think it’s such an exciting moment. Because of the MOBOs’ Alternative category, we’re going to see more artists feeling confident about experimenting with genres that sit outside of the usual musical pathways. So, industry-wise, it’s a time for celebration and it’s a call to action for more work to be done.”

WIM is all about celebration – who are the women in music you'd most like to celebrate and why?

CBM: “I would say our mum. She’s been with us for our whole lives and she was the one who pushed us towards the music industry. It was 2020, we were writing loads of songs and doing covers on YouTube. And then our mother was like, ‘Why don’t you actually try and release a song?’”

NBM: “First she said, ‘Learn about the industry.’ And then it snowballed into this huge career! I’d also say Kanya King, CEO of the MOBOS, is a massive, massive inspiration for everything that she’s done over the years. Also, Alyx Holcombe – we got our first ever Radio 1 play from her and our first year of music was massive.”

What are Alt Blk Era’s biggest ambitions?

CBM: “I would love to collaborate with all my favourite artists. That would be a bucket-list thing. I listen to such a wide range of artists – Stromae, Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga – I don’t know what that would sound like! But it would mean so much to have the opportunity.”

NBM: “Legacy is a big one. Just being able to say, at the end of our career, we’ve changed lives. I want small artists to listen to us and think, ‘Oh, they’re cool. I didn’t realise you could mix all these genres, I didn’t realise you could do this and this.’ We want to bring a new perspective to the industry”.

I am going to end with a review for Rave Immortal. I am going to come back to Kerrang!. If some critics felt Rave Immortal was more powerful Bubblegum Pop than something more Rave-indebted and fierce, there is no denying the potency and sense of power from the album. A declaration that ALT BLK ERA are here and are going to make a big splash! Maybe album number two is already being worked on. They will grows in strength and ability the more music they put out. As it stands, they are very much set for greatness and longevity:

“ALT BLK ERA exploded onto the scene as a fascinating prospect – two sisters with yin and yang personalities taking a hammer to genre boundaries and flying the flag for misfits and weird kids everywhere. Last summer, however, Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam got a little more personal. Onstage at 2000trees, Nyrobi revealed she’s been living with a chronic illness since the middle of the pandemic, which has left her bed-bound, fatigued and in pain. This is the nexus of the Nottingham duo’s debut album, but beyond this showing of vulnerability, the sisters prove that they’re still determined to live loudly.

At first, things look a little darker. Opener Straight To Heart vibrates with a subdued pulse as the sisters recount how Nyrobi’s friends 'Left me in the dark / Wasting away under the stars,' while she was most ill, before the surging alt.rock of Come Out Outside beautifully captures the support Chaya offered her.

From there, the clouds dissolve into a lurid rainbow of sound, but their willingness to delve into sometimes untouched topics remains, and it’s one of their biggest strengths. The fizzing My Drummer’s Girlfriend delves into complicated friendship dynamics, while Hunt You Down’s eerie synth-pop (almost reminiscent of Fame-era Lady Gaga) lends a thrumming edge to an exploration of unhealthy obsession.

ALT BLK ERA’s sound has often remained quite fluid, but as the title of Rave Immortal suggests, they’re committing to the unbridled energy of the illicit warehouse party here. The jittering sounds of drum ‘n’ bass power much of the record and at its best – the fierce Crashing Parties and tongue-in-cheek Upstairs Neighbours – listening while sitting still does not feel like an option. Even with a couple of slightly samey tracks in the second half, the spooky Catch Me If You Can opens a portal to Halloween for three minutes in a clever late album twist.

The exciting part is that this is just the first chapter. They’ve got a foundation for greatness, not to mention a knack for sticky hooks and a giddy playfulness to the way they seem to make whatever the hell they want. It won’t be long before they find a way to outdo themselves”.

I shall end it here. Undoubtably one of the most important new (or emerging) acts around, the fact that ALT BLK ERA have won awards and plaudits so early on is only the start of things! They will continue to grow and dominate. Their music, whilst perhaps not at their absolute peak, is phenomenal and instantly engrossing! I am excited to see where they go and how far they go. Nottingham’s Nyrobi Beckett-Messam and Chaya Beckett-Messam truly deserve…

THE world.

____________

Follow ALT BLK ERA

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Isabel Garvey

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

IN THIS PHOTO: Isabel Garvey, Chief Operating Officer at Warner Music UK (a role which she steps down from at the end of this year), was the winner of Outstanding Contribution at the Women In Music Awards 2025 on 10th October, 2025 at JW Marriott Grosvenor House London/PHOTO CREDIT: Music Week

 

Isabel Garvey

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ONE of the most important events…

PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Louise Bennett

in the music calendar occurred on 10th October. It took place at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House London. I think that more focus needs to be put on the event. Not only because women in music are not celebrated as much as they should be. We do not spend enough time spotlighting and commending the incredible work that women do throughout the industry. At a time when there is still huge imbalance and misogyny. Technical roles and studio jobs. Still dominated by men. Not as many opportunities for girls and women as there should be. In another feature, I will reflect on a scheme FKA twigs is launching. Someone who recognises that women are underrepresented, Saffron is designed to challenge that. You can read more here. The New Artist award winners are Alt Blk Era. I am going to shine a light on them in another feature. For this Modern-Day Queens, rather than highlight an artist, I instead want to talk about Isabel Garvey. It has been announced that she is stepping down from her role as Chief Operating Officer at Warner Music UK. Prior to her work with Warner, Garvey was the managing director of Universal Music's Abbey Road Studios. There is no denying the huge contribution that she has made to music. I am going to come to the Music Week interview with Isabel Garvey. I will come to a couple of other interviews before that. I want to start out with an interview from Music Ally. Isabel Garvey discussed what success means now for artists. Whereas a chart-topping album was a real peak, now things are different. It is more complex and multifaceted. I am really interested in what Garvey says and I wanted to bring in the first parts of the interview:

“Isabel Garvey has been COO of Warner Music UK since May 2023, having previously been MD of Abbey Road Studios (owned by Universal Music Group). Going from where records are crafted to where hits and success have to be minted marks a creative shift, a business shift and a cultural shift.

What shape that success takes, however, depends on your expectations, your scale of investment and what angle you are looking at it all from.

“Success is very different in the world we live in today – or the metrics of success are different,” says Garvey. “An artist’s definition of what success looks like can vary as well.”

Under the ownership of Edgar Bronfman Jr (from 2004 to early 2012), the focus at Warner Music was around multiple-rights deals (or, ideally, 360-degree deals), in a large part a spread bet response to cratering CD sales. That era, says Garvey, is firmly in the past for Warner, outside of a handful of smaller markets. “There is no prerequisite that you must sign up to these things,” she says of current artist contracts. The focus is on recorded music revenues, although that can include partnering on D2C.

“The reality is we probably pick up artists at a lot of different phases,” says Garvey of how acts are signed at Warner. “I can think of a couple of signings we did this year that are super early stage and there are no followers of social media. They are very music-driven signings. Then there are artists where you can see the bubblings of social media picking up on a song or on the artists themselves. And then there’s the signing frenzy around these artists.”

She says that acts must be backed in the long term as the build is longer and harder. Charli XCX, with Brat, is a solid example of that, taking six albums before hitting the mainstream (or what we understand as the mainstream now).

“We’re investing [in acts] at the same rate, if not more, because the media environment and the media landscape is so changed,” she says, arguing the acts can run at a loss for longer than in more impatient times in the past – all in the hope or belief that success is coming. “I think we tolerate the red for a long time.”

She points to Fred Again.. as an act that might not have one of the key success metrics of the past (major chart hits). “But he is streaming incredibly well, building a hugely engaged listener base and selling out stadiums around the world.”

She adds, “We’re investing for the longer term, so we will stick with things. Charli is on album six now. We’re really sticking with artists. It’s not: ‘That didn’t work – goodbye.’ The whole point of A&R is to pivot. We saw some shoots of success here, so let’s pivot towards that and let’s grow that audience”.

Back in May, Music Business Worldwide spoke with Isabel Garvey and asked her to name the songs that define her life. Those that are most important. The Music Week interview I will come to explains why Garvey is so important and influential. Why she richly deserved the Outstanding Contribution award at the Women in Music Awards 2025:

“1) Dave Brubek, Take 5 (1959)

I’m one of four girls, and when I was growing up my dad used to take himself off on a Sunday to listen to jazz on vinyl, it was quite religious for him. Jazz was very much part of the soundtrack to my very earliest days, hearing trumpets and piano coming out of his room while he escaped for a couple of hours!

It brought a kind of calm to the house – which wasn’t always there thanks to there being four girls. I associate it with the smell of print from the Sunday papers, and it’s just a very warm memory for me.

“I still love jazz to this day, to the extent that I’m currently trying desperately to force my eight-year-old to learn the trumpet.”

It also clearly seeped in, because I still love jazz to this day, to the extent that I’m currently trying desperately to force my eight-year-old to learn the trumpet.

There was a lot of music in the house generally. My mum actually grew up in a very classical music environment. And, like I say, my dad was really into his jazz. But then whenever we’d go on car journeys we’d force him to put musical soundtracks on while all four of us sang our heads off.

I think that’s why he needed his Sundays.

3) Corona, Rhythm of the Night (1993)

This takes me back to night clubs, growing up in Dublin and being with all my childhood friends.

This was our song, it was the one where you put your bag down and you went onto the dance floor.

I struggled to pick just one track from that era of dance music, because there was so much of it that we loved.

There was Haddaway, there was Daft Punk, there was Darude… they’re all tracks that take me back to a real time and place and bring me such a lot of joy, still to this day.

“I was at a birthday party recently, this came on and I couldn’t have been happier! It’s amazing the impact one track can have.”

In fact, I was at a birthday party recently and this came on and I couldn’t have been happier! It’s amazing the impact one track can have.

It was a great time to be going out in Dublin, whether to bars that hosted live gigs with DJs coming on after. or the clubs on Leeson Street.

7) The Beatles, Come Together (1969)

Obviously I had to have at least one track with an Abbey Road connection, and this one just seemed perfect.

Running Abbey Road for eight years has been one of the absolute privileges of my life. It’s just a phenomenal place, steeped in history. You still get the goosebumps going up the steps.

Of course its story is so interwoven with the Beatles, and this particular song is from Abbey Road, which is the album that named the studio. Until then, it had always been known as EMI Studios.

The connection between the two is magical, and when you bring people to the studio, the first thing they want to see is Studio Two, the Lady Madonna piano, etc.

These are the fables that the studio is built on, but they’re not fables; they are part of the reality of that building, they’re the result of how the Fab Four – along with Sir George Martin – worked with that studio.

We did a lot of playbacks of Beatles songs, and this is one that we used quite a lot, so it’s ingrained in me as a track that represents my time there.

My time at Abbey Road was full of very surreal moments: I’m in Abbey Road, which is mad enough, I’m running Abbey Road, which is crazy – and now I’m just casually saying hello to Paul McCartney in the corridor!

8) Dua Lipa, Levitating (2020)

I actually feel like I owe a lot to Dua Lipa, for this song and this album. It came out in lockdown when we were all in the depths of depression, a lot of us struggling quite a bit with this unprecedented situation, and then there’s this irresistibly joyful and uplifting album reminding us that we will be back out there at some time in the future.

One thing I did to preserve my sanity in lockdown was go for a run along the Thames, and I would make sure I planted this song halfway through my playlists to lift me and keep me going.

It was the album we all needed. It was kind of a throw back to the eighties, and to the days of disco, so it was both familiar and new – all made even better by a phenomenal voice. It was my salvation”.

I will end with the main interview. When Music Week spoke with its main award winner recently. Someone who has made a huge impact on he music industry, it is fascinating reading her words. What she has accomplished. Also, the question regarding what comes next, as she is leaving her role as Chief Operating Officer at Warner Music UK in December:

“Isabel Garvey has always been someone who is willing to embrace change, who will invest in new technologies, adjust business structures or look for patterns in consumer behaviour. And, days before being presented with the Music Week Women In Music Award for Outstanding Contribution, she turned towards another huge change and announced she would be stepping down from her role as chief operating officer at Warner Music UK in December. 

Garvey informed colleagues that her decision was made following the reorganisation at the major last month when Tony Harlow stepped down as CEO. Under the new framework, Atlantic and Warner Records presidents report to US management, while Warner Music UK’s other teams will be overseen directly by Simon Robson, president, EMEA, Recorded Music. 

“The structure of our UK business has changed quite fundamentally,” Garvey tells Music Week. “I've worked with leadership here to figure out if there's a path for me going forward. But, I think, the structure has changed so much that there isn't much of a COO role anymore. So it felt incredibly logical to step down and think about the next thing. I do wish everyone at Warner, and the new structure, well. I am sure it will be a raving success.”

Garvey’s time at Warner has been full of highs. Since joining in 2023, she has overseen the commercial, legal, business affairs and artist relations teams, as well as Rhino Records UK and The Firepit Studios. This has included restructuring the commercial team and establishing a data and insight team.

“There was always a brilliant data team here at Warner, so it was just about creating easy reference tools,” she says. “It’s almost like a new language of how we communicate with the artists and with the labels, to make sure that the data is actually changing behaviour and really accelerating artists profiles… We have a lot of data scientists who've done really smart work around the correlation between social media discovery and streaming. It has been a really exciting area to be in, it felt very cutting edge.”

Prior to her work as COO of Warner, Garvey was the managing director of Universal Music’s Abbey Road Studios, where, amongst many other things, she launched the legendary venue’s digital production services and Europe's first incubator for music tech innovation. She has also held various other senior roles, including SVP of commercial channels and consumer marketing at Warner Music International and VP of digital at EMI.

So, what’s next?

“I'm very excited about the future,” she says. “I think there's plenty I can still contribute and do and I'd like to be somewhere where I can be the mastermind of that.”

And so as Garvey ponders her next outstanding contribution, we reflect on her story so far...

Firstly, what are your initial reflections on winning the Outstanding Contribution honour?

“It was a huge honour to be in that room and amongst so many incredibly talented women, and to be singled out feels really special. It's brilliant. I love this industry, so to be honoured by the industry is a real, real joy.”

With this award and your impending departure from Warner, is this a time for reflection on your years in the industry?

“Yes, the beauty of this award is it really forces you to reflect on the journey. I mean, my entry into the company was particularly interesting. One of the first things I did was stand in front of a government inquiry on misogyny. That's very apt to bring up for this interview, but that was a baptism of fire. But we liaised with the government and the BPI and did a lot of work on that. We’ve worked with the government on AI challenges and looked at what we need to do to lean into a new government and make sure this industry was set up for growth. I've also done a lot of work with a team here and internally on how we kind of become a lot more strategic, a lot more data-led in terms of our decision making.”

With the likes of Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, PinkPantheress, Rachel Chinouriri and more, Warner acts have been at the heart of a period of female acts dominating the charts and the live circuit. Why do you think these acts are doing so well at this time?

“Personally, I think it's long overdue. Previously we were all terribly concerned that the representation in the charts still wasn’t female enough. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, where we have almost a dominance of female artists who are real lyricists and storytellers. It’s not throwaway pop, it’s relatable and thoughtful artistry.”

In terms of female talent on the executive side, are you seeing enough coming through? Is this something that you've been involved in nurturing?

“Yes, yes, yes.  I personally grew up in an industry where I never had female leadership above me and anyone to model myself against. I've always taken my role very seriously in terms of being hopefully inspirational and definitely a mentor to people coming through. But Tony [Harlow] and I have very purposefully thought about diversity, particularly gender diversity, in the UK team. We have an incredible generation of women that are coming through in numbers. It's not just identifying talent, it is also having the right parental leave in place and nurturing a culture that supports women through all their various life stages. I feel like there's excellent groundwork in place and a generation that's ready to push through.”

How would you describe your own journey through the music business?

“I've been in this industry now for over 20 years, and I have just loved it. I joined it when Napster was stealing the world's music. The parallels with today are quite ironic, it’s strange that we're on the next iteration of that [technological shift with AI]. I've always been at the intersection of creativity and commerce, and the changes that are forcing the business to innovate.”

You started out at EMI, how do you reflect on that time now?

“I joined as the chief of staff at EMI Music. I was working for Alan Levy and David Munns. It was a great introduction, because they were chairman and vice chairman of the recorded music side and they taught me the industry top to bottom. So I got the best schooling you could get. And then I moved into business development. That was the era of ringtones and going over to the West Coast of the US to do ringtone deals with Microsoft. It was a really exciting time, it was that cusp of change again, because at that point only 2% of revenue was digital. Just imagine how far we’ve come.”

And from there you took a job at Warner Music International…

“I ran the European digital business there. That was an era where we talked about 360 degree deals a lot, so it was about expanded rights. But rather than grabbing rights from artists, it was about building capabilities, buying merch companies and live companies, many of whom are still in the portfolio today throughout Europe. I’ve always been very digital and technology leaning in what I’ve been doing. But then I got the call to go and run Abbey Road…”

How exactly did that come about?

“Universal had just acquired EMI and with it Abbey Road. They had really exciting entrepreneurial plans about what you could do with a brand and a place as magical as Abbey Road. I spent seven years there reimagining this place that’s an incredible cultural icon, but working on how to take it outside just being a physical studio in north west London. So we built tech incubators and schools and retail stores, and it became a business with multiple strands, but always with creativity and music production at its core.”

What do you think the future of the industry looks like?

“I wish I had that crystal ball. It feels daunting, but I have no doubt that if the government puts the right legislation in place, if we're smart about how we licence and how we represent artists in this new AI world, then I think there's plenty of opportunity. I think the challenge for all of us is we can see how powerful the technology is, but we don't see what the consumer proposition is just yet. There are so many articles out there at the moment about how disruptive AI can be. But in terms of actual industry uptake, how we use it day-to-day, or how we use it facing our audiences… we’re not there yet. It's kind of like Skype. We all know Skype and video calling now, but it took 10 years for that technology to make sense. So I think it's going to be a journey. Change has just been such a constant in our industry, I have no doubt that we will be able to hold hands with all of the various stakeholders and actually find something that kind of comes through.”

And, speaking personally, what would you like to do next?

“I don’t know… I am definitely the person who is the commercial brain, and I love this beautifully creative business that we work in. I love the clash. It can be really frustrating, but it’s also really rewarding, that clash of creativity and commerce. I'd love to stay in that intersection and find a growth business, a business that has a real energy about doing something different. We're about to hit another phase of serious disruption, so being able to plot something disruptive, disrupting with the disruptors, feels really compelling. It can feel quite daunting, reading the headlines and trying to get our heads around AI in the first instance. How do we market effectively? How can we be really good champions of artists in this world and this landscape? But it brings huge opportunities and new ways of working. Who knows where the next opportunity is?”.

A hugely important figure in the music industry, I wanted to shine a light on the award-winning Isabel Garvey. It will be exciting to see what her next step is and what opportunities lie ahead. The Women in Music Awards 2025 celebrated everyone from Chantal Epp, Semera Khan and Amy Wheatley. I will be spending time with some of these amazing women for future features. However, I did want to spend some time with Isabel Garvey. A modern-day queen and incredible influence and force for good in music, small wonder that she received such a high accolade from Music Week. The amazing and inspiring Isabel Garvey is such…

AN incredible human.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Shivani Day

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Shivani Day

__________

I will start out…

with a couple of interviews from last year before getting to one from this year. They relate to Shivani Day. The Leicester-born, London-based artist released her debut E.P., That Which Is Not, last year. It is a remarkable E.P. and I would urge anyone who has not heard it to check it out. Day has put out a couple of brilliant singles this year. Too Well came out in April. I am new to her music and have only recently discovered her. However, I feel next year will be one where we will see Shivani Day blow up. Loads more interviews and perhaps another E.P. Her music fuses Electronic, Trip-Hop, and alternative R&B music. It is a sonic cocktail that takes from her South Asian heritage. I am going to start out with Wonderland and their interview from last July. Shivani Day talked about the creation of her debut E.P. and what drew her to music:

“Talk us through your musical origins? 

My musical origins start from my father, who played so much different music for me and my sister growing up. One of my earliest memories of music was him pausing songs and asking if we knew what the lyrics meant and then he would proceed to tell us the meaning and often the songs would have social and political meanings. This was quite a big part of my knowledge of music being a tool to get a message across and be used as a way to inform. Music has always been a safe space for me and meant a lot to me and that continued to the point of expression. In 2019 I taught myself how to DJ and was building on that for a few years, then in 2021 I decided to start making my own music and see what I could do. Since then it’s been my life haha.

Who and what inspired you to pursue artistry?

I mean to be honest I’ve always wanted to be this I just never really knew how I would get there and didn’t think someone like me would be able to. I’m just an Indian girl from Leicester, it was not the norm to see someone like me doing this or even attempting it. I think as I started working in the industry as a DJ and then started making more connections I gained a bit of inspiration and thought well if it doesn’t work at least I can say I tried. My good friend Erin said to me before I took the plunge that I could sing and I said I know shyly and it was her reassurance that pushed me to take the plunge back in 2021.

How does your cultural background influence your musical and personal outlook? 

Growing up I would watch and listen to Bollywood movies and South Asian sounds all the time, I used to dance Kathak and Bollywood so it was a big part of my childhood. In terms of my own music I pull from it when it feels right, I normally like to weave certain aspects into all of my music sometimes more overtly and sometimes covertly. It has to feel right for me I don’t force it and definitely don’t do it for the sake of it, my ear is naturally drawn to those sounds due to my upbringing and so it weaves itself in naturally. Also the complexity of the music is something that I really emulate in my own music. I took some open classes for Hindustani and Carnatic vocal last year and it’s something I want to explore deeper.

Congratulations on your new EP! Talk us through the creative process?

Thank you! I’ve essentially been working the EP since I began my musical journey in 2021. A few of the first songs I ever wrote are on it (“Rhetoric”, “Autoflight” & “Sucks to be There”). This EP is me for the last few years figuring things out, my experiences, my observations etc. Ive worked a lot with my 2 close collaborators Sonny (23Sunz) and Minas, I met them both in 2021 and I was very blessed things just clicked and they were very open to letting me steer and my crazy ideas haha. They are both lovely and have been a big part of me growing into the artist I am. I also worked with Earbuds on a track on the EP which was really cool as I had been a fan of his other work for years. I’ve been blessed to be with FAMM and be able to put things out the way I want and to my creative vision, the creative team and my sister who is also my creative director have really been such a wonderful support system in doing so. Shoutout Erea and Jay working with them on my videos for this EP, honestly I do feel blessed to work with so many great and talented people who enjoy my music.

What’s to come from you, this year and beyond?  

Hopefully some live shows, I’m keen to start performing and bringing my EP to life. More music and delving deeper into my artistry and self. I really love the process of making music and figuring out the next parts of the song so right now Im just in the studio putting the next pieces together. I also look forward to DJing again and doing it in a way that’s Shivani Day”.

Before coming to an interview from very recently, I am going to move to one from NOTION from last year. They asked Shivani Day about her music firsts. Within the interview, we hear about her love for Sade and her father’s musical influences. If you have not listened to Shivani Day, then make sure that you connect with her music. She is this astonishing talent that is going to have a very long and interesting career in music. I am excited to see what next year holds in store:

“No one has a sound quite like Shivani Day. Though a fresh face to the scene, she has nailed her artistry down to a ‘T’, blending a bold electronic palette and a sultry R&B smoothness that takes genre-bending to greater heights. Her sound feels modern, suave and an authentic tribute to her South Asian heritage, finely tuned in every note she configures and lyric that she sings.

Despite her newcomer status, Shivani’s voice resonates with an old-school charm that belies her youth. Raised on a diverse musical diet curated by her father—comprising reggae, Chicago house, Latin and jazz—her eclectic tastes swiftly saw her stand out amongst her peers. While pursing International Relations at university, it was there where her passion for music truly blossomed. Teaching herself the ins-and-outs behind the decks, Shivani swiftly became a name in the game, travelling across the UK for sets that included a coveted Boiler Room gig.

Whilst she has moved on from her DJ roots, Shivani still brings her love for electronica into her sound today. In her debut single, ‘Rhetoric’, released this spring, she seamlessly fuses electronica with R&B, incorporating traditional South Asian motifs into the fabric of the genres, whilst infusing the track with hints of sounds that pay homage to her heritage.

First time you fell in love with music?

I think I fell in love with music from inside the womb. I have a few strong early memories of music which really shaped my ear. From the beginning of my life music was always played and my dad would pause songs and explain their meaning. Learning that music can be a tool to help state an opinion or be a means to inform was something that stuck with me.

First song you were infatuated with?

I have two! One is ‘Jealous Guy’ by John Lennon, or as I used to call it, “dreaming of the past”, which my dad used to sing to me every night to put me to sleep. The other is ‘No Ordinary Love’ by Sade, which I’ve heard countless times; the progression and emotion get me every listen.

First time you felt starstruck?

I haven’t, maybe it’s yet to come.

First thing on your rider?

I have never had a rider but it would be tea for sure, english breakfast or a good chai. I need my daily cup of tea around 2/3pm.

First track you play when handed the aux?

It depends on the environment! I’m a particular person, so I always need context. I can never answer these types of questions”.

I am going to wrap things up with CLASH and a new interview from them. We learn that Shivani Day is working on her new project. I am interested to hear what form that takes. I do love how websites like CLASH are spotlighting Shivani Day and introducing her music to new fans. I do think that she is going to be making waves and inspiring people for years to come. Someone that we really need to embrace and celebrate. Her music is among the most distinct and brilliant you will hear:

“Shivani Day might be relatively new to the scene, but her artistic intention already shines in its ambition and creative possibility. Just coming off the success of her singles ‘Too Well’ and ‘Know When You Call’, her music embodies multitudes of being: a melange of cultural identities, a comment on human behaviours, and a duality of past and present.

Day isn’t precious about this, and she empowers her listeners to believe that they can exist in multitudes too. Leading with independence and introspection, these are two words Day has self-subscribed to in her craft. She is most creative in her solitude, and attributes her uniquely independent vision to her space of quiet.

Even more so, independence and introspection stand all the more powerful as a female artist fronting her culture. When I cited the importance of distinctive identity against this backdrop, she reassured me that this was a conversation she would always want to have. As someone who inherently cares about these conversations, she says it’s hard not to implement these thoughts into her music.

“So tell me about the new project you have coming out next!

I’m so excited to talk about this new project. It builds on this idea of dystopia—which I think is quite real. We’re living in a state of dystopia, whether we want to admit it or not. This project is about fusing the ancient with the futuristic. ‘Ancient-futurism’ is a keyword I’m holding throughout this project, and I think it will be a theme in my work moving forward, at least for now. It’s always been part of me, this blend of old and futuristic. I’ve always loved it, especially in the films and sci-fi I watch. Films like Tron really laid the groundwork for me, fusing those two worlds together. But, of course, I’m coming at it with elements of my Indian heritage and more Eastern influences. Some of that is obvious, some more subtle.

My influences and inspirations also come from people like Sade, Grace Jones, Aaliyah. They had such elegance and a strong sense of self. They never compromised on who they were, and that’s something I channel in my work and visuals. One thing I don’t love about things now is how people need to be spoon-fed everything. Art is so subjective and open to interpretation. I want people to think about it and connect with it in their own way. If you attach your own meaning to it, that’s just as valid. For the next project, I want people to pick up on the main themes I’m putting out there, but also really think critically about it. Everything I do is intentional. Even with the sonic elements, everything is thought out. For example, one of the songs we worked on—I had Minas [my producer] add a conch sound, which is something used in Hindu temples. It’s used to call people in and set the tone for prayer. I’m going to put it in an electronic song, with glitches and everything, to bring those worlds together. It’s intentional, again, fusing the ancient with the modern world.

PHOTO CREDIT: Aanaya Ferreiro + Anaya Dayaram

I think being a creative and a woman of colour sometimes means we’re justifying a lot of our identity to other people, but we shouldn’t have to do that. Your music really breaks that mould, and that’s why I love what you’re doing. It’s not on the nose, but it brings out your culture and your interests and you’re just saying, “this is me”.

I’m so happy you get it. I really hope people do too. It’s true that I’m speaking about those things, but like I said, it’s not overly obvious—it’s deeper, and I think that’s something I’ve always loved in music. I’ve always enjoyed songs with hidden meanings, things you have to read between the lines to understand..

Not everything needs to be obvious, and critical thinking is key. I studied International Relations at university, and that was kind of a mix of politics and human behaviour—how humans interact with each other and the world. That definitely influenced my music and the things I wanted to address. Music can be an escape, but it’s also such a powerful tool for saying something real, and I think it’s important to speak about things that matter.

Do you feel like implementing these influences comes quite naturally to you? Or are you quite intentional with it?

I think it comes quite naturally, to be fair. Of course, there are certain points where I put more thought into it, but for the most part, it just flows. With this project, I’m always thinking about how to weave these deeper themes into the music and give it those double meanings and subtle messages. I can’t wait to reflect that in the visuals as well. I’ve been making mood boards and putting together a big project book, like a scrapbook, with printouts and notes. As I move forward with the real-life aspects, like live performances, I’m really keen on immersing myself in that experience. I want people to feel like when they hear my music or see me perform, they’re not just listening to a song or watching a show—they’re learning something about themselves. I want them to question things, maybe discover something new, or at least think critically. I also want to transport them into this world, this blend of ancient and futuristic, a place where even in the dystopia, there’s still hope.

How do you hope to grow as an artist in the next few years?

I really hope to connect with more people who resonate with my music and understand the world I’m trying to create. Building a community is at the core of what I want to do, and I think that’s been the biggest challenge for me so far. I’ve been craving real connections, you know, with like-minded people, and I feel like I’m slowly getting there—especially this year, as I’ve been more consistent with what I’m putting out.

But beyond that, I want to do more live shows, have genuine, real conversations with my audience. I encourage anyone to reach out. I think it’s so important to bring that sense of community and connection back into the conversation, especially when so much of social media feels so disconnected. I’m also excited to work with more producers, particularly female producers, and just keep exploring new creative spaces”.

I will wrap there. The wonderful Shivani Day has had a pretty good year. I think that we will see even more from her next year. Working on a new project – whether that is an E.P., mixtape or album -, maybe that will come out early next year. She is no doubt going to be playing some big stages. I think that everyone needs to listen to Shivani Day. This phenomenal musical talent is…

SOMEONE to be truly proud of.

_________

Follow Shivani Day

FEATURE: Kim Wilde at Sixty-Five: Inside Her Classic, Kids in America

FEATURE:

 

 

Kim Wilde at Sixty-Five

 

Inside Her Classic, Kids in America

__________

I am sort of…

tying two things together. First, the amazing Kim Wilde turns sixty-five on 18th November. I am going inside Kids in America, as this was Wilde’s debut single. I love how Kim Wilde’s eponymous debut album, where Kids in America features, had all the songs written by Kim Wilde, her younger brother Ricky, and her father, Marty Wilde. In fact, it was mostly father-daughter writing the songs. That is the case for Kids in America. Released as a single on 26th January, 1981, it reached number two in the U.K. One of the most successful and remarkable debut singles in music history, Kids in America sold so well in its first week, many suspected foul play because it was not included in that week's chart. A scam. Kids in America, In its first eight weeks of release, sold more than half a million copies in the U.K. alone. It is easy to see why. The song is so infectious that you cannot help but to listen to it again and again! I am going to get to an interview with Kim Wilde, where she said she felt caged in by Kids in America. Artists who are defined by one song or expected to repeat it, it did take on a life of its own. I am starting out with some features about the classic song and how it was made. In 2018, LOUDER published their feature. Speaking with Kim Wilde about the making of Kids in America, it is a fascinating piece. I have included the earliest parts of the interview. An idea of how the seeds were planted:

“Kim Wilde remembers exactly where she was when she stumbled upon the song that would change her life forever. “I’d just left art college in St Albans, and I was half thinking about going on to do a degree, only because I hadn’t found a band,” she tells TeamRock from her home in Hertfordshire. “Actually, one of my main motivations for going to college was to try and start a band, because I heard that could be a good place to start them.”

Having grown up under the watchful eye of British rock’n’roll singer and MBE-awarded songwriter Marty Wilde, Kim’s career in music was as good as set, as was that of her older brother, Ricky. “Ricky had left school at 16 and had been on the road with my dad Marty when he started writing songs. My dad had some studio time he couldn’t make because he’d double booked himself, so he gave the studio time to Ricky.”

That simple administrative mistake ended up sewing the seeds for what would become one of the biggest-selling songs of the 80s. “Ricky went in demoed some songs he’d been writing and ended up taking them to London to meet with several record companies,” recalls Kim. “One of them happened to be Mickie Most’s RAK Records. Mickie recognised very quickly that he had a great talent on his hands with Ricky’s production, songwriting skills, energy and passion for pop music – they were all the things he recognised in himself.”

With Ricky firmly ensconced in Mickie’s favour, Kim sensed an opportunity. “I asked Ricky to ask Mickie if it was okay if I went and did some backing vocals on these tracks that Ricky had done,” she says. “I was trying to row myself in as a backing singer really, which is where my head was at the time. I had a lot of experience with my father in studios and live and I knew how to work with harmonies; it came as second nature to me. So I thought, ‘Right, I’m going to get myself in as a session singer, and then I’m going to get on the circuit’.”

“So obviously I arrived looking as natty as I could,” says Kim. “I remember I had a pair of black red striped pants and an old dinner jacket of my dad’s. At that point I’d already started dyeing my hair, so I basically turned up looking like Kim Wilde, but not realising that at the time.”

As it turned out, Kim wasn’t the only one sensing an opportunity. “Mickie asked Ricky who I was and mentioned something about getting me in with his producers, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who were writing all the hits for Suzi Quatro and numerous others at RAK Records at the time,” says Kim. “They were sort of like the Stock Aitken Waterman team, but it was Mickie Most, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. So Ricky thought, ‘Sod that’. He was determined to impress upon Mickie that he didn’t need other producers, that he was a one-man show.”

So Ricky set about writing the song that would transform both of their careers – but not without inspiring some good, old-fashioned sibling bickering in the process. “He went home that weekend – we were all living in Hertfordshire at this point – and he wrote Kids In America,” recalls Kim. “I remember that happening, because his bedroom was next to mine and he’d got himself a Wasp keyboard –­ the little yellow and black thing – and I was really annoyed by all the noises coming out of his room. It had a sort of pulsing beat which ended up being the intro to Kids In America. That was particularly annoying coming through into my room while I was trying to listen to Joni Mitchell,” she laughs”.

In 2023, Marty Wilde talked to Songwriting Magazine about how he and Kim Wilde wrote Kids in America. It is one of the most enduring hits of the 1980s. One that arrived right near the start of the decade, I still think it is amazing today! It still pops and has this incredible addictiveness. Not so dated and old that it does not fit into modern Pop:

“I’d seen a TV programme which was about a certain batch of young teenagers in America and they frightened the hell out of me, because their attitude was…quite interesting! They came across very single-minded and their attitude was was very hard, which of course, a lot of youngsters can have, at a certain age. But I thought, if the American youth are going to be like that, we’re going to have a third World War in a few months time! So with this song, I said to Rick, ‘That’s the title: Kids In America.’ Then, of course, I had a clear cut picture. I wanted this tough girl who was looking out of a window, looking at the nightlife and people, traffic rushing by and thinking, ‘What the damn hell am I doing sitting here? Let’s get down there, let’s follow the music! Once you are there, you’re in control, in that song. She is in control. It’s not the guy, it’s not the person she’s dancing with, she is in total control. And that’s what I got from watching those American teenagers, I thought that’s what they would be like.

“It came together fairly quickly, really. I mean, Rick is very productive, he’s a very talented writer and he’s full of ideas – we both were – and, of course, Kim’s input was important. We worked in a studio in Hartford with a group called The Enid – I think they’re still in operation. They were a wonderful group of musicians. So whenever we were in their studio, [they would create] whatever sound that we wanted. So if we wanted a French horn, or a bit more synth on this, or a more powerful sound there… They knew they could twiddle the knobs and get it up, so suddenly we had a French horn at the end of Kids In America and we had sirens and a great pulse… They were a very experienced band so we were helped, we were fortunate to have them, so there’s no question that The Enid must take some credit. All the tracks that we did there, which were n Kim’s first album, came very quickly.

“It was one of those those times when I hadn’t really written anything of value and hadn’t been writing at all for some time – I’d probably not written for about five or six years when I started to write this song – so that layoff did me good. Because with lyrics, if you’re talking about love and after you’ve written [so many] songs on love, you start desperately looking around for a fresh angle. So I had the angles, I had fresh ideas and I felt like I was about 20 years old again! And with Rick being a young guy, the whole thing really went through like a dream. As we were finishing one song, he would get a melody line or I would get an idea and we’d be moving on to the next one.

“[With the iconic ‘woa-a-oh’ backing vocal] there was always a gap there but we all thought it should be a vocal ‘answer’ and also something you which you can get a crowd to join in with. It was just a natural chant that came in and it was needed. It comes down to the arrangement, you couldn’t leave [it out] so that tiny little line really fills it up. And when Kim does a concert you can here them all going, ‘Woa-a-ohh!’

“It was like every song that I’ve ever been a part of, when I’m actually writing it, I’m 100 percent up for it. Sometimes you can be very wrong. I’ve been there many times, you can be part of a song that you think, ‘Oh, this is a smash!’ But whatever happens, you go in with that kind of enthusiasm when you’re writing because you need to keep your energy flowing. If you start to doubt yourself, your song will end up on a piece of paper in the corner of a room instead of being out on a record. So yeah, I still get a buzz. Sometimes you write a song you think: why in God’s name wasn’t that a hit? It’s one of those things, there needs to be a gap for a song to be a hit. There has to be a market for it and a bit of luck. [We had] phenomenal luck!”.

There are a couple of other interviews I want to bring in. The Guardian chatted with Kim and Marty Wilde in 2017. A single that was controversial as it sold so fast. Seen as a scam because of its instant success, there is no denying how Kids in America was this titanic thing. It instantly connected with people. I want to include recollections from Kim Wilde:

“My brother Ricky hated school and left at the age of 17. He started writing songs and trying his luck with record companies. He was bowled over by the charismatic Mickie Most at RAK Records and took me along to meet him. I wore my best black-and-red punky trousers and had newly acquired blond hair which, according to one teacher, was the most creative thing I’d done at art school.

Mickie noticed me straight away. He asked Ricky: “Does your sister sing?” Suddenly, Ricky was being asked to write songs for me. He wrote the tune for Kids in America with my dad [the singer Marty Wilde] doing the lyrics. Ricky came up with the melody on a Wasp synth, a little black and yellow thing that made a bloody irritating noise if you were an older sister in the bedroom next door.

We recorded it in a studio in Hertfordshire owned by prog rock band the Enid. It was full of reptiles and other slithery things. The finished song sounded really exciting, but took a year to get released, during which time I worked in a local pub, wondering what was going to happen. When Kids in America finally came out, it sold so fast the people who regulate the charts thought it was a scam. It sold 60,000 copies a day and was only kept off No 1 by Shakin’ Stevens.

As Hertfordshire kids who grew up with Saturday Night Fever, we always imagined American teenagers were having a much better time: going to drive-ins, eating hamburgers, wearing fabulous clothes, snogging really cool kids. The song worked because everyone had the same fantasy.

Four years ago, Ricky and I were coming back on the train after the Magic FM Christmas party. They had all these exotic cocktails, so we’d stayed much longer than we planned. I’d acquired a pair of antlers and, since Rick had his guitar, I said: “Come on, let’s have a sing-song.” A passenger filmed us so there’s this footage of me on YouTube, extremely squiffy, wearing antlers and singing Kids in America. To my amazement, it went viral”.

Kim Wilde has very little but respect and love for her best known song. In 2015, The Guardian spoke with her, and she did say this: “After the 1980s I felt very caged in by “Kids in America”. I put out a more R&B influenced album but the public just didn’t want that girl Kim Wilde doing that. So I got out of the music business. Now I realise what a piece of gold that song is; I feel extremely honoured it’s mine”. I can appreciate she did not want to feel defined by one song. However, it is a gift that keeps on giving. Widely played to this day, she is still out there releasing phenomenal music. Her fifteenth studio album, Closer, was released in January. Writing on the album with Ricky Wilde and his daughter, Scarlett, it is another case of family being at the heart of her music. The same with Kids in America and writing with her father. Even though Marty Wilde is not songwriting anymore, he can look back proudly at one of his greatest moments. As Kim Wilde turns sixty-five on 18th November, I wanted to show proper respect…

FOR Kids in America.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Neil Young at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pfluger for The New Yorker

 

Neil Young at Eighty

__________

BECAUSE the one and only…

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Neil Young turns eighty on 12th November. I am going to come to a career-spanning mixtape featuring so many of his incredible songs. One of the greatest songwriter ever, I am going to focus on Neil Young solo (or him with Crazy Horse too) , rather than his work with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. Before getting there, I am going to bring in some incredibly detailed and deep biography from AllMusic:

“An iconoclast with a large, loyal audience and a long, very successful career, Neil Young has explored a impressive range of styles -- from acoustic introspection and wistful country-rock to blistering hard rock, electronic experimentation, blues, rockabilly, and heartfelt polemics -- while sounding entirely like Neil Young at all times, with his engagingly craggy voice, his flinty sincerity, and unique gifts as a songwriter. Young's creative restlessness is a comfortable match for his prolific nature, and he's not averse to dropping his current fascinations for something else on the drop of a dime, which frustrates some fans but also helps keep his music fresh and full of ideas. Even when he's in relatively familiar musical territory (his electric music with Crazy Horse, his rootsy semi-acoustic work, the intimacy of his solo performances, his thematic albums focusing on life experiences and his take on the world around him), there's a spark of unpredictability that fuels his muse and keeps him in the present day despite a career spanning over seven decades.

Looking back at the blockbuster success of "Heart of Gold," the mellow country-rock tune that became his first number one single and only Billboard Top 40 hit in 1971, Neil Young remarked that the song "put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch." Young wrote this passage for the liner notes of Decade, a double-disc compilation that documented the first part of his career, ten years that took him from the pioneering Los Angeles rock & roll band Buffalo Springfield, through his emergence as a lone folk-rock troubadour and his alliance with Crosby, Stills & Nash, to his noisy, rambling wanderings with Crazy Horse. Over the years, he would tap back into these different sounds and personas, but his avoidance of the middle of the road pushed him into eccentric territory his singer/songwriter peers would generally avoid. Young's willfulness could be as much a hindrance as an attribute -- famously, Geffen Records sued him for delivering albums that were "uncharacteristic" -- but his muse also led to a series of distinctive, indelible records whose legacy sometimes only revealed itself over time; eventually, the electro experiments of 1982's Trans were acknowledged as an artistic achievement, not a commercial disaster. Many of Young's most enduring works arrived in the '70s, when he alternated between such bruised, beautiful introspection as 1970's After the Gold Rush and noisy guitar jams like 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, taking detours for such after-hours decadence as 1975's Tonight's the Night. Young would follow this rough blueprint for years, swaying between noisy rock and intimate folk. Occasionally, his muse led him directly into the cultural zeitgeist, as it did during the 1990s, when he was hailed the Godfather of Grunge and collaborated with Pearl Jam, and he always felt compelled to address social ills, whether it was through his 2006 Iraq War protest album Living with War or The Monsanto Years, a record about the environment made with Promise of the Real in 2015. Even backed only by his guitar or a piano, he could still mesmerize an audience, as on 2025's Coastal: The Soundtrack. Young often returned to his home base of Crazy Horse -- they backed him on efforts like Barn (2020) and the Rick Rubin-produced World Record (2022), and echoes of their noisy approach could be heard on Young's first album with the band the Chrome Hearts, 2025's Talkin To The Trees -- yet despite these constants in his career, he remained a vital, unpredictable presence for decades, challenging himself and his audience.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Neil Young moved to Winnipeg with his mother following her divorce from his sports journalist father. He began playing music in high school. Not only did he play in garage rock outfits like the Squires, but he also played in local folk clubs and coffeehouses, where he eventually met Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills. During the mid-'60s, he returned to Toronto, where he played as a solo folk act. By 1966, he'd joined the Mynah Birds, which also featured bassist Bruce Palmer and Rick James. The group recorded an album's worth of material for Motown, none of which was released at the time. Frustrated by his lack of success, Young moved to Los Angeles in his Pontiac hearse, taking Palmer along as support. Shortly after they arrived in L.A., they happened to meet Stills, and they formed Buffalo Springfield, who quickly became one of the leaders of the California folk-rock scene.

Despite the success of Buffalo Springfield, the group was plagued with tension, and Young quit the band several times before finally leaving to become a solo artist in May of 1968. Hiring Elliot Roberts as his manager, Young signed with Reprise Records and released his eponymous debut album in early 1969. By the time the album was released, he had begun playing with a local band called the Rockets, which featured guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina. Young renamed the group Crazy Horse and had them support him on his second album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was recorded in just two weeks. Featuring such Young staples as "Cinnamon Girl" and "Down by the River," the album went gold. Following the completion of the record, he began jamming with Crosby, Stills & Nash, eventually joining the group for their spring 1970 album Déjà Vu. Although he was now part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, he continued to record as a solo artist, releasing After the Gold Rush in August 1970. The album, along with its accompanying single "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," established Young as a solo star, and fame only increased through his association with CSN&Y.

Although Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were a very successful act, they were also volatile, and they had split by the spring 1971 release of the live Four Way Street. The following year, Young had his first number one album with the mellow country-rock of Harvest, which also featured his first (and only) number one single, "Heart of Gold." Instead of embracing his success, he spurned it, following it with the noisy, bleak live film Journey Through the Past. Both the movie and its soundtrack received terrible reviews, as did the live Time Fades Away, an album recorded with the Stray Gators that was released in 1973.

Both Journey Through the Past and Time Fades Away signaled that Young was entering a dark period in his life, but they only scratched the surface of his anguish. Inspired by the overdose deaths of Danny Whitten in 1972 and his roadie Bruce Berry the following year, Young wrote and recorded the bleak, druggy Tonight's the Night late in 1973, but declined to release it at the time. Instead, he released On the Beach, which was nearly as harrowing, in 1974; Tonight's the Night finally appeared in the spring of 1975. By the time of its release, Young had recovered, as indicated by the record's hard-rocking follow-up, Zuma, an album recorded with Crazy Horse and released later that year.

Young's focus began to wander in 1976, as he recorded the duet album Long May You Run with Stephen Stills and then abandoned his partner midway through the supporting tour. The following year, he recorded the country-rock-oriented American Stars 'N Bars, which featured vocals by Nicolette Larson, who was also prominent on 1978's Comes a Time. Prior to the release of his late-'70s records, Young scrapped both the country-rock album Homegrown as well as future bootlegger favorite Chrome Dreams, and he assembled the triple-album retrospective Decade. All of the songs from these shelved albums would eventually be released in one form or another on various scattered albums as the years went on, and the original forms of each would see proper, official release decades later. At the end of 1978, he embarked on an arena tour called Rust Never Sleeps, which was designed as a showcase for new songs. Half of the concert featured Young solo, the other half featured him with Crazy Horse. That was the pattern that Rust Never Sleeps, released in the summer of 1979, followed. The record was hailed as a comeback, proving that Young was one of the few rock veterans who attacked punk rock head-on. That fall he released the double-album Live Rust and the live movie Rust Never Sleeps.

Rust Never Sleeps restored Young to his past glory, but he perversely decided to trash his goodwill in 1980 with Hawks & Doves, a collection of acoustic songs that bore the influence of conservative right-wing politics. In 1981, Young released the heavy rock album Re*ac*tor, which received poor reviews. Following its release, he left Reprise for the fledgling Geffen Records, where he was promised lots of money and artistic freedom. Young decided to push his Geffen contract to the limit, releasing the electronic Trans in December 1982, where his voice was recorded through a computerized vocoder. The album and its accompanying technology-dependent tour were received with bewildered, negative reviews. The rockabilly of Everybody's Rockin' (1983) was equally scorned, and Young soon settled into a cult audience for the mid-'80s.

Over the course of the decade, Young released three albums that were all stylistic exercises. In 1985, he released the straight country Old Ways, which was followed by the new wave-tinged Landing on Water the following year. He returned to Crazy Horse for 1987's Life, but by that time, he and Geffen had grown sick of each other, and he returned to Reprise in 1988. His first album for Reprise was the bluesy, horn-driven This Note's for You, which was supported by an acclaimed video that satirized rock stars endorsing commercial products. At the end of the year, he recorded a reunion album with Crosby, Stills & Nash called American Dream, which was greeted with savagely negative reviews.

American Dream didn't prepare any observer for the critical and commercial success of 1989's Freedom, which found Young following the half-acoustic/half-electric blueprint of Rust Never Sleeps with fine results. Around the time of its release, Young became a hip name to drop in indie rock circles, and he was the subject of a tribute record titled The Bridge in 1989. The following year, Young reunited with Crazy Horse for Ragged Glory, a loud, feedback-drenched album that received his strongest reviews since the '70s. For the supporting tour, Young hired the avant-rock band Sonic Youth as his opening group, providing them with needed exposure while earning him hip credibility within alternative rock scenes. On the advice of Sonic Youth, Young added the noise collage EP Arc as a bonus to his 1991 live album, Weld.

Weld and the Sonic Youth tour helped position Neil Young as an alternative and grunge rock forefather, but he decided to abandon loud music for its 1992 follow-up, Harvest Moon. An explicit sequel to his 1972 breakthrough, Harvest Moon became Young's biggest hit in years, and he supported the record with an appearance on MTV Unplugged, which was released the following year as an album. Also in 1993, Geffen released the rarities collection Lucky Thirteen. The following year, he released Sleeps with Angels, which was hailed as a masterpiece in some quarters. Following its release, Young began jamming with Pearl Jam, eventually recording an album with the Seattle band in early 1995. The resulting record, Mirror Ball, was released to positive reviews in the summer of 1995, but it wasn't the commercial blockbuster it was expected to be; due to legal reasons, Pearl Jam's name was not allowed to be featured on the cover.

In the summer of 1996, he reunited with Crazy Horse for Broken Arrow and supported it with a brief tour. That tour was documented in Jim Jarmusch's 1997 film Year of the Horse, which was accompanied by a double-disc live album. In 1999, Young reunited with Crosby, Stills & Nash for the first time in a decade, supporting their Looking Forward LP with the supergroup's first tour in a quarter century. A new solo effort, Silver & Gold, followed in the spring of 2000. In recognition of his 2000 summer tour, Young released the live album Road Rock, Vol. 1 the following fall, showcasing a two-night account of Young's performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado, in September 2000. A DVD version titled Red Rocks Live was issued that December, and included 12 tracks initially unavailable on Road Rock, Vol. 1. His next studio project was his most ambitious yet, a concept album about small-town life titled Greendale that he also mounted as a live dramatic tour and indie film.

In early 2005, Young was diagnosed with a potentially deadly brain aneurysm. Undergoing treatment didn't slow him down, however, as he continued to write and record his next project. The acoustically based Prairie Wind appeared in the fall, with the concert film Heart of Gold, based around the album and directed by Jonathan Demme, released in 2006. That year also saw the release of the controversial Living with War, a collection of protest songs against the war in Iraq that featured titles such as "Let's Impeach the President," "Shock and Awe," and "Lookin' for a Leader." Restless, prolific, and increasingly self-referential, Young issued Chrome Dreams II late in 2007 and the car-themed Fork in the Road in 2009. Later in 2009, he finally issued the first installment in his long-rumored Archives series, Archives, Vol. 1, a massive first volume that combined over ten CD and DVD discs in a single box. As he was prepping Archives, Vol. 2, Young entered the studio with producer Daniel Lanois and recorded Le Noise, which appeared in the fall of 2010.

Archives, Vol. 2 was not forthcoming, however, as Young stayed very active during the early 2010s, he finally reunited with Richie Furay and Stephen Stills as Buffalo Springfield for a pair of shows at his annual Bridge School Benefit in the fall of 2010. It wasn't a complete reunion, since bassist Bruce Palmer had died in 2004 and drummer Dewey Martin passed in 2009, but the three singers used drummer Joe Vitale and bassist Rick Rosas to fill in. The same configuration played six concerts in the spring of 2011 but reportedly did no studio work. Young continued going through his archives with the release of A Treasure in 2011, a single-disc set of live tracks recorded during his 1984-1985 tour with the International Harvesters that featured five previously unreleased Young songs mixed in with older songs like "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" and "Are You Ready for the Country?," all done in the classic Harvest style. In 2012, Young reunited with Crazy Horse for Americana, a set of classic folk tunes like "This Land Is Your Land" and "Wayfarin' Stranger," followed several months later by the double-disc album of originals Psychedelic Pill, which again saw Young turning to the guitar garage stomp of Crazy Horse.

In September 2012, Young published his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream. In the book, he wrote at length about his family and career and expressed his frustration with the low sound quality of digital music. Timed with the release of the book, Young announced the founding of Pono Music, originally a new audio format but later simplified to a music player and downloading service designed for audiophiles and listeners who had similar issues with sound quality. A Kickstarter campaign in 2014 raised six-million dollars, one of the largest digitally crowd-funded efforts in history, and the company started shipping the devices in the fall of 2014. On the recording front, Young entered Jack White's Third Man studios in Nashville to cut A Letter Home, a covers album featuring songs from Young's favorite songwriters. Within a few months, he announced another full-length for 2014, Storytone. The album was heralded by the release of an environmentally conscious song, "Who's Going to Stand Up?," that Young had been performing in concert.

Young's passion for environmental causes also informed his next album, 2015's The Monsanto Years, in which he took on the issues of genetically modified crops and agribusiness; the album found him backed by Promise of the Real, a band led by Lukas Nelson, son of outlaw country icon and Young's close friend Willie Nelson. Young and Promise of the Real supported The Monsanto Years with a tour, which became the basis for the 2016 live double-album Earth. Just after the June release of Earth, Young wrote and recorded the protest album Peace Trail, which appeared in December 2016.

Young continued his burst of activity in 2017 with the release of "Children of Destiny." It was the first single from The Visitor, an album recorded with Promise of the Real that appeared in December 2017. The Promise of the Real also supported Young on Paradox, the soundtrack to the Daryl Hannah film starring Young and the band. Also in 2018, Young released two volumes in his Archives series: April saw the release of Roxy: Tonight's the Night Live, which was recorded in 1973, and November brought the release of Songs for Judy, a collection of highlights from his acoustic 1976 tour. Young unveiled another archival release in June 2019, Tuscaloosa, a live set recorded at an Alabama date on the same 1973 tour that produced Time Fades Away.

In May 2018, Young announced he was playing a handful of shows in California with Crazy Horse. Frank "Pancho" Sampedro opted not to perform, and Young recruited Nils Lofgren to join himself, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina for the tour. The concerts proved to be a warm-up for the recording of 2019's Colorado, cut in the titular state during a full moon, with the Lofgren/Talbot/Molina edition of Crazy Horse backing him.

Neil Young continued mining his archives in 2020, unearthing the scrapped 1975 album Homegrown for an official release that summer, with the long-awaited box set Archives, Vol. 2: 1972-1976 appearing at the end of the year; a live 2003 performance called Return to Greendale preceded the box by a few weeks. Just two months prior to the 2020 presidential election, Young released The Times, an EP offering solo acoustic versions of his well-known protest songs along with a cover of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'." In February 2021, Way Down in the Rust Bucket -- a double-disc live album recorded in November 1990 on the Ragged Glory tour -- appeared, followed in March by Young Shakespeare, a live album from 1971. Before 2021 was over, Young issued the first installment of his Official Bootleg Series with Carnegie Hall 1970. Though the second of his two sets at Carnegie Hall had been widely bootlegged over the years, this release offered previously unreleased recordings of the first set, which found Young playing many songs off the then-recently released After the Gold Rush LP, as well as performing tunes that weren't commercially available yet at that point.

Young closed out a busy 2021 with Barn, an album recorded with Crazy Horse; it was the second LP in a row to feature Nils Lofgren, who took over the guitarist role vacated by a retired Frank "Poncho" Sampedro. The Official Bootleg Series continued in May 2022 with the release of three more live sets that had circulated as bootlegs for decades, all presented in upgraded recording quality and packaging: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Royce Hall, and Citizen Kane Jr. Blues 1974 (Live at the Bottom Line). Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Royce Hall were recorded within weeks of each other at separate Los Angeles gigs in 1971, and they included material from After the Gold Rush as well as songs yet to be recorded for Harvest. Citizen Kane Jr. Blues captured an unannounced solo set on a bill shared with Leon Redbone and Ry Cooder in 1974. The show featured performances of songs that would appear publicly for the first time a few months later as part of On the Beach. In July 2022, Young issued Toast, an archival release of a studio album he had cut with Crazy Horse in 2001, which was swiftly followed by Noise & Flowers, a document of his 2019 tour with Promise of the Real.

Later in 2022, Young teamed with Crazy Horse once more to record the new LP World Record. Working with producer Rick Rubin, Young and his band tracked the album live in the studio and mixed the sessions to analog tape, giving the entire record an off-the-cuff energy. Unlike the meat-and-potatoes rock of Barn, World Record experimented with expanded instrumentation, and the songs tended toward themes of environmental conversation and efforts to preserve the Earth. Not long after releasing Barn, the four current members of Crazy Horse issued All Roads Lead Home, a record credited to Molina, Talbot, Lofgren & Young.

Young's archival releases continued in earnest in 2023, starting with two additions to his Official Bootleg Series: the 1973 concert document Somewhere Under the Rainbow and High Flyin', the first official release of his very unofficial band the Ducks, a short-lived group who played a handful of unannounced barroom gigs in 1977. Next up was another installment of the Official Release Series -- this volume featured his comeback of the late '80s and early '90s -- and then the first official release of Chrome Dreams, an album originally intended for release in 1977 and heavily bootlegged over the years. At the end of 2023, Young released Before and After, a live-in-the-studio acoustic set that found him revisiting songs from earlier in his career. In 2024, the live set FU##IN' UP captured Young and Crazy Horse performing songs from their 1990 album Ragged Glory in an intimate concert setting, presented mostly with new titles taken from lyrical fragments within the songs. The album was released as Young and the band embarked on a North American tour.

In 2025, his vault-combing continued with the official release of yet another lost album, material from 1977 sessions entitled Oceanside Countryside. Tracked in Malibu and Nashville, one side of the album found Young playing solo, and the other was full band excursions with Rufus Thibodeaux, Joe Osborne, and drums on one tune by the Band's Levon Helm. Actress and filmmaker Daryl Hannah followed Young on the road with a small camera crew when he set out on a West Coast solo tour (not long after the end of COVID-19 restrictions against live performances), where he focused on some of his lesser-known material. Hannah fashioned the material into a documentary, Coastal, which was given a one-night theatrical release on April 17, 2025. The film's soundtrack album was issued the following day.

In 2024, Young revealed he had formed a new backing band, the Chrome Hearts. The group was full of familiar names -- guitarist Micah Nelson, bassist Corey McCormick, and drummer Anthony Logerfo had all worked with Young before as members of Promise of the Real, while keyboard player Spooner Oldham was a veteran session musician and songwriter who first backed Young on his 1978 album Comes a Time, touring and recording with him periodically ever since. Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts booked an international concert tour to coincide with their first album together, 2025's Talkin to the Trees, an eclectic and free-spirited set that featured thoughtful folk-rock as well as loud, loose-limbed rockers”.

One of the greatest songwriter who has ever lived, this year has been another busy one for Neil Young. A headline slot at Glastonbury and another album, his forty-ninth, was Talkin to the Trees. That was released as neil young and the chrome hearts. To celebrate the approaching eightieth birthday of Neil Young, enjoy this career-spanning mixtape…

FROM a masterful artist.

FEATURE: Spotlight: JayaHadADream

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Rosenbaum

 

JayaHadADream

__________

I am writing this…

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Thacker

ahead of the release of her debut mixtape, Happiness from Agony. That came out on 24th October. After a series of solo singles and collaboration, this is the first big project from one of our most promising and talented artists. I am going to start with an interview from 2023, so we can learn a little more about this incredible musician. I will then bring things more up to date. Left Lion spoke with JayaHadADream. The Nottingham (she was based there for university, but now she resides in Cambridge) Hip-Hop sensation was set to take the world by storm. That course is set and she is making big strides. A debut mixtape will definitely take her music to new fans and nations:

“Raised in Cambridge with Jamaican and Irish heritage, Jayahadadream moved to Nottingham in 2018 to study at university. Since then, her time has been split between the two locations, and we were lucky enough to catch her for a chat in our LeftLion offices while she was visiting our city for the weekend…

A number of bands met and formed while they were at university in Nottingham; think Amber Run, Blondes, and Don Broco, to name a few. Jaya (stage name Jayahadadream) - a rising star in the world of hip hop - also found her voice and sound while studying here, and Nottingham has served as something of an honorary hometown for her ever since. “It has been the most nurturing city for me; this is definitely my city. Most of my big checkpoints have been here,” she says. “It feels like home when it’s not, really.”

This month, Jaya will make a further appearance on Nottingham’s vast festival circuit, headlining Green Hustle in Old Market Square. This is an opportunity she was particularly looking forward to because it aligns with her own personal morals and interests. “I’m so excited, not just because I love the people who are hosting it, but also because I'm vegan myself, so the event very much supports my morals and the things I'm interested in.”

The inspiration behind her stage name, which can now be seen displayed on these festival posters, is a complex one with many layers. “There's a lot of different things that went into it,” she says. “I have a sociology degree and I have a strong sense of justice – I can't help it, being a woman and being mixed race. Ever since I was a kid, in the hallway we had a Martin Luther King poster which had his whole speech on it. Then, at the bottom it said, ‘I had a dream.’

“I used to just naturally say ‘Jaya had a dream’ in my songs a lot, and that's something that seemed to stick with people. It just fits. Actually, people in the industry have tried to get me to change it and shorten it. But Tyler, the Creator is a long name, too!” she laughs. “I like it and I do feel like there's something deep in it now, in my soul.”

With the mention of Tyler, the Creator, I recall a tweet where Jaya said she doesn’t listen to much hip hop herself, despite making it. “I forget that people can read my tweets!” she says with a laugh. “I actually only listen to hip hop thirty percent of the time. I listen to a lot of old music, like Stevie Wonder and David Bowie. If I feel the lyrics, I like it. I think Kendrick Lamar and Nas are my top rappers, but I even listen to Kings of Leon and My Chemical Romance. I also love musical soundtracks, like Les Mis and Rocky Horror.”

Using social media can create a lot of pressure and anxiety for recording artists, but Jaya has established a healthy balance that many find difficult to strike. “At the moment, I'm actually finding social media really fun,” she says. “I have support across the world and that wouldn't happen without social media. There is an anxiety, but right now I don't scroll very much. That’s my biggest piece of advice for other artists: just post, don’t scroll!”

Going forward, Jaya plans to release a single which is more in line with the rest of her discography prior to Top One. “Something that's a bit slower, with more of a story, like my other songs,” she explains. A full EP with Nigerian artist Wasalu is also on the way, which has been two years in the making. “I recorded most of it on Glasshouse Street here in Nottingham, in my old flat,” she says”.

I forgot that JayaHadADream, put out an E.P., Redemption Songs, last year. In any regards, her debut mixtape is still her biggest release. I am interested to see how it is received. I shall come to a recent interview from NME. Before that, in September, CLASH spoke with the amazing JayaHadADream. This is an artist very much primed and ready. There is focus from radio stations in the U.K., though I don’t think she is being talked about as much as she should be. Go and follow her on social media and check out Happiness from Agony:

“Her first EP, ‘Redemption Songs’, helped propel the razor tongued teacher-turned-emcee into a stratosphere of high calibre performers just over a year ago, off the back of winning Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition. The breakout project included sound-defining tracks such as ‘Twiggy’ and ‘Stubborn’, and placed her on the radar of grime and hip hop’s most prolific voices.

Having recently appeared on Frisco’s ‘Owe Me One’ single alongside JME and Flowdan, and stepped up to the plate of Red Bull’s Raise the Bar Cypher with Chip, Kibo and Kasst, her new sparring partners have helped sharpen the 24-year-old’s burgeoning artistry.

‘Happiness From Agony’ feels like the next evolution in an already shining career. Slick lyricism and infectious energy go hand in hand over an intricate array of different production styles. Keeping the vibe of a project consistent over different genres and BPMs is no mean feat, but Jaya and her big name collaborations do it effortlessly.

Over the course of two hours, connecting from Salford’s Media City to Jaya in the comfort of her home in Cambridge, we explored the importance of her matriarchal upbringing, musical influences throughout her life, and the excitement of releasing a new mixtape and going on tour.

What is your earliest memory of music?

We used to listen to Kisstory in the car. One time this song by CeeLo Green and Kelis came on called ‘Little Star’. Even to this day, if I hear that song it makes me so sad and happy at the same time. That was the first time I recognised that I got goosebumps from music.

I used to cry a lot over songs when I was very young, stuff by Michael Jackson, and Damian Marley – ‘There For You’, because it made me happy. I know it sounds weird, but that was the moment when I was like, ‘Oh, there’s something connected between me and this thing’.

What genres and artists do you love and how have they influenced your music?

I like a lot of 80s music. My Mum was born in the 70s, so she grew up on a lot of stuff from then. Artists like Kate Bush, Bowie, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, and Whitney.

My sisters influenced a lot of the stuff outside of hip hop, [they] went through phases of being into Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, artists that really taught me how to write differently.

I also like a lot of alternative music that’s more recent. I like Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tame Impala, and Hak Baker. I just like anything that makes me feel like I believe what they’re saying.

Another thing that people don’t know about me is I actually love a lot of musical soundtracks. I just love anything that draws you in. Rocky Horror Picture Show, I probably know that back to back. Les Mis, Grease, Phantom of the Opera. There are always good stories and good characterisation which I really appreciate.

our lyric writing is so powerful. Where does the inspiration come from?

I’m quite an opinionated person, but I have always struggled to be the loudest in the room. Everything I write is like, ‘if I had a platform, this is what I want to say’.

I was a really shy kid. I barely spoke to anyone for the first three, four or five years of school.

When I first started doing sociology, one of the lecturers said “sociology is just ranting about shit that you hate in society…” To an extent, I feel like my music is me ranting about things I hate, things I love. I’m trying to almost set a philosophy of ‘this is how I see it, this is how I want society to be’.

What are the main differences for you as an artist from ‘Redemption Songs’ to ‘Happiness From Agony’?

I feel like I’ve learned so much. As artists, we drop a song, and then we feel a bit like ‘I gotta be doing the next thing’. I think this time, I’ve taken a lot more time with things. I definitely think more about building a song and making songs more cinematic, almost theatrical.

These days, I send voice notes to myself on WhatsApp when I’m out and about. I spend an awful lot of time working out the first bar these days, the first lyric. I’m becoming a real perfectionist with the pen”.

Whether you would class JayaHadADream as Grime or Hip-Hop, it is clear that this introspective and powerful storyteller is changing the scene. NME wrote how this “genre-hopping excellence and racking up recognition in the grime scene”. The magnificent Jaya Gordon-Moore is someone to watch closely. Her background and rise is so fascinating. How she has come through this academic route and has won plaudits, played on huge stations and is being tipped as one of the most essential artists in British music. The Grime/Hip-Hop queen is ready to take over the world:

“’Happiness From Agony’, her debut mixtape, continues to keep listeners on their toes. Gordon-Moore cites the soulful and syrupy number ‘I Know’ as her favourite track and one of her proudest moments of her career so far. “I don’t think people are expecting a mellow track like that from me,” she reasons. “When I made it, I listened on repeat, which is very rare for me. It gave me the same feelings my favourite songs do, and I’ve never really been able to recreate that. I also sing a lot more on it.”

On ‘The Bank’, she leans into bubbly 2-step production, perfect for dented, checkerboarded party floors and garage raves. By contrast, ‘Repackage’, her collaboration with Capo Lee, trades that bounce for trap-ruptured 808s, giving her space to volley back at haters, “repackage hate back to the sender / I’m Top Five, doesn’t matter what gender,” as she puts it.

It’s no surprise, then, that Gordon-Moore relates to artists being forced to categorise their sound – a struggle for someone who hops effortlessly between styles. “It’s just a collage that I’m tapping into,” she explains. “I can’t lie, being biracial [Jamaican and Irish] means you’re automatically one foot in everything ­– you see things differently.

“There’s also a lot of letting people bring you in. I do a lot of grime and hip-hop, and in my early work, I sang more while I was still finding myself artistically. I see grime as a movement and world, and hip-hop as a genre – it’s hard for me to identify with just one thing.”

As our chat winds down, Gordon-Moore smirks, hinting towards more brewing beneath the surface. The next chapter, she says, is all about taking her new tape on the road. What’s certain is how far she’s come from those university bedroom sessions. “Yeah,” she laughs, “my pen game’s better, my delivery’s better. I’ve actually got people to work with now. I’m just being the best MC possible, regardless of the box I’m put in. I think the kid in me who absorbed and saw so much growing up would be proud”.

I am going to end there. This feature is designed to give an insight into JayaHadADream and who she is. Happiness from Agony will be out by the time this feature is shared, and I know it will be met with acclaim and massive love. It is no less than we’d expect from a wonderful talent who richly deserves huge long-term success. I am fairly fresh to her music, though I can tell that she is the real deal. Go and catch her live if you can. She has some dates coming up, including some in London. I might see if I can get along to one of those. A natural and distinct talent who should be known by all. You do not need to be a Grime/Hip-Hop fan to appreciate and understand her music. For anyone who has not fallen under the spell of JayaHadADream, then go and add her to your playlist. We are going to be hearing and watching her shine…

FOR years to come.

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Follow JayaHadADream

FEATURE: Groovelines: Warren G ft. Nate Dogg - Regulate

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

 

Warren G ft. Nate Dogg - Regulate

__________

I am including this song…

in Groovelines, as Warren G turns fifty-five on 10th November. Perhaps his best-known track is Regulate. That 1994 single featured Nate Dogg. Nominated at the 1995 GRAMMY Awards for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, this track was a huge international success. I will come to features about the classic song. It was interesting reading critical reaction to the song. I am going to move on in a minute. However, Wikipedia collated some critical reviews. I think Regulate has gained in stature and legacy in the thirty-one years since its release:

“James Hamilton from the Record Mirror Dance Update named it a "lovely languid 0-95.3bpm US smash gangsta rap with catchy whistling" in his weekly dance column. Gareth Grundy from Select wrote that songs like 'Regulate' "are smooth jeep beats that even a fully paid-up Klan member would struggle to resist." Charles Aaron from Spin commented, "Funny (or maybe not) how pop's young soul rebels sound more comfortably sincere when they're romancing their gats than when they're sweet-talking their ladies. Guess you gotta start somewhere. Anyway, as a rapper, Warren G's a regular-joe version of childhood bud Snoop Dogg; as a producer, his gangsta fantasyland is even more slickly diminished than big brother Dr. Dre. Imagine a stripped Mothership up on blocks with a fresh paint job”.

I will start out with a feature from Billboard published in 2014. I may repeat some of the details later on, though the fact that this feature has Warren G and Michael McDonald discussing the track makes it worth a read. There are sections of the article that particularly caught my eye. McDonald’s I Keep Forgettin' is sampled in Regulate. Its hook. McDonald says how his kids prefer Regulate over I Keep Forgettin'! He also says how Regulate is this landmark track:

“Michael McDonald had just hit the Lower East Side of the N-Y-C, and while he wasn’t on a mission trying to find Mr. Warren G, fate was about to intervene.

This was 1996 or ’97, and the former Doobie Brother and blue-eyed-soul legend was on his way to a Manhattan studio to work on some tracks. Suddenly, a car rolled up, the window went down, and there was Warren, one of several West Coast rappers and producers instrumental in creating the “G-funk” sound that revolutionized hip-hop earlier in the decade.

In the time it took for the traffic light to change from red to green, the two exchanged compliments like old friends, even though it was their first — and to date only — meeting. Then they went their separate ways.

“The fact that he saw me on the street and recognized me, I thought, was kind of funny,” McDonald tells Billboard.com. “I wouldn’t think of myself as a recording artist that, in his generation, you’d know what I look like.”

Of course, this wasn’t the first time fate had brought the two seemingly disparate musicians together. On April 28, 1994, Warren G and his frequent collaborator, the late Nate Dogg released “Regulate,” a single based largely on a sample from McDonald’s 1982 hit “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).”

Originally appearing on the “Above the Rim” movie soundtrack, “Regulate” became a summer rap anthem, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Every teenager in America knew the words, even if they couldn’t really relate to Warren and Nate’s tale about “hitting the east side of the L-B-C” and getting mixed up in all sorts of inner-city drama.

The song succeeds precisely because of its contradictions— gangsta lyrics combined with Nate Dogg’s lover-man crooning and McDonald’s smoother-than-smooth yacht-rock sound — and that’s down to Warren’s reverence for the source material. Thinking back to that face-to-face meeting with McDonald, Warren downplays the strangeness of their stoplight chat.

At the time, Warren was living in a dingy apartment on Long Beach Boulevard with dog crap all over the floor. He hadn’t yet risen to superstar status like his stepbrother Dr. Dre or good buddy Snoop Dogg — with whom he and Nate had founded the group 213 — but he was a striver. Maybe that’s why he related to the Wild West outlaws in “Young Guns,” a movie he happened to watch one night on VHS. It was a fortuitous viewing, as one line of dialogue — “Regulators: We regulate any stealing of this property, and we’re damn good, too” — caught his ear.

“That was our word: regulate,” Warren recalls. “Oh, we gotta regulate that, or we gotta regulate this.”

Realizing the line would make a great sample — and pair nicely with the McDonald bass groove and melody already swimming in his head — he plugged the VCR straight into his Akai MPC60 sequencer. Lastly, he whistled a riff lifted from Bob James’ 1981 funky jazz-fusion cut “Sign of the Times.” Now all the track needed was lyrics, so Warren called up Nate and told him to come on over.

“Why don’t we do a duet-type song like what Dre and Snoop dig with “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang?'” Warren remembers thinking.

The two went back and forth, Warren penning the first four bars and then passing the pen to Nate. Before long, they’d banged out the first verse and set the scene for the song’s strange, somewhat dreamlike narrative. In the opening lines, our heroes are cruising around Long Beach in separate cars, looking for female companionship. If Warren and Nate had a rough idea of where the story was going next, they didn’t have a chorus”.

I want to come to a feature from Pitchfork that was published in 2014. They talk about “The story of G Funk linchpin Warren G, from his fated break at a bachelor party hosted by Dr. Dre to his debut LP, which soundtracked the summer 20 years ago”. If you have not heard Warren G’s debut album, Regulate... G Funk Era, I would recommend you listen. Pitchfork talk about Nate Dogg and Warren G hooking up. The elegance and simplicity of Regulate. The perfect samples and fusions that make the track so enduring and rich:

“With a marijuantra of “whatever you do, young brother, you best not choke,” Nate Dogg staked his first claim as the most formative hip-hop singer. Had he embarked on a non-secular path, the bowler-hatted Bodhisattva might’ve wound up one the great missionaries of history. Save for Too $hort, it's difficult to think of anyone who could make people lovingly sing such profane things. To a 7th grader growing up in the G-Funk era, the imbalance was obvious: Nate Dogg telling you to smoke weed everyday > D.A.R.E..

“Indo Smoke” peaked at #56 on the Billboard Hot 100, but looped constantly on Power 106, 92.3, and "The Box". It transformed Warren G from a prospective inmate idling around Death Row into a rising prospect. 2Pac became a fan. Searching for his own contribution to the Poetic Justice soundtrack, Warren furnished the future rap martyr with “Definition of a Thug Nigga”. That same session at Echo Sounds in Atwater Village also induced “How Long Will They Mourn Me?”[3]

But nothing anticipated “Regulate”. It ran the summer of '94 with the sort of blockbuster rampage usually reserved for radioactive lizards. The multi-platinum ode from the Above the Rim soundtrack eventually reached #2 on the singles charts. It’s so tattooed into our collective memory that you can pick out any line (“It was a clear black night,” “If I had wings I would fly,” “Nate Dogg is about to make some bodies turn cold”) and the next rhyme is already in your head.

“Regulate” has an elegant simplicity, inasmuch as that’s possible for a song with a plot point hinging on a spontaneous orgy at the Eastside Motel. Warren stitched a loop of Michael McDonald white-linen soul with some whistling from an old jazz record by Bob “Nautilus” James. The cherry on top was the “regulators” speech from Young Guns. The rules were clear: No geeks off the streets, and only people who could earn their keep need apply. You didn’t need to understand the laws to know that they were ones to live by.

In essence, “Regulate” is Nate Dogg and Warren G’s version of “Nuthin But a G Thang”. The narrative revolves around a sliver of Eastside Long Beach: from the neighborhood hub at 21st Street and Lewis to the hourly motels on PCH. You’d have to scrap the entire conceit if you wrote it today, though—Nate Dogg and Warren G wouldn’t need to swerve solo in search of one another, they could just text. But in Motorola pager days, serendipity was possible through Nate catching his best friend in a dice game gone awry, using his marine skills to terminate every attacker, and play seductive Good Samaritan to some curvy girls with a broken car. He said it himself: It went real swell.

By its June 7, 1994, release date, Regulate…G-Funk Era ranked among the year’s most anticipated albums. Most teens didn’t even realize it wasn’t an official Death Row release. I always considered it the last in the Holy G-Funk Trinity, a smooth Sunday cruise to the hydraulic drive-by of The Chronic and Doggystyle. If Dre and Snoop were mythical Gin and Juiced Robin Hoods, Warren was the laid-back younger brother in the sweatshirt—the rap version of Mitch from Dazed and Confused, less intimidating and eager to pass the blunt.

Warren G’s debut received two Grammy nominations, was certified triple platinum, and finished as the year’s fourth most popular rap album—behind Doggystyle, Salt-N-Pepa’s Very Necessary, and the Above the Rim soundtrack (which inevitably sold a million strictly off “Regulate”). During a period where Def Jam and its sister company Rush Associated Labels faced bankruptcy, Warren G’s sales kept the company solvent”.

I might wind up here. Because Warren G is fifty-five on 10th November, I did want to shine a light on that amazing collaboration with Nate Dogg. The lead track from Regulate… G Funk Era, this amazing track was one I first heard when it came out in April 1994. Regulate is one of the best tracks of the 1990s. I think it still sounds completely remarkable and original today. How it has been passed through the generations. One of those indelible songs that stays inside the head, it is a Hip-Hop masterpiece. Undoubtably, this is a gem that is…

ONE of the classics.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Lana Lubany

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Lana Lubany

__________

HERE is a remarkable…

human who is Palestinian-American artist blending Middle Eastern influences with Western sounds. Lana Lubany is someone I have been a fan of for years now. I spotlighted her back in 2022. A lot has happened since then. I am going to bring in a few interviews that have happened since then. It is a terrible time for so many of us but, for someone who has Palestinian heritage and is seeing genocide is Gaza and has connections to the country and people, it must be especially heartbreaking, angering and raw. We need to herald and highlight more artists who bring in sounds of Palestine and sing in Arabic. Whilst the news focuses on Israelis, their struggle and how they are benefiting from a ceasefire, there is very little about those in Gaza. The news speaking about Hamas post-ceasefire and them not disarming. Ignoring the fact that Israeli forces have killed Palestinians since the ceasefire deal. There is this huge bias towards Israel. Very little is being done to reverse this. I want to start out with this feature. An interview with Lana Lubany. She spoke about embracing her heritage, bilingual pop and the richness and importance of Palestinian culture:

“Your music seamlessly blends English and Arabic sounds, creating a unique fusion that reflects your Palestinian-American heritage. How did you decide to integrate both languages into your songs? And what significance does this bilingual approach have for you?

My mom has always encouraged me to sing in English and Arabic because of my Palestinian heritage. My grandmother, who’s American and from New Jersey, also greatly impacted me, blending different cultural experiences into my life.

For the longest time, I didn't want to sing in Arabic. I didn't think it was something I wanted to do, and I felt like I couldn't be successful singing in Arabic - especially in the Western world, where there were no examples to follow. But a few years ago, I hit a breaking point. I had been trying to find my thing for so long and nothing worked. Then a friend told me about someone looking for a girl who could sing in both languages.

I had to talk myself into it because I didn't think I could, but I wrote my first English-Arabic song, and to my surprise, I ended up liking it. There was something special about it. That experience led me to a path of accepting my identity and discovering who I am. I had to go through the tough times of not being true to myself and watering down my personality and cultural identity, but now I'm so glad I did because it led me to embrace who I am fully. Singing in both languages and doing whatever the fuck I want in my music feels incredibly powerful.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Sheppard

It’s so powerful! Growing up with Arab heritage, I had never heard of or seen that. To see that happening now in the Western world is so incredible. I wish I had that as a little girl. It would have changed my thoughts on myself and music in general. It's incredible what you're doing. As a third culture kid, how do you navigate the duality of your heritage and influences in your music so well. How do you balance these two worlds creatively? And what unique perspectives do you bring to your work?

I find it really enjoyable to be creative in a way that hasn't been done before. It's like working on a blank canvas and I love being in the flow of constantly creating. It's surprising how two seemingly unrelated things can end up meshing together. Authenticity is the key. I will never do something that feels gimmicky or inauthentic to who I am, even if it's related to Arab culture or anything else. I stay true to myself while being open to experimenting and not afraid to be different. I want to do more than just follow trends – I want to do my own thing and create meaningful art.

Representing your homeland through your music is a powerful form of storytelling. How do you approach this responsibility, and what messages or narratives do you hope to convey about Palestine through your songs?

I want to show people what we're really like, the true face of us Palestinians, because we have a beautiful culture and we're such generous, giving people. Everything you see about us in the media is very harmful and sad. My role is very specific to me and to my experiences. There isn't a representation for everyone right now out there in the world. It's really important to me to make people feel they don't have to water down their personalities and backgrounds to fit in. You should be proud of where you're from.

I did that at the start of my career, which I feel sad about now.

I can understand, you felt like you wanted to fit in.

You've been a pioneer in representing your culture through your art; what challenges have you faced in this role? And how important is it for you to speak up?

I feel like you don't know someone entirely online. You can't. It's just impossible. And a lot of people are very judgy. They misjudge you based on one thing that you've said or not said, and they don't think about the whole story. Because the internet is so polarising, I've had difficulty navigating social media, especially in the past year.

Not just that, the political situation has been very difficult for me. I had to step back from social media because I didn't know how to navigate it. But now I know that people are going to judge no matter what.

It's important, especially as a Palestinian artist, for you to protect yourself and your mental health. Have you spoken about the adversity and racism you experienced growing up? If you could go back, what advice would you give your younger self to navigate those challenges?

If I could go back, I would tell my younger self so many things. Being Arab is fucking cool. It's the coolest thing in the world, and you should embrace it. Because I think everybody's hating us because they ain't us. Do you know what I mean?

When I look back now as an Arab woman, I didn't even realise how much pop culture is influenced by our music - like Timbaland. All these artists used our beats and our movements. I looked at it through that lens and was like, ‘Oh, my God, we were there all along.’ People were so into our culture. If I had that perspective back then, things would have been different.

I would tell my younger self not to listen to the narrative that's been so loud in the media for the past years. Because it's all storytelling. I've learned so much about how the media can change the narrative, even if they're lying, which is crazy and scary.

I would tell her to accept herself, which is harder said than done. It’s much cooler to be unique and individual and yourself. It's so corny, but it's so true.

I am going to come to some coverage and interviews from this year. However, last year was one where Lana Lubany was on the radar of a selection of music websites. Her YAFA E.P. was released last Hallowe’en. This year has seen her release extraordinary singles, KHALAS and 73T. It is the fact Lana Lubany strives to incorporate, represent and highlight her Palestinian heritage in her work that is a huge reason to be drawn to her. So few artists who sing in Arabic are talked about. It is perhaps more important now than ever that this language and the voices of these artists is discussed. Last September, ahead of her appearance at Germany’s Reeperbahn Festival, Lubany was interviewed by DIY:

“When it comes to discovering music’s most exciting artists, there’s no better place to do it than Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival later this month. As ever, the city will be transformed into Europe’s premier new music hub, with performances coming from some of the buzziest breakthrough acts about – including Lambrini Girls, Soft Launch, Wasia Project, Moonchild Sanelly and more – as well as some more familiar faces for good measure (Swim Deep, Kate Nash, The Lemon Twigs, Rachel Chinouriri, we’re looking at you…).

You’ve had a busy year so far, releasing a handful of singles; how did you want to move forward after the release of ‘THE HOLY LAND’ - did you have a plan of where to go next, or was it much more reactive? 

I definitely had a plan post ‘THL’, but it had to shift due to the unforeseeable circumstances back home that were out of my control. I was experimenting with my sound with the releases that I had lined up, and I almost wanted to surprise people with the versatility I know I’m capable of, whilst also  staying quite reactive to what fans wanted and keeping them in the loop.

We can only imagine that it’s been incredibly difficult this year to be away from your family and home. You mentioned that ‘make it better’, which came out earlier in the year, stemmed from those feelings; without meaning to pry, can you tell us a little more about how challenging it been to stay creative as a Palestinian-American artist in recent months? 

This past year has been beyond difficult. The world was and is burning, inside and out. The basic concepts of humanity have shattered, and this has changed the face of normality. As creative as I always am, there seemed to be no room for art when basic survival was being fought for. I had to take a break to process everything and to give humanity priority, and when I was finally ready and able, I started expressing my emotions and frustration through my art. Everything I wrote this year has my pain and experiences as a Palestinian burned into it.

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Can you tell us a little more about your most recent track ‘PRAYERS’, and what the inspiration was behind it? It has you singing in both English and Arabic - why was it important to explore both languages here?

I wrote ‘PRAYERS’ during a time of desperation as everything fell apart around me, and to advocate for relief of all the pain that’s being inflicted. As a powerless being on this earth, I turned to a higher power to try and understand how this can be happening.

Adding Arabic to my songs is something I’ve been exploring and loving for the past couple of years, and it’s proved to be an important part in me showcasing my full identity truthfully, but during these times it’s felt even more important to me. I feel like my story as a Palestinian, born in her place of origin as a minority, is underrepresented and should be heard, and language is one of the ways I can tell that story.

Is this new material leading to a bigger project? If so, are you able to tell us a little bit about that?

I’m always thinking of the bigger picture when I write, and this new material is definitely building up to something… I’m not gonna reveal too much, but the project incorporates pieces of me and my story, and the role family and home have played in my life. The name of the project is highly personal to me as well! I’m very proud of it”.

It is clear that Lana Lubany has paved the way and changed the game for Arabic-speaking artists in the West. There is now more representation than ever, so Lubany should be hailed for that. However, I still think that the media and music industry needs to do their part more. Show why it is so important that there is more awareness of Arabic-speaking artists and why that is so important. In terms of their stories being told, now is a time in history that they need to be heard and never forgotten. Going back to DIY and their interview from this January. Including Lana Lubany in their Class of 2025, they commended Lubany’s world-building and ensuring that more Arabic voices are heard. Lubany revealed how she wants to let the whole world in. How, also, that she would be releasing a bunch of songs that would hopefully be included on an album. I hope that we hear an album from this remarkable talent next year:

“With Lubany leading the way, it feels like there’s no shortage of Arabic artists finding global stardom right now. Having opened for her friend and viral rapper Saint Levant for a run of sold out shows across Europe earlier in the year, does she feel like the narrative is beginning to shift? “I think there’s definitely a lot more people out there providing people like me representation,” she says. “That part of the world is being explored more through the arts and that’s so cool; suddenly there’s exciting things coming out of the Middle East and its diaspora. I don’t know where it’s going to head but I know it’s going to go far and it’s an honour to be a part of it.”

She also attributes parallels to breakthrough artists in Western culture, with a standout 2024 moment coming when she supported The Last Dinner Party earlier in the year. “I learned so much through watching them perform every night, they’re very inspiring to watch. I love artists who build worlds and it was so fun performing on those big stages to a lot of people who didn’t know me necessarily.”

Having spent so much time on the road this year, Lubany has been able to see the impact her music has had on the Arab diaspora first hand. “I’ve had people come up to me and say that, because of my music, they feel proud to be Arab now,” she muses. “I think that was so beautiful and such a privilege. “I’ve had so many people tell me that they want to learn Arabic through it as well which is really special.”

Given the weight of the ongoing crisis in her home nation, it’s understandable that the shockwaves coming from the Middle East initially brought about a creative pause at the start of the year. “I took a little break; I kind of got a little shaken up by everything going on so I wasn’t able to create in the way that I normally could and I wasn’t able to focus,” Lana says. But after some time for reflection, the musician realised that her art is a form of defiance. “I realise now it’s more important than ever to focus on art and to be telling my story,” she nods. “That’s my way of communicating and that’s my purpose.”

There’s a resulting sense of pride and freedom in her latest EP ‘YAFA’: a love letter to home and her Palestinian culture. The EP is a beacon of hope, celebrating the real Palestine and its people. “It’s important to tell the stories of the things that I’ve seen,” she says. “I love the culture, the people, and I want to bring that representation through. I think you do have to tell real stories of people because we’re not numbers. In the news we’re not humanised and art can really humanise people.”

The most direct way Lubany tells those stories is by leaning into her own family heritage. On ‘YAFA’’s meditative and otherworldly title track, she samples an emotive recording of her own late grandmother discussing her home as a dramatic synth swells around it. “It was really important to me to tell her story within mine because obviously they’re very interlinked,” she smiles. “Family is such an important part of my artistry and my life.”

The release also broaches the struggle around her identity. On the haunting and dramatic ballad ‘I WISH I WAS NORMAL’, one of the very few lines in English yearns, “I wish I was born without something to say”. She says the line came from a particularly difficult time. “I was just wishing I was making songs about normal topics like boys or something,” she explains. “I ended up writing that song which is very vulnerable. It definitely helped me through the healing process that I was going through back then”.

In July, The New Arab spoke with Lana Lubany. They spoke with he about navigating the industry and her career after gaining popularity through TikTok. They also asked about her 2024 E.P., YAFA, and its incredible and powerful title track. If you have not discovered this artist, then make sure the supreme Lana Lubany is on your radar:

“Then there’s the title track, YAFA, which Lana describes as a way of preserving memories, particularly those of her grandmother, who was from Yafa, a city that, like many other Palestinian cities, came under Israeli occupation after the 1948 Nakba.

She shares, “The woman speaking in the song is my grandmother, my teta, from my dad's side. She would always visit us when we lived in Yafa, telling us stories about their grand home. They had a grand piano shipped from Europe, and they would host gatherings where they sang and played together. I was young when she told me these stories, so I wasn’t fully aware, but I remember them clearly.”

YAFA, named after Lana's hometown, incorporates elements of her upbringing and experiences that have shaped who she is today

In sharing this, Lana reveals that the idea for YAFA came to her when she discovered a video of her grandmother telling those very stories.

“I had already created the song when I found that video, and everything just clicked. Her story and mine connected so naturally, it felt like the perfect way to preserve a memory that needed to be shared. It's my love letter to the places that raised me — two places, both of which had an impact on who I am and who I’ve become.”

As for the YAFA visualiser, Lana describes the setting as both simple and powerful: “I’m in a room covered in red material, and the imagery symbolises so much. Everything is covered, with memories scattered on top. There’s a TV that stays off until my grandmother’s story starts, like a news flash interrupting the moment. It’s a video of her," she says.

"Watching the video makes me emotional because it’s so simple, but so powerful. It’s just an older woman sharing her life, and even after all those years, she still remembers where she comes from. And that, to me, is so powerful”.

I have so much respect and love for Lana Lubany. I hope to interview her at some point. I feel next year is going to be her most important yet. For that reason, I was keen to revisit her work. I am going to end there. Go and follow Lana Lubany. Truly, one of the most essential artists in music right now, she is also someone who has helped bring Arabic-speaking music more to the forefront. Her own path is looking bright! I can see her headlining festivals and releasing a string of albums. If you do not know about this American-Palestinian queen, then go and ensure that you…

CORRECT this right away.

___________

Follow Lana Lubany

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Björk at Sixty 

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Vidar Logi (via GQ)

 

Björk at Sixty

__________

ONE of music’s…

IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in 1993 photographed for The Face/PHOTO CREDIT: Glen Luchford

innovators and true originals turns sixty on 21st November. The iconic Björk is one of the most recognisable voices in music history. Her debut album was not 1993’s Debut. Björk released her actual debut album back in 1977. Her most recent, Fossora, was released in 2022. I do hope that there will be more music in the future. I have been a fan of Björk’s since I was very young. I think Debut would be in my top fifty albums ever. It is a masterful and stunning work from the Icelandic artist. As she turns sixty on 21st November, I want to feature a mixtape that is career-spanning and features big tracks and some deeper cuts. I am going to start out with AllMusic and their extensive biography about the legendary and singular Björk:

“A visionary artist who effortlessly blends avant-garde and pop elements, Björk makes music that is as innovative as it is emotional. When the Icelandic singer, songwriter, producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist launched her solo career, she traded the arty guitar rock of her former group the Sugarcubes for dance music and worked with some of the genre's biggest names, including Nellee Hooper, Underworld, and Tricky. She established her new artistic direction with 1993's Debut, an international, multi-platinum hit that she followed with two equally groundbreaking albums: 1995's Post, another wildly successful work that reflected her style at its poppiest even as it fused jazz, industrial, and different flavors of electronic music, and 1997's Homogenic, an uncompromising fusion of strings and fractured beats that foreshadowed her increasingly experimental direction in the years to come. She swung from the daring softness of 2001's Vespertine to the primal vocal textures of 2004's Medúlla, and found new ways to connect humanity, technology, and music on 2011's Biophilia. Later in the 2010s and into the next decade, Björk delivered powerful expressions of loss and renewal with albums including 2015's Vulnicura and 2022's Fossora, both of which reaffirmed her as one of the most influential and distinctively creative talents of her times.

Born in Reykjavik in 1965 to activist Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, Björk spent her early years living in a commune with her mother and stepfather Sævar Árnason, who was a guitarist in the band Pops. She studied piano and flute at the Reykjavik school Barnamúsíkskóli; when she sang Tina Charles' "I Love to Love" at a recital, her teachers sent a recording to Iceland's Radio One that was then broadcast across the nation. A contract with the Fálkinn record label followed, and Björk recorded her self-titled debut album when she was 11. Released in Iceland in December 1977, Björk became a hit within Iceland and contained covers of several pop songs, including the Beatles' "Fool on the Hill."

As the '70s came to a close, the punk revolution changed Björk's musical tastes. She formed the post-punk group Exodus in 1979 and sang in Jam 80 the following year. In 1981, Björk and Exodus bassist Jakob Magnusson formed Tappi Tikarrass, which released an EP, Bitid Fast I Vitid, on Spor later that year; it was followed by the full-length Miranda in 1983. Following Tappi Tikarrass, she formed the goth-tinged post-punk group KUKL with Einar Orn Benediktsson. KUKL released two albums, The Eye (1984) and Holidays in Europe (1986), on Crass Records. During this time, Björk published a book of poetry, 1984's Um Úrnat frá Björk and appeared in her first film, The Juniper Tree (which was released in 1990). When Kukl dissolved in mid-1986, Björk, Benediktsson, and other former members founded the Smekkleysa ("Bad Taste") arts collective, which included the Sugarcubes among its projects. The Sugarcubes quickly became stars within their homeland and were also one of the rare Icelandic bands to achieve international success when their debut album, Life's Too Good, became a British and American hit in 1988. While the band was on hiatus following the Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! tour, Björk pursued other projects, including Gling-Gló, a 1990 set of jazz standards and originals with an Icelandic bebop group called Trio Gudmundar Ingolfssonar, and a collaboration with Current 93. She also wrote her own songs and appeared on two songs on 808 State's 1991 album ex:el, an experience that sparked her love of house music.

After recording and touring in support of the Sugarcubes' final album, 1992's Stick Around for Joy, Björk moved to London and embarked on her solo career. Working with Massive Attack's Nellee Hooper as her co-producer, she combined new compositions with songs she had written as a teenager and drew from influences such as Bollywood, exotica, and jazz as well as electronic music. Featuring contributions from Talvin Singh, jazz harpist Corky Hale and reedist Oliver Lake, Debut -- so named by Björk to underscore its musical fresh start -- appeared in June 1993. It quickly became her most successful project to date: the album earned widespread critical acclaim and reached number two on the charts in Iceland and number three on the U.K. Album Charts. Debut went double platinum in the U.K. and platinum in four other countries, including the U.S., and was certified gold in five other countries. Boosted by an eye-catching Michel Gondry video, the single "Human Behaviour" became a Top 40 hit in the U.K., followed by "Venus as a Boy," "Big Time Sensuality," and "Violently Happy." At the end of the year, NME magazine named Debut the album of the year, while she won International Female Solo Artist and Newcomer at the BRIT Awards; at the 1994 Grammy Awards, Gondry's video was nominated for Best Short Form Music Video.

Björk followed Debut's success with a number of collaborations. "Play Dead," a collaboration with David Arnold recorded for the film The Young Americans, appeared shortly after the album's release and was included as a bonus track on a rerelease. In 1994, she lent her vocals to Plaid's album Not for Threes, co-wrote Madonna's "Bedtime Stories," and appeared in an uncredited role in Robert Altman's film Prêt-à-Porter. She also worked on her second album with Hooper, Tricky, 808 State's Graham Massey, and Howie B of Mo' Wax Records; as her co-producers; her other collaborators included Talvin Singh and Brazilian composer and conductor Eumir Deodato. Recorded in Nassau and London, June 1995's Post further broadened Björk's musical horizons, incorporating industrial, ambient, IDM, trip-hop, and jazz into its bustling portrait of her life after moving to London. Hailed for its fusion of pop and experimental music, the album was another critical success as well as on the charts. Post was a Top Ten hit in over 20 countries (including the U.K., where it reached number two) and peaked at number 32 in the U.S. It was certified platinum in four countries, including the U.K. and the U.S., and was certified gold in four more. Post yielded the singles "Army of Me," "Isobel," "Hyperballad" and "It's Oh So Quiet," the latter of which topped the Icelandic charts and was a Top Ten hit in four other countries. The album's accolades included the Icelandic Music Award for Album of the Year and the Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album, while Björk won the Icelandic Music Awards for Artist of the Year, Female Singer of the Year, and Composer of the Year, and won her second Brit Award for Best International Female Solo artist. Additionally, Spike Jonze's vivid music video for "It's Oh So Quiet," which took inspiration from vintage Hollywood musicals, was nominated for the Best Music Video Grammy award. To support the album, Björk embarked on her first official tour of North America with Aphex Twin, and chronicled the European leg of the tour as well as the making of the album in the book Post. November 1996 saw the release of Telegram, a collection of remixes featuring contributions from LFO, Massey, Deodato, Dillinja, and percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The album reached number 66 on the U.S. charts and peaked at 59 in the U.K.

After the lengthy Post tour and an attempt on her life by an obsessed fan, Björk decamped to Málaga, Spain to work on her next album. Seeking a more cohesive approach inspired by Iceland's landscapes, she combined crunchy beats with sweeping strings and worked with co-producers Mark Bell, Guy Sigsworth, Howie B, and Markus Dravs, the Icelandic String Octet, and Deodato, who contributed additional string arrangements. Arriving in September 1997, the moody, forceful Homogenic was another triumph: Reaching the Top Ten in 15 countries, it was also certified gold in six countries, including the U.S. Along with earning Björk her third Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist, Homogenic was nominated for the Best Alternative Music Performance Grammy Award, while Gondry's video for the single "Bachelorette" and Chris Cunningham's video for "All Is Full of Love" were nominated for the Best Short Form Music Video Grammy Award in 1999 and 2000, respectively.

Early in 1999, Björk started work on Lars von Trier's film Dancer in the Dark, in which she played the main character Selma and wrote and produced the score. At the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, Dancer in the Dark won the Palme d'Or, while Björk was named Best Actress. Later that year, her score for the film appeared as Selmasongs, which included contributions from Homogenic collaborator Bell and "I've Seen It All," a duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke that earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. During the challenging Dancer in the Dark shoot, Björk composed quiet, intricate songs that provided a respite as well as a way to celebrate her relationship with artist Matthew Barney. Written and recorded in Spain, Denmark, Iceland, and New York, Vespertine appeared in August 2001 and included contributions from Barney, Jake Davies, Marius de Vries, Thomas Knak, Matmos, and harpist Zeena Parkins. Winning critical acclaim for its delicate sonics and sensual, vulnerable songwriting, the album topped the charts in five countries including Iceland and was certified gold in six countries; in the U.S., it reached number one on the Top Electronic Albums chart. Vespertine was nominated for the Best Alternative Album Grammy Award and the Icelandic Music Award for Album of the Year, while Björk was nominated for the Best International Female Solo Artist Brit Award. She brought Parkins, Matmos, and a choir of Inuit women with her on the Vespertine tour, chronicling its smaller-scale performances with the 2002 DVD Live at Royal Opera House and the following year's Miniscule. During this time, she also released Family Tree, a box set gathering rarities and previously unreleased material; Greatest Hits, which collected songs chosen by Björk's fans on her website; and Live Box, a set of live recordings and videos from each of her albums.

For her next album, Björk moved away from Vespertine's detailed electronics to focus on the primal power of the human voice. Collaborating with Robert Wyatt, Mike Patton, Rahzel, Japanese beatboxer Dokaka, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq (who also performed on the Vespertine tour) the Icelandic and London Choirs, Nico Muhly and Matmos among many others, she released Medúlla in August 2004. With a title based on the Latin word for "marrow," the largely acapella album earned praise for its experimental approach to the essential qualities of music and vocals. Its global success included placing in the Top Ten of the charts in 19 countries; gold certifications in France and Russia, and silver certification in the U.K.; hitting number one on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart in the U.S.; and an Icelandic Music Award nomination for Pop Album of the Year. Björk also received Grammy nominations for Best Alternative Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the track "Oceania," which she performed at the opening ceremony for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. The following year, she worked with Barney on his film Drawing Restraint 9, acting in it as well as composing its soundtrack. She also appeared in Screaming Masterpiece, a 2005 documentary about Iceland's musical community. Late in 2006, she and the rest of the Sugarcubes reunited for a performance benefitting the band's former label Smekkleysa.

In 2007, Björk's cover of Joni Mitchell's "The Boho Dance," which appeared on A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, preceded the May release of her sixth album Volta. A percussive, playful work, its contributors included Timbaland, Toumani Diabaté, Antony Hegarty, Konono No. 1, and an all-female Icelandic brass section. Reaching the Top Ten in 18 countries (including the U.S., making it her highest-placing album there), it was certified silver in the U.K. Like its predecessor, the album was nominated for Grammy and Icelandic Music Awards. Björk toured in support of Volta for a year and a half, with the 2009 set Voltaic, which was released in sets ranging from a CD/DVD to limited multi-disc and vinyl editions, capturing select performances.

During the Volta tour, Björk continued to work on music, releasing the single "Náttúra" in October 2008. In 2010, she worked with Dirty Projectors on the Mount Wittenberg Orca EP, appeared on albums by Ólöf Arnalds and Anohni, and paid tribute to her late collaborator and friend Alexander McQueen by performing at the designer's funeral and contributing the previously unreleased song "Trance" to the short film To Lee, With Love. That year, she also received the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music along with Ennio Morricone.

Björk's next project, Biophilia, was one of her most ambitious. An interactive exploration of humanity's relationships to sound and the universe that educated its audience about music theory and science, it took shape with the help of engineers, scientists, custom-built instruments, and video game designers. Released as a suite of apps for the iPad and iPhone and on CD, Biophilia arrived in October 2011. A Top Ten hit in six countries, the album once again topped the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart in the U.S. and was nominated for the Best Alternative Album Grammy Award and several Icelandic Music Awards. Bastards, a collection of Biophilia remixes featuring Death Grips and Omar Souleyman, was released in Europe in late 2012 and in the U.S. in early 2013. The Biophilia apps were translated to Android in July 2013, the same month that When Björk Met Attenborough, a BBC Channel 4 documentary with Sir David Attenborough and scientist Oliver Sacks that related Biophilia to humanity's relationship with music, premiered. In 2014, Björk contributed vocals to Death Grips' album Niggas on the Moon. She also continued the Biophilia project with a live concert film, Biophilia Live. Filmed at London's Alexandra Palace and featuring spectacular visuals, it was released theatrically and in DVD and Blu-ray sets that included the live audio on CD. That year, the Biophilia apps were added to the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.

By late 2014, Björk was putting the finishing touches on her next album. Featuring collaborations with Arca and the Haxan Cloak, Vulnicura was released in January 2015 after it leaked ahead of its scheduled March release date. Tracing the aftermath of Björk's relationship with Barney and harking back to the string and beat-heavy sounds of Vespertine and Homogenic, the album earned rave reviews for its powerful emotional impact. Topping the Icelandic charts and reaching number 11 in the U.K., Vulnicura also charted throughout Europe and was a Top 20 hit in the U.S. It won Best Album at the Icelandic Music Awards, and Björk won the awards for Best Female Artist, Best Songwriter, and Best Producer. At that year's Brit Awards, she was named International Female Solo Artist (marking her fifth Brit Award), and Vulnicura was nominated for the Best Alternative Music Grammy Award, her seventh nomination in that category. In March 2015, the Museum of Modern Art launched a multimedia exhibit documenting Björk's career from Debut through Vulnicura. It presented her notebooks, costumes, the instruments created for Biophilia, and videos, including a film for the Vulnicura song "Black Lake" by director Andrew Thomas Huang commissioned by the museum. The book Björk: Archives chronicled the exhibition.

That March, Björk also embarked on the Vulnicura world tour, backed by Alarm Will Sound and percussionist Manu Delago, with Arca joining on theater dates and the Haxan Cloak on festival shows. A series of Vulnicura remixes kicked off in July, with Lotic, Katie Gately, Mica Levi, Rabit, Juliana Huxtable, and Björk herself among the artists reworking the album's tracks. One Little Indian gathered all 12 remixes in a limited edition vinyl set that December, the same month that "Stonemilker" was released as a VR app including a 360-degree video and a string-based mix of the song. An acoustic version of Vulnicura, Vulnicura Strings, arrived at the end of 2015 and featured the viola organista, a keyboard-driven string instrument designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Vulnicura Live, which featured Björk's favorite performances of the album's songs as well as some chosen from her other albums, was given a limited release; wider distribution followed in 2016. That June saw the premiere of Björk Digital, a touring exhibit collecting the VR videos created for Vulnicura (one of the videos, "Notget VR," won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix Award for Real Time Virtual Reality Experience). At the exhibit's Tokyo date, Björk performed "Quicksand" during YouTube's first ever virtual reality live stream broadcast. Starting in September, she performed a small acoustic tour with stops including London's Royal Albert Hall and Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In 2017, Björk reunited with Arca for the follow-up to Vulnicura. The lighter but still complex Utopia, which featured Icelandic and Venezuelan birdsong, an all-female flute section, and lyrics inspired by science fiction and folklore, arrived in November 2017. Charting globally, the album reached number 25 on the U.K. Albums Chart and number 75 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S. Utopia was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, becoming her eighth consecutive nomination in that category and her 15th nomination overall. The album spawned several singles and EPs: 2017's Blissing Me EP featured a collaboration with serpentwithfeet; 2018's Arisen My Senses EP included remixes by Lanark Artefax, Jlin, and Kelly Lee Owens; and the following year's Country Creatures EP collected remixes of "Creatures Features" by Fever Ray and the Knife along with Björk's remix of the Fever Ray song "This Country." Following the initial run of dates in support of the album, in 2019 Björk launched the Cornucopia tour, an ambitious live experience that combined imagery and projections by director Tobias Gremmler and the choir that performed on the album with other musical and visual artists. That year, Björk also shared the stage with Arca, performing "Afterwards," a song that appeared on Arca's 2020 album KiCk 1. She then appeared in Robert Eggers' 2022 film The Northman, marking her first film appearance since Drawing Restraint 9. That September saw the release of her tenth album Fossora. Named for a Latin word meaning "digging" and informed by the 2018 death of her mother, the album combined clarinets, flutes, and strings with choral vocals as well as performances by serpentwithfeet and Emilie Nicolas. The album reached number four on the Icelandic charts and number 11 in the U.K.; in the U.S., it peaked at 100 on the 200 Albums chart and number two on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. Another nominee for the Best Alternative Music Album Grammy Award, Fossora took home the Alternative Album of the Year and Recording Direction of the Year prizes at the Icelandic Music Awards”.

The simply incredible Björk turns sixty on 21st November. I hope there will be celebration and spotlight closer to that date. There is no denying that Björk is an artist in a league of her own! So startingly unique. I was struck by her when I was a child and I am still massively invested. She is also this remarkable actor and someone whose interviews and words are always fascinating, intelligent and compelling. In a wide and very packed music scene, when it comes to those who could rival or match Björk, it is evidently clear that there is…

NOBODY like her.

 

FEATURE: How Could Anyone Be So Lonely? ABBA's Super Trouper at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

How Could Anyone Be So Lonely?

 

ABBA's Super Trouper at Forty-Five

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RELEASED on…

3rd November, 1980, we are about to mark forty-five years of ABBA’s Super Trouper. The band’s seventh studio album, they would follow it with 1981’s The Visitors. That was their final album until 2021’s phenomenal Voyage. I do wonder if ABBA will follow their most recent album. One of their members, Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad, turns eighty on 15th November, so there will be new reason to celebrate. I want to focus on Super Trouper because its iconic title track also turns forty-five on 3rd November. Perhaps my favourite ABBA song – though Voulez-Vous is up there too! -, it is one of several standout tracks from ABBA’s masterpiece. One that includes one of ABBA’s best, The Winner Takes It All. I am going to get to some reviews of the album. Some retrospection inspection. Reaching number one in multiple countries, including the U.K. and their native Sweden, I do wonder if many will assess and revisit the album on its forty-fifth anniversary. Earlier this year, Classic Pop dug deep into an album that is a unanimous band favourite. One that is fully formed, ABBA put aside their differences (for now) to deliver a timeless album:

“Although ABBA’s sixth studio album took its name from the giant spotlight that glared on the band during their live shows, the four members of the group revealed themselves to be super troopers of a different kind, soldiering on through the catastrophic turmoil that was their personal lives to produce their most accomplished album to date.

While Agnetha and Björn had put on an amicable front when announcing their divorce in 1979, the fact that Björn had met his new partner within a week of his split from Agnetha strained their professional relationship considerably. Also, though unbeknown to the public at the time, Benny had also met a new woman, thus signalling the end of his marriage to Frida.

Therefore, at the dawning of the 80s, ABBA was a very different entity to the fun foursome in flamboyant fashions that captivated the world with their infectious Scandi-pop. On Super Trouper, they emerged, battle scars on display, with an album as rich with emotional depth as it is in complex harmonies – the confessional lyrics testament to Björn’s grasp of the English language and his flair for storytelling.

As initial sessions for the album took place in January 1980, Benny and Björn found themselves struggling to write for the new album. As this was the same predicament they had found themselves in with Voulez-Vous, they once again decided a visit to sunnier climes could help to get their creative juices flowing (not to mention a break from the tensions of their home lives) and headed for Barbados.

The trip was short lived, lasting only 10 days, but was a success, in that it resulted in them having written the first two songs for the album, Happy New Year and On And On And On, the former stemming from the idea of writing a musical that they were still toying with.

Feeling they had made progress with the album, they divided their time in the cottage in Viggsö and in their Polar Studio in Stockholm, penning songs for the album.

With half of an album’s-worth of material written, the band completed a tour of Japan in March (which would be their last), before returning to work on the LP in earnest at the end of May.

As work continued, and Benny and Björn felt that the record was taking shape, they revisited a few older ideas they had recorded and, during one particularly fruitful session, came up with the song that became the centrepiece of the album and would be recognised in the fullness of time as ABBA’s masterpiece.

The Winner Takes It All was released as the first single from the album in July 1980 and is an obvious standout. With a visceral lyric about a couple’s divorce delivered with heartbreaking feeling by the person the track was written about, the track is one of those instances which transcends the boundaries of being a throwaway pop song.

As an emotionally spent Agnetha opines the breakdown of her marriage, the song covers the stages of a broken relationship such as denial, shock, wistfulness and self-punishment, asking her ex questions she doesn’t want the answers to, such as: “Does she kiss like I used to kiss you?/Does it feel the same when she calls your name?”

Although Björn has insisted that The Winner Takes It All is not strictly autobiographical about his divorce from Agnetha, in the sense of there being a winner and a loser, the raw, emotional lyrics can only be a subliminal release. He admitted that once the backing track was complete, the song is one the quickest he’d ever written, with the lyrics pouring out of him.

Aside from the lyrics and Agnetha’s delivery, bathed in choral backing vocals and Benny’s simple cascading piano line, the song is notable for its unusual structure, something ABBA had become masters at ever since their biggest hit, Dancing Queen (which begins halfway through the chorus), taught the pair that there are no rules when it comes to writing timeless pop songs.

The Winner Takes It All is by no means the only song on Super Trouper to explore the pain of the breakdown of relationships. As affecting a song, if not so raw, Our Last Summer finds the wistful Frida of Knowing Me, Knowing You reflecting on a summer spent in Paris, reminiscing of “Walks along the Seine/ Laughing in the rain/ Our last summer/Memories that remain”.

There are two more features that I want to bring in before completing. In 2020, to mark its forty-fifth anniversary, PopMatters shared their words about an album that, in their minds, is uneven and has the odd filler track. I think Super Trouper is a classic that is well worth getting on vinyl. If you have not heard it before then do go and spend some time with it. A true classic that I would recommend to everyone. I do hope that we have not heard the last of ABBA when it comes to their incredible music:

“So, where exactly were ABBA in 1980? Not that anyone would have known it, but they were in the final year of their commercial ascension. One year later, The Visitors proved that while their artistic growth was ongoing, their commercial decline had begun. Singles released in 1982 (“Under Attack”, “The Day Before You Came”) registered far lower chart positions than those to which the group had become accustomed, especially in their key markets. 1980, on the other hand, was a banner year for ABBA, with two UK #1 singles and a US #8.

Super Trouper, their seventh album, arrived towards the end of the year with a sleeve that captured them in white-and-cream fripperies, standing in the glare of a large spot-light, surrounded by circus performers. Looking at the accompanying picture-sleeve singles, it wasn’t their finest moment in style terms. The discotheque ice-tones of the Voulez-Vous cover, and the “Summer Night City” video, had almost made them look hip. The Super Trouper-era singles heralded a retreat back to Day-Glo knitwear, fussy flamenco outfits, tight perms, and eye-straining, children’s TV presenter daywear. Some of these photo-sessions have been used for the album’s new inner sleeves (the original inner sleeve, featuring the lyrics against a maroon background, has been moved to the interior panels of the gatefold).

The music was a different story. ABBA were at an exquisite apex. Their lyrics bore witty and heart-rending turns of phrase that might have sounded guileful and over-baked coming from native English-speakers. Every track contained an abundance of celestial harmonies and devastating solo vocals. Underneath was a warm, rich, intricately textured blend of synthesizers and traditional instruments.

ABBA understood that the creative process is dynamic – everything influences everything. The received wisdom – that their sound was formed from schlager and other European influences – ignores how the group wore American inspiration quite conspicuously from the start. Their early hits, like “Ring Ring”, were in the great tradition of the American conveyor-belt pop of 1960s New York. On Super Trouper, it’s “On and on and On”, with its chugging, bar-band sensibility and mildly hedonistic lyric, that is probably the most American moment. It’s not surprising it was chosen as a US single, despite remaining an album track in most other territories.

Another prevalent dismissal of the group contends that they were ‘bubblegum’ – something to file alongside The Partridge Family, Boney M, and the Bay City Rollers. That is partly down to how Andersson and Ulvaeus, grappling with a second language, tended to cleave to perfect rhyme at all costs (“money/honey/funny”), presumably because they cared about craft and were learning as they went along. And it’s partly down to the gently-accented English and gauche apparel of their early years. But to believe that ABBA never transcended bubblegum, you’d have to ignore about 90 percent of their work, which had a far higher purpose.

Take, for example, the delicate art of the divorce song. ABBA had a peculiar flair for it, no matter the angle from which they approached this knotty subject of conflict and unresolved pain. On Abba (1975), they looked at it from the viewpoint of an outsider talking with rather brash concern to a divorced single mother (“Hey Hey Helen”). With “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, one year later, they were tackling it in the first person, with the narrator surveying an empty house that also served as a metaphor for her newly-evacuated marriage.

But it was, of course, on Super Trouper‘s “The Winner Takes It All” that the group perfected this curious sub-genre. It comprises just two melodic phrases. Thanks to the arrangement and production, a trick-of-the-ear is achieved, making the song seem elaborate and operatic. Perhaps it was the group’s most convincing divorce song because it came with the added poignancy of being rooted in experience. The Fältskog-Ulvaeus union had splintered during the creation of Voulez-Vous, the Andersson-Lyngstad marriage unraveling a year later. “The Winner Takes It All” is a dignified heartbreak set to music. The way ABBA put together couplets (“Nothing more to say / No more ace to play”) has a slightly odd, formal quality that betrays the writers’ overseas roots but somehow just serves to make it all the more touching.

Then there’s the iridescent title track, the final song assembled for the LP. The faintly silly “su-pah-pah, trou-pah-pah” backing vocals may invite mockery, but there’s great storytelling here. In the verse, Frida sounds matter-of-fact and listless as she relays the apparent privations, loneliness, and tedium of super-stardom. But this is all a set-up for a joyful chorus in which she imagines the thrill of stepping away from mass adulation and coming to life in a lovers’ tryst. Then comes that glorious, lilting, operatic bridge (“So I’ll be there / When you arrive / The sight of you will prove to me I’m still alive”), foreshadowing the exceptional melody writing that would be unveiled on the following year’s “I Let The Music Speak”.

Analog synths create an icy cathedral of sound for the unforgettable introduction to “Lay All Your Love on Me”, ABBA’s final disco song. Rarely has openly expressed jealousy, and the demand for exclusivity from a sexual partner sounded so slinky and appealing”.

I am going to wrap things up soon. I am going to end by sourcing from this article that noted how the 1970s party was over. Super Trouper marked the start of a more introspective era. The four-piece were “retooling themselves for a new decade”. Although there is some stiff competition, I do think that Super Trouper is ABBA’s best album. I can see why the group hold it in such regard. After a difficult and strained time, this seemed like something or a revival or rebirth. A slightly different sound for them, there is so much to love about Super Trouper:

“Across a tight 10 tracks, Super Trouper is like a greatest hits sampler, showcasing all the styles that made the group so successful. “The Winner Takes It All,” regularly voted the people’s favorite ABBA record, and a Top 10 hit in every major market, is the ballad that they never truly bettered. Drenched in pathos, it featured Agnetha’s greatest vocal performance and has been claimed as her favorite ABBA track.

The ballads dominate the album. “Happy New Year,” once earmarked for wide single release until the title track emerged, is a melancholic choker that effortlessly captures that messy moment when the clock strikes midnight. “Our Last Summer” again bathes us in a sentimental haze of melancholia; no one does happy-sad songs as well as ABBA, and the schlager foundations underpinning so much of their work are very evident here.

On “Super Trouper,” the last track to be recorded, but released as the album’s second single, the band’s classic European pop sound found its latter-day peak. In the UK, it proved to be their ninth, and final, chart-topper to date.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. The exuberant roar of the dance classic “Lay All Your Love On Me” showed the band still knew how to get us out of our seats. This ahead-of-its-time anthem topped the Billboard dance charts and still fills floors to this day. Lighter fare such as “Andante Andante” and “Me And I,” meanwhile, proved that the standard album material ABBA produced remained leagues ahead of the competition.

Live track ‘The Way Old Friends Do,” lifted from their 1979 tour, closed Super Trouper and, in many ways, sums up the mood of the record. With personal and professional turbulence surrounding them, the four-piece retrenched into a safe place – focusing on simpler pop sounds familiar to the faithful. In time, the urge for experimentation would return but, for now, they remained content to be fixed in the spotlight that gave the album its name… just as long as the beam was a bit dimmer.

After all, it had been one hell of a party…”.

I am going to end it there. The title track is perhaps my favourite from Super Trouper. It is a song that I heard as a child and has stayed with my ever since. As both that single and the album it came from turn forty-five on 3rd November, I wanted to spend some time with an album that was to be one of the last ABBA made before a long time away. After releasing Voyage in 2021, many see this as a new phase for them. I do hope there is more from them. 1980’s Super Trouper is an album that will continue to resonate…

FOR generations more.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Mariah Carey

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: Ethan James Green for ELLE 

 

Mariah Carey

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THIS time around…

for The Great American Songbook, I am focusing on an artist who is among the greatest of all time. The sensational Mariah Carey just released her sixteenth studio album, Here for It All. It has won acclaim and been hailed as one of her best albums in years. I put out a playlist of Mariah Carey songs last year but, with a new album out, I want to revise that. Drill down to twenty essential Mariah Carey tracks. Before getting there, I want to reintroduce a biography from AllMusic:

“One of the best-selling artists of all time, Mariah Carey is known for her stunning five-octave vocal range and a hit-laden songbook that spans soul-rooted contemporary R&B, pop, and adult contemporary. An elastic talent who has easily moved from glossy ballads to hip-hop-inspired dance-pop throughout her career, Carey earned early comparisons to Whitney Houston and Céline Dion, yet distinguished herself by co-writing almost all of her own material from the start. All four singles off her multi-platinum debut album, Mariah Carey (1990), topped the Billboard Hot 100, beginning with "Vision of Love," which also led to Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. Each one of her proper studio albums, including the diamond platinum releases Music Box (1993) and Daydream (1995), as well as the Grammy-winning The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), has peaked within the Top Five of the Billboard 200, promoted with smash hit singles that either set or adapted to contemporary pop production trends with solid songwriting at the core. By the time she released Caution (2018), Carey was one of only six artists with two songs in the upper half of Billboard's All-Time Hot 100 Songs (namely the record-breaking "One Sweet Day" and "We Belong Together"). Shortly thereafter, she hosted her first Christmas special, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" became the first holiday single to earn a diamond platinum certification, and she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. A handful of archival releases and sold-out residencies preceded Here for It All (2025), her self-released 16th studio album.

Born in Huntington, New York, on March 27, 1969, Carey moved to New York City at the age of 17 -- just one day after graduating high school -- to pursue a music career. There she befriended keyboardist Ben Margulies, with whom she began writing songs. Her big break came as a backing vocalist on a studio session with dance-pop singer Brenda K. Starr, who handed Carey's demo tape to Columbia Records head Tommy Mottola at a party. According to legend, Mottola listened to the tape in his limo while driving home that evening, and was so immediately struck by Carey's talent that he doubled back to the party to track her down.

After signing to Columbia, Carey entered the studio to begin work on her 1990 self-titled debut LP. The heavily promoted album was a chart-topping smash, launching four number one singles: "Vision of Love," "Love Takes Time," "Someday," and "I Don't Wanna Cry." Overnight success and Grammy wins in the categories of Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female (for "Vision of Love), made expectations high for the follow-up, 1991's Emotions. The album did not disappoint, as the title track reached number one -- a record fifth consecutive chart-topper -- while both "Can't Let Go" and "Make It Happen" landed in the Top Five. Carey's next release was 1992's MTV Unplugged EP, which generated a number one cover of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There." Featured on the track was backup singer Trey Lorenz, whose appearance immediately helped him land a recording contract of his own.

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In June 1993, Carey wed Mottola in a headline-grabbing ceremony. Months later, she released her third full-length effort, Music Box, which became her best-selling record to that point. Two more singles, "Dreamlover" and "Hero," reached the top spot on the Hot 100. After her first tour and a break, she resurfaced in 1994 with a holiday release titled Merry Christmas, scoring a seasonal smash with "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Released in 1995, Daydream reflected a new artistic maturity. The first single, "Fantasy," debuted at number one, making Carey the first female artist and just the second performer ever to accomplish the feat. The follow-up, "One Sweet Day" -- a collaboration with Boyz II Men -- repeated the trick, and remained lodged at the top of the Hot 100 for a record 16 weeks.

After separating from Mottola, Carey returned in 1997 with Butterfly, another staggering success and her most hip-hop-flavored recording to date. #1's -- a collection featuring her 13 previous chart-topping singles as well as "The Prince of Egypt (When You Believe)," a duet with Whitney Houston effectively pairing the two most successful female recording artists in pop history -- followed late the next year. With "Heartbreaker," the first single from her 1999 album, Rainbow, Carey became the first artist to top the Hot 100 in each year of a decade; the record also pushed her ahead of the Beatles as the artist with the most cumulative weeks spent atop that chart.

After signing an $80 million deal in 2001 with Virgin -- the biggest record contract ever -- she starred in her first film, Glitter, and made her label debut with its attendant soundtrack, which went platinum thanks to the single "Loverboy." Virgin and Carey parted ways early in 2002, with the label paying her $28 million. That spring, she found a new home with Island/Def Jam, where she set up her own label, MonarC Music. In December, she released her ninth album, Charmbracelet, her first proper studio album to go merely platinum rather than multi-platinum.

The Emancipation of Mimi, her most successful work in years, appeared in 2005. It climbed to multi-platinum status and earned Carey three Grammy Awards -- Best Contemporary R&B Album and, for the single "We Belong Together," Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song -- thus restoring her status as a megastar. Two weeks before the release of her subsequent album, 2008's E=MC2, Carey scored her 18th number one hit with "Touch My Body," a feat that pushed her into second place (and past Elvis Presley) among all artists with the most chart-topping singles. That hit song, along with the late April news that she had married Nick Cannon, kept her in the spotlight that year.

Carey went back to work fairly quickly, and in 2009, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel -- featuring collaborations with the-Dream, including the Top Ten hit "Obsessed" -- became her 12th studio album. The following year, Carey released her second Christmas album, Merry Christmas II You. She gave birth to twins in 2011, and within a year was performing again and judged the 12th season of American Idol. The Miguel collaboration "#Beautiful," the lead single to her next album, was released in 2013 and went platinum. Me. I Am Mariah: The Elusive Chanteuse, her first album for Def Jam, followed in 2014 and debuted at number three.

Between releases, Carey started a residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which ran from January 2015 to July 2017 and showcased all 18 of her number one singles. She also made appearances on the small screen, directing a Hallmark Channel movie, A Christmas Melody, and guest starring on Empire. On the big screen, she lent her talents to 2017's animated The Lego Batman Movie and the hit comedy Girls Trip. After the conclusion of a summer co-headlining jaunt with Lionel Richie, she debuted a new Vegas residency, which commenced in July 2018.

Caution, an album featuring appearances from Slick Rick, Blood Orange, and Ty Dolla $ign, arrived five months later as her first release for Epic. A number five hit, the LP yielded the number seven adult contemporary single "With You," Carey's collaboration with DJ Mustard. Carey celebrated the 30th anniversary of her debut throughout 2020. She published her memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, and issued a number of archival projects. Among these were digital reissues of her singles (including the remixes), The Live Debut: 1990 (a recording of a New York club performance), and The Rarities (previously unreleased material spanning her career). A streaming holiday program and soundtrack, Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas Special, premiered in December 2020 and found the singer performing with a variety of guests, including Ariana Grande, Tiffany Haddish, and Jennifer Hudson. Included on the soundtrack was a re-recorded version of Carey's song "Oh Santa" featuring Grande and Hudson.

The following year, Carey headlined a second holiday special, Mariah's Christmas: The Magic Continues, on which she debuted her song "Fall in Love at Christmas" with Khalid and Kirk Franklin. Also that year, she was featured on the song "Somewhat Loved" from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis' album Jam & Lewis: Volume One. In 2022, Carey was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and she published her first children's picture book, The Christmas Princess. She was also featured on a remix of Latto's song "Big Energy," which featured a reworking of her 1995 hit "Fantasy." A concert special, Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to All!, aired that December.

In February 2023, her 2009 song "It's a Wrap" gained a second life after going viral on TikTok, leading the singer to release an EP featuring the song. That September, Carey issued the three-disc Music Box: 30th Anniversary Edition, which included a remastered version of the original album along with previously unreleased tracks and mixes. The following year she examined her 2018 song "Portrait" as part of Audible's Words + Music series. Titled Portrait of a Portrait, it included the re-released single along with a new house remix. 2024 also saw a special 30th anniversary deluxe reissue of Carey's enduring holiday album, Merry Christmas, which made its annual re-entry onto the Billboard 200.

Following a May 2025 release of a 20th anniversary edition of The Emancipation of Mimi, Carey released "Type Dangerous" as the strutting lead single off her 16th studio album, Here for It All. Containing a sample from Eric B. & Rakim's "Eric B. Is President," the song cracked the Hot 100 and was followed a month later by a second single, the dancehall-influenced "Sugar Sweet," featuring Shenseea and Kehlani. The album, Carey's first to be released through her own label, Mariah, arrived that September”.

One of the legends of the music world, Mariah Carey will continue to release amazing albums. It will not be long until we hear the perennial classic, All I Want for Christmas Is You. I will end the mixtape with that song. However, I will also do a career-spanning look at the career of an artist like no other. One who has inspired so many others. Possessed with an incredible gift, Carey has this sensational voice that is…

BEYOND compare.

FEATURE: “If I Only Could, I’d Make a Deal with God”: Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and War Child

FEATURE:

 

 

“If I Only Could, I’d Make a Deal with God”

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and Michael (now Misha) Hervieu in the video for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and War Child

__________

JUST when you thought…

IN THIS IMAGE: Midnight Wave by Maggi Hambling/ART CREDIT: Maggi Hambling

Kate Bush’s kindness and brilliance could not increase, there is this new piece of news that adds new layers and dimensions to her charitable side. Rather than Bush asking people to donate to War Child, she has asked for something special from people. I shall come to those details in a minute. We are seeing a ceasefire unfold. Rather than it being a ‘conflict’ or ‘war’ like BBC and other news channels keep saying – which shows a bit of a bias towards Israel -, it is genocide. The BBC spent so long covering the release of the Israeli hostages, it was pretty unseemly. Showing that they have time for Israel and are very much predisposed to them and their experiences rather than the unimaginable suffering of those in Gaza. Hardly any time spent with them and how this ceasefire affects them. People, especially children, throughout the besieged Gaza have been killed or starved. It is a time when they desperately need support and aid. The same for those in Ukraine ravage by Russian violence. As Hounds of Love turned forty on 16th September, I was wondering if Kate Bush would pay tribute or do anything. For War Child, she has tied in to the album by highlighting lyrics from its best-known song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). The words, “If I only could, I’d make a deal with God”, are very powerful. They mean specific things in the 1985 track. How men and women could make a deal with God to swap places so they can better understand one another. For this charity endeavour, Bush is asking visual artists to use those words and have them in mind when creating artwork.

IN THIS IMAGE: Detail from Child of War by Peter Doig, one of the pieces in the auction/COMPOSITE CREDIT: Peter Doig

The Guardian explains more about an idea that hopefully will raise a lot of money for War Child. Kate Bush once more at the forefront when it comes to charity and a cause very dear to her. Last year, she released the video for Little Shrew (Snowflake) to raise awareness and funds for War Child. It was a brilliant moment. She is always concerned and moved by what is happening across Ukraine and Gaza:

“Kate Bush and artists harness power of Running Up That Hill for War Child appeal

Musician invites 52 UK visual artists to create works based on song lyric to raise money for children affected by war

Kate Bush is harnessing the power of her global hit Running Up That Hill in collaboration with leading names in British art to raise money for children caught up in global conflicts.

The singer-songwriter invited 52 visual artists to respond to her lyric “If I only could, I’d make a deal with God” from her 1985 anthem. One of her best-loved songs and hailed as “one of the greatest songs of all time” by Rolling Stone, it became a hit all over again in 2022 when it featured in the fourth season of the US TV series Stranger Things.

Maggi Hambling, once described as the “original bad girl of art” and Peter Doig, whose paintings have sold for millions, are among those to contribute works interpreting the lyric for the fundraiser Sound & Vision, named after David Bowie’s 1977 hit. All the works will feature in an online auction, from 28 October to 13 November, with starting bids at £100, to raise money for the charity War Child, which protects, educates, and stands up for the rights of children living in war zones.

Announcing the project, Bush said: “All wars leave horrific scars; ruined lives, families ripped apart, life-changing injuries, trauma, and loss on a massive scale – but it’s the children who suffer the most in so many ways. Their past, present and future melt away into fear and uncertainty.

“It is more important than ever we support War Child and their invaluable work providing immediate aid to children caught in conflict all over the world including in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Syria. Projects like Sound & Vision harness the power of art and music to make a real difference to children living through war.”

Bush follows in the footsteps of Bowie as a supporter of War Child. Bowie helped curate a fundraising exhibition for the charity in 1994 called Little Pieces from Big Stars, which 30 years later was the inspiration for the first Sound & Vision last year with artists responding to the lyric “We like dancing and we look divine” from his song Rebel Rebel.

IN THIS IMAGE: And If I Only Could I’d Make a Deal With God by Susie Hamilton/ART CREDIT: Susie Hamilton

The curator Gemma Peppé, the founder of Art on a Postcard, said Bush’s lyric had “prompted some great contemporary artists to produce some vibrant and evocative work”. She said Doig had asked if he could take part. “I nearly fell off my chair. That’s a testament to the great work War Child does.”

Charlotte Nimmo from War Child UK, which is present in a number of active conflict zones including Ukraine and Gaza, said: “We are delighted to announce that Sound & Vision is returning, this year inspired by lyrics from the incredible Kate Bush. This is made possible thanks to the immense generosity of both Kate and her team, as well as the iconic artists that are creating and donating pieces inspired by Kate’s lyrics.

War Child’s Sound & Vision 2025 will be exhibited at Iconic Images Gallery from 4-8 November. The online auction takes place from 28 October to 13 November via Givergy”.

It is great that there is this full circle moment. The Sound & Vision exhibition is inspired by the title of David Bowie’s song from 1977’s Low. In 1994, a couple of Kate Bush’s art pieces were part of a War Child exhibition. David Bowie took a fancy to her work. A hero of hers, it must have been a shock and honour that his eye was drawn by her works, Someone Lost at Sea Hoping Someone in a Plane Will Find Them, and Someone in a Plane Hoping to Find Someone Lost at Sea. Those titles relate to Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave. When Bush/the heroine was lost at sea and in need of rescue. Bowie didn’t end up buying the pieces, though it was this very special moment that she will not forget.

Now, over thirty years since David Bowie was compelled by Kate Bush artwork that was inspired by the second side of Hounds of Love, Kate Bush has this initiative and incentive with lyrics inspired by a song from the first side of Hounds of Love. It is a shame that David Bowie is not with us to see this happen. I wonder whether Kate Bush will be involved with War Child more. She has been involved with charity so much through the years. War Child on multiple occasions. This is a charity that is particularly important. Given the genocide and violence that is still going, it is more important now than ever to shine a light on their work. Raising much-needed funds. For the remainder of the year, I think we will hear a message of two from Kate Bush. The Christmas message in December. Maybe she will announce something or provide an update. It has been quite a busy and varied year for Bush. I wonder what 2026 holds in store. It is Kate Bush’s constant commitment to charity that is one of her most impressive and commendable qualities. Putting back into the spotlight her most-streamed and loved song, there is this constant life with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). It is a track that has this influence and pull. A power that has made different impacts through the years. Now, these amazing visual pieces are being created around the words “If I only could, I’d make a deal with God”. Baring in mind War Child and the work they are doing. The images we are seeing in Gaza, Ukraine and other nations affected by violence (including Myanmar, Sudan and Syria). Yet another amazing act of innovation, kindness and humanity from…

A genius and icon.

FEATURE: Sheer Electricity: The Avalanches’ Since I Left You at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Sheer Electricity

 

The Avalanches’ Since I Left You at Twenty-Five

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EVEN though it got its…

worldwide release in early-2001, The Avalanches’ debut album, Since I Left You, was released in the group’s native Australia on 27th November, 2000. Produced by group members Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann (In 2000, the Avalanches had at least three core members, with the debut album being produced by Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann, with Tony Di Blasi also a founding member), it would be sixteen years since they followed Since I Left You with Wildflowers. Since then, they have been more productive. The Avalanches now consists of Tony Di Blasi, as Darren Seltmann parted company. We Will Always Love you came out in 2020, and there are plans for a fourth studio album. However, I still think that their debut is their most startling and best. Songs rich with samples, you can hear the precision and passion that went into this album. Collages of sounds and samples that make these incredible songs. The album was recorded and produced at two separate, near-identical studios by Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann, exchanging audio mixes of records they sampled. After the success of Since I Left You in Australia, there was this wider release. It is a tragedy to think that this amazing album might never have reached the U.K. if it did not fare well in Australia. I think its title track is one of the most joyous things ever released! Other highlights include Electricity and Frontier Psychiatrist. There are some reviews and features that I want to get to. As we are approaching the twenty-fifth anniversary of this masterpiece, it is important to bring in some context and exploration. Stereogum marked twenty years of Since I Left You in their feature from 2020. One of the biggest takeaways is how an album like Since I Left You could not exist today. Plunderphonics is a music genre characterised by the use of recognisable musical samples that are manipulated, recontextualised, and layered to create new works. This is what Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann did with abandon for Since I Left You. Not that concerned by copyright laws, today, they would be sued and prevented from using many of the samples. It is a shame that there are such restrictions for those who want to use samples in their work:

“The Avalanches don’t make albums like Since I Left You anymore. Nobody does, really. For one thing, they legally can’t. The Melbourne production crew’s chosen genre was known as plunderphonics for a reason: Practitioners gleefully plucked samples from record after record without regard for copyright law, overlaying them into vibrant collages. The rise of this movement in the late ’80s and early ’90s was a beautiful wild-frontier moment in music, one documented insightfully in Philip Sherburne’s review of plunderphonics provocateurs the KLF’s ambient techno lodestar Chill Out. But such blatant flaunting of intellectual property could never last forever. Once the lawsuits started flying, rappers and ravers alike had to pivot to expensive cleared samples and alternate techniques.

At that point plunderphonics mostly disappeared into the realm of memory and dream, which is where Since I Left You already existed. The Avalanches’ debut floats through the liminal space between the crate-pillaging hip-hop visionaries like the Dust Brothers and Prince Paul were spearheading around the turn of the ’90s and the MP3 orgy overseen by festival-slaying mashup king Girl Talk in the second half of the aughts. Conventional wisdom suggests it’s great party music but even better for the pre-dawn comedown after a night out, when the endorphin rush is over and sleep is setting in but you’re still too abuzz to fully shut down yet. This is all true, but as good as Since I Left You sounds in the earliest hours of Sunday morning, I can testify from recent experience that it’s a fine soundtrack for making Thanksgiving crafts with your kids on a Sunday afternoon. It’s remarkable music regardless of context.

Mostly, though, Since I Left You is about mood and texture. It’s less an album than a feeling you get lost in for an hour at a time. Though many of the samples have burrowed their way into my brain as thoroughly as any original hook — from “We can book a flight tonight!” to “That boy needs therapy!” — there are no lead vocals, just an endless parade of sounds stitched together seamlessly: clattering beats, sliced-up rap verses and disco choruses, keyboards that squelch and swirl, flickers of melody looped until they achieve some kind of zen state. It’s endlessly busy, yet a wistful calm hangs over everything, a warm, woozy nostalgia for a moment you’re not sure ever really existed”.

I am going to end with a review from Pitchfork that, oddly, seems to have been published at the end of 1999 – a year before it came out in Australia! I am not sure how they managed that, though I will bypass that anomaly and focus on a rare positive review from them. Before that, I want to come to DJ Mag and their retrospective. One of the all-time classics of Electronic music, The Avalanches’ debut album still sounds so wild and overflowing with ideas. Nothing like it has come since. Maybe an album like Donuts by J Dilla (2006), but even that does not pack in as many samples as Since I Left You. The album plays with your mind and senses! It isn’t rapid like many Hip-Hop albums where there are a lot of samples. Since I Left You is quite mellow and laid back, though it crams in so much: “But there’s a mind-boggling amount going on at all times. Anywhere between 900 and 3,500 individual samples employed during the making of the album ping off one another constantly, rising and fusing and fizzing away like bubbles in a champagne glass, or molecular chemistry writ large”:

“The Avalanches’ creative isolation in the wake of ‘Since I Left You’ was mildly ironic, given that the album itself was fixated with the allure of tasting all the world’s cultural fruits. Originally entitled ‘Pablo’s Cruise’, with an overt concept about chasing love from port to port, today ‘Since I Left You’ stands as the last foghorn of a faded age.

Word-of-mouth phenomena like ‘Since I Left You’ still take place in the digital era, but they aren’t passed around on burned CD-Rs, and you’d be hard pressed to find any album with a month’s gap between release in different markets, let alone a year. As Mark Richardson elegantly wrote when Pitchfork anointed ‘Since I Left You’ as the 10th best LP of the 2000s, “The Avalanches started in Australia in late 2000 and took the slow boat west, moving from one 56k modem to the next.”

“It’s hard to describe just how different the world was back then,” Chater reflects. “My favourite music magazines from the UK took, like, two months to arrive in Melbourne on the boat. You had to be passionate to discover new music when we were geographically very distant. Our album came out here and drew a good reception, but it was nothing crazy — maybe 1,000 or so sold. Then you find out there’s a buzz brewing half the world away. I remember we were in a shared house on the dole, and one of my flatmates shouted down the hall, ‘There’s someone from England on the phone! Your album’s debuted at number 8...’ It just doesn’t compute.”

By the time ‘Since I Left You’ arrived in America, fully 12 months after the album’s Australian release, the world had profoundly changed. The after-effects of the 9/11 terror attacks caused a schism in the role of aviation. Prior to the album’s release some of the group, including Di Blasi, had never ventured outside their national borders, so regarded jet-setting as a classy, romantic folly. As a love letter to carefree travel, ‘Since I Left You’ inadvertently wound up as a time capsule itself, tying a bow atop an era that had lasted for over a half-century, yet conclusively ended in a matter of seconds.

A completely unrepeatable feat of anarcho-surrealism, ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ was 2001’s least-likely crossover hit, etched into impressionable brains like fingers into putty. If the notion of ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ gatecrashing the upper regions of the charts seems strange on reflection, it appears even more bizarre under a microscope. Look at the UK top 20 on 21st July ‘01 and you’ll find The Avalanches nestled next to Robbie Williams, Roger Sanchez, Ian Van Dahl, D12, Aaliyah, Shaggy and Usher. One of these things, politely, is not like the other.

Meshing rented Western movies and a recording of Canadian comedians Wayne and Shuster, ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’’s musical motifs manage to be as lucid as each of its 37 spoken word snippets. Some might vouch for the lilting calypso that guides us onto the cruise liner deck as the “record-ecord-ecord” winds to a close. Others prefer “the violin!” — Laurie Anderson’s voice again — which bursts from the rubble of crunching breakbeats and garbled nonsense, then glides through the track like scissors through wrapping paper. And though wildly scribbling turntables were commonplace at the time, who would ever think to scratch over a parrot?

Horses bray, grandfather clocks spin backward and some unnamed craftsman is making a set of false teeth in perpetuity. God bless whoever sold The Avalanches the weed when they made this one.

“The promos for ‘Frontier’ and ‘Since I Left You’ really took us to strange places,” marvels Chater. “We were flown to Germany to collect an MTV Award for Best Video — just a bunch of shy, jetlagged kids wandering around backstage, not really knowing what to do. This dude comes over to me and he’s like, ‘Jay likes your record’. I look across the room and JAY-Z is standing there, nodding at me. All you can do is laugh, like, ‘Honestly, what the fuck is going on?’”.

I am ending with a review from Pitchfork. The one that someone came out in 1999. Regardless, is this wonder of an album that was unlike anything around it. It could have failed and confounded people. Instead, it built this reputation and popularity. I remember when it came out and being struck by how bold and imaginative it was. How much work and passion goes into every track! It is such a shame that we will never hear an album like this ever again:

“Given the fact that Since I Left You, the debut album from Aussie party animals the Avalanches, contains over 900 individual samples, it's pretty incredible that this thing got released in the first place. The fact that they sample everything from long-forgotten R&B; records to golf instructionals to Madonna's "Holiday" makes it even more impressive. But what really makes this album brilliant is not as much the volume or quality of the samples used as the way that they're employed. The Avalanches have managed to build a totally unique context for all these sounds, while still allowing each to retain its own distinct flavor. As a result, Since I Left You sounds like nothing else.

Much of the beauty of the opening title song and its accompanying track, "Stay Another Season," lies in the way that the Avalanches turn obvious sonic mismatches into something all their own. It's not too common that you'll hear a sample of a horse, a rastafarian singer, and an invitation to a Club Med disco all in the same song, but somehow it makes perfect sense under the masterful direction of the Avalanches.

Indeed, many of the most interesting moments on Since I Left You come with these mismatches. "A Different Feeling" sets horn blasts from 1974 against video game sounds from 1988-- the kind of bizarre pairing of classic soul with futuristic sounds that constitutes a substantial part of Avalanches magic. "Radio," which is slated for release as the band's next Australian single, centers around a mantra-like vocal sample, a thick disco bassline, and bits and pieces of filtered guitars and synthesizers.

Throughout Since I Left You, sampled vocals are used almost like percussion. But rather than utilizing the frenetic, intricate rhythms seen in most contemporary rap, the Avalanches repeat small vocal samples over and over again, melding them into their rump-rocking grooves. And while many of these songs rely heavily on the repetition of beats and samples, no single part of the record is allowed to stagnate. Something is always being mixed up-- a sample transposed up or down a few steps, a beat chopped up into little pieces and seamlessly restructured, an unexpected vocal sample popping up out of nowhere before being swallowed up by the massive sound the Avalanches have concocted.

Another key element of Since I Left You is the keen sense of humor the Avalanches display throughout. And "Frontier Psychiatrist," one of two singles already released from the album, is simply one of the funniest songs I've heard in ages. Relying on a heavy, Ninja Tune-style beat for backing, "Frontier Psychiatrist" busts out samples from 37 spoken word recordings, resulting in an oddball, hilarious pastiche of phrases like, "You're a nut! You're crazy in the coconut!" And some brilliant scratching on a sample of a parrot.

Though it contains many distinct songs and moods, Since I Left You is a remarkably coherent record on all fronts. Aside from the fact that the Avalanches achieve a certain uniform "sound" on this album, subtler elements come into play as well. Songs blend seamlessly into one another. Samples reappear from song to song. And the album's final cut, "Extra Kings," with its breezy flute and psychedelic swells of sound, puts a brilliant twist on the album's title track, fading out with that same chipmunky voice lamenting, "I've tried but I just can't get you/ Ever since the day I left you."

In releasing Since I Left You, the Avalanches have essentially brought hundreds of slabs of inanimate vinyl to life. Though it was no doubt meticulously constructed, this is an album brimming with spontaneity, joy, sadness, humor, reflection, and general human-ness. With its high fun factor and subtle traces of deeper emotion, Since I Left You is the perfect record for the party, and for the period of regret and recovery after the party”.

On 27th November, the genius Since I Left You turns twenty-five. Released in Australia in 2000 and the following year internationally, I do hope that there are podcasts or a reissue of Since I Left You for the anniversary (though there was a Deluxe release in 2021). This dizzying and enormously accomplished album some would say should not exist because it plunders samples and modifies them. However, I think the fact that there is such strictness around copyright makes Since I Left You an example of why that should be relaxed. A quarter-century after its release and The Avalanches’ debut album still…

UTTERLY exhilarating and unforgettable!

FEATURE: Spotlight: My First Time

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

My First Time

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THIS is the chance to spotlight…

PHOTO CREDIT: Cloe Morrison

the Bristol Post-Punk band, My First Time. Consisting of Isaac Stroud-Allen (guitar/lead vocals), Jordanna Forsey (drums), James Mellen (guitar/vocals) and Niamh Jones (also known as Naia) (bass/vocals), they have released a string of great singles this year, including Much Better, and Sippy Cup. I want to bring in a few interviews from this year with the band. I will end with a very recent interview from NME. I am going to start off by going back to April, and an interview with DORK. Having met whilst studying at university in Bristol, there is this organic and easy chemistry between the members. DORK found out more about The First Time and music that possesses “raw wit and thunderous hooks to challenge indie pretensions”. Make sure thew quartet are on your radar:

“Their path from campus collaboration to rising force in British alternative music wasn’t exactly pre-plotted. Though as it turns out, those university days weren’t wasted – Isaac’s music business studies would later prove instrumental in securing their record deal. It’s the kind of pragmatic detail that feels perfectly aligned with a band whose new single ‘Much Better’ takes aim at the modern obsession with artistic purity.

Speaking of that latest release, the band pulls no punches in describing its intent: “‘Much Better’ is an anti-music anthem. Stop caring about meaning finding yourself, or the importance of carefully curated art. Start cashing cheques and worm your way into real money.” They continue with delicious irony, “‘Much Better’ is for the social media business gurus that have the solution to complete self-actualisation: COLD HARD CASH.”

This refreshing cynicism comes paired with an equally unvarnished songwriting approach. When asked about his lyrical inspirations, Isaac cuts straight to the marrow: “Anything in the real world. Real world shit… ‘I’m a modern man, I piss with my phone in my hands’. That’s the sort of stuff I’m drawn to. The squeamish, the queasy, the words or pronunciations that make your hair stand up. The grease, the moisture. The hard snap of a belt buckle.”

Their character-based approach to songwriting serves a deeper purpose, too. “It allows you to take a viewpoint that’s rarely shared,” the band explain. “By taking the viewpoint of an arsehole, you can hear just how insane their thoughts really are. It’s like a messed-up therapy session where you’re speaking to a drunken oaf whose mind can’t change. Sometimes, all you can do is respond with an emoji. 🤷‍♂️. Proper deep shit.”

While their early days drew inspiration from Bristol’s politically charged atmosphere – “When we first started out, the likes of Idles (who are Bristol based) were definitely an inspiration in getting into more politically-sided music” – they’ve since evolved toward something more personal. “But now, where we’ve taken the rest of our songs, our inspirations lie more in the areas that shaped us when we were kids.”

That evolution is evident in their creative trajectory. “‘Man of Ill Repute’ and ‘Brand New’ are songs that are over two years old for us. They are some of the first songs we wrote, so releasing stuff like ‘Much Better’ feels much better.” And there’s more where that came from – “So many songs. We’re sweating buckets writing at the moment. New songs in the set, as well. We’re all salivating to release new stuff.”

The band’s ambitions for the future are as unfiltered as their lyrics: “Release lots of new songs, tour, gig and achieve a level of music domination on a global level.” But it’s not all world domination and industry critique – they maintain a charmingly diverse array of outside interests: “Badminton, tennis, Top Trumps, pastries, Dairy Lea Dunkers, Tinder, binge drinking and hanging out with our loved ones”.

I am interested to see where My First Time head. There will be call and demand for a debut album or E.P. It is hard to define their sound in terms of genre. I guess they are more Electro-Punk. I am going to move to Kerrang! and their interview from August. Commending their “impulsive, cutthroat songwriting”, they told Kerrang! about, among other things, their “abrasive lyricism” and “their mystery synth player”. I am really excited to see where the band head. After such a big year, you get the feeling that 2026 will be their most successful year yet. In terms of festival bookings and maybe releasing a full project. They are among the most hyped – and rightfully so – bands in this country:

“Everything about My First Time leaves you ravenous for more. Their witty personalities, their spontaneous songs and even their live show – where a mysterious fifth member known only as “tracksuit man” or “Bez” will often make an appearance on synth for a grand total of one song. It’s not quite Sleep Token or PRESIDENT, but K! goes in search of some answers.

“He drinks a lot backstage,” teases Isaac. “It's quite funny, because he's just by himself for 30 minutes… he’s the brains behind the operation.”

“It's funny that this is his whole bit, [because] he’s a very talented musician. He grew up playing classical piano,” adds James. Will ‘tracksuit man’ play any further part at future shows? You’ll have to come and find out for yourself, warns Naia.

“He's like Father Christmas. If you wish hard enough, he'll be there.”

As they continue to toil away in the studio, My First Time’s key ingredient is to keep surprising themselves, while having as much fun as possible. To sum up this ethos, we need only directly quote Isaac on Bodybag: ‘Don’t be such a square.’

“You don't want to be boring,” urges Isaac, with an imaginary raised eyebrow. “The most important thing, no matter what we're doing, is to never be dull”.

I am going to end with parts of a new interview from NME. If you get to see My First Time live in the future, then they are well worth seeking out. Although the band have been about for a little bit, they have come to mass attention this year, though I still think there are many that have not discovered this incredible band. My First Time met whilst studying in 2021 and have made big strides in a short time. Speaking with My First Time’s vocalist, Isaac Stroud-Allen, around the release of Sippy Cup, there are some interesting takeaways from the interview. This is a band that is going to take over the world soon enough. It is the blend of the cutting-edge and ferocious and the humorous that makes My First Time such a dynamic, fascinating and revered band:

“As much as that fun and humour are a vital part of what My First Time are doing, there’s a vicious fury behind all their music. “Deep down, we are a bitter generation. And for good reason,” says Stroud-Allen. All four band members are in their early twenties and spent a formative part of their youth in COVID-enforced lockdown. “We were constantly lectured about the importance of coming together for a greater purpose. Then we were let out into a world that’s fallen to pieces.”

He continues: “Everything that was seen as important, such as human interaction and togetherness, has seemingly been replaced by people just being fucking horrible to one another.” These frenzied times demand frenzied music. “I want people to come to our shows with an awareness that we are just getting fucked over.“

Although My First Time are comfortable with being known as a ‘political band’, they don’t want to tell people how to think. “There’s so much music, film and art that’s just so beige. If we’re fucked off about something, we’ll put that into a song,” says Mellen. “We are ‘Generation Fucked’ but if you think about that for too long, you just get miserable,” he adds, which is why their live shows are so joyful.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cloe Morrison

“It’s a nice type of escape as well because it’s not so much an ignorance or a neglect for what’s going on, it’s a triumphant acknowledgement that everyone is in on,” adds Jones. “It’s us saying ‘we know how shit this is, but look at how this shit can breed something so positive’.”

“I want people to come to our shows with an awareness that we are just getting fucked over” – Isaac Stroud-Allen

As well as buzzy performances at festivals such as The Great Escape, Dot To Dot and Wilderness, My First Time’s first London headline gig in May saw them pack out Third Man Records, turning its basement into a sweaty mass of bodies. As promised, each of the band’s shows so far has been a frenzy of excitement, catharsis and community. “It’s so validating to see that what we’re building means something to other people,” says Mellen. “We all found community going to gigs when we were younger. It’s sometimes tough to properly explain it, but you do just want to be a part of something”.

My First Time will round off a very busy and successful year I am sure with another song. I think they are probably planning what comes in 2026. There will be summer festival dates and opportunities for them to play internationally. Go and follow this amazing quartet. I am a bit new to them, though I can see myself following them for a long time to come. It is clear that this band live up to all the hype. Such brilliant and original music, this is a band that you cannot…

MISS out on.

__________

Follow My First Time

FEATURE: Try to See It My Way… Why Recent Casting News Regarding Sam Mendes’s Beatles Films Is Hugely Positive

FEATURE:

 

 

Try to See It My Way…

IN THIS PHOTO: It has been announced that Aimee Lou Wood is a frontrunner to play Patti Boyd (for which Boyd has given her blessing) in Sam Mendes’s films about The Beatles, due for release in 2028/PHOTO CREDIT: Rosaline Shahnavaz for The Sunday Times

 

Why Recent Casting News Regarding Sam Mendes’s Beatles Films Is Hugely Positive

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WHEN the actors who are set…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sam Mendes (left) introduced the main cast of his upcoming four films about The Beatles on stage at CinemaCon earlier in the year/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

to play The Beatles in four separate Sam Mendes films were announced earlier in the year, there was mixed reaction. I assume that the four films about The Beatles are not solely about the four members, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon. I assume, from what we have heard, that the films will focus mainly on each member, but there will be interaction with the other members. Sam Medes will do justice to the Fab Four. And with the blessing of surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, we will see what comes about in 2028:

“Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan have been confirmed as part of the all-star line-up who will play members of the Beatles in four major new films about the band.

Normal People and Gladiator II actor Mescal will portray Sir Paul McCartney, while Saltburn star Keoghan will step into Sir Ringo Starr's shoes.

The acting supergroup will also feature Harris Dickinson, who was most recently seen opposite Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, as John Lennon.

And Joseph Quinn will go from Marvel's Fantastic Four to the Fab Four, playing George Harrison in the big-screen quadrilogy, which will be directed by Sir Sam Mendes.

The Oscar-winning director was joined by the four actors for the announcement at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday.

Each film will focus on a different member of the legendary group.

"Each one is told from the particular perspective of just one of the guys," Sir Sam told the event. "They intersect in different ways - sometimes overlapping, sometimes not.

"They're four very different human beings. Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply. But together, all four films will tell the story of the greatest band in history."

The films will be released "in proximity" to each other in April 2028.

The director explained: "I just felt the story of the band was too huge to fit into a single movie, and that turning it into a TV mini-series just somehow didn't feel right”.

As a massive fan of The Beatles, when the main cast was announced, I was a bit miffed. In terms of the actors, I was looking for less well-known names who could get a break playing a member of the band, rather than established actors being cast. I guess their star power and cinematic pull is a big reason behind the casting. In terms of resemblance, one could argue that Barry Keoghan is best in terms of him resembling Ringo Starr. Paul Mescal too as Paul McCartney. I am not too sure regarding Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. Also, in terms of casting, what out Liverpudlian actors? The ages of the four actors in relation to one another and even their heights. How convincing will they be?! I have come around more to the casting decisions, as the films will bring existing Beatles fans and new fans in. It will introduce their music to a whole new generation. Also, the pedigree of Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn is clear. Humour is a massive part of The Beatles’ story, and I think the four have comedic chops and will bond easily. There is still massive interest in The Beatles. In December, it will be sixty years since Rubber Soul was released. Their sixth studio album, it is my favourite release of theirs. Next month sees the release of Anthology 4. You can pre-order the album here. The Beatles Anthology documentary series premiered on Disney+ on 26th November. Barely a year goes by without a bit of Beatles news. It is always welcomed! Books come out all the time and the fact we have two original members with us who love to talk about the band (when asked) means that the band’s legacy and meaning will ever dim. 2028 is going to be a massive year. Not only do we get these films released. There are various Beatles album anniversaries, including the sixty-fifth anniversary of their debut album, Please Please Me, and the sixtieth anniversary of The Beatles (a.k.a. The While Album).

I guess we could not judge the four films and what they would be like based off the announcement of who had been cast as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. People did feel that a lack of authenticity regarding accents – a lack of Liverpudlian actors – could extend to the actors cast to play Yoko Ono or Linda Eastman. In terms of making the wrong choices. However, in the last few days, there have been some very pleasing casting announcements. I almost feel that the more minor characters are more important, as they are less discussed. They also will give the four films a life and world beyond the band members. Getting the casting right there is crucial. Patti Boyd, who was married to George Harrison, has given her blessing to the actor who will most likely play her: Aimee Lou Wood. The esteemed and hugely respected actor, who is a wonderful comedic talent, will play the wonderful Patti Boyd. In terms of resemblance, I do think there are similarities between Wood and Boyd. It will be intriguing to see what era we are talking about. Maybe not when Patti Boyd and George Harrison first met (that would be on the set of The Beatles’ debut film, A Hard Day’s Night, of 1964, where Patti Boyd was in the cast). Also, some other names have been announced. Yoko Ono, far from splitting The Beatles up, was hugely important to their history and success! I think that she provided John Lennon inspiration and support to create some of his best work with the band. She was someone maligned and attacked who we should view as the brilliant human she was and is. Anna Sawai is most likely going to be be cast as Ono. I would love to see one or more of the films to be set maybe in 1967 or 1968. That would be between Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and The Beatles (1968). Magical Mystery Tour came out in 1967 too. Seeing this relatively new marriage of Patti Boyd and George Harrison, and Yoko Ono and John Lennon intensifying their relationship (they married in 1969).

IN THIS PHOTO: Anna Sawai is hotly tipped to play Yoko Ono in Sam Mendes’s Beatles films/PHOTO CREDIT: Angella Choe for Wonderland

The two incredible actors playing these hugely important and strong women. As important as The Beatles themselves are, so too are the amazing women they married. Far from the dismissive and sexist term, ‘muse’, these women were brilliantly talented in their own right. Whilst Yoko Ono and Patti Boyd influenced some of the band’s most powerful and enduring songs – such as Something (from 1969’s Abbey Road) -, they also had their own important and successful careers. The casting news is speculation at the moment, so it is not 100% done that Aimee Lou Wood and Anna Sawai will play Patti Boyd and Yoko Ono, as Variety report:

“The deals for Sawai and Wood are not signed, however, and it’s not certain they will be cast. A representative of Sony Pictures had no comment.

As for the rest of the Fab Four, Paul Mescal is playing Paul McCartney and Barry Keoghan will star as Ringo Starr. Saoirse Ronan has been cast as McCartney’s first wife, Linda, who also performed in his post-Beatles band, Wings; Mia McKenna-Bruce is set to play Starr’s first wife, Maureen Starkey.

Mendes is making four separate movies, one from each Beatles member’s point of view. They will intersect to capture the band’s improbable journey from Liverpool to the center of global culture, leading to their 1970 breakup. The tagline, in other words, is “Each man has his own story, but together they are legendary.” All four installments will debut on the big screen in April 2028 in what Sony Pictures is dubbing the “first binge-able theatrical experience.” The exact release timeline is unclear.

Sawai, 33, rose to fame in Japan as a singer in the girl group Faky before breaking through internationally on the Apple TV+ series “Pachinko.” She scored an Emmy for the series “Shogun,” making her the first Japanese actress to win for lead actress. Sawai will also appear onscreen in director David Leitch’s heist film “How to Rob a Bank” and the Jeremy Allen White and Austin Butler-led crime drama “Enemies.”

Wood, 31, first starred in the Netflix teen dramedy “Sex Education” over four seasons from 2019 to 2023. She’s also appeared opposite Bill Nighy in the 2022 film “Living,” and she earned her first Emmy nomination in 2025 for her role in the third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Might there be a role for the peerless Jodie Comer in one or more of the upcoming Beatles films?/PHOTO CREDIT: Scandebergs for GQ

In April, writing for The Guardian, film critic Peter Bradshaw bemoaned the lack of Liverpudlian talent announced for Sam Mendes’s Beatles films. However, he did suggest one name who I think would be perfect. In terms of playing Ringo Starr’s wife, Mo Starkey. Jodie Comer resembles the late great Mary Cox (her birth name), so I do hope that Comer gets that role, as she is one of our finest actors. It would also encourage more screen time for a part of The Beatles’ story that is not discussed enough. I think Mo Starkey is written out slightly. In terms of the most important women to The Beatles, few could compete with Linda Eastman. Paul McCartney’s first wife, we lost the photographer and musician in 1998. She was an extraordinary talent. We saw her in the Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary, Get Back, in 2021. Again, a woman who inspired some phenomenal songs. Among them is Maybe I’m Amazed. That song appeared on Paul McCartney’s debut album, 1970’s McCartney. Linda McCartney also appeared on various Paul McCartney albums and she was a member of Wings. In terms of resemblance and actors who could play Linda Eastman, there are American actors Blake Lively, Emma Roberts, in addition to Australian actors Teresa Palmer and Olivia DeJonge. Even British actor Imogen Poots and Gabriella Wilde. However, American-Irish actor Saoirse Ronan is tipped to play Linda Eastman/McCartney. As this recent article confirms, it is another casting decision that is not a done deal. However, it seems likely Ronan will be cast:

“According to Deadline, multiple sources have claimed that the star of Little Women and Lady Bird will play the first wife of Paul McCartney in the upcoming set of biopics. The singer will be played by Paul Mescal, who starred alongside Ronan in the sci-fi drama Foe.

Sony has yet to make an official confirmation.

IN THIS PHOTO: Saoirse Ronan is rumoured to play Linda Eastman alongaside Paul Mescal’s Paul McCartney/PHOTO CREDIT: Nathan Merchadier for Numéro Magazine

Each of the four films will tell the story of a different Beatle with Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. Dickinson, who recently received acclaim for his directorial debut, Urchin, has said the prospect is “frightening” in an interview with the Times.

In July, Starr said he asked for changes in the script after meeting with Mendes but is now “much more satisfied with how he’s depicted in the script”. The scripts are being written by Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne.

“The Beatles changed my understanding of music,” Mendes said in April. “I’ve been trying to make a movie about them for years.” He added: “There had to be a way to tell the epic story for a new generation. I can assure you there is still plenty left to explore and I think we found a way to do that.”

Ronan has received four Oscar nominations and was last seen in The Outrun and Steve McQueen’s Blitz. She recently led the dark comedy Bad Apples, which premiered at the Toronto film festival, and will also be starring with Austin Butler in Deep Cuts, a music drama based on Holly Brickley’s debut novel.

Linda and Paul McCartney met in 1967 when she was a photographer and they were married up until her death in 1998. She was part of his later band Wings and was an animal rights activist who wrote vegetarian cookbooks and founded a successful food company”.

There are other key players that have yet to be cast. Their producer, George Martin, and roadie Mal Evans. There is also their manager, Brian Epstein. I guess these details and castings will happen later, as we are not sure exactly how many years these films will span and which people will need to be portrayed. However, as the Fab Four are locked in and the brilliant women who are underdiscussed when it comes to The Beatles are pretty much set in stone, it looks interesting. Some phenomenal actors who will do justice to Patti Boyd, Yoko Ono and Linda Eastman (McCartney). We will wait to hear if Mo Starkey plays a role in these films and who will portray her. There is a long way to go until 2028, so we will get teaser clips and more news close to release date. In the meantime, there is going to be plenty of Beatles-related activity. I wonder if we will get remastered and reissued releases of Beatles albums like Rubber Soul or A Hard Day’s Night. There will be some interesting books and I am sure we will even get another documentary. Definitely some solo Ringo Starr work. Hopefully a new album from Paul McCartney (his most recent album, McCartney III, was released in 2020). I, like so many Beatles fans, are excited to see what Sam Mendes delivers in 2028. It is going to be fascinating seeing The Beatles’ individual members get their own films, though there will be plenty of moments of them together through different periods. Proof that The Beatles’ influence legacy and influence is as strong today as ever. Incredible films that put in the spotlight…

THE legendary band.

FEATURE: The Death of MTV’s U.K. Channels: Why There Is Still a Place for Music Television

FEATURE:

 

 

The Death of MTV’s U.K. Channels

PHOTO CREDIT: Vision Graphixs/Pexels

 

Why There Is Still a Place for Music Television

__________

I don’t agree with people…

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Manhattan Design, New York

who say that, in the modern era where the digital is dominant, that we have no need for music television. With the rise in vinyl sales and formats like cassettes and C.D. still sustainable, I think people are keener to experience something tangible. The need for physical content will never die. I realise that the role of the music video is not as prominent and important as it was years ago, though most artists make music videos, and it is a way of expressing themselves and also introducing their music to potential fans. It is shocking to see the complete lack of music shows across the world. Even in the U.S., most of the televised musical performance are on chat shows. I guess that is a way of getting your music heard. In the U.K., we have Graham Norton and the odd talk show, though you have one artist playing a week and people are not necessarily tuning in to hear an artist. In terms of dedicated music shows, the only thing we have is Later… with Jools Holland. That has been on over three decades and, whilst excellent and a broad church regarding the artists featured, there has been no real viable alternative. Top of the Pops ended a long time ago and it seems that commissioners are unwilling to entertain the idea that a genuinely solid alternative could exist. I think there is a potential for a weekly music show to come out of Manchester or Salford. Where most of its shows was filmed out of BBC Television Centre, since 2022, Later… with Jools Holland has come from Alexandra Palace Theatre in North London. This is a gorgeous venue that allows all of this space to accommodate a host of artists. Rather than have one artist play on stage, stop the filming and then resume when the next act comes on, they each have their own stage in this circle/semicircle and you pan from one to the other. It gives the show a fluidity and more of a live feel.

It would be nice if there was a new music series from the north. In terms of breaking new artists and having this more varied music show that does more than hosting live performances and interviews, it does seem like there will no movement. I mention this, as it was recently announced that MTV is axing the last of its U.K. music channels after almost thirty years. NME reported the news that was first shared to BBC:

“MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live will all stop broadcasting after December 31, but their flagship channel, MTV HD, will remain on air. It shows reality series, including Naked Dating UK and Geordie Shore.

MTV launched in 1981 in the US, quickly becoming a staple of pop culture, having been tied to historic moments in music, including the world premiere of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video and the 16-hour broadcast of the Live Aid concerts in 1985.

There has been a marked shift in viewing habits since the channels’ heyday, with music videos more commonly consumed on YouTube and social media rather than television now.

A spokesman for MTV’s parent company, Paramount, declined to comment when approached by the BBC. Many fans, however, have taken to social media upon learning the news, with many pointing to a diminished brand identity for its ultimate demise.

“MTV was culturally and spiritually dead when it stopped airing music videos,” one wrote on X/Twitter. “Corporate-led decline of what was once the coolest brand in existence. Sad’”.

Maybe there is not a need for multiple music channels and decade-specific options. However, getting rid of all the U.K. MTV channels seems like a step too far. How much music television media does that leave us with?! I love Jools Holland’s show and I think that the spectacular venue, coupled with the calibre of artists that are invited each week, makes it essential viewing. It does show that there is a place for music television. I reject the idea that the music video is obsolete. Whilst perhaps not able to sustain an entire channel and day of scheduling, there is definitely a place for musical television that combines videos, live performances and archives. Independent music media and journalism is needed now more than ever. It could tie into a music channel. I keep coming back to that idea of a second music show on U.K. television. Do similar things to Later… with Jools Holland but also have its own angles. Featuring classical albums and do news stories and features. Year by year, the role and visibility of music television in the U.K. is dwindling. Last year, when Channel 4’s The Box was axed, The i Paper discussed “death knell for an artform that changed the world”:

“But at the same time, reality was starting to bite, and music became less important to MTV. It started in early 90s with The Real World – a show credited/blamed for launching the modern reality genre – but was soaring by 2002 with The Osbournes, and reached cultural saturation with the likes of Jersey Shore and The Hills after that. Suddenly, music videos were a respite from reality shows, filling in the gaps between Ozzy Osbourne picking up a dog turd and another fight between Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. Reality TV had taken over from the premiere of “Justify My Love” or “Black or White” videos as the youth’s topic of conversation. Gen X was growing up and wanted to turn that damn music down so they could hear their programme.

Then there was the rise of YouTube. In 2005, two years after “Crazy in Love” was released, a clunky video website launched at the same time as home broadband started to spread. Another two years later, in darkest Manchester, a friend came to my flat to get ready for a night out. Instead of putting the telly on, he headed over to my laptop to cue up some songs on YouTube, now owned by the mighty Google… the means of delivery had changed.

“MTV made a business decision to pivot to original programming and IP [intellectual property] revenue, but music videos on YouTube still garner billions of eyes every day,” says Schnur. MTV sensed the way the wind was blowing – they were no longer the gatekeepers and curators of playlists.

And then there was the rise of streaming, which meant people no longer bought albums and left all but the very biggest artists short-changed. The cost of music videos – especially for mid-tier artists without the deep pockets of Adele or Harry Styles – could no longer be justified as part of a campaign, with their call times, crews, choreographers, SFX and post-production. These are no longer an extension of the artist, but shop windows, and a lyric video on Vimeo or a self-filmed TikTok or Instagram clip would reach the same audience for a tiny fraction of the price. MTV quietly dropped the words “Music Television” from underneath its logo in 2021.

Is Channel 4 closing its music channels the final nail in the coffin for this once revered art form, then? “Aren’t broadcast and cable television themselves in terminal decline?”, answers Schnur, reassuringly. “[But] every so often, there’s a new music video that gives me that same sense of excitement I felt at MTV programming meetings back in the 80s. Case in point…”

Here, he shares a link with me to Eminem’s new video for “Houdini” – its cartoonish, Joel Schmacher-era Batman colour palette, celebrity cosplay and high production values are a reference-rich hark back to 2002’s “Without Me” and are clearly intended for a generation who remember the days of the statement blockbuster video, which stirred up controversy, gave birth to many a parody, and had everyone talking in the playground at morning break.

It is not intended for Gen Z, however, and will go over most of their heads – as will the closure of any music channel. Why wait half an hour hoping Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” will come on when you can just watch it on your phone any time you like?

But in losing that, we lose the passive luxury of boredom – having to sit through songs you’ve never heard of – or even don’t like – getting used to them or falling love with them, watching and waiting for your new favourite to come on… The jaunty milk carton in Blur’s “Coffee + TV”; the paving slabs lighting up in “Billie Jean”; the single tear running down Sinead O’ Connor’s face in “Nothing Compares 2 U”; Steven Tyler calling out Run DMC in “Walk This Way”, or Christopher Waken bouncing off the walls in “Weapon of Choice”… These iconic moments are seared into the brains of those of a certain age. The videos still play in our heads as the songs stream from our phones.

Now? Now there are the influencers, with their money for nothing, their clicks for fees. That “Houdini” video has 72,929,469 views on YouTube, however… never write off an artform that once shot for the moon”.

It won’t be the case that there are no music television options apart from Jools Holland’s show come next year. There are programmes here and there. However, as people are still watching music videos, they want to see artists perform live and there is as much interest in legacy music as there is the new, all of this could coexist alongside that on television. Music shows also give people access to see an artist perform live they would not otherwise have the chance to. There could be documentaries and exclusive interviews. The best videos of the week and regular feature that could built a brand. MTV’s decision to jettison its remaining U.K. channels is a sad end of an era. One that really does not have to happen. I know people want to see Top of the Pops revived (the final show was in 2006), though I don’t think it would be the best plan, unless it was updated, overhauled and there was more than artists on stage miming (or performing live). Otherwise, you are not really offering an alternative, and there’s that danger a return could be short-lived. We can build a music show that has a good audience and one that mixes music news and spotlighting new artists and also a chunk dedicated to older music. A blend of live performances that is similar to Jools Holland’s guests but is a bit wider. I am not sure who would host or what the name would be, though there are more than enough people who would support this venture. Commissioners and stations are so reluctant to spend money on something they feel will be a sure-fire failure. There should be enough faith to at least broadcast a pilot and see how that is received. However, there is this mindset that says music television and music videos are dead. That one regular music T.V. show in the U.K. is enough. Most artists do not have the opportunity to – and do not want – perform on cooking shows or chat shows. They want the chance to perform on a dedicated music show. With pretty much only one option, it seems insane given the vast amount of talent out there struggling to get attention when Pop monoliths are getting the majority of attention and opportunity. Rather than bemoan the death if an era and a sad final chapter, we need to be more positive and welcome in…

A new era.

FEATURE: Mustn't Give the Game Away: Kate Bush’s There Goes a Tenner at Forty-Three

FEATURE:

 

 

Mustn't Give the Game Away

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the There Goes a Tenner video/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Henry

 

Kate Bush’s There Goes a Tenner at Forty-Three

__________

I am going to start out…

by quoting some interviews snippets I have sourced before. Relating to Kate Bush’s There Goes a Tenner. Included on her fourth studio album, The Dreaming, it was released as a single on 2nd November, 1982. On the same day, Suspended in Gaffa was released as a single in continental Europe and Australia. There Goes a Tenner was the U.K. and Ireland release. Perhaps the oddest single release day in Kate Bush’s career, one would have though Suspended in Gaffa would have made a more successful U.K. single. Maybe There Goes a Tenner could have been released more widely. Even though it only reached ninety-three in the U.K. and was her worst-performing single to that point, I really like There Goes a Tenner and feel it should be talked about. I am going to start with those interviews with Kate Bush:

“It’s about amateur robbers who have only done small things, and this is quite a big robbery that they’ve been planning for months, and when it actually starts happening, they start freaking out. They’re really scared, and they’re so aware of the fact that something could go wrong that they just freaked out, and paranoid and want to go home. (…) It’s sort of all the films I’ve seen with robberies in, the crooks have always been incredibly in control and calm, and I always thought that if I ever did a robbery, I’d be really scared, you know, I’d be really worried. So I thought I’m sure that’s a much more human point of view.

The Dreaming interview, CBAK 4011 CD

That was written on the piano. I had an idea for the tune and just knocked out the chords for the first verse. The words and everything just came together. It was quite a struggle from there on to try to keep things together. The lyrics are quite difficult on that one, because there are a lot of words in quite a short space of time. They had to be phrased right and everything. That was very difficult. Actually the writing went hand-in-hand with the CS-80.

John Diliberto, Interview. Keyboard/Totally Wired/Songwriter (USA), 1985”.

The reviews for the single were not that kind at all. A mix f bafflement and disappointment. Record Mirror’s Jim Reid wrote this in November 1982: “Blackheath beauty goes all cooey cockney-gasp in a bouncy tale of the downfall of Thatcherism and the rise of mass working class solidarity… actually it’s more trivial than that”. There Goes a Tenner is fascinating. Maybe a political song against high taxation and the British government, the song contains some of Kate Bush’s best and most unusual lyrics: “I hope you remember/To treat the gelignite tenderly for me/I’m having dreams about things/Not going right/Let’s leave in plenty of time tonight/Both my partners/Act like actors:/You are Bogart/He is George Raft/That leaves Cagney and me”. In terms of the musicians who feature on the song, it is quite basic and streamlined: drums: Stuart Elliott; bass: Del Palmer; synclavier: Dave Lawson; piano, Fairlight CMI, CS80: Kate Bush. Del Palmer features in the video as the getaway driver. I have a lot of time for There Goes a Tenner, even if most people do not. Maybe an unusual and flawed choice for a single, I think there is more depth and potential in this song than it is given credit for. Though Dreams of Orgonon highlight flaws with the song, they do write about some of the more interesting aspects of There Goes a Tenner. Even though Kate Bush revealed no political motivation in the song, you can read between the lines and see it is taking aim at Margaret Thatcher and the government in 1982. A time of austerity and hardship for many working-class people in the U.K., There Goes a Tenner reacts to this, albeit through the lens of something more playful and apolitical:

“Fundamentally, “There Goes a Tenner” channels the heist movie through a children’s panto. It treats poverty and crime with the tropes and language available to Bush through English popular culture. “Ooh, there’s a tenner/hey look, there’s a fiver” interpolates British currency onto the trope of money exploding in the middle of a robbery, as seen in such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There are some hat tips to old gangster films, like when Bush observes her partners’ conduct in the middle of their robbery: “both my partners/act like actors/you are Bogart/he is George Raft/that leaves Cagney and me.” Clumsy, to be sure, but distinct in its aesthetics, and in a better song, Bush’s dive into British class politics with crime film tropes might be enlightening.

There’s something more going on here though. Bush asserted that her robbers were incompetents with limited experience: “It’s about amateur robbers who have only done small things, and this is quite a big robbery that they’ve been planning for months, and when it actually starts happening, they start freaking out.” She goes on to cite Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as an example of hypercompetence in cinematic criminals, objecting to the composure of the genre’s heroes, observing “the crooks have always been incredibly in control and calm, and I always thought that if I ever did a robbery, I’d be really scared.”

Certainly the heist genre is populated by “chill” paragons of masculinity. It’s how you get lead actors like Paul Newman, Al Pacino, or George Clooney as top notch criminals. The genre offers the pleasures of breaking with the decorum of civil society while still keeping a layer of masculine authority in the mix, and its films tend to conclude with major punitive measures for the culprits (see Bonnie & Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon, etc).

Bush’s resulting bemusement at this is almost quaintly middle-class. “But don’t people who’ve robbed hundreds of banks get scared when they rob a bank” is the sort of question your childhood friend who’s horrified by shoplifting would pose. The pantheon of confident men in her early work is broadly absent from The Dreaming, which abounds with self-destructive masculinity. Moving beyond the bourgeois fantasy of domestic bliss between a man and a woman shakes up Bush’s faith in men. Femininity and masculinity become fluctuant, throttled by patriarchy, colonialism, trauma, and poverty. Bush could feasibly be writing a character of any gender here, but to have a woman’s voice leading the charge and vocalizing the anxiety that might pervade a robbery is canny.

For its vexed class dynamics, “There Goes a Tenner” does acknowledge poverty as a motivation for its characters. “Pockets floating in the breeze” indicates impoverishment, and the final line of the song “there’s a ten-shilling note/remember them?/that’s when we used to vote for him” is a weirdly subtle political critique for “Tenner.” When the single dropped in 1982, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government was enjoying a 51% approval rating in the wake of the Falklands War and Thatcher’s craven sinking of the retreating Argentinian battleship the ARA General Belgrano, killing 323 people. By the 22nd of September, 9 days after the release of The Dreaming, 14% of the United Kingdom’s workforce was reported to be unemployed. As the Tory government waged a war on inflation in its slow establishment of neoliberalism, it caused a glut of unemployment that lost 1,500,000 people their jobs. “When we used to vote for him” is an odd phrase — but clearly the robbers have turned to crime because alternatives are unavailable (one merely has to point out that poverty is a major contributor to crime)”.

The single has never really had a kind write-up or much said about it. I mark its anniversary every year, and though I have to include a lot of the same information, it is important to talk about this song. There Goes a Tenner is still a brilliant song from one of Kate Bush’s best albums. One really not designed with singles in mind. Rather than seeing There Goes a Tenner as a singles disaster and signs of a decline, it is one of ten gems that forms her amazing fourth studio album. Rather than it being a failure or minor song, There Goes a Tenner is…

FAR better than that.

FEATURE: In France They Kiss on Main Street: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing of Summer Lawns at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

In France They Kiss on Main Street

 

Joni Mitchell's The Hissing of Summer Lawns at Fifty

__________

PERHAPS not placed…

IN THIS PHOTO: Joni Mitchell in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Norman Seeff

alongside Blue (1971) and Ladies of the Canyon (1970) as Joni Mitchell’s best albums, I think that The Hissing of Summer Lawns deserves to be. It is another masterpiece from the Canadian songwriter. It turns fifty next month. Rather annoyingly, nobody seems to know exactly when in November 1975 this album was released! To be safe, I am publishing this before 1st November, so we can mark fifty years of The Hissing of Summer Lawns at the earliest date. I think it might have been late in November but, as there is no certainty and precision, I will have to guess and be general. Before getting to a couple of features that go inside the album, I want to source this article from the official Joni Mitchell website, as they provide so many resources around the album. A host of critical reviews. Who played on the album. By all accounts The Hissing of Summer Lawns did not get the same positivity as previous Joni Mitchell albumns. That would continue with 1976’s Hejira:

“When a Brazilian photo-journalist named Wolf Jesco Von Puttkamer took an assignment in the mid-70s to document the lives of the Kreen-Akrore, a reclusive tribe of Amazonian hunters later known as the Panara, there were serious doubts about whether they'd survive the decade. The government had built a highway through their territory in '73, redoubling their fear of strangers, and the small amount of contact they'd had with the outside world in the past had decimated them with disease. Von Puttkamer found only 130 left alive.

In one of the photos he took, a tiny girl camouflaged in stripes of genipap pulp peers out from a gap in the jungle. In another, the chief of the tribe grimaces as a doctor injects him with penicillin. In another, seven hunters wearing yellow headbands carry an enormous, trussed-up python back to their village from a riverbank. Published in the February 1975 issue of National Geographic, the images were seen by millions of readers, among them Joni Mitchell. While officials in Brasilia had been turning the Kreen-Akrore's paradise into a parking lot, Mitchell's live album Miles Of Aisles, with the serene momentum of an adult-oriented superstar going through an invincible phase, had cruised to No 2 on Billboard, outsold only by Linda Ronstadt's Heart Like A Wheel. At the beginning of March, Mitchell was chauffeured to the Shrine Auditorium in downtown LA to collect a Grammy for a song on Court And Spark- a pleasant accolade to place alongside its platinum disc. But the python and the boys in the headbands must have stirred something, because she got out her ink, drew the photo from National Geographic and incorporated it into the cover art of her next LP. In doing so, she set in motion a chain of events that shattered the calm, darkened the skies and left her seething about the criticism she never saw coming.

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is many things. It's an exclusive peek behind the curtain of palm trees that protects the super-wealthy and the super-bored. It's a set of 10 musical pieces that are at times melancholy, graceful, fine-woven and inscrutable. It's a dossier of sophisticated observations on women's material victories and defeats as they rely on, resent or revolve around their men. Above all, it's an LP that documents the lives of an endangered species that knows little of worlds beyond its own: the indigenous tribespeople of American suburbia. On the embossed sleeve, Mitchell transposed the giant snake to a fettucine-green landscape that might have been a modern-day urban park. The skyscrapers of a metropolis towered in the distance. Lined up in front of them, occupying the space between the businessmen and the bushmen, a row of bungalows stood like tanks before an army, guarding the city's perimeter. Mitchell's motif of the summer lawn was both impressionistic and sociocultural. The incongruous elements of the cover art combined in a visual pun. The hissing sound was made by sprinklers, but a serpent can thrive in a suburban dream-home, coiling itself around a marriage.

Joining some of the dots was "The Jungle Line", the album's second song, in which Mitchell traced direct connections from Africa to the jazz clubs of New York, imagining their crammed, noisy cellars as canvasses painted by Henri Rousseau. A primitivist best known for his tropical jungle scenes, Rousseau might well have designed a club décor of "ferns and orchid vines" (as well as putting a "jungle flower" behind the waitress' ear), but the snake that Mitchell notices in the jazz band's dressing-room is only a figurative cousin to the real ones in Rousseau's The Snake Charmer. It's a "poppy snake" - in other words, the heroin that comes into the city via the trafficking routes that lead back to another humid, vine-thick jungle. To get deeper into the heart of darkness, Mitchell hitches the venue's wild clientele ("cannibals of shuck and jive") not to a backdrop of jazz horns, but to pummelling Burundi drums and the electronic growl of a Moog. A totally new event on a Joni Mitchell record, "The Jungle Line" was conceptually provocative and years ahead of its time. The primitive met the avant-garde in the ritual of after-hours safari, and everyone from Paul Simon to Adam Ant was galvanised by the rhythms.

But as the LP cover reminds us, to travel from jungle to city, the primitive must first pass through the suburbs. In isolation and affluence, the suburbanites scatter themselves like plush velvet cushions behind their gadgetry and emotional shields, while Mitchell, with penetrating eye and paintbrush, sees something slithering in their neatly mown gardens. How self-negating are the concessions, she seems to conclude, that yield and are yielded by these unhappy families. Her "third-person lyrical portraits of damaged and unsympathetic characters," as Elvis Costello once called them, now begin to make their presence felt. They change the tone of the album completely, and with them disappear any realistic prospect of another singer-songwriter confessional. What exactly appears in its place - an air of cold detachment? A sleight-of-hand elegance? An artistry so rarefied that some people don't react to it while others can't stop overdosing on it? - has been the subject of debate for four decades.

For example: Edith, picked up last night by a crime boss, awakes in his bed with a song going through her mind. The title eludes her, but her thoughts quickly turn to the man by her side. She won the contest to be his prize for the evening, beating off the competition of older girls, and the criminal empire he runs is not hers to question. She locks eyes with him across the pillow. As the song ends, Mitchell seems to suggest they're as amoral and desperate as each other: a perfect gangland match. "You know they dare not look away," she sings, holding one of the album's longest notes for as long as the two of them can stare without blinking. And that, sure enough, is one way of hearing "Edith And The Kingpin".

But another way is to listen to the musicians – all of them, or as many as you can – who, far from being emotionally detached, bring sweetness and warmth flooding into the song from all corners. This way of hearing involves smiling with eyes closed as the trumpet on the left is joined by a flute on the right, and once they've held their notes for nine seconds, an electric piano ("fresh lipstick glistening") plays a rippling trill so exquisite that a nearby electric guitar appears to sigh with bliss. Another example: "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow", which follows, has often been described as a stream-of-consciousness jazz poem, making it sound like a text of abstruse intellectualism that only someone with a triple First in Classics and Oriental Languages would enjoy. Don't believe a word of it. Cajoled along by Wilton Felder's inventively rubbery bassline, "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow" is a cavalcade of musical delights. Guitarist Larry Carlton's feather-light glides up and down his fretboard provide so many gorgeous moments that Mitchell stops singing and lets him form them into a solo.

Minutes later, when we meet the high­maintenance Southern belle Scarlett ("Shades Of Scarlett Conquering"), we can count, by all means, the cost of what she loses with her impossible demands while she adheres to the doctrine she absorbed from Gone With The Wind- but we mustn't forget to swoon to Dale Oehler's heavenly string arrangement or luxuriate in the dreamy pattern of piano notes that Mitchell reiterates with her left hand. The Rolling Stone reviewer in 1975 who claimed that the album had "no tunes to speak of' evidently missed the wood for the trees; most of the songs are inundated with instrumental parts of aching loveliness, be it Chuck Findley's Bacharach-ian trumpet on the title track or his flugelhorn's haunting three-note refrain on "The Boho Dance", and their cumulative importance is as absolute as any vocal or lyric. However, as Mitchell would learn, finding not a single tune on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns wasn't the most scathing accusation the critics in America would level.

There are two more songs about suburban marriages in the album's second half, and at the end of each one the wife makes a pragmatic decision of sorts. In the title track, an unnamed woman lives as a virtual prisoner on her husband's hillside ranch ("She patrols that fence of his to a Latin drum"), but chooses to stay because there's just enough value in their expensive home to compensate for the poverty of her dreary days. As per Mitchell's album concept, the soothing hiss that the woman can hear from her balcony has worked its mesmeric effect. When it doesn't, the result comes as a shock. A high-ranking executive on a business trip to New York ("Harry's House/Centerpiece") has an erotic daydream about his wife when she was younger ("Shining hair and shining skin/shining as she reeled him in"), before snapping out of his reverie - and we aren't prepared for it - to reveal in the last few lines that she asked him for a divorce that morning. How old is the woman? Her age isn't specified. Old enough to be bored out of her mind with her husband, that's all we need to know. Old enough to be conscious of the moisturizing lotions and the march of time. "All those vain promises on beauty jars, "Mitchell sings in "Sweet Bird", the next song, just in case a middle-aged divorcee might fancy she's escaping into a rainbow. "Calendars of our lives, circled with compromise."

Mitchell, unmarried herself, lived behind wrought-iron gates in her 1920s Bel Air mansion with her boyfriend and drummer, John Guerin. When the gatefold sleeve of Hissing... was opened, there she was, floating on her back in the secluded Eden of her swimming-pool, while 30 lines of album notes, starting somewhere above her right knee, made it clear she was elated with the product inside. "This record is a total work conceived graphically, musically, lyrically and accidentally- as a whole. The performances, were guided by the given compositional structures and the audibly inspired beauty of every player. The whole unfolded like a mystery." A mystery to be lapped up by hundreds of thousands of armchair sleuths who hung in her every word. But something went wrong. The verdict was not measured out in superlatives this time. Critics dipped their adjectives in scorn (“narcissistic”, “pretentious”, “sometimes so smug that it’s downright irritating”) and her manager had to hide the reviews from her. With its jazz overtones and clear shift away from autobiographical writing, the LP left many fans disappointed. Internet book reviewers condemn a much-hyped novel by saying they “couldn’t relate to any of the characters”. The problem with the album was that some people couldn’t relate to the fact that there were characters at all.

In the 40 years since its release, it’s been place in a much more favorable light. Mitchell was touched when Prince listed it as one of his favorite albums in the 80s. Bjork, Morrissey, and George Michael all sung its praises. Elvis Costello hailed it as “the masterpiece of that time” when he wrote about Mitchell for Vanity Fair in 2004. It’s now celebrated for the very qualities that 70s listeners found hard to tolerate: the icy stillness, the special composure, the delicate balance of colors, the manicured refinement, the considered reportage”.

I will move to Albumism and their forty-fifth anniversary salute of Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns. If you have not heard this album, then I would suggest that you spend some time with it now. Even if critics were somewhat cold to upon its release, there is no denying it brilliance. It still sounds phenomenal years after I first heard it. One of the essential Joni Mitchell albums:

“Mitchell’s fans had acquired a taste for gossip. Taylor Swift isn’t the first songwriter to use her personal life as grist for the mill. Mitchell’s laundry list of lovers includes Leonard Cohen, David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor, and others. Fans had become accustomed to her songs being informed by the highs and lows of those relationships. Much of the ballyhoo (or lack thereof) was around the shift away from more popular works like Blue (1971) and her previous studio album Court and Spark (1974) that mined these experiences. That is to say, Mitchell had no intention of spilling the contents of her heart like a purse turned upside down this time.

“People started calling me confessional,” Mitchell lamented about the response to Blue, “And then it was like a blood sport. I felt like people were coming to watch me fall off a tightrope or something.” And so began the moratorium on allowing the public to live a vicarious love life through her.

Furthermore, Mitchell as an artist is adventurous and musically itinerate. Sentencing her to continue making different permutations of Blue time and again might have put her in an early grave. She needed to follow her muse, and it was very much a moving target. Hissing dabbles in world music, defiantly undiluted jazz, and incorporates synthesizers for the first time. On one hand, this is truly exciting for an artist. On the other, it drove Asylum Records to drink.

Asylum co-founder David Geffen was actually Mitchell’s roommate for a time. Though Geffen repeatedly encouraged her to write hits so she could “sell a lot of records,” he says she laughed the idea away. Roberta Joan Anderson could not be any less concerned with hits. It didn’t matter to her that Hissing’s esoteric lean made choosing a single nearly impossible. This was the album she wanted to make.

The label issued “In France They Kiss On Main Street” as a 7-inch in the winter of 1976. The rollicking release is full of youthful abandon, not unlike some of the L.A. Express-backed workouts on Court and Spark. Here, the verses scrawl romantic, devil-may-care imagery on the wall almost faster than the listener can take them in. Friendly ex-flames Nash, Crosby, and Taylor join her all-star background chorus for a fun time. In total, “France” flirted with Adult Contemporary radio for a couple months until it reached #32. But then it lost interest in the pursuit and went off to sweet talk someone else.

The title track of the LP begins its flip side with a lustrous, afternoon groove. Electric piano and Moog bass guarantee a mellow mood. The song is rife with understated musicianship, like the lazily purring horn line that follows the bridge, curling on the ground like an overfed housecat seeking attention. And every time Mitchell sings “summer lawns,” she drags its sibilance behind her like the tail of a serpent. Her perception is keen, and delivery slit-eyed. The exhibitionist has become a voyeur.

It was revealed in 2012 that Mitchell wrote “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” about renowned musician José Feliciano after visiting him and his new wife at their home in the San Fernando Valley. Attaching the lyric to Feliciano, famously blind since birth, gives a context that changes the lighting on its opulence and elitism (“He gave her his darkness to regret / And good reason to quit him / He gave her a roomful of Chippendale / That nobody sits in / Still she stays with a love of some kind / It's the lady's choice”).

Mitchell again casts a questioning eye on a relationship in “Edith and the Kingpin.” The three-act short story has no chorus, but is carried by a curious melody rolled through a winding path of jazz chords. In it, an underhanded figure in a small town sets his sights on a soon-to-be-corrupted young ingénue (“Women he has taken / Grow old too soon / He tilts their tired faces / Gently to the spoon”).

Answering the imagined questions of salivating gossip hounds, Mitchell told Mojo Magazine, “Part of it is from a Vancouver pimp I met and part of it is Edith Piaf. It's a hybrid, but all together it makes a whole truth. Basically, I am trying to present the human truth, but did [those things] happen specifically to me? What does that matter?” That’s how an intellectual tells one to mind one’s own damn business.

If that stung any, focus on the “little black dress” that Mitchell’s voice then slips into for the Hendricks-Edison composition “Centerpiece.” In this dream sequence, Mitchell indulges her Cotton Club fantasy shimmying as if to drive a hooting audience as mad as possible. It’s in the way she saunters up to all the flat thirds in the melody, shamelessly milking all the soul that can be gathered from them. The ‘50s jazz tune gets spliced into the center of “Harry’s House,” itself a compelling split-screen depiction of a marriage with its intimacy waning.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns didn’t have quite enough jazz to vie for Recording Academy honors in that category. It had just enough to scare off the timid contingent of her pop, rock, and folk listeners. It scored a GRAMMY nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, but was predictably passed over in favor of Linda Ronstadt that year.

Genuinely unconcerned with her records’ commercial performance, Mitchell would swim out into deeper jazz explorations over the next several years. Her pairing with kindred musical spirit Jaco Pastorius would define Hejira (1976). Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (1977) would push even further past the edge of wonder. By 1979, jazz legend Charlie Mingus chose Mitchell to complete the last compositions of his lifetime on an album named after him”.

I am going to end up with a review from The Quietus from 2020. They marked forty-five years of Joni Mitchell’s seventh studio album. The Hissing of Summer Lawns contains some of Mitchell’s best songs in my view. Even though it was a relative chart success in 1975, it did not get the critical acclaim that it deserved. I am glad that there has been fonder regard in years since. It is a wonderful album:

“‘In France They Kiss On Main Street’ stands as a stepping stone between what Mitchell had been and what she was about to become. It would not have been notably out of place on Court And Spark. But ‘The Jungle Line’, with its thudding tribal drums and beat poetry incantations, certainly would. Now, there are, let’s say, issues with Mitchell and race. Not just the sleeve of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (1977), which one might generously explain away as theatricality in art, but her subsequent, jaw-dropping remarks about it. And to invoke the jungle, and Rousseau – whether he of the noble savages, or he of the Primitivist art; it proves to be the latter – on “Safaris to the heart of all that Jazz” in Harlem is, in today’s wince-inducing word, problematic. And yet. So evocative is its sorcery, so piercing of history’s sweep the lyric, that if one cares to justify it, one could say it is descriptive of the products of an attitude rather than an example of that attitude. And if one doesn’t, one may simply acknowledge both its uncomfortable stereotyping and its singular redolence and atmosphere, and accept that chipping away at the clay feet of great art for the purpose of bringing it down altogether is a kind of spiritual vandalism – as if the entire past must be slung out for failing to come up to code in the present.

The safari seems a preliminary excursion, but it isn’t. It travels by an unexpected route to the same set of views, which is female life seen both from the inside and the exterior. ‘The Jungle Line’’s barmaid is sister under the skin to Edith, she of the languid, lovely ‘Edith And The Kingpin’. The Kingpin is a small-time Mr Big, a local potentate, who has fixed upon Edith as his bedmate, the latest in a line of women who “grow old too soon”, raddled by cocaine and the terrors of their incumbency. Chosen, Edith has no choice. Taken, she must take what she is given. She is woman as vassal, no more free in her American town than her equivalent falling under the eye of a feudal village’s liege lord. No more free than the lavishly kept wife in the title track – who might be Edith, years on, prisoner of the man she’s captured – pacing the barbed wire perimeter of her ranch house like the caged animal she is. Or is she? Is it that liberty is impossible, or that she imprisons herself? “He gave her his darkness to regret/And good reason to quit him… Still she stays with a love of some kind/It’s the lady’s choice."

Here she is again, or again, her subcutaneous sister, in ‘Harry’s House – Centerpiece’, yet another of the post-Impressionist wonders Mitchell daubs onto the album in loose brushstrokes that coalesce with magical precision into perfect pictures; and every last one of those pictures has its shadows and it has some source of light. Here is Mad Men, three decades early. Harry in the city, surrounded by glamour and sexual opportunity; wifey in the suburbs, surrounded by dead air. And with astounding artfulness, Mitchell places at the heart of her own song a cover version, the swing-jazz standard, ‘Centerpiece’, in which the singer’s “pretty baby” is lauded as, quite literally, a piece of furniture around which his household is to be assembled. In the gap between 1958, the year of the song’s composition, when its subject was evidently intended to feel delight at such a prospect, and 1975, Mitchell unpicks how it feels to become a trophy. Edith, Harry’s wife, the “lady” of the summer lawn: all are prized possessions who learn the hard way just what it is to be acquired, when you think it’s you who’s making the catch.

Mitchell never makes things simple. Nor needlessly complex. The music on these songs flows like water running downhill, switching this way or that not for the sake of it but because it must. Its course is unpredictable and ineluctable; once followed, it could not, you sense , have gone any other way. The same is true of the feelings and images it carries along. They are as plain and as complicated as the lives they invoke. So there is no easy dichotomy whereby women at liberty are happier than women trapped by men, or by themselves. Freedom has its own hazards. “Since I was seventeen/I’ve had no one over me,” snarls the narrator of ‘Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow’, the scene of a fierce and terse battle of the sexes in which ancient, Abrahamic patterns of domineering and resistance play out via the mores of the day. Religion clutches at everything. ‘Out of the fire like Catholic saints/Comes Scarlett and her deep complaint.” Woman as something wounded. Woman as something bloody and unbowed. Woman as something red, aflame and dangerous. This is ‘Shades of Scarlett Conquering’. A lambent piano ballad, invoking Gone With The Wind and depicting a creature of unblinking will: ‘It is not easy to be brave/Walking around in so much need… Cast iron and frail/With her impossibly gentle hands/and her blood-red fingernails.’ Mitchell unfolds the femme fatale from the inside, in the most delicate and ingenious reverse origami, and makes you quiver at the truth of it”.

Even though there is no certainty exactly when in November 1975 The Hissing of Summer Lawns was released, I am going to play it safe and say 1st, even though it was likely later in the month. I was keen to show my appreciation for…

SUCH a brilliant album.