FEATURE: The College Genius: BBC Radio 6 Music As It Prepares for Its Eighteenth Birthday

FEATURE:

The College Genius

IN THIS IMAGE: Lauren Laverne presents weekday breakfasts between 7:30-10:30 on BBC Radio 6 Music/IMAGE CREDIT: BBC

BBC Radio 6 Music As It Prepares for Its Eighteenth Birthday

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I know its birthday is not until…

IN THIS PHOTO: Mark Radcliffe (alongside Stuart Maconie) presents weekend breakfasts between 7:00-10:00/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

11th March but, with about a month to go, it is like celebrations of album anniversaries. You post something ahead of time so people are aware and, let’s be fair, so other people do not beat you to it! I have written about BBC Radio 6 Music quite a few times in the past (including this recent article) but, as the station is about to turn eighteen – and it can legally buy itself a beer! -, I think that is worth celebrating! Known as BBC 6 Music from its launch in 2002 to April 2011, it has added the ‘Radio’ since – I prefer it. BBC Radio 6 Music – I shall refer to it as such from here on -, was the first national music radio station to be launch by the BBC in thirty-two years. One can access the official site or tune your DAB in – you can also access the station on digital television. Whilst I am going to tip my hat to the presenters and everyone who makes the station run and grow, I wanted to focus on two things as BBC Radio 6 Music turns eighteen: its survival and how influential it is. BBC Radio 6 Music has always been dogged by the perception that it caters heavily towards Alternative music and guitars. Maybe that was partially true when they started – the first song played was Ash’s Burn Baby Burn -, but the station is broader than any out there. This is why I, and so many others, make it our station of choice! I hope that, one day, the station broadens out a bit when it comes to Pop and older songs; maybe picking up a few songs one might find on BBC Radio 2’s playlist!

IN THIS PHOTO: Steve Lamacq (pictured with Nadine Shah) presents weekdays from 4-7 p.m./PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

That is a minor quibble because, as you will notice when you tune in and listen to all the shows, there is a huge variety of music on display. I listen to the fabulous Lauren Laverne and Chris Hawkins a lot. I also listen to the brilliant Shaun Keaveny every weekday in addition to Steve Lamacq. From Cerys Matthews, to Gideon Coe, through to Craig Charles, Liz Kershaw, Iggy Pop, and Gilles Peterson, each presenter has their own flavour and theme - I cannot write a detailed appraisal of each presenter, but trust me when I say they are ace! Each person on the station adores what they do, and the fact so many of the presenters have been at the station for many years shows it is a place to be; a haven and station that does what others cannot. A few of the talent – including Chris Hawkins and Tom Robinson (who also presents the BBC Introducing Mixtape) – have been there since the early days, and one feels they will be at the station for many years more – let us hope so! Whether you love the wit of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie on weekend breakfasts or Mary Anne Hobbs’ expertise weekday mornings, there is something for every ear! I also love Miranda Sawyer’s Sound and Vision, Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour, and Don Letts’ Culture Clash Radio! I am going to try and tag every presenter and music news peep I can when posting this article but, if I have left too many people off, I hope they will forgive me! The BBC Radio 6 Music family is a united and strong one, where everyone there provides golden radio; one can hear the passion in every single moment. BBC Radio 6 Music have seen their listener figures increase, and the station is growing larger and stronger:

“And Virgin’s digital-only rival BBC Radio 6 Music had a stonking quarter, up 8.4% year-on-year at 2.49m – it’s now back in front of Kisstory (2.2m, up 22.1% year-on-year) and the biggest digital station. The result for 6 Music comes 10 years after the BBC announcement that the station would close - a decision later reversed. Meanwhile, 1Xtra is still hovering around a million, but slips back with a 6.5% decline year-on-year to 987,000. BBC Radio 3 had its biggest audience since 2016 (2.13m, up 16.4% year-on-year)”.

It is testament to the dedication of the broadcasters and the quality of the shows that means BBC Radio 6 Music will continue to swell and build its empire. It is shocking to imagine what could have been if the BBC had scrapped the station in 2010! There were plenty of articles published around the time perplexed by the BBC’s cut plans.

IN THIS PHOTO: Mary Anne Hobbs at Jumbo Records in 2019 - Hobbs can be heard weekdays from 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on BBC Radio 6 Music/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

Music news presenters like Matt Everitt, Georgie Rogers, Helen Weatherhead, Siobhán McAndrew, and Clare Crane keep us informed of all the latest happenings and need-to-know announcements…and one often overlooks the dedicated producers who do not get the same credit as presenters but are invaluable and ensure we actually get to hear a show! I think we can put the issue of diversification, sonically, to bed, as one of the most frequent things I see on social media related to BBC Radio 6 Music is how varied they are! Not only does this extend to the classics and well-known tracks, but the brand-new stuff. Not limited by genre, the station throws the door open to the best music around. I first encountered BBC Radio 6 Music quite a few years after it started, but I have found so many artists through them; many I have written about and follow closely. In the same vein, I am always picking up on songs I had forgotten about, those that BBC Radio 6 Music bring back into my life. Whether it is Jon Hillcock, Lauren Laverne, Tom Ravenscroft or Tom Robinson digging up some new brilliance, or Marc Riley and the ultra-cool Huey Morgan offering up some tasty cuts, there is no station like BBC Radio 6 Music! I have not even mentioned the wonderful Amy Lamé and Nemone - check out their incredible shows! (The marvellous Katie Puckrik and Huw Stephens are passionate stand-in presenters who would be popular in a larger role). It was only eight years into its life that BBC Radio 6 Music was faced with extinction. By July 2010, a BBC Trust announced that it had rejected plans by the BBC to close the station; though the mere suggestion BBC Radio 6 Music is expendable is laughable. The station has grown since but, even a decade ago, the BBC Trust knew that BBC Radio 6 Music was highly-valued and offered a rich contribution.

By 2018, BBC Radio 6 Music was the most-listened-to digital-only station; it brings new listeners in all of the time, and there will never be talk again of closures or cutbacks. The station is not perfect, I’ll admit: the comparative lack of female broadcasters is alarming (even if there is more balance in terms of gender when it comes to producers), and I think there could be greater recruitment in that area. We have Gemma Cairney (who presents The Leisure Society) and Georgie Rogers on the music news – who, as I have said many times, is qualified and popular enough to helm her own show. This is an aside because, aside from some minor quibbles, BBC Radio 6 Music goes from strength to strength! The dedication of its broadcasters, producers, and staff will ensure the station continues to draw in new listeners for decades to come. It is humbling to think that, in a matter of weeks, BBC Radio 6 Music will be eighteen! In 2002, albums like The Streets’ Original Pirate Material, Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf, and Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me were turning heads. In the middle of an eclectic and exciting year for music, this fledgling station was coming into the world. BBC Radio 6 Music responds with the times, and it keeps its music roster fresh and multifarious. There are great features one gets hooked on, and there is this addictive, warm quality that means, once tuned in, one is hooked!

In its third decade (making me feel old!), I can see new successes for BBC Radio 6 Music. The 6 Music Festival is back and coming from Camden this year. It runs from 6th-8th March, and you can see more details here. Keep abreast of all the latest happenings via the station’s Instagram and fantastic Twitter accounts. Go and see all the latest videos and live sessions on BBC Radio 6 Music’s YouTube channel. I think the fact BBC Radio 6 Music is alternative and strays away from the mainstream is appealing to people. Whereas other big BBC stations tend to have a defined demographic, BBC Radio 6 Music speaks to listeners of all ages and tastes. A decade after the station was threatened with closure, the future looks very bright for BBC Radio 6 Music! I think the success and growing popularity of BBC Radio 6 Music has inspired so many people to get into radio; it has influenced others to start their own podcast and, actually, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another digital station appear on the BBC that builds on BBC Radio 6 Music and adds in new angles and ideas – a sister station that would have a similar ethos. On 11th March, the station turns eighteen and leaves college; it is bound for university, it can buy alcohol and it is an adult. So many people remember when BBC Radio 6 Music was an infant and finding its feet - my, how our child has grown! Now, it is one of the jewels in the BBC crown, and a station that offers so, so much. Artists consider it a badge of honour being played on BBC Radio 6 Music and, with so many stations providing very little in the way of entertainment, variety and wide-ranging music, we are very lucky to have BBC Radio 6 Music! It is only left for us to raise a glass and wish this sensational station…

IMAGE CREDIT: BBC

ONE hell of a birthday!

FEATURE: Her Sensual World: Kate Bush’s Language of Love

FEATURE:

 

Her Sensual World

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s Language of Love

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WE are heading closer to Valentine’s Day…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed on 23rd October, 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Sunday Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

and I have been thinking about Kate Bush’s music. I have written a fair few features about her, but I don’t think, if I remember rightly, I have ever really talked about her sensuality and sexuality. One of the most affecting things about her music is its honesty and openness. Even on her debut, The Kick Inside, Bush was writing about desire, sex, and love in a very arresting and uninhibited way. It is one of the reasons I love that album as much as I do. Bush’s take on love, even as a teenager, was never of someone scornful and judgmental. One would be hard-placed to name many modern artists whose music has the same balance of sensuality, positivity and depth. I am reminded of a song like The Man with the Child in His Eyes. It is about a man having that innocence and child-like curiosity; Bush songs in a very impassioned and committed way. It was about her then-boyfriend, Steve Blacknell, and right throughout The Kick Inside, we hear this young woman exploring love and sex in a very positive way. Not only was Bush hopeful and lacking in any resentment, she could describe lust and attraction like nobody else. Phrases like “You came out of the night/Wearing a mask in white colour” (from L'Amour Looks Something Like You) is a superb image; Feel It is a gorgeously-delivered song where Bush sings: “Here comes one and one makes one/The glorious union, well, it could be love/Or it could be just lust but it will be fun/It will be wonderful”.

Whilst Bush would write more complex love songs later in her career, that combination of her angelic, arresting voice and the way she describes longing and affecting…it is like no other artist! I am not saying a positive outlook on love is rare – as plenty of artists have written songs that are hopeful -, but Bush has rarely penned a line where she scolds her lover or talks about the cruelty of love. Maybe some of her expressions and lyrics on The Kick Inside – “My heart is thrown to the pebbles and the boatmen/All the time I find I'm living in that evening/With that feeling of sticky love inside” from L'Amour Looks Something Like You veers from the poetic to the explicit in a manner of seconds – are not overly-sophisticated and, at times, they bordered on the explicit. The Kick Inside turns forty-two on 17th February, and I have been revisiting it quite a bit. When a then-teenage Bush sings of desire and sex, It does not sound like her contemporaries – rather juvenile and commercial -, but more like an older soul; one who has greater wisdom and curiosity and, with it, a much more interesting take on love and romance. Bush’s debut album came at a time when Punk was all the rage and, with very few comparisons out there, her songwriting was a breath of fresh air. I want to quote from Laura Snapes’ review of The Kick Inside where she discusses Bush’s musical urges and the way her writing/mindset differed from artists of the time:

“Besides, Bush had always felt that she had male musical urges, drawing distinctions between herself and the female songwriters of the 1960s. “That sort of stuff is sweet and lyrical,” Bush said of Carole King and co. in 1978, “but it doesn’t push it on you, and most male music—not all of it, but the good stuff—really lays it on you. It’s like an interrogation. It really puts you against the wall and that’s what I’d like my music to do. I’d like my music to intrude.”

But provocation for its own sake wasn’t Bush’s project. EMI not pushing her to make an album at 15 was a blessing: The Kick Inside arrived the year after punk broke, which Bush knew served her well. “People were waiting for something new to come out—something with feeling,” she said in 1978. For anyone who scoffed at her punk affiliation—given her teenage mentorship at the hands of Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour and her taste for the baroque—she indisputably subverted wanky prog with her explicit desire and sexuality: Here was how she might intrude. The limited presence of women in prog tended to orgasmic moaning that amplified the supposed sexual potency of the group’s playing. Bush demanded pleasure, grew impatient when she had to wait for it, and ignored the issue of male climax—rock’s founding pleasure principle—to focus on how sex might transform her. “I won’t pull away,” she sings almost as a threat on “Feel It,” alone with the piano. “My passion always wins.”

What made Bush’s writing truly radical was the angles she could take on female desire without ever resorting to submissiveness. “Wuthering Heights” is menacing melodrama and ectoplasmic empowerment; “The Saxophone Song”—one of two recordings made when she was 15—finds her fantasizing about sitting in a Berlin bar, enjoying a saxophonist’s playing and the effect it has on her. But she is hardly there to praise him: “Of all the stars I’ve seen that shine so brightly/I’ve never known or felt in myself so rightly,” she sings of her reverie, with deep seriousness. We hear his playing, and it isn’t conventionally romantic but stuttering, coarse, telling us something about the unconventional spirits that stir her”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

Bush was an artist who did not just write about relationships and love. A lot of modern artists could learn something from Bush when it comes to lyrics variety and imagination but, when she did put passions in the spotlight, she was always unique, original and engaging. Lionheart’s Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake uses images of a vehicle and a slippery road to describe a woman (Emma) losing her flame. In the Warm Room begins with the evocative and stunning opening verse: “In the warm room/Her perfume reaches you/Eventually you'll fall for her/Down you'll go/To where the mellow wallows”. Some people – idiots – scoff at Bush’s gymnastic vocals and lyrics, thinking they are a bit ridiculous and hippy-dippy. Even from her first album, Bush was writing lines that took love away from the cliché and heartbroken to new realms and heights. I was actually going to write a feature about the song, Breathing, as it turns forty on 14th April; a gem of a song from Never for Ever (1980), it is a moment where Bush embraced the political in a way she had never done before. I digress. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) from Hounds of Love (1985) is about Bush trading shoes/bodies with a man so they could see what the other goes through and, in doing so, have a greater understanding of one another.

There was a period of Bush’s recording life where she was actually writing more about subjects away from relationships – The Kick Inside (1978) to The Sensual World (1989). Even though I love Bush when stepping away from love, I find myself awed and dumbstruck when she sings of sensuousness and passion. I missed out on mentioning Wuthering Heights from The Kick Inside, where Bush plays the role of Catherine Earnshaw from Emily Brontë’s masterpiece; a spectral figure at Heathcliffe’s window. Bush steps beyond the personal and limited and incorporates literature, the natural world, and a variety of settings when she sings of love and passion. The title track from The Sensual World (1989) was inspired by Molly Bloom stepping out of the black-and-white, two-dimensional pages of James Joyce's Ulysses into the real world…and is immediately struck by the sensuality of it all. Love and Anger (from The Sensual World) is one of Bush’s finest set of lyrics: “Take away the love and the anger/And a little piece of hope holding us together/Looking for a moment that'll never happen/Living in the gap between past and future/Take away the stone and the timber/And a little piece of rope won't hold it together”. The Red Shoes’ And So Is Love is one of Bush’s most impassioned performances; 50 Words for Snow’s (2011) Misty – Bush showing she is as saucy, boundary-pushing and unique as she was on The Kick Inside – concerns a snowman lover who melts away after a night of passion.

It is almost Valentine’s Day and, on the radio, we will hear a slew of classic love songs that, whilst good, are riddled with clichés, hyperbole and, often, negativity. I have only mentioned a few of Kate Bush’s great songs but, on every occasion, she wrote something original and different to what came before. I have mentioned how Bush rarely wrote anything judgmental and bitter; she has a very positive attitude towards men and, when it comes to love, she could blend incredible poetry with racy images without losing focus. Bush’s voice is, obviously, very beautiful and varied, but few people mention her way with words when it comes to matters of the heart. If you are not a fan of Valentine’s Day or the usual kind of love song, spend some time investigating Kate Bush’s music and one will find something much more immersive and intriguing. Her incredible lyrical approach and majestic voice is a stunning blend that overpowers the heart and mind. I think a lot of songs that deal with love and relationships leave a bitter taste and can be quite forlorn. Even when Bush has lost love and is looking around for meaning – “Every day and night I pray/And pray that you will stay away forever/It's so hard for love to stay together/With the modern Western pressures” (Between a Man and a Woman, The Sensual World), there seems to be this hope; something the listener can take away or, at the very least, a set of lyrics that is miles removed from anything anyone else is doing. Bush is a masterful lyricist and is someone who can talk of war and loss as memorably as desire and passion. When it comes to matters of the heart and soul (and loins), Kate Bush is…

ONE of the all-time greats writers.

FEATURE: Sisters in Arms: An All-Female, Winter-Ready Playlist (Vol. V)

FEATURE:

 

Sisters in Arms

IN THIS PHOTO: H.E.R.

An All-Female, Winter-Ready Playlist (Vol. V)

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THIS weekend is going to be…

IN THIS PHOTO: Adwaith

a changeable one for weather, and tomorrow is especially rough. Many people will experience some wild weather, so I think it is a chance to stay in with some music and just relax. Rather than brave the elements, stay in with this collection of tracks from some of the finest women in music right now. Every week produces killer tracks from all corners of the musical map – this week is no exception. It has been a fantastic week for music, so have a listen to these golden cuts, and they will make you feel safe…

IN THIS PHOTO: Isabelle Brown

AND warm.  

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La Roux – He Rides

I Break Horses – Death Engine

Låpsley – Womxn

PHOTO CREDIT: @andrea_savall

Hinds – Good Bad Times

Sharon Van Etten – Beaten Down

Ina Wroldsen – Pale Horses

MARINA – About Love (from the Netflix film, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You)

PHOTO CREDIT: @mariesutter

Red Moon – Dogma

Phantogram – Pedestal

Isobel Campbell – Rainbow

Adwaith - Lan Y Môr

Georgia Ku – Ever Really Know

Lauren Jauregui – Invisible Chains

Maisie Peters – Smile

Frazey Ford – Purple and Brown

SIIGHTS – Better Now

lau.ra, Secaina – Sideways

Anne-Marie – Birthday

Carly Rae Jepsen – Let’s Be Friends

Christine and the Queens – People, i’ve been sad

Nadine Shah – Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love)

Beach Bunny – Promises

Dagny – Come Over

H.E.R. – Comfortable

Isabelle Brown – To Say Goodbye

PHOTO CREDIT: Brandon Hicks

Victoria Monét – Moment

Basia Bulat – Already Forgiven

FEATURE: The February Playlist: Vol. 2: Beaten Down, But Not Defeated

FEATURE:

The February Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Sharon Van Etten

Vol. 2: Beaten Down, But Not Defeated

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THIS week is crammed with great tracks…

and some really big artists are in the spotlight. Apart from new tracks from Sharon Van Etten, Christine and the Queens, and La Roux, there are ace tunes from Nadine Shah, Green Day, and FOALS - in addition to some sparklers from Hayley Williams, Moses Sumney, and Willy J Healey. This weekend is going to be pretty unsettled weather-wise, so it is best to settle down with some good music. It is a typically eclectic week, so have fun with this great selection! Although we are only just in February, this year has started off incredibly. It makes me wonder what gold we will receive…

IN THIS PHOTO: Christine and the Queens/PHOTO CREDIT: Eve Pentel for DIY

NEXT week.

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

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PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pfluger

Sharon Van Etten - Beaten Down

Christine and the Queens - People, I’ve been sad

Nadine Shah - Ladies for Babies (Goats for Love)

Green Day – Oh Yeah!

Isobel Campbell – Ant Life

EOB – Shangri-La

PHOTO CREDIT: Joe Wheatley

Willie J Healey - Why You Gotta Do It

La Roux – Everything I Live For

Hayley Williams – Cinnamon

PHOTO CREDIT: Eddie Chacon

Best Coast - Different Light

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Neill

FOALS – Neptune

H.E.R. – Comfortable

The Pussycat Dolls - React

Jack Garratt – Time

The 1975 - Me & You Together Song

Halsey – Experiment on Me

Moses Sumney – Cut Me

Anne-Marie – Birthday

Hinds - Good Bad Times

Beabadoobee - Sun More Often

Circa Waves – Sad Happy

Beardyman - Every End Is A Beginning | SHEER VOLUME - 1/52

Oh Wonder – Hallelujah

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack McKain

Khruangbin, Leon Bridges - Conversion

Adam Lambert (ft. Nile Rodgers) - ROSES

Carly Rae Jepsen - Let's Be Friends

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Patmore

King Krule – Alone, Omen 3

Beach Bunny – Promises

The Shires – Independence Day

Adwaith - Lan Y Môr

PHOTO CREDIT: Erica Hernandez

Victoria Monét – Moment

Nathaniel Rateliff - All or Nothing

FEATURE: All Together Now: Can the Music World (and Fans) Unite for a Universal Movement?

FEATURE:

 

All Together Now

PHOTO CREDIT: @trapnation/Unsplash

Can the Music World (and Fans) Unite for a Universal Movement?

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THAT question sounds both huge and vague…

PHOTO CREDIT: @li_anlim/Unsplash

but what I mean is, as we are experiencing bushfires, climate change, and violence on the streets, there are a lot of people concerned and scared. There are a lot of issues and big problems that need tackling, and one wonders how much the world leaders are prepared to do. It is a tense time but, with so much passion and desire for change in the world, it seems like a revolt or peaceful movement might be needed. When it comes to passion, the music industry is no short supply! From musicians through to broadcasters, and journalists, there is a wealth of strength and activation. I know there are charities and movements that are dedicated to tackling climate change and other issues, but I wonder whether it is possible to create a unified movement that joins people in a common cause: to make the world a better place. We had Punk in the 1970s and 1980s that seemed to speak to a great many people but, in 2020, I think there are more problems and bigger emergencies that could benefit from mass action. Artists are talking about climate change and violence (and other subjects) in their music, but the industry is so compartmentalised and wide-ranging, one doesn’t see too much togetherness. Maybe it would take the form of a new musical movement; it does not need to be all angry and charged. I think a certain urgency is needed but, as I have said in many pieces, we need more fun and euphoria in music.

PHOTO CREDIT: @kristsll/Unsplash

That may seem inappropriate given the situation we are in, but I do think we all need to realise things will get better. I was researching for a forthcoming Peter Gabriel feature, and he was saying that the young or technological-minded will start a change/revolution in the same way Punk did decades ago. Music has the power to change so much; from an individual to the world itself, I think artists can affect change faster and more effectively than politicians. All is never lost, but it is evident we have a lot of fires to put out – both literal and metaphorically -, and music does not have the same movements that we used to see. Many artists today do not like genre labels but, rather than define this movement by sound, it can have a name instead; it can consist multiple sounds and ideas. Having a genre/movement that mixed together the positivity and Pop of Britpop with something akin to Punk would be fascinating. I look around music now and there are some great artists, for sure, but so many different sounds and colours. Variation is a great thing but, with so many people in the industry keen to do their bit, a strong and proactive movement would be much-needed. In terms of aims, I guess it would involve calling for change and raising awareness, both through song and in speech.

I think a lot of us are also feeling suffocated and frightened by the news and, whilst the truth needs to come out, another side of the movement would be a new euphoria; a sort of third Summer of Love. I know I have talked about that possibility before and, thirty years since its last incarnation, I feel now is a time to revive it. It would take a bit of work but, with so much at stake – in terms of the damage to the planet -, I do feel music can alter so much. With technology and the sheer potential of music itself, who knows what could happen? I was also thinking about viral campaigns and the fact we have not had one for a long time. Whereas previous viral campaigns have involved people doing certain tasks or dares, this would be music-based and either a playlist or a person nominating a song. They would share that on social media, and one will donate on a homepage that collates money for a single charity that tackles a range of problems. There are times when music has changed the world and, reading this article, it seems like a Live Aid-style event would be potent. So much money and awareness could be generated with a global concert that is broadcast around the world. I am just throwing ideas out there, but there is so much potential in music/musicians that is not being tapped. This year is one where so many huge issues will be put under the spotlight, and there are going to be various charities and bodies calling for action. I do think music has that ability to bring us all together and make the world better. Some sort of scene or movement could be just the start and, even though it may start as a rumbling, it could lead to…

PHOTO CREDIT: @adityachinchure/Unsplash

A huge tremor.

FEATURE: Freedom Days: Gorillaz’s ‘Song Machine’

FEATURE:

 

Freedom Days

IMAGE CREDIT: Gorillaz

Gorillaz’s ‘Song Machine’

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I am always interested when someone…

IMAGE CREDIT: Gorillaz

comes along and makes music more interesting and less routine. We are living at a time, as I say often, where the digital rules and social media is the way we promote music. Campaigns seem very samey, and you get the cycle happening time and time again. To be fair to artists, they need to do things this way because it is the best method to market and get the most engagement and focus. When it comes to recording music, do we need to be slavish to the studio and the usual process!? This may sound random, but the animated band, Gorillaz, have unveiled something unique. They are recording songs in their Kong Studios, and letting people more into the recording process. They are also working with a range of different collaborators, and it is a very different way of doing an album. This Rolling Stone article explains more:

“Gorillaz will launch a new music and cartoon series, “Song Machine,” Thursday with a new track, “Momentary Bliss,” featuring British MC Slowthai and the punk duo Slaves.

“Song Machine” will find Gorillaz moving forward outside the constraints of a typical album cycle. Per a press release, the series will find the animated outfit teaming with an “ever-evolving roster” of collaborators, with episodes coming together in the band’s Kong Studios. The series won’t have a set schedule, with Gorillaz promising the “spontaneous delivery of episodes throughout the year.”

Tuesday, Gorillaz shared the “Song Machine” theme music, while today they dropped “Machine Bitez #1,” a short skit featuring members 2D, Murdoc and Russel.

In a “statement,” Gorillaz drummer Russel said, “‘Song Machine’ is a whole new way of doing what we do. Gorillaz breaking the mould ‘cos the mould got old. World is moving faster than a supercharged particle, so we’ve gotta stay ready to drop. We don’t even know who’s stepping through the studio next. ‘Song Machine’ feeds on the unknown, runs on pure chaos. So whatever the hell’s coming, we’re primed and ready to produce like there’s no tomorrow. Y’know, just in case.”

Gorillaz — the long-time project of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett — released their most recent album, The Now Now, in 2018. The previous year, they dropped Humanz, which at the time marked their first LP since 2010’s The Fall. Last December, the band released a new documentary, Reject False Icons, which chronicled the prolific three-year period that produced The Now Now and Humanz”.

There are few more hard-working bands than Gorillaz and, when it comes to Damon Albarn, he is always looking at ways to push music forward and doing something new. I am interested to see how this song cycle pans out, and what we get. I like the fact we might get a new song out of the blue, and one is not going to know in advance who it is. So often, we get so much warning online regarding albums/songs, and they are mercilessly teased online. It can get predictable and rather dull. Most smaller artists cannot afford to do what Gorillaz are doing, but I wonder whether there are ways to change the way albums are recorded.

PHOTO CREDIT: @jesmanfabio/Unsplash

I have seen examples where artists have recorded an album live and streamed it at the same time. That is pretty exciting, and it means one can literally see an album being recorded. Maybe the whole process of writing, releasing, and marketing music means musicians are loathed to break from the usual course. I think Gorillaz’s new tact/idea will spark interest in others. I like the idea of songs sort of springing up, and we can actually see what is happening from the studio. Perhaps artists feel like cameras in a studio would be too intrusive, considering social media makes us feel exposed and vulnerable. I think there is something to be said for changing up things and thinking outside the box. Maybe artists could find a new way to market songs but, actually, I love the recording process and seeing the nuts and bolts of a track. We hear songs on streaming services or vinyl (or other formats), but few of us can appreciate how a song is created and recorded. At a time when we are short of attention spans, I do actually think something more immersive and forensic would interest people. I find myself skimming through tracks and being interested; I might listen a few more times, but the fascination fades. Maybe it is just me, but I am always intrigued when an artist goes beyond what we expect. (The risk doesn’t always pay off, mind). In the case of Gorillaz, I was finding myself turning away from their music because it was sort of blending in too much – maybe that is me being fickle.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @dpmb87/Unsplash

Now that they have an incentive and new way of releasing an album, I am re-invested and look forward to what comes next – and the track they made with Slaves and slowthai is pretty good! I can appreciate how demanding music is, and how little time artists get to actually create and release their music. I am not suggesting people go too much out of their way regarding releases and promotion. Anything that lets the listener know more about the creative process benefits both the listener and musician. Also, anything that can surprise people in 2020 is pretty necessary. I think there is a mass of music out there, and a way of making it more real or differentiating it from the herd is always impressive and welcomed. I shall leave things there, but I think it is cool Gorillaz have sort of opened up their world more to fans – even if they are animated -; they have this album campaign that is kind of unpredictable and unconventional. It is another bold step from a simian band who are…  

IMAGE CREDIT: Gorillaz

PRETTY damn evolved!

FEATURE: This Will Be My Testimony: The Iconic Peter Gabriel at Seventy

FEATURE:

 

This Will Be My Testimony

IN THIS PHOTO: Peter Gabriel captured in 2012/PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Enoch

The Iconic Peter Gabriel at Seventy

___________

WHERE does one start with…

the iconic and legendary Peter Gabriel?! As it is his seventieth birthday on 13th February, I felt it would be wrong to ignore such an important occassion! I grew up listening to Gabriel’s music and, in terms of songs, I think Steam was the first track of his I heard (I also love those songs only the diehard fans know). Steam appears on his 1992 album, US, and I first heard it on Now That's What I Call Music! 24 in 1993. After hearing that track, I listened back to Gabriel’s catalogue and was mesmerised. I think, oddly, me and Gabriel have a distant connection. He has said in interviews how, when young, he would listen to albums in Record Corner in Godalming, Surrey. I spent many happy lunchtimes there when I attended college in Godalming between 1999-2001. Apart from that, me and Peter Gabriel are worlds apart! Before I go into more detail about his work – especially his solo career –, here is some pretty good overview/biography regarding Gabriel:

“In 1980 he founded WOMAD (World of Music Arts and Dance), which has presented 170 festivals in over 30 countries. The festival became the inspiration for Real World Records, which he launched in 1989 with the aim of providing talented artists from around the world with access to state-of-the-art recording facilities, and help get their music better known around the world. Artists released by the label such as Hukwe Zawose, Ayub Ogada, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Papa Wemba, Totó La Momposina, Sheila Chandra and more recently The Gloaming and Loney dear, have all helped establish the label’s eclectic credentials.

Since 1980, when Peter released the anti-apartheid single ‘Biko’ he has been actively involved in human rights campaigning. He has participated in many benefit concerts, notably Amnesty International’s 1988 Human Rights Now! Tour, which was the first benefit concert to tour globally with Youssou N’Dour, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman and Sting. It was on this tour he saw first hand how video can transform a human rights activist’s chances of achieving justice and change, and in 1992 proposed the creation of an organization to pioneer the use of video in human rights work, Witness.org. Around 2000 he co-founded TheElders.org, with Richard Branson, to bring together a small group of highly respected global leaders, launched with Nelson Mandela in July 2007.

In 1999 Peter co-founded On Demand Distribution (OD2) with Charles Grimsdale and others, which quickly became Europe’s first successful Digital Music Download retailer (and pre-dated Apple’s iTunes launch in Europe by some four years). OD2 is now Nokia Music.

Still convinced in the need for easy digital access to music, he co-founded WE7, a streaming service, with John Taysom and Steve Purdham in 2006 (two years before Spotify). It was sold in 2013.

In 2008 Peter, along with Real World and British Hi-fi manufacturer Bowers and Wilkins, created the Society of Sound to record and release new music in high definition audio. The Society of Sound has recorded over 100 albums of previously unheard music (as well as many recordings from the archives of the LSO) in the highest possible quality.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Enoch

For his music, Peter has received several Grammy and MTV awards, an Oscar nomination, the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and various lifetime achievement awards including BT’s Digital Music Pioneer Award and The Polar Music Prize. He has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall. For his activism, The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates awarded him Man of Peace award in 2006 and TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Peter is now writing and recording, and working on a plan to create a streaming service for digital medicine and an Interspecies Internet”.

I will talk more about his activism and politics a bit later but, in terms of artists who should be considered geniuses, Peter Gabriel definitely needs to feature in the conversation! I am going to talk more about Gabriel’s solo work but, when looking back at his roots, one has to mention Genesis. Before Gabriel went solo, he was part of this incredible band. Some say that his departure changed the band and they were less credible without him. This article provides a perspective:

“At first sight there doesn’t seem to be much connection between the Genesis of the 70s fronted by Peter Gabriel and the Genesis of the 80s fronted by Phil Collins. The former is a rock legend; the latter is a rock phenomenon.

Fans of both bands tend to be mutually exclusive as well. The millions upon millions who picked up on Genesis in the 80s as a succession of world-wide hits dominated the airwaves had little idea of the band’s legendary progressive rock past. "In the later years there were people coming to our concerts who didn’t know that I drummed,” laughs Collins.

And the fervent cult following that nurtured Genesis as they became progressive rock legends in the 70s perversely drifted away as the band’s popularity increased. "I think that happens with every band that becomes successful,” reflects Mike Rutherford. "It’s just the way it goes.”

But both bands have the same core membership. Keyboard player Tony Banks and guitarist Mike Rutherford were ever-present from the first Genesis single in 1968 to the last in 1997. And Phil Collins can claim 26 years continuous service with the band from 1970 to 1996. Indeed from 1978 when they released the appropriately titled album …And Then There Were Three…, Genesis consisted of just Banks Collins and Rutherford for nearly 20 years.

For them of course, there is an obvious continuity between the two bands, summed up by Collins: "The spirit of the way we write songs has never really changed. A lot of the older fans think that Genesis should be a brand name for progressive rock or whatever, but actually Genesis is the name for a group of songwriters who have always done whatever they felt like doing under that banner.”

Banks is more specific: "We’ve always liked something to be distinctive about a song, even a simple song. There is usually an element of quirkiness about a Genesis song and that’s important to us”.

I am going to end with a Peter Gabriel playlist that charts his best tracks with Genesis and solo (and soundtracks). Before starting with his albums - I shall TRY and keep the timeline linear and sober! -, you need to follow Gabriel and experience this artist on social media. Follow the legend on Twitter; his brilliant official website contains all of the latest news and happenings. His Instagram account is pretty up to date and cool, and one can find a lot of information and photos on his official Facebook page. Look at all those epic and inventive videos - more, too, on that a bit later - on his YouTube channel, and understand why Gabriel is such a treasured and unique artist.

There are some great Peter Gabriel books, and last year’s Peter Gabriel: A Life in Vision by Alan Hewitt is a treasure chest of great images and information! I have ordered the book and am looking forward to it arriving. If you need a bit more information, here is what you can expect:

“As Gabriel is close to entering his seventh decade A Life In Vision is a chronological, visual biography of his extraordinary and colourful career. From the early days of Genesis through to the present day it is crammed full of glorious photography, much of which is previously unpublished, along with a timeline narrative by Genesis aficionado Alan Hewitt”.

One only needs to look at Peter Gabriel on the Grammys website to see what this pioneering musician has achieved. Peter Gabriel’s first eponymous album of 1977 is masterful. Gabriel announced to his Genesis bandmates, during The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour, that he was leaving the band. Gabriel stayed until the end of the tour, but it was clear he needed to embark on a different path. In terms of Peter Gabriel’s albums, his debut outing is overlooked in favour of Peter Gabriel 3 or Melt and So. I love Gabriel’s introductory solo album, and it is full of tremendous songs, innovative sounds and memorable moments.

The difficult pregnancy of his wife, Jill, and the birth of his first child meant that he was committed to stay at home and could not continue with Genesis. Gabriel would create more consistent and highly-regarded eponymous albums, but his first contains some magnificent music. Solsbury Hill was written about a spiritual experience he had atop Little Solsbury Hill in Somerset. The song is about letting go and making way for new beginnings. I did say how other Gabriel albums have scored bigger, but Peter Gabriel (also known as Peter Gabriel 1 or Car) is a terrific debut solo album. This is AllMusic’s review:

 “Peter Gabriel tells why he left Genesis in "Solsbury Hill," the key track on his 1977 solo debut. Majestically opening with an acoustic guitar, the song finds Gabriel's talents gelling, as the words and music feed off each other, turning into true poetry. It stands out dramatically on this record, not because the music doesn't work, but because it brilliantly illustrates why Gabriel had to fly on his own. Though this is undeniably the work of the same man behind The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, he's turned his artiness inward, making his music coiled, dense, vibrant. There is still some excess, naturally, yet it's the sound of a musician unleashed, finally able to bend the rules as he wishes. That means there are less atmospheric instrumental sections than there were on his last few records with Genesis, as the unhinged bizarreness in the arrangements, compositions, and productions, in tracks such as the opener "Moribund the Burgermeister" vividly illustrate.  

He also has turned sleeker, sexier, capable of turning out a surging rocker like "Modern Love." If there is any problem with Peter Gabriel, it's that Gabriel is trying too hard to show the range of his talents, thereby stumbling occasionally with the doo wop-to-cabaret "Excuse Me" or the cocktail jazz of "Waiting for the Big One" (or, the lyric "you've got me cookin'/I'm a hard-boiled egg" on "Humdrum"). Still, much of the record teems with invigorating energy (as on "Slowburn," or the orchestral-disco pulse of "Down the Dolce Vita"), and the closer "Here Comes the Flood" burns with an anthemic intensity that would later become his signature in the '80s. Yes, it's an imperfect album, but that's a byproduct of Gabriel's welcome risk-taking -- the very thing that makes the album work, overall”.

D.I.Y. and Mother of Violence feature on Peter Gabriel’s second album, A.K.A. Peter Gabriel 2 or Scratch, and here is a step up from the incredible songwriter. Although his biggest hits were yet to come – although Solsbury Hill is a classic! -, his first couple of albums are full of invention and memorable moments. Gabriel is the person who introduced Kate Bush to the magic of the Fairlight CMI. Bush would use the Fairlight heavily from her 1980 album, Never for Ever, and the two worked together on several songs – more on that later. I want to bring in a review of Peter Gabriel’s second eponymous album.

“The pairing sounds ideal - the former front man of Genesis, as produced by the leading light of King Crimson. Unfortunately, Peter Gabriel's second album (like his first, eponymous) fails to meet those grandiose expectations, even though it seems to at first. "On the Air" and "D.I.Y." are stunning slices of modern rock circa 1978, bubbling with synths, insistent rhythms, and polished processed guitars, all enclosed in a streamlined production that nevertheless sounds as large as a stadium. Then, things begin to drift, at first in a pleasant way ("A Wonderful Day in a One-Way World" is surprisingly nimble), but by the end, it all seems a little formless.

 It's not that the music is overly challenging - it's that the record is unfocused. There are great moments scattered throughout the record, yet it never captivates, either through intoxicating, messy creativity (as he did on his debut) or through cohesion (the way the third Peter Gabriel album, two years later, would). Certain songs work well on their own -- not just the opening numbers, but the mini-epic "White Shadow," the tight "Animal Magic," the tense yet catchy "Perspective," the reflective closer "Home Sweet Home" -- yet for all the tracks that work, they never work well together. Ironically, it holds together a bit better than its predecessor, yet it never reaches the brilliant heights of that record. In short, it's a transitional effort that's well worth the time of serious listeners, even it's still somewhat unsatisfying”.

I am not going to discuss and dissect each of his studio albums, but it is worth mentioning the first Peter Gabriel masterpiece: Peter Gabriel 3 or Melt. Not many albums can start with a better one-two than Intruder and No Self Control. Although the songs are experimental and eerie, they are strangely alluring and enticing! The album, produced by Gabriel and Steve Lillywhite, was Gabriel's first and only release for Mercury Records in the United States, after being rejected by Atlantic Records. Upon hearing mixes of session tapes in early-1980, Atlantic A&R executive John Kalodner deemed the album not commercial enough for release and he suggested Atlantic drop Gabriel from their roster.

PG3 is an album that has amazed and fascinated critics since its release in 1980. This is what The Quietus had to say in 2010:

“PG3 is where Gabriel ascends, where he hits the perfect point on the curve between artistic ambition and accessibility, between dark and light, between floridness and reticence. Songs, themes, sonics and presence come together to create a cohesive yet many-limbed piece which pitches up somewhere between Lodger and Scary Monsters. Challenged by the NME at the time about Bowie comparisons, he replied defensively, “I get the feeling he’s more calculating. There’s not too much coincidence emanating. With me there is still quite a large functioning of randomness, accident and mistakes.” Going on to praise Bowie’s willingness to keep moving, he added, “You must let go of what you’ve got, cause if you try and clutch on to something which you think is yours, it withers and dies.” It would be facile to pin this album as an anti-Genesis statement though: much of it is every bit as self-important. It’s just leaner, sharper, quicker to make its points. It’s speed (with all the nervous glances over the shoulder), not dope, not comfortable or relaxing.

While this will not turn into a detailed discussion of drum sounds, it has to be mentioned that the outstanding, ominous opener 'Intruder' is where the “gated drums” technique which so dominated and ultimately defiled the subsequent decade was invented.

IN THIS PHOTO: Peter Gabriel at his home in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Noble/Redferns/Getty

Gabriel and (the then very fashionable) co-producer Steve Lillywhite banned cymbals, asked Collins and Jerry Marotta to adopt a less-is-more approach, and found the results to be sinister, dramatic and arresting. (Freeing up the higher frequencies thus allowed room for exploration that few artists had realised was possible. They used the spaces for creaks, screeches, whistles, sirens and found sounds that are just as important to the record’s feel as the conventional keyboards, guitars, etc. This subsequently became common practice for a while, then it wasn’t, and now – in a period where music has a chronic lack of drama - it would be good if it was again.)

'And Through The Wire' is relatively straight-ahead rock, but after the repeated teaser of “I want you”, that’s one doozey of a chorus, and he sings the title line like he’s gargling emeralds. You’ll know 'Games Without Frontiers' (with a barely audible Kate Bush on backing vocals). As an anti-war lyric it’s facile; as a pop song it’s a peach. 'Not One Of Us' is a prescient piss-take of the NIMBY anti-immigration lobby. “A foreign body... and a foreign mind... never welcome in the land of the blind.” Then comes the track which grabs you last but, after many listens, grabs you hardest. 'Lead A Normal Life' is barely there, a whisper, a rivulet. It can be interpreted as an asylum inmate’s murmurings as he glimpses the trees. It haunts, in your peripheral vision.

You keep returning to it, like a flicker of a memory, willing it to catch flame. Grand finale 'Biko' signals where Gabriel was next to travel, becoming pop music’s patron saint of all things worthy and earnest.

That said, his story of the murder of the apartheid activist, even with its big singalong coda, is lyrically extremely restrained and pointed, eschewing see-how-clever-I-am imagery: “The man is dead, the man is dead”. And again, one must recall that the first people to champion good causes should not be blamed for those who later jump the bandwagon to further their own careers. This is not Geri Halliwell posing with Nelson Mandela. This is a guy singing about something few people in the Western world had then heard of.

There are great podcasts that dissect the album and underline why it is such a staggering achievement. It has received impassioned reviews through the years and, nearly forty years after its release (it turns forty on 23rd May), a lot of the songs and themes seem more relevant now more than ever. I want to bring in a couple of reviews concerning Peter Gabriel’s third, and most successful, eponymous album. Here is what AllMusic had to say:

“Generally regarded as Peter Gabriel's finest record, his third eponymous album finds him coming into his own, crafting an album that's artier, stronger, more song-oriented than before. Consider its ominous opener, the controlled menace of "Intruder." He's never found such a scary sound, yet it's a sexy scare, one that is undeniably alluring, and he keeps this going throughout the record. For an album so popular, it's remarkably bleak, chilly, and dark -- even radio favorites like "I Don't Remember" and "Games Without Frontiers" are hardly cheerful, spiked with paranoia and suspicion, insulated in introspection.

For the first time, Gabriel has found the sound to match his themes, plus the songs to articulate his themes. Each aspect of the album works, feeding off each other, creating a romantically gloomy, appealingly arty masterpiece. It's the kind of record where you remember the details in the production as much as the hooks or the songs, which isn't to say that it's all surface -- it's just that the surface means as much as the songs, since it articulates the emotions as well as Gabriel's cubist lyrics and impassioned voice. He wound up having albums that sold more, or generated bigger hits, but this third Peter Gabriel album remains his masterpiece”.

When I mention So later, I want to explore why it was so different to Gabriel’s earlier works. There are fans who prefer Gabriel’s more commercial So, and those who think Gabriel was at his insanely-brilliant-best in 1980. This is The A.V. Club’s take on a work of genius:

“The greatness: Genesis was all about bombastic excess, and Gabriel's later solo work struck a balance between mainstream pop and world music. But Melt and its follow-up, Security, share more with the contemporaneous Talking Heads albums Remain In Light and Fear Of Music, by exploring themes of paranoia and violence with densely layered, aggressive post-punk production. Gabriel opens the album with the palpably menacing "Intruder," a disturbing first-person account that a night-stalking creep directs at the listener, whose house he's breaking into for purposes best left unspoken. "Family Snapshot," based on the autobiography of the would-be assassin of presidential candidate George Wallace, even engenders some sympathy for its lonely, deluded gunman protagonist, who waits patiently with his rifle for the motorcade to come into range, dreaming of the day he'll be famous. But Gabriel shows his true colors on the album-closing "Biko," an elegy for murdered South African activist Stephen Biko. It begins as a dirge, then slowly evolves into a thundering cry for justice: "You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire / Once the flame begins to catch, the wind will blow it higher." Melt is still influential, too, with echoes showing up in songs like TV On The Radio's "Wash The Day," which shares the distinctive drumbeat of "Intruder".

1982’s Peter Gabriel 4 or Security was not as packed with hits and his finest work but, that said, I think it is an amazing album that warrants a lot of acclaim. The Rhythm of the Heat is about Carl Jung’s experiences whilst observing a group of African drummers; San Jacinto is the fear of a Native American man who sees his culture and world overrun by the white man; Shock the Monkey – one of Gabriel’s very finest efforts – is about insecurities and infidelities. Maybe Peter Gabriel’s fourth eponymous album was a bridge between his first huge revelation and peak and the more commercial and equally brilliant So of 1986 – where he would ditch the eponymous titles and opened his musical palette up. Although Peter Gabriel’s fourth solo album opened the door for the commercial breakthrough of So in 1986, the recording process had its ups and downs:

“Peter Gabriel's long-awaited fourth self-titled album – later retitled Security before its September 1982 U.S. release – began with the rhythm. Always fascinated by textures, Gabriel had been digging deeply into folk drumming from Africa. He'd also become intrigued by early sampling technology.

"I think the rhythm is like the spine of the piece," Gabriel told the South Bank Show in 1982. "If you change that, then the body that forms around it is changed as well. So, the style of writing which I was then attracted to put with it was very different from what I would have done with a normal rock rhythm."

Once he got the cadences down, Gabriel worked for a long period of time improvising over these basic skeletons of song. At one point, he and David Lord – the fourth new Gabriel producer in as many albums – were dealing with a stack of 100 demos.

Gabriel's decision to record at home on rented equipment proved to be a boon, as it encouraged this free-form sense of discovery, but it also meant that there was no natural time frame to govern things. Ultimately, Gabriel would go nearly two and a half years between solo albums, an eternity in that era.

"Initially, we had a mobile outside the farm building and then gradually built a studio as we went along," Gabriel explained on his website. "I was working with David Lord, who I’d known a bit in Bath. He had studio there. He'd come really more from a classical background, but was very good with textures and sounds. A lot of time, as always, I had been noodling away, and he was quite good at helping forge through that."

This tactile focus on both ageless sounds and modern technology would become the hallmark of Gabriel's solo career. The lengthy experiments on Security led directly to his belated post-Genesis mainstream breakthrough on 1986's So. For the time being, however, Security was a mess.

At one point, Gabriel was still juggling 18 songs, and several of those rough drafts were more than 10 minutes long. "He's a slow worker," Lord told the South Bank Show. "And the main problem is, he likes to keep every possible option open as long as he can." When things got particularly tense, Gabriel would break for a game of croquet.

"I'm trying to enlarge what I do with my voice, not through technique but just through the sounds," Gabriel told the South Bank Show. "I think we all make noises and, particularly when we get involved or emotional about something, the colors and the tones of those noises change."

No matter how far afield he got, the songs coalesced around world music influences that had first popped up on Gabriel's 1980 album, which ended with a rousing tribute to slain South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. This balance of old and new still intrigued him. As he delved ever deeper into these clashing cultural touchstones, the theme worked its way into Gabriel's songs”.

Whatever it was called, the gold-selling Security held together better than any previous Gabriel solo album. As the door to stardom cracked open for Gabriel, it was clear the work had paid off. "Shock the Monkey," a song not about animal rights but raging jealousy, became his first Billboard Top 40 hit, reaching No. 29 on the strength of a heavy-rotation MTV video. Security also notched Gabriel's fourth straight Top 10 finish in the U.K.

Despite the lengthy gestation period, he had set the stage for a commercial breakthrough. "It worries me sometimes that I'm taking too long over these things," Gabriel admitted in his talk with the South Bank Show, "and then I think, it really doesn't matter a damn if the end product works".

I was born in 1983, but I remember songs from So being played on the radio. Gabriel continued to use the Fairlight CMI in new ways; although songs on this album were less experimental than previous efforts, I think that So is, perhaps, Gabriel’s best album. Although So is less experimental than his earlier work, Gabriel brings in elements of World music; fusing different cultures and sounds together wonderfully. Sledgehammer, with its eye-opening and spectacular video, is a song that bursts from the trap! It is MTV’s most-played video ever and still seems awe-inspiring to this day. I look at the video today and, well, it just moves me so much! Gabriel helped bring the music video to the mainstream and his visual flair has been evident throughout his career. I will look at the rest of the album soon but, as it is such a popular song, here is some information about the mighty Sledgehammer:

“Sledgehammer was the first single to be taken from Peter’s fifth solo studio album So, and was released on 21 April 1986.

‘Sledgehammer’ was obviously a big track from that record and that was, in part, homage to the music that I grew up with. I loved soul music, blues music and that was a chance to work with some of the brass players that had worked with Otis Redding, who’s my all time favourite singer. It was a fun thing to do, but again that was built around a great groove and a good feel.

Written by Peter Gabriel, the song was produced by Daniel Lanois and Peter and engineered by Kevin Killen and Lanois.

The single first charted in the UK on 26 April 1986, peaked at 4 and stayed in the UK Top75 for 18 weeks.

The accompanying video for Sledgehammer was directed by Stephen R Johnson, produced by Adam Whitaker, with animation by Nick Park, The Brothers Quay, Peter Lord and Richard Goleszowski. The video won a record nine awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year as well as Best British Video at the 1987 Brit Awards. In 2018 a remastered 4K version of the video was premiered on Apple Music, after extensive restoration work was completed by the team at Aardman”.

I mentioned how there was this clash between those who prefer Gabriel at his experimental and political best and those who love the more accessible and commercial sounds on So. There are some great interviews around 1986, where Gabriel talked about So. Whilst I adore Peter Gabriel’s early period, So remains a magnificent album:

“The first of Peter’s studio albums to have a proper title So was a watershed release in his career. Its marriage of the artistic and the commercial made for an indisputable success, with the album quickly sitting atop the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Aside from some intriguing collaborations – with Laurie Anderson on This Is The Picture, Kate Bush on Don’t Give Up and Youssou N’Dour on In Your Eyes – it was the unity of singer, band and producer that made So such a crucial record in the Gabriel canon.

“There is always wisdom from hindsight. And because ‘So’ was my most successful record, I think that a lot of people, particularly in America, think that it was designed to be that.

From the other end of it, you never really know which records are going to do well. You know that some things are going to be so obscure and difficult for a mainstream audience that they’re no-hopers but generally, with what I do, it’s hard to predict which albums are going to do well.

You know certain songs have a better chance of getting on the radio when you do them, for sure, but I think part of the reason that ‘So’ works so well was that the band was really firing off each other and we had a great sound and production team. It was compact in the process and the way it was put together.

One of the things I learned with Daniel Lanois is a total respect for the magic of the moment. When you have some spine-tingling event musically, you’ve got to capture it. I remember talking to Brian Eno about the Talking Heads record ‘Remain In Light’ and ‘The Great Curve’, I believe, is a track which was recorded on cassette from a band rehearsal because the band were really cooking at that point. They tried it again and again in the studio and never got it to feel as good. I think all musicians know that process, and you never really know when it’s hitting and when it isn’t, and I think one of the things that makes Dan’s records very strong is that there’s a real consciousness of when the performance is good. It’s quite difficult to spot because, you sort of hear what’s good in any particular thing and you forget whether the one before was actually a lot better or a lot worse. Holding all that emotional memory is quite hard.

PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn

‘In Your Eyes’ was the first thing that I’d recorded, I think, with Youssou and it was very important for that reason. It was around the time I was going to Africa and really getting inspired by a lot of the music I was hearing there, particularly rhythmically and vocally. I’ve described Youssou’s voice as “liquid gold” and I think when he comes in singing on that track it’s just a fantastic moment. We’ve since gone on to do a lot of other things, but that was one of the most exciting”.

What I love about So is that the energetic tracks such as Sledgehammer and Big Time balance seamlessly against the emotional, rawer numbers like In Your Eyes, Red Rain and Don’t Give Up – Kate Bush providing empyrean joint-lead vocals this time; a stunning and moving performance with Gabriel (the video is another work of genius that brings tears to the eyes!). I will bring in an interview with Gabriel reflected on So but, first, a couple of reviews. Here is what AllMusic have to say about So:

“Peter Gabriel introduced his fifth studio album, So, with "Sledgehammer," an Otis Redding-inspired soul-pop raver that was easily his catchiest, happiest single to date. Needless to say, it was also his most accessible, and, in that sense it was a good introduction to So, the catchiest, happiest record he ever cut. "Sledgehammer" propelled the record toward blockbuster status, and Gabriel had enough songs with single potential to keep it there. There was "Big Time," another colorful dance number; "Don't Give Up," a moving duet with Kate Bush; "Red Rain," a stately anthem popular on album rock radio; and "In Your Eyes," Gabriel's greatest love song, which achieved genuine classic status after being featured in Cameron Crowe's classic Say Anything.

These all illustrated the strengths of the album: Gabriel's increased melodicism and ability to blend African music, jangly pop, and soul into his moody art rock. Apart from these singles, plus the urgent "That Voice Again," the rest of the record is as quiet as the album tracks of Security. The difference is, the singles on that record were part of the overall fabric; here, the singles are the fabric, which can make the album seem top-heavy (a fault of many blockbuster albums, particularly those of the mid-'80s). Even so, those songs are so strong, finding Gabriel in a newfound confidence and accessibility, that it's hard not to be won over by them, even if So doesn't develop the unity of its two predecessors”.

Although I will not include everything from Pitchfork’s review, here are a few key exerts/observations:

“The first 20 seconds of So’s first single “Sledgehammer”—a trilling, echo-laden bamboo flute created by an E-mu Emulator II synthesizer—is just a feint before the song explodes into a sharp left turn: a ’60s soul rave-up. Gabriel’s latest revelation wasn’t rooted in geopolitics, but his own libido (“I wanna be your sledgehammer” is a classic R&B double-entendre). And though he could have easily programmed the song’s brassy trumpet hook into his synthesizer, Gabriel was an R&B aficionado who valued cultural authenticity, so he flew in Otis Redding’s 1960s sideman Wayne Jackson to play the chart. In Gabriel’s global mindset, Jackson was every bit the bearer of a distinct musical tradition as Katché. He called the duo’s participation “a commanding blend of parallel heritages.”

Gabriel tackled the opposite side of ballooning Western capitalism on “Don’t Give Up,” an emotional response to the growing sense of working-class British despair under the stifling austerity of the Margaret Thatcher era. Like Reagan in the U.S., Thatcher preached the gospel of free-market individual resilience in the face of the skyrocketing unemployment. While Gabriel sketches a despondent scenario about a man on the verge of losing everything, Kate Bush alights on the chorus, her empyrean voice offering sincere comfort: “Don’t give up/’Cause you have friends/Don’t give up/You’re not beaten yet.” Bush and Gabriel had collaborated before (she provided the eerie vocal counterpoint on “Games Without Frontiers”), and she had zoomed past him in his absence to the vanguard of experimental UK art-pop. Now, they held one another in a deep embrace for the length of the “Don’t Give Up” video, the perfect visualization of such a simple, compassionate sentiment, cradled by the gossamer chords of the CS-80 synthesizer. Though rooted in a very 1980s political reality, three-and-a-half decades later it is perhaps Gabriel’s most affecting song.

The heady emotional state of So was further complicated by the fact that Gabriel’s 15-year marriage was on the verge of collapse. His side-relationship with Rosanna Arquette was an open secret, and the album’s lyric sheet is rife with references to fledgling attempts at personal communication. Though “That Voice Again” has the album’s most appealing non-“Sledgehammer” chorus, it also contains the album’s most biting lyric, which could have been drawn straight from a counseling session: “I want you close I want you near/I can’t help but listen/But I don't want to hear/Hear that voice again.” In this context, the album’s inclusion of longtime concert staple “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)”—named for the notorious psychological experiment that claimed to prove humans were innately predisposed to harm others—gains an added layer of resonance”.

In 2012, Gabriel spoke to Rolling Stone, as he was playing So on tour:

“Why do you think So managed to reach a much broader audience than your previous albums?

There was less sort of esoteric songwriting. I think they were simpler songs in some ways, but I think we caught a wave. They were done with passion and we had a really good team working on them. Then, of course, we had things like the “Sledgehammer” video, which helped enormously. It got us a wider audience. Also, the one concession I agreed to was to place an actual photo of myself on the cover rather than the usual obscured stuff I had been doing.

When you made So, did you try and make it more accessible, or that was just sort of a natural development?

I think that was a bunch of songs that were there at the time. With “Sledgehammer,” everyone thinks, “Oh, he must have created that to get a hit.” And it wasn’t done that way. In fact, [bassist] Tony Levin reminded me that he was packing his bags to go home, and I called him back into the studio, saying “I’ve got this one idea that maybe we can fool around with for the next record – but I like the feel.” That was “Sledgehammer.” It was late in the day and we just fell into the groove, landed a beautiful drum track on it, a great bass line and it all came together.

I think the video really helped get it to a different audience. I’ve not had many intersections with mass culture, so that was one occasion where that happened.

You didn’t release a follow-up to So for six years. Do you think that was a mistake? You sort of lost some momentum there.

I’m sure commercially it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I’ve never really worried about that. And to be honest, I think one of the reasons I’m still lucky enough to put out records and have audiences come to shows is cause I haven’t played that game very well. I think that consumer culture tends to be very hungry. It can’t get enough of you for a very short time and then your taste gets boring and they spit you out and take the next new thrill. And so, while it was never a predetermined strategy, I would probably recommend it to artists now if they want a long career. If you got something worth saying, if you’ve got something to put out, don’t worry about what the record company tells you. Take your time”.

I am going to merely mention Up (2002), the intriguing Scratch My Back (2010) and New Blood (2011) – and include songs from each album in the playlist at the end -, but 1992’s US is the first Gabriel album I came across. Steam – despite the fact it is very similar to Sledgehammer – boasts another majestic video, and it is one of Gabriel’s best songs I think. Although the album has some weaker moments, it does boast Digging in the Dirt and Blood of Eden (with Sinéad O'Connor). I will move on and wrap up soon but, before I do, a little information about US:

“US, which was released six years after the phenomenally successful So, was, at that time, arguably Peter’s most personal record yet as he stepped into the confessional to explore and dissect many of the relationship issues he was then experiencing. But US is far from just being bleakly introspective featuring several songs that have gone on to be amongst the most cherished in the Gabriel songbook.

The album also continued the now well-established Gabriel motif of mixing high technology with decidedly analogue contributions from musicians from West Africa, Egypt and Armenia. Reunited with Daniel Lanois as co-producer, Peter extends the hand of collaboration to Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Brian Eno, Peter Hammill and Sinead O’Connor.

“Although US was not nearly as big a seller as So, I’m pleased that it is now getting better regarded, with hindsight, and I think it has some of my best songs on it.

Part of the idea of using US, other than the fact that it was another two-letter title which doesn’t give me huge room for variation, was the sense that there is a dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The further back you can push the dividing line, the less problems the world is going to have. The more people you feel compassion, sympathy and understanding for the better. It’s very easy to fall into a state of mind where you just put blame and responsibility on other people and you don’t connect with them. I know that my life works much better when I don’t do that”.

Whilst US gained some mixed reviews, I think it contains some of Gabriel’s most interesting material - including Digging in the Dirt and Secret World. Here is what The Los Angeles Times said in 1992 when US was released:

“Temporarily setting aside his social conscience, Gabriel is using the title pronoun not in the we-are-the-world sense, but as an umbrella for writing about couples and about his own failed relationships. He explores his lack of self-esteem and sees as much division as unity in love, more than once going back to the Garden of Eden for imagery to describe a split between the sexes that seems all but unmendable.

The album’s thematic cohesion in this regard puts it in marked contrast to 1986’s “So,” which had such variance it was like a greatest-hits album. There are a couple of attempts here to update the horn-driven fun(k) of “Sledgehammer” (most notably the near-sound-alike “Steam”) that provide a lively break in the sonorous soul-searching. But it’s the dominant consistency of Gabriel’s more quietly revelatory material that is the album’s artistic strength, and potentially its commercial weakness.

Though most of his musical tricks no longer come as surprises to anyone familiar with “So” and the instrumental album “Passion,” you do have to marvel more than ever at how seamlessly and unshowily he integrates the plethora of world-beat guest players into his ethereal post-art-rock sound. Just as you have to admire the former pop philanthropist of the year for making a melancholy chorus out of the refrain “I love to be loved”.

Not only has Gabriel recorded solo studio albums, he has also written several soundtrack albums: Birdy (1985), Passion (1989); the underrated OVO (2000), and the excellent Long Walk Home of 2002. Peter Gabriel’s genius and importance extends beyond music. Gabriel has been a champion of World music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting World music through his Real World Records label. Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single, Biko. He has participated in several human rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007 (information taken from his Wikipedia page). In 2013, Gabriel spoke with The Telegraph about his music and the album, I’ll Scratch Yours – where a range of brilliant artists covered some of Gabriel’s best-known songs:

“Although Gabriel’s photograph may not be hanging there in reception, and it is decades since his Sledgehammer heyday, you sense the industry might quietly have a lot to thank the former Genesis singer for. It was him after all who, while most record companies were burying their head in the sand about digital music and downloading, invested in services that allowed people to buy music online easily and later on to listen to records via streaming.

In 2003 he warned that “the music industry is the canary down the coal mine and, unless we do something about it, will be the first to be extinguished by the gases of file sharing.” Is he surprised it’s still here then, I ask him? He laughs: “I’m pleasantly surprised to find there is more than a receptionist, a computer and a boss, because that is what I was expecting the record industry to end up as.”

If anything, the sheer variety of styles reveals new depths to Gabriel’s own songwriting. Arcade Fire’s take on Games Without Frontiers makes it sound like a Clash song, reminding you that Gabriel was one of the few prog rockers who withstood the ire of the punk movement.

Perhaps the hardest challenge was presented to Feist and Timber Timbre who took on Don’t Give Up, Gabriel’s duet with Kate Bush. To avoid direct comparison, Gabriel suggested they switch gender on the words, and Feist’s delicate, folk-tinged delivery has hints of Dolly Parton, the singer Gabriel first had in mind when he wrote the song, influenced by the Great Depression.

Bush, he says, hasn’t heard the new version. “I should send it to Kate because that song is very much hers as well. I was very lucky that she did it. It has some extraordinary stories attached to it, people who say it stopped them committing suicide. It is that loving tenderness that come out of her voice that nails it”.

There are articles dedicated to Gabriel’s role as a digital innovator; he has talked about reworking his back catalogue and, as we prepare to celebrate the seventieth birthday of a brilliant artist, activist, and pioneer, many are asking whether we will see any new material from Gabriel. You can check his official website and over on his Twitter account for all the latest news and happenings. I would suggest people look back at classic interviews and deeper conversations; videos where he talks about his past, and great interviews like this. I know Gabriel is keeping busy, and we might be lucky enough to hear some new music soon enough. (He has inspired so many artists).

Gabriel is a prolific talent, but 2010’s excellent Scratch My Back was his first studio album since 2002’s Up. Despite the fact Gabriel did not release a lot after Up, there was always that fascination and interest - not just from his fans but from the media as well. Gabriel was interviewed and featured by The Arts Desk in 2011 ahead of the release of his album, New Blood (it consists orchestral re-recordings of various tracks from throughout Gabriel's career). It is a fantastic and underrated album, and one that a lot of people pass over when they talk about Gabriel’s work. In the interview, he was quizzed about the gaps between albums:

“The last three studio albums with new material have been So in 1986, Us in 1992 and Up in 2002, while last year saw a project in which he did cover versions of songs he liked called Scratch My Back (the idea was that the covered artists would then do a cover of a Gabriel song in return).

PHOTO CREDIT: York Tillyer

Perhaps one of the problems is that he has his own studio, so there are no time limits. The Beatles, after all, used to record an album in one day in the early years. “I’m a master of distraction, that’s true. But on the other hand, I have an interesting life, and in the long run that is what nourishes you. If I’d been on a commercial trek of doing album-tour-album I would have got tired very quickly of it.”

If he absolutely had to do an album in 10 days he probably would, I suggest. “I did think of doing a song a day, and if I had to I think I could do it. There would, of course, be a ton of crap but some good stuff as well.”

In fact, he just wrote a song in a day, dedicated to Archbishop Desmond Tutu for his 80th birthday. Tutu is the Chair of The Elders, an idea by Gabriel and Richard Branson for an informal group which they developed when they met Nelson Mandela. As leader, Mandela brought in Mary Robinson, Jimmy Carter and others. As Gabriel said of rationale of The Elders "In traditional societies, the elders always had a role in conflict resolution, long-term thinking and applying wisdom wherever it was needed. We are moving to this global village and yet we don't have our global elders."  The likes of Tutu and Carter are able as he says "to speak truth to power." and cites Tutu outspokenly criticising the ANC this month for denying the Dalai Lama a visa to visit South Africa. Their website mentions numerous collective and individual interjections on questions like child marriage and the situation in Zimbabwe. How effective it is remains to be seen, but the slightly lunatic ambition of of it all is pure Gabriel.

The good news on the music front for Gabriel fans is that, “there is a quite a lot in the can. If I can clear the time and hold it…” he pauses. “The problem is more the lyrics - generating the initial idea is not a problem but finishing lyrics I am happy with is”.

I haven’t talked a lot about Peter Gabriel’s film work but, last year, he released PG. It is a stunning collection of songs that shows how evocative his music is on the screen:

“Rated PG is a collection of Peter Gabriel songs from the movies.

Having always loved the combination of film and music (aged 17 he gave up a place at film school to pursue a career in music) Peter Gabriel’s first opportunity to really marry these twin interests came when he was asked to create the music for Alan Parker’s film Birdy in 1985. Further film work, including his music for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (that became the album Passion) and the soundtrack to Philip Noyce’s film Rabbit-Proof Fence (released as the album Long Walk Home), has continued to feed that interest.

“I have always loved film and any chance I have been offered to work with good film projects and good directors I have jumped at. This is a mixture of songs that have been written for specific films, and existing songs that found an appropriate place in a story. Consequently, there is a mix of different styles and moods.” – Peter Gabriel

Alongside those longer soundtrack commissions Peter Gabriel has also regularly contributed songs to a diverse range of movies and Rated PG explores this other connection forged by Peter between his music and film.

Rated PG is an opportunity to bring together in one place, for the first time, a selection of songs written especially for, or used to notable effect in, movies and includes new and previously unreleased versions, otherwise unavailable songs and a brand new track.

Originally released for Records Store Day in April 2019, where the album was a single LP picture disc in a die-cut sleeve. Numbered and limited edition. Due to the nature of the picture disc manufacturing process the sound quality may not be comparable to our recent black vinyl releases, though every effort has been made to make this LP sound as good as possible within the limitations of the picture disc format. For the audiophiles amongst you a hi-res download code is included”.

Peter Gabriel spoke to the brilliant Matt Everitt of BBC Radio 6 Music last year (I shall mention Everitt again in a second), and he discussed why there have been long recording gaps in recent times:

“To promote his new film song LP Rated PG (see here), Peter Gabriel was interviewed on BBC Radio 6, which was aired yesterday.

Peter said about taking a longer break in recent years: "...my wife was ill for a while, so I'd slowed down and being a carer a good while, but now I'm very happy to say she's doing very well, so I'm getting back into music making and really loving it."

About the kind of stuff he is currently working on: "...and there's is about 50 ideas I'm working on - working in my usual snails pace – but there will be something coming out soon and all this time I had been working on new stuff so there should be ... I mean there is stuff that comes through for films, like the Snowden song and then you have Down To Earth, and there was a film about religion etc."

About a new record: "... I'm hoping to get the songs nailed by the end of this year and then open it up to the band and get a record out."

About the style and atmosphere of the new material: "Well I think that hose two songs, Show Yourself and the Snowden one, are slightly over direction but there's a wide bunch in there, so it depends on what makes the final cut. And I'm also trying to do some simple piano versions of things which I don't know being enough to make a whole record or not, but that's something I'm looking at".

I am going to end this feature in a second, but there are some truly great podcasts like Peter Gabriel: Genesis of a Rock Star and this fantastic installment from All Songs Considered; Gabriel chats about his career, and his music tastes are put in the spotlight. This year, WOMAD starts on 21st February in Chile, and it is a festival Gabriel is passionate about.

If you have not purchased Matt Everitt’s excellent book, The First Time: Stories & Songs from Music Icons, then make sure you grab a copy! I wanted to end with a couple of snippets from it because, when it comes to Peter Gabriel interview, one learns something new from each one. Everitt mentions, in the introduction to the interview in the book, how Gabriel does not recall when he met him (Everitt the first time). Everitt’s band, Menswear, were recording at Real World studios near Bath (for Nuisance, I assume), and they had made a mess of Gabriel’s recording facility; behaving “like total idiots” and “inviting local kids over for parties”. Gabriel was cool about it and, throughout the introduction, one thing is clear: Peter Gabriel is a Very. Cool. Guy. It turns out, when Everitt mentioned their first encounter in 1995, Gabriel was fine about it - “It was much worse when The Libertines, and Shaun Ryder and Black Grape visited”, as it happens! It is worth getting Everitt’s book to read this interview (and all the others), but it is his first question that I wanted to quote:

“Matt Everitt: The first thing we always ask everybody is when were they first aware of music as a kid.

My mum’s family were all musical, so Christmases were full of songs and different people playing piano, particularly. My mum still plays ‘Buttons and Bows’.(Dinah Shore, 1948) - that was probably the first melody.

I grew up around music, and church music had a significant impact.

I loved some hymns - not all of them, but when they were good, they were fantastic. And I remember at school we used to scream our hearts out with the right hymns. I would come into the chapel with my bells hidden under my trousers. That was my musical-accompaniment skill”.

f

I am not sure whether Gabriel is planning any original material this year but, with WOMAD upcoming and his seventieth birthday on Thursday (13th), I am not sure. There are plenty of years ahead for Gabriel, and I am sure we will see some more brilliance from an iconic musician. Gabriel has come an awful long way since his young days at school where he would scream his heart out along to hymns. From his time with Genesis in 1967 until 1975, through his remarkable and varied career, Peter Gabriel has influenced so many artists and released some of the finest albums ever. I first encountered the magic of Gabriel as a child, and I have been beguiled, moved, and motivated by his music ever since. I think Gabriel is one of the most underrated artists ever, and I hope this feature - or parts of it - have highlighted his range and brilliance. Peter Gabriel deserves a lot of love, fresh inspection and affection on his seventieth birthday. His incredible back catalogue is among music’s best! Peter Gabriel, let there be no doubt about it, is an…

Thanks again, Peter. This artefact shall never leave the building. Its too heavy: https://t.co/HlTGHK1o9A

— Shaun Keaveny (@shaunwkeaveny) April 11, 2019

ABSOLUTE legend.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Charlotte Dos Santos

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

Charlotte Dos Santos

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I know I have spotlighted quite a few…

female artists over the past week but, to be honest, there are so many strong women emerging that I feel like it would be wrong to ignore them. Although Charlotte Dos Santos has been releasing music for a few years now, I do think she is primed for explosion. I can see her being one of the big names of 2020; someone who is demanded at festivals and, when you hear her music, it is hard not to be cast under her spell. The E.P., Cleo, was released in 2017, and it received very little in the way of critical attention. Maybe there was a lack of awareness for Do Santos but, when it comes to this artist, everyone needs to be aware of her! She grew up in Bærum with a Norwegian mother and Brazilian father. Dos Santos attended Jazz studies at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts between 2013–‘16), where she earned a Bachelor of Music in Contemporary Writing and Production, and Vocal Jazz Performance. I love the soulfulness of Dos Santos’ voice, and her music mixes Jazz, Neo-Soul and South-American tastes. Although her E.P. received some good reviews in the Norwegian media, it did not get too much scope past there. There are some gigs coming up so, if you can get to see her, make sure you do. There are so many artists I need to see this year, but I just know I will forget! Harvest Time was released a couple of months back, but I have heard it get a lot of love on BBC Radio 6 Music.

I adore the sound of her voice as it whispers and seduces; the song is dream-like but there is power and potency to be found. I am not sure whether there is an album planned and any firm dates, but I would not be surprised if Dos Santos released an E.P. or album before the end of the summer. In terms of interviews and articles, a lot of them have been with smaller sites/blogs, but this year will definitely be one where her music reaches more people and she gets some big acclaim. In 2018, she spoke with Soul Feeder, and was asked about her sounds, influences, and being a woman of colour in the industry:

“Recently, Latin American music has massively increased in popularity – not merely Puerto Rican and Colombian reggaeton but also more alternative or traditional Latin American music have received attention, partially due to the promotion of DJs such as Gilles Peterson. Your album clearly has some Latin American influences (among many other influences). Do you think it would’ve been as successful and critically acclaimed if you had released it for example 10 years ago?

Many of the first tracks that formed Cleo circulated the internet amongst the soul collectors and hip hop heads a few years before being heard by the commercial market. I first released a song called “Stay” on Soundcloud in 2012 which was a Shuggie Otis tune that I recorded melody and lyrics to just straight on top of the instrumental. At the time I was a part of the Oslo collective Mutual Intentions and was working with producer Fredfades and we made “Take It Slow” “Move On” “Watching You” and Cleo” which are all sampled based and I really thought they would forever stay within our “niche geeky collectors scene”. But then they didn’t. Granted it did take a few years of circulation!

When writing the rest of Cleo, which came together over a time span of three years, it was important for me that I got to express how free and varied I like to be as a musician and wanted to put that on the project as this would be people’s first introduction to my music. I don’t particularly have one style or type of music that influences me. “King Of Hearts” was melodically inspired by a 1930s Russian avant-garde film on the revolution in Mexico that I watched in my apartment in Brooklyn and simultaneously dealing with emotionally unavailable people and that song came out. “Sumer is Icumen In” is a Middle English reading rota from the 12th century which started out as a school assignment on my exchange semester in Valencia that ended up as the intro because I liked my re-harm so much. “Red Clay” is partially a Freddie Hubbard tribute, who is one of my favorite trumpet players, so when I wrote it I definitely was surprised it got such a warm reception from the commercial market. I think because all the songs are so varied they keep resonating with different people from different scenes, but I do think there is a time for when people are receptive to certain types of sounds and music, yes. It’s a little difficult for me to debate whether or not people would’ve been as receptive to my music ten years ago, as I think it just depends on what people are going through personally that makes them being able to connect lyrically.

In an interview with Utopie Tangible you cited a wide variety of soul artists as your influences, but also renowned hip-hop producers such as J. Dilla and Madlib. Have you ever considered adding a rap feature to one of your songs and is there any hip-hop artist in particular you’d like to work with someday?

No I haven’t considered that actually. I think it’s funny, just because you are an admirer of an art form or impressed and inspired by it doesn’t mean that I should take that and embed that in my own music. I heavily grew up on rap and hip hop and will always continue to listen. But we don’t always have to take on things that we like. To me it is the same thing as just wanting to be a part of everything and not having enough insight to watch it, admire it, and let it be what it is. Like a flower, you wouldn’t rip it up and take it home just because it’s beautiful. At least that’s what my father told me.

In several interviews you’ve stated that you wish to be a role model for people of color by showcasing that by working hard, anything is possible. Are you, nevertheless, not afraid of ever being seen as a “person who made it in a white industry” rather than an actual role model?

I don’t even know what that means. The music industry is an industry at the end of the day, and has been dominated by black culture historically. The entertainment industry has been the only platform through which people of color have been able to claim respect which has been a part of the problem for so long. As black and POC we were accepted either as athletes or musicians but what happened to seeing black and POC doctors, scholars, presidents, businessmen, prime ministers? They weren’t seen even though they thrived in sectors that have been outwardly dominated by white people due to racism. Being a part of breaking that image is what is important to me. That is the metaphor for me behind Cleo – being able to do whatever I/she likes. In the end if you are in any industry moving towards being true and uplifting people you are already a role model to somebody, but I have been focusing on uplifting WOC musicians especially back home in Norway where there are close to none, and I grew up without any role model in my field so I try to be the change I would like to see.

One can detect elements of Neo Soul greats in her voice, but there are other shades and layers that are unique to Dos Santos. I am looking forward to seeing where she heads next as, with her voice and musical talent, the future is going to be very bright.

Charlotte Dos Santos will be looking ahead and planning her moves but, from a creative point, I was interested to understand how songs came together for her, as every artist is different. In this interview from Urban Outfitters, Dos Santos revealed her process:

“What is your process like for creating new music?

I use my piano to write. I don't necessarily know what the end result is going to be or sound like but I might start with a bass line or hear certain string arrangements in my head. It's a journey! And all depending on my mood. I also always have my phone with me and record whenever I come up with something. On the plane ride back from Berlin a few days ago I was recording different parts for strings and the guy next to be probably thought I was crazy”.

This article reveals some of Dos Santos’ musical influences - and I definitely approve of her choices! I shall leave things there but, looking ahead, I hope there are more interviews and features that highlight this fantastic artist. After putting out a single a couple of months back, many are looking her way and are very excited (I am one of them!). The stunning Charlotte Dos Santos is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Nathan Bajar for FADER

ONE of 2020’s names to watch.

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Follow Charlotte Dos Sanrtos

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/CharlotteDosSantosmusic/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/charlottedossan

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/charlottedossantos_/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0INatsTiEOX0EJimNTQjSM

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Donna Summer - Bad Girls

FEATURE:

 

Vinyl Corner

Donna Summer - Bad Girls

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I have not included too many women…

in this feature recently, but I have been listening to Donna Summer’s Bad Girls and, on vinyl, it sounds terrific! Even if you are not a huge fan of Summer, I would suggest people grab the album, as it is remarkable and fresh. It was the seventh studio album from Donna Summer, and it was released on 25th April, 1979. I remember when its fortieth was marked last year – I will bring in a feature relating to that later -, and thinking whether we have seen an album like it since. Donna Summer, for sure, has inspired many other artists and was ahead of her time. The album was originally issued as a double album and it was Summer’s best-selling release of her career. The album received a deluxe and remastered edition in 2003 and, as I said, it still sounds new and cutting in 2020. It is a testament to the remarkable songwriting and durability of the album that it is being celebrated and people keep coming back to it. Upon its release, Bad Girls went to the top of the U.S. Billboard 200, and it stayed there for six weeks. With singles like Hot Stuff and Bad Girls owning the airwaves, it is no surprise the album was such a commercial success. It is one of the best albums of 1979, and it arrived at a time when Disco was sort of on its last legs; Summer showed there was plenty of life left, even though Punk was starting to muscle in and steal a lot of focus. Donna Summer was the first female artist to have two songs in the top-three of the Billboard Hot 100 – with the two singles I just mentioned.

Bad Girls is a stunning work from an artist who was at her peak. Although Summer was dubbed ‘The First Lady of Love’ by the press because of songs like Love to Love You Baby, she was never comfortable with that label. There are steamy tracks on Bad Girls but, rather than Summer trying to earn any sort of tag or be associated with sex and love, the album is simply a wondrous work. Summer was experiencing personal problems prior to Bad Girls and she suffered a breakdown. When she was recovered, she worked with long-term partners Girogio Moroder and Pete Bellote (including some additional collaborators). Because Summer knew Disco was dying out, Bad Girls is the most diverse work of her career to that point. The album incorporates Soul and R&B, and I think that is why it resonated and was so popular, as Summer managed to reach new audiences and was evolving. Hot Stuff won Summer a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and it famously featured in The Full Monty film in the 1990s. Although Summer died in 2012, Bad Girls, I think, remains her finest work. It is an album a lot of artists of today can learn from when it comes to penning catchy and instant songs that lodge in the head. I do think we need more Disco-Soul blends today; something that takes you back to the late-1970s.

In their review, this is what AllMusic wrote:

“Bad Girls marked the high-water mark in Donna Summer's career, spending six weeks at Number One, going double platinum, and spinning off four Top 40 singles, including the chart-topping title song and "Hot Stuff," which sold two million copies each, and the million-selling, Number Two hit "Dim All the Lights." Producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte recognized that disco was going in different directions by the late '70s, and they gave the leadoff one-two punch of "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls" a rock edge derived from new wave. The two-LP set was divided into four musically consistent sides, with the rocksteady beat of the first side giving way to a more traditional disco sound on the second side, followed by a third side of ballads, and a fourth side with a more electronic, synthesizer-driven sound that recalled Summer's 1977 hit "I Feel Love." Though remembered for its hits, the album had depth and consistency, concluding with "Sunset People," one of Summer's best album-only tracks. The result was the artistic and commercial peak of her career and, arguably, of disco itself”.

Maybe Bad Girls is the peak of Disco, but I think it is so much more than a pure Disco album. It has attitude and seduction; there is so much emotion and passion running through the blood, and the songs are never throwaway or too simplistic.

I want to bring in a review from Rolling Stone that was published in 1987. It is interesting comparing a review a decade after the album’s release and, in the case of AllMusic, quite a bit further down the line:

“In 1977, Donna Summer -- the first no-bullshit soul singer to have an icy, businesslike edge to her voice -- delivered "I Feel Love," one of the greatest, unalloyed disco songs ever. Two years later, Summer transcended her disco origins and stormed the old rock-pop traditions with Bad Girls. The album was more concise and scorching than Summer's earlier work -- particularly the title jam and the Rolling Stones-worthy "Hot Stuff." The general impression at the time was that Summer was assuming a place within the line of red-hot rock-soul belters, but the truth was much more important: Along with her brilliant producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, she was creating a new idea of international pop. Madonna's career without Summer and "Bad Girls"? Unthinkable.

Bad Girls is the first major album to use synthesizer-based disco studio techniques in the service of pop-rock songs. Much of it is played on live instruments; the guitar solo in "Hot Stuff" is as universal as, say, the Lindsey Buckingham riff on Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way." But on uncannily biting and hook-y tunes such as "Can't Get to Sleep at Night," Summer and Moroder showed how dance music could kick like the meanest real-time rock & roll. For years after, an entire commercial strain of rock and pop would obsess about technology in ways that would revolutionize the sound of music, for both good (Duran Duran) and ill (Kajagoogoo). 

This reissue contains a companion disc that collects Summer's previous and subsequent hits: the minimalist masterwork "I Feel Love" and the sweet, soaring "On the Radio." Like Bad Girls itself, it's just about unimproveable”.

If you can get the album on vinyl, then do so. It sound so much bolder and more moving when you listen on vinyl and, aside from the obvious hits and highlights, there is a lot of treasure to be found. Last year the sensational, Bad Girls celebrated forty years and, as the feature below proves, it was a groundbreaking release. I know it will be poured over in 2029, when it has its fiftieth anniversary:

 “Summer delivers every composition with precision and heart, her amorphic instrument reveling in its might on uptempo (“Journey to the Centre of Your Heart”) or downtempo (“On My Honor”) moments.

Musically, as with much of her canon up to this point, there had been other genres at work underneath or adjacent to the seductive disco element. One such genre—rock & roll—had long since been in Summer’s sights. Having recently been in a cooperative sphere with Brooklyn Dreams on her December 1978 smash “Heaven Knows,” Summer was sonically smitten with their rock-disco-soul vibe that merged with her own shimmering dance music shape on that effort.

Bad Girls strikingly split itself three ways with an aggressive, bottom-heavy rock-funk-disco fusion (“Dim All the Lights”), experimental electronics (“Our Love”) and booming AOR balladry (“All Through the Night”). That Summer could command these different sounds over an entire recording demonstrated that she couldn’t be confined to just one space.

It was the mark of a true pop pioneer.

Preceded by the aptly titled four-on-the-floor firestorm “Hot Stuff” in mid-April 1979, Bad Girls arrived later that month. It subsequently stormed the charts to become Summer’s best-selling collection and her second double album (of an eventual three) to top the U.S. Billboard 200. It’s a record set and held by Summer to this day.

In addition to its commercial triumph, its critical scores were near universal and culminated in a groundbreaking achievement with a Grammy nomination—and win—in 1980 for its lead-off single “Hot Stuff” for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. The newly minted category saw Summer as not only the first woman to win this accolade, but she was the only woman of color to compete in this category that year alongside Carly Simon, Rickie Lee Jones and Bonnie Raitt. She secured nominations again in 1982 and 1983, which put Summer at the head of an elite cache of black frontierswomen such as Joan Armatrading, Melba Moore, Nona Hendryx (of Labelle) and Tina Turner to receive entry into an exclusively white field”.

I am going to listen to Bad Girls again this week, as I really miss artists like Donna Summer, and I feel the music scene could do with a new explosion of Disco and Soul. We have some uplifting and spirited music now, but nothing that resembles Donna Summer’s 1979-released gem. It is a brilliant album that will continue to stun and amaze for years and years to come. If you have not heard this cracker, then make sure you investigate Bad Girls…

WITHOUT delay.

FEATURE: Dream for You: The Struggle to ‘Switch Off’ in the Social Media Age

FEATURE:

 

Dream for You

PHOTO CREDIT: @entersge/Unsplash 

The Struggle to ‘Switch Off’ in the Social Media Age

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ANYONE who is involved…

PHOTO CREDIT: @cikstefan/Unsplash

in the music industry – I, technically, am as a journalist – struggles to relax and unwind. Whether you are a megastar traveling the world and playing major gigs to someone much further down the ladder, music is something that consumes you! Most of us are happy for music to take us over and, whilst this is another subject I have explored in the past, I want to return, as I am finding it harder to detach than ever before. Maybe it is fitting my day-job around music, but my sleep is particularly affected. It is difficult to put music aside or reduce your workload; there is something about music that keeps driving you and obsessing every waking hour! One of the biggest problems in the industry is the toll music has on mental-health. By that, I mean the hours people put in and how many of us spend so long online. I think my problem stems from trying to balance a full-time job and keeping the blog going, but it is the sleeplessness that is affecting me at the moment. I, like many, try not to be on the laptop too close to bedtime, but there is always that temptation to check the latest music news and have a gander on social media – just in case something has been missed out on. I read a lot of posts online where artists, journalists and those in music struggle with sleep and anxiety, as they dedicate so much of their time and thought to it. Music and music therapy are very good for your mental-health, but it is more the social media aspect that worries me.

PHOTO CREDIT: @diklein/Unsplash

I have not read any study that suggests that listening to too much music – whatever that would constitute – is that bad for your mental wellbeing; it is the associated baubles, commitments and aspects around music that takes its toll – from emails and social media through to long hours etc. I have huge sympathy for those in music with greater responsibility than me. Think about the major artists whose every hour is spoken for; the affect that sort of pressure has is immense! It may seem like an impossible ask, but I think all of us in music need to take some time away to recharge or just get away from the screen. It may seem easy to say this, but there is an addictive quality to music where one needs to know every happening and development; where the latest track could arrive any moment and one needs to be all over it. Not only will this lead to poorer sleep, but you find the mind never really switches itself off. It is not only me who is finding it hard to limit time online and be so involved with music all of the time. As I said, I am reading a lot of stuff online where people are getting buried and they are struggling to find peace. Maybe it is the natural urge and personality of the music lover that means we need to stay in the loop and know everything happening. This, in this day, means a lot of time online. Some are good at rationing time on social media. They can turn off and only spend a few hours a day online.

PHOTO CREDIT: @austindistel/Unsplash

At the moment, my ‘working day’ – the full-time job and writing – runs from 5 a.m. to about 8 p.m. That might sound manageable, but it is the time asleep (or trying to) with the brain musing and wondering about what is happening in music that creates the fatigue. Is there any likelihood any of us can make realistic adjustments? I have been pledging to limit my online time but, as a journalist, I feel like I need to be online to capture everything and be at the top of my game – not that my standard and talent is that lofty! I am not one for resolutions, but I think all of us in music who are feeling a little over-committed or tired need to make up a plan and eliminate the inessential. This might mean spending fewer hours a day online or taking a couple of days off during the week. For musicians, it might be harder to achieve because they need to be on the road, but I think we can all cut back and find time for ourselves. Not only can this lead to better sleep and relaxation, but the quality of our mental-health will be improved. Of course, it is easier said than done, and a musical diet can be hard to stick to. I think just enjoying music for therapeutic reasons is better than spending so much time on social media and getting overwhelmed with information. I think, if we all did that, then it could make an impact – I definitely need to find a better balance. It may involve small steps at first, but it can lead to…

PHOTO CREDIT: @brookecagle/Unsplash

A more peaceful and relaxed year.

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Eighteen: Anna Calvi

FEATURE:

Modern Heroines

PHOTO CREDIT: Maisie Cousins

Part Eighteen: Anna Calvi

___________

I am not sure why I have left it so long…

to include Anna Calvi in this feature! I have scanned back and cannot see her name so, rather timely as it is, I will get to it. Calvi is the Ambassador for this year’s Independent Venue Week, and is someone who has relied on smaller venues - early in her career – to get where she is. I will circle back to that at the end of this feature but, before I mention her debut album, I want to bring in a bit of news that came out earlier in the week. Calvi’s excellent 2018 album, Hunter, has been re-tuned; she has stripped and modified the tracks and has collaborated with some great artists. This article explains more:

“Art rocker Anna Calvi set a record last year when her latest full-length, Hunter, earned her a third consecutive Album of the Year Mercury Prize nomination. No other solo artist has achieved that feat — and now she’s looking to make the record even more unbreakable. Calvi has today announced a new LP, a stripped-down reimagining of Hunter she’s dubbed, Hunted.

Between tour legs, Calvi revisited some of the early recordings she’d made for Hunter. “These recordings capture the very moment I first wrote these songs, and recorded them on my own, in my attic studio,” she said in a statement. Calvi was struck by the “intimate” nature of “these most private recordings,” and decided to highlight that feeling on Hunted.

However, she wouldn’t be reworking the tracks on her own. She invited a number of guests to help her give the songs new life, including Julia Holter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and IDLES’ Joe Talbot. Lead single “Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy” (which, incidentally, was the first track shared off Hunter, as well) sees Calvi teaming with Courtney Barnett.

“Anna is a completely awe-inspiring performer, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her onstage,” Barnett said of her fondness for Calvi. “I love her songwriting for its beautiful and perfect balance between aggression and tenderness”.

It is great that artists take a successful album and then see potential to take it further; whether that is an acoustic version of said album or bringing others into the fold. Right now, Calvi is one of the most revered and talented artists around and, right from her earliest work, there was that spark of brilliance. What about Anna Calvi herself? Born in 1980, she has received three Mercury nominations – every one of her studio albums has earned one! -, and she has won several other gongs. Calvi is renowned for her virtuosic guitar skills, her powerful voice and incredible songwriting. Born to therapist parents in London, Calvi graduated from the University of Southampton with a degree in Music, having studied violin. I often wonder whether children whose parents have jobs like Calvi’s are more attuned to the human condition and have a different insight compared with other musicians – I will muse on that later, perhaps.

Calvi worked with a private guitar tutor and, by 2011, her acclaimed debut album came out (on Domino). It was a Mercury-nominated album – I wonder why Calvi has not won one yet! -, and it is a remarkable offering. Calvi grew up exposed to a variety of musical genres; she was seduced by artists like Captain Beefheart and it seemed, right from childhood, music was her path and connection. Inspired by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Ravel and Debussy, there are a lot of different artists in her heart. For sure, the stunning guitar work throughout can be traced to Hendrix, but I think Calvi is very much her own artist on the debut. With material written in her parents’ attic using eight-track equipment, there is something intimate and charmingly lo-fi about her eponymous debut. Many artists are a little disappointed with their debut, as they feel they could have done better or changed things. Calvi was very proud of her first outing – and rightfully so! -, and she wanted the music to tell a story more than the lyrics. Anna Calvi is an evocative and immersive album from a unique and hungry artist. Whilst Calvi would go on to better things, Anna Calvi is a remarkable album that, I feel, does not get enough airplay and focus. This is what AllMusic had to say when they reviewed the album:

“Citing the likes of Debussy, Captain Beefheart, and Nina Simone as her main influences, it's clear from the outset that Anna Calvi isn't your average, run-of-the-mill singer/songwriter. She may have been tipped for success by everyone from the broadsheet music press to Brian Eno, but her blend of sultry blues-rock and dark, mysterious flamenco is a million miles away from the chart-friendly output of her fellow Sound of 2011 nominees.

Her self-titled debut, therefore, is unlikely to reap the same commercial rewards as the likes of Jessie J and Clare Maguire, its uncompromising, gothic, David Lynch-esque nature certainly won't spawn any bite-size TV ad soundtracks or airplay favorites your mom can sing along to. But in a music scene dominated by female solo artists, Calvi's romantic but often sinister ten songs certainly helps her to stand out from the crowd. Opening track "Rider to the Sea," sets the scene immediately, a brooding instrumental whose atmospheric twanging guitars would provide the perfect score should Quentin Tarantino's much rumored Kill Bill 3 ever come to fruition. Calvi's haunting and intense vocals first come to the forefront on "No More Words," a gloriously menacing number which evokes the shimmering distorted harmonies of My Bloody Valentine. But it's on the grandiose "Desire" when Calvi really unleashes the impassioned post-punk tones that have drawn favorable comparisons with the likes of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey (whose regular collaborator, Rob Ellis, is also here on production duties). Backed by an impressively tight backing band, the likes of "Suzanne and I," a future James Bond theme in the making, "I'll Be Your Man," which would sit comfortably on Florence and the Machine's Lungs, and "Blackout," which evokes Phil Spector's expansive Wall of Sound, prove Calvi isn't averse to delivering slightly more accessible material.

But it's the more unconventional "The Devil," which undoubtedly provides the album's highlight, a mesmerizing, stripped-down fusion of classical, rock, and flamenco that showcases her virtuoso guitar skills, and her effortless shifts from whispering restraint to primitive aggression before ending in layers of drenched feedback. By the time the epic strings have reverberated on closing track "Love Won't Be Leaving," you're left in no doubt as to why the industry appears to be so excited about her. Capturing the intensity and raw emotion of her captivating live shows, Anna Calvi is an ambitious and always intriguing debut which heralds the arrival of a unique and inventive addition to the plethora of U.K. female singer/songwriters.

I am going to bring in reviews of all three of her studio albums in a minute – not including her latest work – but, right from the start of her career, Calvi was speaking with the media and telling her story – a lot of artists avoid interviews for a while, which is a shame. Calvi is someone who arrived on the scene with a very original and interesting sound, so it is understandable people were keen to know more. I am not sure when I first encountered her music, but it might have been just after her sophomore album was released in 2013. I have gone back to her debut a lot since then, and I am struck by how complete and confident it sounds. In this interview with The Guardian, Calvi talked about her influences, confidence, and where her voice emerges from:

“In fact, almost everything about Calvi's musical vision seems to be the result of intense fixations and pushing herself to uncomfortable limits. In many ways, performing seems to be a release for her. It gives her courage, putting her in touch with "a different side of me that's strong and braver and more powerful", which, perversely, allows her to be more vulnerable, too. "The singers I love, that's what they have," she says. "Nina Simone is extremely vulnerable but her voice is powerful.

This rawness, this complete fearlessness, in giving everything, and leaving nothing. It's a really inspiring quality." On a personal level, she says being creative "stops the annoying side of consciousness that's like, 'Nanananana!' You know, all that crap that your mind is filled with, worrying about what you said yesterday, what you're going to do about this. All of that completely goes away. Without it I'd be a bit of a nervous wreck."

“…But that takes confidence, which was slower to come than technique. "Often you have singers and you know who it is in the band because they walk in strutting, if it's a girl, in heels, clop, clop, clop," she says. "And I look at them and think, 'God, I can't do that. I can't be that kind of person.'"

Instead, she's created a world of her own. From the smuttily seductive Blackout ("Here in the dark/ I could be anyone") to the pining but sinister First We Kiss ("...then you will lock the door, my dear"), the album is heavy and close. "There's a sense of internal forces taking you over and finding a way to survive them," Calvi says. "They can be anything from loneliness to passion. At times it can feel really close, and at times really vast. Musically, I love the sense of tension and release that you get a lot in orchestral music. You get it in bite-sized form in pop music but I like to extend it and make the most of it, because I find it really exciting; the dynamics you get from really building something up until it's almost unbearable, then letting it go."

…Is this where that enormous voice comes from? "It's a bit like when something really bad happens, there's a survivor in you that kicks in and you don't realise how strong you are," she explains. "It's the same part of me that kicks in when I sing. Physically and emotionally, because it's both. It's a very physical thing to do." Being so slight, she says, means that performing takes it out of her. "I think that's why I like Edith Piaf, because I know she was small as well, and it's really nice that even if you're of a small frame – and I'm really weak – there's something in me that's like that".

After such an intriguing and well-received debut, Calvi could have taken a few years off and taken a breath. Calvi was busy gigging and preparing the songs for her follow-up, One Breath. Recorded at Black Box studios in France, it was mixed (in Texas) by Calvi’s new producer, John Congleton. The fact such an esteemed and legendary producer was working with Calvi so early in her career shows what an impression she was making and how good her music was/is! One Breath is full of thrills and vulnerability; about being open and surrendering to that feeling of fear, but then embracing it. I think One Breath is an even more confident and nuanced album than her debut. Eliza, Suddenly, and Piece by Piece were released as singles, and the whole album shines and sparks. It is a terrific creation and, again, critics were keen to lend their praise.

This is what The Irish Times wrote when they listened to One Breath:

“Described by Brian Eno as “the biggest thing since Patti Smith” and addled with bounteous comparisons to PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi does have her work cut out for her. But the Londoner makes certain to brand her own style across her second album. The tumultuous rock of Eliza, the intimate, woozy throb of One Breath, and the primal bluster of Tristan are distinctive yet complementary. Still, it is Piece by Piece that best sums up Calvi’s appeal. Tiptoeing through verses of whispered choruses and swaddled drums, she unleashes an abrasive scramble of atonal guitar and noisy keyboards at the song’s most vulnerable points. It confirms that you never quite know what’s coming next with Calvi, be it ghostly hymnal passages, cinematic strings or buzzing rock’n’roll – but the anticipation is both delicious and satisfying”.

I am keen to get to Anna Calvi’s latest album and a couple of interviews she provided fairly recently. With each album, she has grown stronger and more assured. One Breath is a remarkable album that exceeded the high standard of her debut and announced her as one of the finest songwriters in the U.K. Again, she had another Mercury nod under her belt, and so many people were eager to explore this ever-evolving and blossoming artist. I do not have too much to add to what I have already said about One Breath, other than to say it is a stunning album that everyone should listen to – I am ending this feature with a playlist that includes One Breath’s best tracks. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel

I want to quote from this interview in The Independent, as it is a really interesting piece and, whilst I would recommend you read the entire interview, I have selected a few choice passages:

“That voice has certainly helped her records, 2011's eponymous debut and 2013's One Breath, win fans and acclaim; both were Mercury Prize-nominated. Yet Calvi says she was "phobic" about singing for many years, not able even to warble in the shower or along with the radio. "I guess I always felt a bit hemmed in. I just decided one day, I'm going to work and work and see if I can sing. I practised for hours every day. I had a few lessons at the beginning, and they were more like therapy sessions: me being like, 'I can't, I can't,' and [the therapist] being like, 'You can, you can!' I would say it is the thing I'm most proud of in my life, finding this voice."

"I can get really lost in my own imagination, and there's something important about having that space," she says. "Not speaking, not writing, just thinking. It's funny, when you're left with your thoughts, they go to different places… k I do think it affects how I write – this idea of loneliness, what it means, how it can be liberating, but also reminds you of all the most scary things about being a human… I kind of like that."

As you can tell, Calvi is not afraid of exploring the deep stuff: loneliness, anxiety, identity, reinvention. Before our interview, I'm told by the PR she'd like to "discuss gender". So we do.

She claims it's a topic she didn't used to think about much – until she became a famous musician and journalists started asking her highly gendered questions. "I felt I was being reminded constantly about my gender in a way you never usually are. 'What's it like as a woman playing guitar?' 'As a woman, how do you…?' 'What is it like to play such a phallic instrument?' At first it surprised me, then it made me angry, and now it's like my eyes are opened to seeing the world in a slightly different way. You're so brought up in the patriarchal way we live, you don't notice it, yet it's everywhere. It's everywhere."

She fears we're sliding backwards in terms of gender roles, that pressure is again increasingly being put on women to simply be pretty and passive, as if their appearance is their primary purpose. "It's beyond perfection, the way a woman is supposed to look. And shapeless – like an 11-year-old boy. You look in the mirror and see that you have hips and you imagine they shouldn't be there. I do shave my legs and my armpits but really, what are you being told, that you have to shave off parts of yourself? You're not allowed to just be in the world. You're always being told that your natural state is a bit disgusting".

After the success of One Breath in 2013 and increased interest, there was a bit of a gap before a third album arrived. Hunter came out in 2018 – five years after One Breath -, but it is Calvi’s strongest work yet. It runs deeper and hits harder; singles like Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy, Hunter, and As a Man see Calvi with her voice in incredible form; her musicianship and guitar playing is truly extraordinary. I love the album and, whilst it was nominated for a Mercury again, it lost out last year – Dave won for PSYCHODRAMA. Produced by Nick Launay and Anna Calvi, Hunter is one of 2018’s very best albums. Few artists manage to hit such peaks on their third album. Calvi released a sensational album that blew fans critics away. Taking in subjects such as gender and sexuality, the songs make you think, but they are striking in terms of the vocals and compositions, and not just the lyrics. AllMusic remarked the following when reviewing Hunter:

“Anna Calvi took a five-year break after releasing 2013's One Breath, but the intervening time didn't diminish the grand sound she's been cultivating since her debut. From the title track's breathy opening to the soaring melody of "Away," her gift for elucidating the drama of a bygone era is intact and just as effective. If anything, the lustily provocative nature of her artistry reaches its dizzy apex on Hunter.

She takes the drama of '80s power ballads and extracts its most gothic textures, no doubt aided by Nicolas Launay's (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) expansive production, which recalls the airiness he gave the Bad Seeds' Push the Sky Away. A great deal of the record explores the fluidity of gender by playing with many of the common tropes associated with masculinity, from "Alpha" to "Hunter." The former track's arch, elongated riffs, and the predatory prowl of "Indies or Paradise," include some of Calvi's most warped and consummate shredding to date, further dispelling another macho myth -- that only boys can play guitar. Nevertheless, these virile expressions never come at the expense of Calvi's femininity, as the lush swirl of "Swimming Pool" attests.

Like gender, the record also examines sexuality. Calvi has flirted with a queer point of view before, as on "I'll Be Your Man" from her 2011 debut. But Hunter is the record which fundamentally lives and breathes queerness, a record where on "Chains" she suggests, "I'll be the boy, you be the girl/I'll be the girl you be the boy." Unlike earlier efforts, this feels less like theater for theater's sake, and ultimately, unbridled and infinitely real. On "Wish," for instance, she's never sounded so liberated, and that lack of constraint bleeds into her guitar playing, hinting at a newfound joy amid the curious majesty of her music.

Hunter is the record where, more than any other, Calvi's talents have fully crystallized. The true character of her music has been unleashed and will likely see all those PJ Harvey comparisons finally fade, eclipsed by the radiance of this tough yet open-hearted work.

I will conclude and wrap things up soon but, before then, I want to source from another review of Hunter. It is an album that deserves all the love it received and, when The Guardian wrote about Hunter, they made some keen observations:

“The more one listens, the more Hunter seems like a filmic album: it is defined by colour. Swimming Pool, a gorgeous, rippling ballad was apparently inspired by David Hockney’s 1960s paintings, and the celebration of shameless pleasure. Yet it seems to recall the films of Douglas Sirk, where colours were used as signifiers of repressed desire.

There are depths to be explored here, depths to wallow in. The title track switches decades: Hunter’s stately, four-chord synth pattern, and little twanged guitar detailing calls to mind something from Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, albeit with a female protagonist as the seeker of prey.

There are missteps – the refrain “I’m an alpha / I divide and conquer” on Alpha feels more like a truism than a truth – but ones so tiny as not to reduce the impact of the album. Hunter is glorious and triumphant, a record that succeeds on any terms you try to force upon it”.

With every new album, Anna Calvi was talking about a new phase of life and developments. Queerness has always been a part of her music, but much more so on Hunter. Artists such as Calvi, Shura and Marika Hackman are putting queerness in the spotlight, yet it is still an area that is under-exposed and supported. I wonder whether the industry is as open as it should be, or whether queer/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists feel like they can be open and expressive.

Hunter is an album that stays with you long after you have heard it. I have a couple of interviews to cover before I come on to her post-Hunter work/activity. I came across an interview in i that interested me, where Calvi talked about the period before Hunter and how she was rebuilding things:

 “It was a time to rebuild my life, my identity and confidence”, she says. “I wrote the record very much in tandem with falling in love again and exploring being happy and experiencing pleasure and being more free. All the possible things a human can be, which is so restricted by the constraints of having to perform one’s gender. That was what I wanted the record to feel like.”

And she has had to defend her relationship. When Calvi and her girlfriend were looking to rent a flat in France, a landlady – on realising that they were a couple rather than a pair of students – refused them. “It was like wow, shit, this stuff really happens.”

So you can understand why Calvi is angry. In the years since she emerged as an esteemed art-rock guitarist and singer, alongside winning best breakthrough act at the 2012 BRIT Awards and being twice nominated for the Mercury, she has found herself answering such questions as: “What’s it like playing a phallic instrument?”, and that other favourite: “What’s it like being a woman in music?”

“It’s this idea that women are a genre and that you would be compared to really random female artists because you have breasts, but not compared to a male artist”, she says”.

With Hunter, a whole new clan of fans and supports headed the way of Anna Calvi. It is an album that still sounds so refreshing and important now, over a year after its release. The record is very intimate and personal in places; that mixes with the more outward-looking and charged. That combination of sounds and emotions makes Hunter such a magnificent album. I am going to bring us into the present soon but, quickly, I want to quote from an interview from The Independent where Calvi talked about releasing such intimate music:

“It was “scary”, she says, to release such intense, intimate music. “It’s a weird thing to say really personal things and then think that any old person is gonna hear them. Especially if you’re quite an introverted person, which I am.”

The risk has paid off. The record is one of 12 in the running at tonight’s Mercury Prize, shortlisted alongside albums by Foals, Dave, Little Simz and The 1975. Calvi says it feels “incredible” to be nominated, but she’s not concerning herself with what happens on the night. “I’ve experienced losing twice, I know how it works,” she says with a laugh. Her self-titled debut was shortlisted in 2011, as was its follow-up, One Breath, two years later. “You spend the whole time thinking, ‘I’m not gonna win’, and then you get there, and you’re waiting at the table, and there’s two minutes where you’re like, ‘Hang on a minute, I could win this!’ And then they announce the winner, and it’s someone else. So I’m so ready and prepared for that. I’ve got it down.”

Calvi is buoyed by the increasing acceptance of queer artists into the mainstream, though she worries about her identity being commodified. “I talked to a journalist who was a bit older who was saying, ‘Is this whole sudden queer thing the new counter-culture, like the punks?’ And I tried to explain to her that the main difference is that if a trans person doesn’t feel they can be understood... we’re talking about life and death. People kill themselves. It’s not just for fun, it’s not about what music you like or what hobbies you have, this is about people’s lives. And I think it’s really dangerous to try and condense it and make it a product. But I do think it’s great for me as an artist that there’s a family of queer artists. The difficult thing is if only people in that community hear about each other, then there’s a sense of ghettoising. I suppose equality is only when it’s not even a thing anymore. And we obviously are far away from that being the case”.

Since Hunter’s release in 2018, Calvi has been touring a lot and keeping busy. I will end by talking about gigs (and bringing in a live review from last year), but Calvi has been doing some T.V. composition for Peaky Blinders. She is a big fan of the show, and she has contributed her magic. I will include a cut from the Peaky Blinders soundtrack in this feature but, if you are not a fan of the show – or missed it -, here is an article from July 2019 where the news was announced:

 “Anna Calvi is pleased to announce that she has written and performed the score for the entire new season of BBC One’s Peaky Blinders.

Peaky Blinders had its season 5 premiere in Birmingham yesterday evening, where Anna Calvi joined the cast and director Anthony Byrne on the red carpet.

Previously a fan of the series, Calvi said on writing the original score: “This is a new thing for me but it was a really good fit, I love everything about the show. I completely immersed myself in it and became quite obsessed with the characters, especially Tommy Shelby [played by Cillian Murphy] and getting lost in his mind”.

Anna adds: “There is a duality to the show, a beauty and a brutality, which I have been exploring in my own music and on the Hunter album. I want to say thank you to the director Anthony Byrne for believing in me and letting me seek out what I needed to".

Anna Calvi is an artist who can step into film and T.V. with ease and is instantly adaptable. I wonder where she might head next, and whether she will write music for other T.V. shows or films. 2020’s Independent Venue Week Ambassador Calvi joined BBC Radio 6 Music on Friday, and she spoke about the event/week and live music. I opened by stating how Calvi, like so many artists, relied on venues to get her break and experience. She is vocal and passionate when it comes to supporting live venues and ensuring their survival. In this report from The Guardian, Calvi spoke about the importance of music; asking why there is not as much funding (for music) as ballet or other areas of the arts:

“Britain’s independent music venues should receive the same reverence and support as the ballet or opera, according to the musician Anna Calvi and the organisers behind a week-long initiative to promote the UK’s smaller concert halls.

Calvi, a three-time Mercury music prize nominee, told the Guardian that venues which predominantly focus on live music – and helped contribute £1.1bn to the UK economy in 2018 – need to be protected at a time when a third of smaller venues report they are struggling.

She said: “Just because it’s music that is played with guitars, why is it any different to a place like the ballet or opera? Other areas of the creative industry might have slowed down, but people are still going to gigs.”

Calvi, who is an ambassador for Independent Venue Week, added that investment in venues should be seen as a long-term project, which allows talent to develop. “There might only be 150 people in the room at the time at those early gigs, but those artists could go anywhere from there,” she said. “Playing smaller venues was instrumental for me to becoming the artist I am now”.

I have not even mentioned Calvi as a live performer. I have not seen her live, but I have watched televised performances and she is incredible! The passion she puts into each performance is electrifying. She has a couple of dates announced this year, but I am sure there will be more dates revealed down the line. I am hoping to catch her live this year, because it is clear Calvi is one of the best live performers around. CLASH caught Calvi in London last year and were mesmerised by what they saw:

“A combination of some Kate Bush gothica; amazing, jaw dropping, on-just-the-right-side of overindulgent virtuoso 80s-era Prince guitar, PJ Harvey sultriness… and – dare I say – a touch of Bruce Springsteen? Oh, and also an incredible soaring voice that, from what I can gather, physically knocks one woman in the audience over at the front. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel

This is a performer that you can’t take your eyes off for one second. Her voice is insane – and I hope I’m not doing her a disservice when I suggest that she should be a shoo-in for the next Bond theme – she could Carly Simon the shit out of it.

But back to the gig – the unconventional and unexpected rhythms; the very of-the-moment themes of androgyny and sexual fluidity; the heavy atmosphere cut through with thrusting guitar and operatic voice - and the highlight - and my new favourite track of hers, ‘Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy’.

She didn’t play ‘Suddenly’, but maybe that would have lifted the atmosphere too much. As it was, the occasion has an almost David Lynch-like quality - like you’ve got too drunk in the Red Room, and someone is holding a blue velvet cushion over your face... in a good way.

It she ventures anywhere close to you this year I urge you to catch her – it’s like a fever dream that never quite leaves you”.

I will leave it there, but I think this year will be big for Anna Calvi. There are no plans for a new studio album yet, but one wouldn’t bet against it – and, I suspect, it will be nominated for a Mercury! There are going to be tour dates and, as festivals are announcing their line-ups, I feel like Calvi will be featuring on more than a few. There are some truly great artists in the music world right now, but few are as impressive and inspiring as Anna Calvi. She is an artist who will be a true…

ICON of the future.

FEATURE: Inside the Pop Documentary: Taylor Swift and Miss Americana

FEATURE:

Inside the Pop Documentary

IMAGE CREDIT: Netflix

Taylor Swift and Miss Americana

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IN an age where we do not have…

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift with the Miss Americana director, Lana Wilson

music television as such, I wonder whether we have lost out a lot. We stream music and have a lot at our fingertips, but there is a definite lack of great music documentaries and shows. I used to love the VH1 and MTV shows that spotlighted artists or albums. Now, in 2020, we have so much technology and viewing options, but there seems to be less reliance on music documentaries. From Madonna: Truth or Dare of 1991 to the patchy Katy Perry: Part of Me in 2012, there has been some great Pop documentaries. Maybe modern artists feel like they are exposed enough with social media, but a good Pop documentary can reveal so much, in a good way. I understand one can feel venerable and exposed on camera, and giving too much detail away can backfire or damage their career. Whether it is a tour documentary like Beyoncé’s Homecoming or a straight look into an artist’s life, I think a good documentary can reveal depths to an artist. I am not a massive fan of Taylor Swift’s music, but I think there is so much pressure on her shoulders. A star of that stature and fame is not going to have an ordinary life or be able to feel normal. Wherever she goes, there is going to be someone taking a picture or somebody trying to get a piece of her.

Miss Americana is directed by Lana Wilson, and he film covers a number of events in Swift's life and career, including the making of her seventh studio album, Lover; her past battle with an eating disorder, her sexual assault trial; her mother's cancer diagnosis, and Swift's decision to go public with her politics. There have been some incredible documentaries through the years, but there have been very few since streaming sites like Netflix came around – surely we should see quite a few in this day?! I think huge Pop artists like Taylor Swift can feel misrepresented in the media, or like they do not have a chance to be open and honest. Not only is Swift’s discussion about her politics and eating disorder brave and inspiring, it makes you feel more bonded to her, even if you are not a fan of her music. I have seen clips from the documentary and feel Swift comes across as articulate, brave and strong. I listen to her music now and then, but I rarely think about what inspired the song or the artist behind the words. I would like to see more documentaries from Pop artists. Whilst some might see documentaries as self-serving and a little egotistical, I think it is great to see an artist talking freely and letting you into their world. Miss Americana can be seen here, and it is a must-see for her fans, but also for those (like me) who respect and like her political stance and how inspiring she is to others.

Even if Miss Americana does miss out some things, there are some very raw and emotional scenes; different sides to a Pop artist. I think Miss Americana will open doors for other artists to produce documentaries. I think many people get the wrong impression about huge artists and what their lives consist. There was a lot of build-up regarding Miss Americana and, when it was released on Netflix, reviewers were keen to have their say. It is clear many expected Swift to be goody-goody and hold back but, clearly, here is an artist keen to have her say. This is what The Independent had to say when they viewed Miss Americana:

“Perhaps most compelling, though, are the arguments Swift has with music executives, as well as her own father, about why she feels compelled to speak about politics after years of silence. For younger viewers, and those who aren’t from the US, it’s difficult to grasp the scale of the backlash faced by The Dixie Chicks when they criticised then-president George W Bush in 2003. That is, until you see the footage of news hosts calling them “dumb bimbos” and claiming they “deserved to be slapped around”, and placards announcing they should “burn in hell”. Before then, The Dixie Chicks had been the reigning queens of country music, with more than 30 million records sold. But an off-the-cuff remark turned America’s sweethearts into the country’s most-hated. With that in mind, it isn’t all that shocking that Swift – a country-pop star in her early twenties appealing to stone-faced label executives demanding she stay quiet – was reluctant to follow that path.

By incorporating home videos, professionally shot backstage films and to-camera interviews, Miss Americana makes an admirable attempt at covering as much ground as possible. There are moments that feel too well-trodden – the Kanye West feud, or her support of the LBGT+ community. And elsewhere, you wish Swift and Wilson would delve a little deeper, such as when she references her former compulsion to appear “sweet” or “nice” all the time.

Before Miss Americana, I only really knew about Taylor Swift’s music and, from a few interviews, various bits and pieces. It could have been a gamble releasing a documentary but, actually, she comes across as this complex but very real woman who has garnered a lot of respect. Even though I am not going to listen to her music a lot more, I am definitely moved by Swift. She has so much passion and belief in what she does, and she is not someone who forgoes her independence – like so many of her Pop peers. In Miss Americana, Swift talked about motherhood and her relationship with Joe Alwyn:

 “Swift spoke in the film about how she doesn't feel ready for motherhood yet, so tabloids, please quit it with any pregnancy rumors. “There’s part of me that feels like I’m 57 years old, but there’s part of me that’s definitely not ready to have kids and definitely not ready for all that grown up stuff,” Swift said at one point. “I kind of don’t really have the luxury of figuring stuff out, though, because my life is planned two years ahead of time. Literally, in two months, they’ll come at me with dates for the next tour.”

What she said—and what was shown—of her with Alwyn was pretty minimal. But she did discuss, without naming him explicitly, why she fell in love with him in the fall of 2016, after her Kim Kardashian Snapchat scandal tainted her, and the singer chose to take a step back from the spotlight for a bit. “I felt alone, I felt really bitter,” Swift said, via Hollywood Life. “I felt sort of like a wounded animal lashing out. I figured I had to reset everything. I had to reconstruct an entire belief system for my own personal sanity. I also was falling in love with someone who had a wonderfully normal, balanced life.”

She also addressed their choice to keep their relationship under the wraps. "We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private," she said. “Even though it [Swift's public image in 2016] was really horrible, I was happy. But I wasn’t happy in the way I was trained to be happy. It was happiness without anyone else’s input. We were just…happy”.

One of the most talked-about and revealing scenes of Miss Americana is when her album, Reputation, was overlooked at the Grammys in 2019. This review from The New York Times highlights that scene:

“On Grammy nomination day in the winter of 2018, a camera watches from a low angle as Swift sits in sweats alone on a sofa and hears from her publicist that her perturbed sixth album, “Reputation,” has been omitted from three of the big categories. She’s stoic. She’s almost palpably hurt. But Swift’s songwriting treats hurt as an elastic instrument, and she resolves in that moment of snubbing, “I just need to make a better record.” And the movie watches as she writes and records “Lover,” another album eventually rejected by the string-pullers at the Grammys”.

Along the way, Swift does a lot of ruminating and recounting, a lot of arguing and apologizing on her own behalf. She’s rueful about sitting out the 2016 presidential election and failing to mobilize her millions of fans and followers against Donald Trump’s candidacy. So “Miss Americana” is also about an apolitical star waking up to herself as a woman and a citizen. She wants to spend her “good girl” credit to decry the scorched-earth-conservative Senate campaign that Marsha Blackburn was running in Tennessee, Swift’s adopted home. Her management team deems this unwise. The team, at that symbolic point, is two slouchy, old white men who counter their client’s raging passion with financial and prehistoric umbrage. Bob Hope and Bing wouldn’t let their politics dent ticket sales 50 percent. It’s part of strong stretch of the movie that argues that Swift’s own experience with a handsy (and consequently litigious) radio personality helped push her off the fence — a passage that culminates with the most stressful sending of an Instagram post you’re likely to see from a star.

At the other extreme is a different trauma, normal only for the famous: Folks who camp outside of Swift’s Manhattan apartment building and shriek as she exits; who, upon seeing her backstage, tearfully come apart; who so adore her that they need her as an unwitting accessory to their surprise marriage proposal. We’re supposed to call these people fans. But the ones who turn up here tend toward the most disturbing adulation. She tells the singer Brendon Urie that a man broke into her apartment and slept in her bed”.

It is fascinating seeing Swift fully explored, and I do think it will ignite a new hunger for music documentaries. As I said at the start, there have been relatively few music documentaries recently; those that investigate current artists. I think modern Pop artists like Billie Eilish would be fascinating to watch in a documentary. I think documentaries, if balanced and open, can be hugely memorable – Lady Gaga’s excellent and memorable Gaga: Five Foot Two is a perfect example. Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana is an insightful documentary that provides rare access to one of the world’s…

BIGGEST artists.

FEATURE: Listen Before I Go: Making Sure Billie Eilish Is Allowed to Breathe in 2020

FEATURE:

 

Listen Before I Go

Making Sure Billie Eilish Is Allowed to Breathe in 2020

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THE title of this feature…

might confuse some people but, over the past few weeks, few artists have been as busy as Billie Eilish. Maybe this feeds into a wider narrative regarding young Pop artists, but there is going to be a lot of attention trained the way of Eilish. She has been commissioned to write the next James Bond theme, No Time to Die, and has cleaned up at the Grammys. This BBC article explains more:

“Pop star Billie Eilish swept the board at the 2020 Grammys, winning five awards, including best new artist and song of the year.

The 18-year-old also won album of the year for her debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, which was recorded in her childhood home in LA.

She replaces Taylor Swift as the youngest person ever to win the award.

"I joke around a lot at these things, but I genuinely want to say I'm so grateful," said the singer.

Eilish triumphed in all of the Grammys "big four" marquee categories - song of the year, record of the year, album of the year and best new artist.

She is the first person to achieve the feat since Christopher Cross in 1981.

Eilish appeared to be overwhelmed by the extent of her domination of the awards. Accepting the album of the year prize, she turned to fellow nominee Ariana Grande and said: "Can I just say that I think Ariana deserves this?" (Grande waved off the comments, ceding the prize back to the winner).

Earlier, on the red carpet, the singer said she felt like an impostor.

"I feel like I'm not supposed to be here," she joked. "I feel like they accidentally let in a fan."

But the teenager has re-written the rules of pop over the last 12 months, creating ominous, unsettling songs that disrupt typical song structures and lure listeners down dark sonic avenues”.

It has been a really successful time for Eilish and her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, got a lot of love from critics. She is still eighteen, and so much acclaim and focus has arrived at her feet. This will only expand and increase as we head through this year. I can imagine Eilish is favourite to headline a few festivals. She will not be headlining Glastonbury – but one suspects she will be booked -, but there are so many other festivals to announce their line-ups. In terms of gigs, she is heading over here to the U.K. later in the summer and there will be that demands from venues around the world. Not only will people want to see Eilish play, but there will be expectations from her record label. Eilish’s debut was released through Darkroom and Interscope, so I hope there is not going to be that pressure for her to release an album so soon. I know Eilish is an independent and strong artist, but there is only so much one can do when it comes to saying ‘no’.

I worry about big artists like her and Taylor Swift and what impact success has. Eilish was overwhelmed to receive those Grammys, and that memory will stay with her for a lifetime. It is wonderful seeing a young artist given such kudos so early on, and I hope this triumph means Eilish will be given the freedom to move and create in her own way. There is that concern that she will be subject to a lot of recording and touring demand all at once and, inevitably, this will create a problem. Artists have come out before and discussed their mental-health problems and stresses. Billie Eilish has a cool head on her shoulders but, even so, a lot of people will be bidding for her time. Who knows what she can achieve in 2020 and how far her music will spread. She is a brilliant talent for sure, and I hope she gets the chance to relax; to find some time to write on her own terms and manage to detach away from the bustle and demand of the industry. One album in, and this is just the future for the American artist. It is obvious – if it wasn’t before – that Billie Eilish has a…   

LONG future ahead.

FEATURE: Modern Life Is Rubbish: Can Pop Regain Its Euphoria?

FEATURE: 

Modern Life Is Rubbish

PHOTO CREDIT: @alexb/Unsplash

Can Pop Regain Its Euphoria?

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I am writing a separate feature…

PHOTO CREDIT: @belart84/Unsplash

later this weekend that reacts to Billie Eilish scoring big at the Grammys (26th January). There is no doubting she is an immense talent and an artist who has a long future ahead of her. Whilst I love her style of music and think that it is original and memorable, she is considered one of the biggest Pop artists of the moment; someone who is at the very top of the industry right now. Look around the Pop landscape right now, and one can see a pattern emerging in terms of sound. Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Drake are the biggest Pop artists in the world. One can put in names such as ROSALÍA, Halsey and The 1975 but, in general, one can make links and definitions. Whether you consider all of these artists purely ‘Pop’ – in terms of a sound rather than what is seen as popular – that is up to you. They are artists who are enormous and command huge popularity. Whilst the likes of Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are idols and are creating great music, I do wonder whether Pop has turned a corner and will never get back on its former track. What I mean is that, by and large, the Pop staple of today is something darker and more introspective. I know artists like Lizzo and Christine and the Queens write more spirited music but, even then, there is a lack of euphoria and the upbeat. I have respect for artists that write from the heart and are unafraid to bring in big subjects.

Music is a platform for raising awareness and talking about important issues, but we are living through some rough times right now. I know I have concentrated on this subject numerous times and, as we move through 2020, I do wonder whether Pop will change its course. How influential is social media when it comes to the course of modern Pop? Look at your Twitter and Facebook feeds and there is so much introspection, unhappiness and narcissism. It is unavoidable when you consider anyone can post anything and, at a period in history where so many people are afraid and unsure, it does create this very negative and anxious feel. Music is a perfect way to unleash those negative feelings and find connection. If you are feeling anxious, upset or heartbroken, music seems like a safer space than social media. Fans can relate to what you are saying, and you are speaking to people who are going through the same thing. What else is to be done? If you are feeling overwhelmed or your contemporaries are writing in a certain way, you sort of have to do the same thing and fit into the scene. Naturally, there are artists who can write happier songs and big choruses but, as I will look at later, there are few that stick in the head and stand out. If anyone knows how to write big Pop hits that make you feel better, then it is the Pet Shop Boys.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been writing classics for decades and their latest album, Hotspot, is out now. They recently spoke with The Guardian about their latest album and music in general. The duo, quite rightly, joked (or were serious) that the acoustic guitar should be banned – we do not have the likes of Joni Mitchell making music right now so, really, what point does it serve!? Pop today is authentic and real, but is this obsession with the pure, personal and sorrowful the new normal?

“They do feel a little out of place in the current pop climate’s obsession with authenticity and ordinariness (“authenticity is a style,” notes Tennant, “and it’s always the same style”), its lyrical penchant for what they waspishly term “narcissistic misery”.

“We’re always looking for euphoria and excitement in music,” he says, “that sort of feeling we got the first time we heard Bobby O’s records, or Helter Skelter by the Beatles, or even She Loves You, going right back to being a child. That euphoric thing came back in with the rave scene in the 80s, but it isn’t really at the core of pop music now. Its context is social media; social media has actually created and defined the form of popular music and I think, unfortunately, that takes it down the narcissistic misery route. It doesn’t have the importance it once had, and that’s been the case for quite a while. It’s become a facet of social media. You know, everything we do, there’s people working out how to edit it down to 10 seconds, literally everything. I wonder what would happen now if you released Bohemian Rhapsody”.

One cannot blindly say all Pop music is dour and lacking in warmth, but it is clear the mainstream is defined by something edgy, colder and unhappy. Even when artists try warmth and lift, it seems rather empty and weak. I have been thinking and musing as to when I last heard a good-old Pop banger. Lizzo has created big songs like Juice, but I find I cannot sing along to that song and it is not as universal as the best Pop music. There are smaller artists who write nice Pop songs with a bit of kick, but they are buried and not as regarded as the bigger artists. My point is that, even when the world is shaking and on fire, that does not preclude musicians from writing great and happy Pop. I have said it many times before: the world was not in this perfect state back in the 1980s and 1990s. We have always struggled and, actually, faced bigger dilemmas and struggles than what we are going through now. Is it the case artists feel silly writing euphoric Pop? Do they lack the talent to pen big hooks and choruses, or do they feel that sort of sound has no place? It is clear the biggest and best Pop artists command attention now, but how many of their songs will be played and remembered decades from now? The best Pop music is not remembered fondly because it was a better time then or we want to be nostalgic. These songs endure because there is an optimism and something in them that speaks to everyone and transcends time and place.

I have just written a feature about Róisín Murphy and the fact that she is releasing these Disco bangers. There are, I know, sadder elements to the lyrics, but you listen to songs like Incapable, and there is this optimism; a beat and strut that makes you feel better. Pop artists like Dua Lipa are trying to bring something more impassioned to Pop but, even then, one feels like third gear is being used a lot – can artists truly get into fifth gear and provide the world something that is genuinely euphoric, without dampening it down? Artists like Murphy are, sadly, in the minority right now. All is not lost in this world; it is never going to be lost and, in our ordinary lives, most of us have a lot to be thankful for and are not living under a cloud of misery. Why, then, does Pop music (and many other genres) feel the need to keep the mood low and edgy? There are articles that posit a link between social media and music, and other articles underline the fact there are so many distractions these days. Perhaps it is impossible to go back and recapture that spirit. Solo artists like Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi are defining modern music with music that is very personal, pained and plain boring. I can appreciate how difficult it is to summon up something original and euphoric that sounds fresh and is not a repeat of an older sound.

I will round things up but, as we all need to be roused and made positive, music is not really delivering. One cannot solely blame Pop but, as it garners the most focus, one has to put some of the blame at its feet. I do really respect big artists like Billie Eilish but, alongside her and her peers, where is the euphoria and the alternative wave? Pop now is so skewed to the darker or experimental, there is desperately little in the way of anthems, happiness and the sort of track that nestles in the brain and releases endorphins. We have not got to the point where the darkness has descended and there is no ray of hope, but one wouldn’t know that listening to modern Pop. It might be tricky to find that energy and inspiration, but we all need music that joins us together and puts us in a better mood. Narcissism and experimentation has become too much a staple. Even when artists are trying to write something upbeat, I find there is something lacking – almost hitting fifth gear, but still stuck in third. I tend to find I listen more to older music now and, as I need something happier, there are few acts from today that I go back to time and time again. Maybe that is me being picky and elitist, but it is hard to find a lot of joy and euphoria in modern music. It is not only Pop that is culpable of putting the personal above the unifying and uplifting. I am not one who thinks Pop music is lost and can never regain its spark. Although euphoric explosion in Pop seems a long way away, I think the revival…    

PHOTO CREDIT: @danimota/Unsplash

CAN still happen.

FEATURE: Play Devil’s Advocate: Sam Fender and the Realities of Touring

FEATURE:

 

Play Devil’s Advocate

Sam Fender and the Realities of Touring

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WHEN it comes to artists who do not have…

much luck with their voice, Sam Fender must be near the top of the list. It seems he has been struck down with a chest infection, so he has had to reschedule a load of gigs here. I guess artists cannot avoid it because, like all humans, these things do happen. This NME article reveals more:

“Sam Fender has been forced to reschedule shows on his UK tour for the second time, after suffering from continued ill health.

The ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ was set to begin a run of postponed shows in Birmingham, Bristol and Newcastle tonight – which were originally shelved when he suffered a respiratory tract infection in December 2019. 

In a message to fans this afternoon (January 30), Fender has confirmed that the shows will be rescheduled once more after he experienced continued health issues and a family bereavement.

“I’m gutted to have to do this again.. I’ve had an absolute shocker with my health,” Fender told fans.

“It’s been a series of unfortunate events this last month with chest infections, laryngitis and a family bereavement, and now I’ve come down again with tonsillitis. I’m raging, all I want to do is get back out and sing, but I just can’t.

“We’re going to reschedule these shows, and will let you know on the new dates as soon as possible. I know this is massively inconvenient, I can’t apologise enough, I’m so sorry.

“My immune system is totally shit at the moment, I’m doing everything I can to combat that. The only thing I can do is tear the fucking roof off when we reschedule again”.

Fender, it seems, has not been fortunate when it comes to illness and gig timing. I will source from this Guardian interview of August 2019 later, but Fender talked about his voice and problems with it:

“This is, to be fair, possibly the worst time Fender could be doing an interview. Tomorrow’s show is the first since his voice went on strike a month ago. The following day he is due to support Neil Young and Bob Dylan in Hyde Park. Last month, his voice problems meant he had to cancel his scheduled Glastonbury appearance; until yesterday, he didn’t know whether he’d be able to sing this week at all, let alone do a press interview. “I did too much and haemorrhaged my vocal cord on the right side,” he says. “I’ve not stopped touring for two years, and then I crashed and burned. I realised that you can’t maintain that high. And now I’ve got myself back on my feet and I’m naturally a bit scared. Because this thing, it can destroy you, it really can”.

One can appreciate fans have been waiting to see him play and, with the release his debut album, Hypersonic Missiles last year, the demand and buzz has increased. I do wonder whether there is too much pressure on artists to perform, and whether we take into consideration the effort and resilience needed. There was a social media backlash against Fender. Many were wondering how he could be blighted by vocal issues yet again. Again, musicians are human beings, and one would not slag off their local mechanic if they took some time off now and then to recover – or maybe they would.

Things are worse for musicians, as they are naturally in contact with a lot of people; they also use tour buses, so are in close confines. Avoiding illness and issues is, sadly, part of music. In Fender’s case, maybe there is a deeper issue that needs addressing. One cannot speculate as to his overall health and prognosis, but he must be feeling stressed and gutted having to reschedule. The sort of opprobrium aimed the way of Fender has been galling. Fans do pay a lot for tickets; they have to book time off and look forward, but most will not lose money, and it is a necessary move from Fender. I have written a feature about Madonna, who has had to cancel a few of her gigs lately because of pain and ill health. Regardless of age of how many dates you play, there is that risk of injury or illness. Fans are entitled to feel annoyed, but I find little use blaming an artist or wondering how they could get ill. Artists like Sam Fender do not do it on purpose and, added with the pressure of gigs and the long hours on the road, I am surprised that tour cancellations are so uncommon. I will end by stating why we need to have more compassion for artists but, before, I want to return to that interview from The Guardian. As a working-class artist from the North, Fender has had some years of struggle, but the tag of a ‘poor’ or ‘struggling‘ artist is not something Fender associates with himself:    

“Fender has the guitar, but also the cheekbones of a supermodel and songs about male suicide, the spice epidemic and fear of nuclear disaster. The only songs in his repertoire that are in any way romantic are about drunken casual sex. His foamier lager anthems recall Liam Gallagher, if Liam was in any way woke. But Fender really can write songs. His singles, such as Hypersonic Missiles (also the name of his forthcoming debut album), are lethally catchy – like a more brooding Killers coupled with a boyish, brass-loving Bruce Springsteen, albeit more Newcastle than New Jersey. And his voice is nothing like the pigeon-warble of his peers, often high-vaulting to Jeff Buckley levels of vulnerability. Elton John is a fan. So is Stormzy, who recently left him a nine-minute voice message about how much he loved his song Dead Boys, a title that leaves little to the imagination.

Fender says he feels uncomfortable being lumped in with the Toms, Jameses and Georges of guitar pop. “I don’t see myself as part of that, because I’m from Shields, and up here is a very different world,” he says. It exasperates him a little that most people “can’t see that – they probably assume that I’m privately educated”. Or, worse, manufactured. 

He stops himself. “[I sound like] I’m playing the whole ‘poor northerner boy’ sympathy card. I hate that. You don’t want to cling on to the whole ‘I’m a class hero’ thing, because it can seem not genuine at all, like. Technically, I started off quite comfortable. I lived in a council estate for half of my life, but not the beginning of it. Before my parents split up, we lived in one of them terraced houses, which was quite nice. And my dad was working, and my mum was a nurse. But if I’m honest about it, the past 10 years of my life were tough. It wasn’t easy”.

Sam Fender is an artist worth supporting, and someone who will enjoy a very long career. Over the past few years, we have heard of artists living with depression and mental-health problems. It is tough being in the limelight and not letting fans down. So many artists have to put on a façade, and a lot people do not appreciate the hours an artist has to put in. Fender will make it up to the fans who were due to see him on tour very soon. It must be difficult playing so many gigs when you have a voice that has faced problems in the past. Some people are vilifying Fender, whilst the man himself has apologised and feels bad about the situation. It is annoying for fans when a tour is cancelled, but the artists cannot help it so, in the case of Sam Fender and other artists who are afflicted by illness, let us…

PLAY Devil’s advocate.

FEATURE: Still the Queen of Pop: Madonna and the Madame X Revolution

FEATURE: 

Still the Queen of Pop

Madonna and the Madame X Revolution

___________

THERE are other artists I love more…

than Madonna, but there are few I have greater respect for. Interestingly, I am writing two pieces this weekend that relate to illness/injury and the demands of the stage; both artists involved (the other is Sam Fender) have been met with a lot of press coverage and some criticism. In the case of Madonna, she has been battling through a lot of pain lately. Back in November, she announced some cancellations:

“Madonna has cancelled three dates of her Madame X tour dates in Boston, saying she was experiencing "overwhelming" pain.

"Please forgive this unexpected turn of events," she told fans on Facebook.

"Doing my show every night brings me so much joy and to cancel is a kind of punishment... But the pain I'm in right now is overwhelming, and I must rest and follow doctor's orders."

The star did not specify the cause of her injury.

However, earlier this month, she told fans in San Francisco she was suffering from a "torn ligament" and "a bad knee".

After her most recent tour date in Los Angeles, an Instagram video showed her taking "my usual ice bath for multiple injuries". In an earlier video, she displayed a painful bruise on her right thigh.

The reason I did not want to put her and Sam Fender together is that I want to talk more about Madonna and her latest incarnation, Madame X. Madonna is no stranger to adopting different looks but, not since Erotica in 1992 has Madonna taken on this new guise and character.

Madonna is currently in London, and the demand has been huge. She did have to pull her first night at The London Palladium earlier in the week due to ill health/injury, but there is this sort of defiance and strength you get from Madonna that means she cannot be put down too long. She is also cancelling two future shows, but is defying doctors’ orders whilst doing so! I think there is this assumption that, when an artist gets to a certain age, they need to scale down live performance and are unable to cut it with younger artists. The fact of the matter is that touring is grueling, and an artist like Madonna puts on a huge show! Even though she is playing in a smaller venue than she is used to at the moment, it seems like she is packing an enormous show in. The Guardian caught her in London and had this to say:

“Madonna plays up her proximity to the audience: usually seated in a different postal district to the stage, today they are within touching distance. She talks about the venue’s wonderful intimacy – a speech she delivers, oddly, while hidden behind a black wooden screen with only her feet visible, which feels a little like talking about a breathtaking view when you’ve got a paper bag over your head. She gamely interacts with the audience, up to and including stealing first a punter’s seat, then his beer, occasionally scuppered by the fact that the people she interacts with are too overawed by her regal presence to make any kind of sense.

Otherwise, the performance doesn’t really do low key: it feels like an arena show crammed into a smaller space, with suitably eye-popping results. There are a series of tableaux that suggest Madonna is an ungovernable force of insurrection oppressed by shadowy forces – soldiers, trench-coated private eyes and indeed actual shadows. There is an appearance by Cape Verde’s Orquestra Batukadeiras, whose performance is so gleeful you scarcely notice Madonna herself, respectfully seated at the side of the stage. There is a fake riot, a moment where Madonna unexpectedly starts playing the bongos, a moment where Madonna is bundled across the stage shouting “fuck the patriarchy!” and a flatly brilliant staging of Frozen, accompanied by a sensuously choreographed video that initially appears to feature Madonna, but turns out to be her daughter Lourdes.

There are also points where the show feels slightly scrappy and disjointed, and points where it sags – you really do get an awful lot of Portuguese fado for your buck – but it’s hard to feel short-changed. There’s such a lot going on over the course of two hours and it’s hard to imagine another star of her stature even thinking about trying anything as clearly experimental as this. The gammy hip that’s dominated headlines in recent weeks doesn’t seem to have much impact on her dancing, and she’s genuinely funny about both the price of tickets for the show and the bizarre moment in the early 00s when, living in Britain, she suddenly developed an English accent: “Why did you let me do that? I’m from Michigan.” Whether it’s really giving you a more intimate glimpse of Madonna is a moot point – physically closer to her fans or not, it’s still a show, not an evening of unvarnished soul-baring. But the racket they make when she finally leaves the stage suggests that, quite understandably, none of them care”.

Madonna is still thrilling her fans, and it is great to see her produce such a big and varied show (Will Gompertz reviewed Madonna at the Palladium). Sure, the routines and energy is not the same as her Blond Ambition World Tour of 1990, but that was three decades ago now. On 13th April, it will be thirty years since that tour began. On 27th March, it is thirty years since Vogue was released. One looks back of the Madonna of 1990 – having released the acclaimed Like a Prayer the year before - and matches her with the Madonna of now. She still has the same verve and passion for performance and holds her fans in high regard. Madame X is her latest album – released last year –, and I think it is quite underrated. It is an inventive record, and I actually like the heroine; this idea that Madonna is a spy-cum-teacher-cum-everything. Some turned their noses up at the idea, but who wants an artist who writes the same albums and never pushes themselves!? Apart from the fact Madonna has to wear an eyepatch for live shows and shoots – which must be a pain in the arse! -, she has crafted this really interesting figures. I did not get a ticket for her London shows, but it seems her wit is sharper than ever. Whether joking about curfews, or blaming Guy Ritchie for her English accent, there are few performers like her! There are some great Pop artists now, but few that can ever compete with Madonna. It is important to look at the present and her Madame X revolution, but there are reasons to look back and respect the durability and continued popularity of an artist who has moved with the times yet retained her independence and own sound.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1998

I grew up listening to Pop music in the 1980s and 1990s, and Madonna was a big part of that. I caught the video for Material Girl when I was seven or eight, I think, and I followed her career. I think my favourite album of hers is 1998’s Ray of Light - but I do love her latest album. It is the way she manages to stay with the times and adapt that is amazing. Although, as we see in this interview from last year, the modern landscape is something that she is not a huge fan of:

“Sometimes when she talks, she unmistakably sounds like a pop star forged in a different era. She is “dizzy” at the sheer turnover of pop in the digital age – “There are so many distractions, so much noise, so many people coming and going so quickly, it takes away the artist’s ability to grow” – and says the modern way of writing pop songs, where artists are thrown together with a rotating cast of random star producers and writers at songwriting camps, didn’t suit her at all. “Oh, I tried that on MDNA and Rebel Heart. I worked with a lot of talented people, but it’s too hard to have a vision when you work with so many people: there’s so much input. I didn’t enjoy the process at all. Sometimes it was great, but it’s very weird to sit in a room with strangers and go: ‘OK, on your marks, set, write a song together!’ You have to reveal yourself, you have to be vulnerable, and it’s hard to do that right away.”

Nevertheless, uniquely among her peers, she is still resolutely a pop artist, still making music informed by what is happening in the charts and the clubs. These days, she sometimes learns about it via her 13-year-old daughter, Mercy, an “urban queen” whose taste in hip-hop apparently sits badly with her Elton John-loving brother, David: “He says the lyrics degrade women, and he’s right.”

“There’s nothing forced about it,” she says of her continuing quest to personify pop. “This is the music that I listen to in my house, this is the music that inspires me. Oh, you’re not allowed to make youthful, fun, sexy music if you’re a certain age? That’s a load of” – she dips into an English accent – “bollocks, to speak your language”.

Madonna will have a fair few tour dates this year, and I hope she does not have to miss too many dates through injury and illness. Whether it is through her humour, performances or albums, Madonna is still leading the way for Pop; so many artists have her to thank and, let’s hope, there are going to many more years of new Madonna music. It is great seeing such an icon still going strong and, as I will discuss later in the Sam Fender piece, artists are not immune from illness and touring is a strain – it is a shame gigs get cancelled, but these things can’t be helped! Writing about Madonna now, it has made me a bit nostalgic, so I am going to listen to her classics, alongside Madame X. Regardless of setbacks with health, Madonna is still proving why she is the Queen of Pop (Kate Bush, let’s establish, is Queen of all Music). Nearly thirty-eight years after she released her debut single – Everybody was released in 1982 -, she is definitely still…

LEADING the way.

FEATURE: Sisters in Arms: An All-Female, Winter-Ready Playlist (Vol. IV)

FEATURE:

Sisters in Arms

IN THIS PHOTO: Hazel English 

An All-Female, Winter-Ready Playlist (Vol. IV)

__________

LOOKING out at the weather…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lilla Vargen

today, and it seems like the weather is getting warmer! It is getting lighter earlier, and we have not experienced the worst the winter has to offer – not in the South at least! That is good, but I am sure the winter has not left us yet. There have been a lot of great tracks released this week, and so many of them are by the terrific women of music. In this playlist will be artists you know, and some new ones that you may not. Have a listen to this mighty playlist and it will give you the kick and energy you need…

IN THIS PHOTO: Amber Mark

TO banish the winter blues.  

ALL PHOTOS (unless credited otherwise): Artists

__________

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashton Fernihough

Julia Bardo - I Wanna Feel Love

PHOTO CREDIT: Lindsey Byrnes

Hayley Williams – Leave It Alone

Lissy Taylor - Mayday

TORRES – A Few Blue Flowers

PHOTO CREDIT: Ariana Molly

Braids – Young Buck

Mathilda Homer – Too Much

Demi Lovato – Anyone

PHOTO CREDIT: Lottie Turner

KAHLLA – Sense of Self

Madison Beer – Good in Goodbye

H.E.R. – Sometimes

Hannah Jane Lewis – Lemonade 

Lilla Vargen – Cold

Hannah Grace – Blue

Saint Agnes – And They All Fall Down

Taylor Swift – Only the Young

Margaret Glaspy – Killing What Keeps Us Alive

Malena Zavala – I’m Leaving Home

PHOTO CREDIT: Billy Holmes

Lindsay Munroe – Mirrors

Hazel English – Off My Mind

Dawn Richard – Die Without You

Amber Mark – Generous

Eve Owen – So Still for You

Jaguar Jonze – Rabbit Hole

JFDR – Shimmer

Josie Dunne – Back to It

Allie X – Devil I Know

Dua Lipa - Physical

Kesha – Honey

FEATURE: The February Playlist: Vol. 1: A Concrete Pony and Some Momentary Bliss

FEATURE:

 

The February Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Ghostpoet 

Vol. 1: A Concrete Pony and Some Momentary Bliss

__________

THIS is a packed week…

where some seriously amazing songs are out! There are new tracks from Dua Lipa, Ghostpoet and Gorillaz (featuring slowthai and Slaves). Also in the pack are Tame Impala, Liam Gallagher, and Taylor Swift; mix in some Hot Chip, Caribou and Squarepusher and we have a mighty and eclectic week! If you do need a boost to get you in the mood and get the weekend swinging, make sure you check the playlist. It is a busy week, and the quality is sky-high! This year has kicked off with a bang and I am looking forward to seeing what else is coming up. In the meantime, have a listen to the epic tunes below and…

IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa

GET the weekend off to a great start.   

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

_________

Ghostpoet – Concrete Pony

Dua Lipa – Physical

Gorillaz (ft. slowthai and Slaves) - Momentary Bliss

Squarepusher – Terminal Slam

Hayley Williams - Leave It Alone

Liam Gallagher – Once

PHOTO CREDIT: Raffaele Cariou

James Righton – Edie

Tame Impala - Lost in Yesterday

Taylor Swift - Only the Young

PHOTO CREDIT: Ewan Ogden

Blossoms - If You Think This Is Real Life

Hot Chip – Positive

Margaret Glaspy - Killing What Keeps Us Alive

Kesha – Tonight

H.E.R. – Sometimes

Morrissey - Love Is On Its Way Out

PHOTO CREDIT: Harley Weir

These New Puritans – The Mirage

Caribou - Never Come Back

Amber Mark – Generous

Demi Lovato – Anyone

Declan McKenna – Beautiful Faces

Allie X – Devil I Know

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Blue Moon Rising

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashton Fernihough

Julia Bardo - I Wanna Feel Love

IN THIS PHOTO: Saweetie

Saweetie & GALXARA - Sway with Me (from Birds of Prey: The Album)

Little Dragon – Hold On

Alex Ebert - Fluid

Cat Burns – Fool in Love

Austra – Risk It

FEATURE: At This Rate… Music Venues’ Prosperity in 2020

FEATURE:

 

At This Rate…

PHOTO CREDIT: @johnmarkarnold/Unsplash

Music Venues’ Prosperity in 2020

___________

SOME good news broke this week…

PHOTO CREDIT: @single_lens_reflex/Unsplash

that is cause for celebration in the music industry. I have talked a lot about small venues but, as the Government announced it is cutting business rates for small and medium-sized venues, it means their survival and prosperity is much more likely. I want to look at how governments can help venues further and, when we look at changing eating and drinking habits, whether some venues could adapt to draw more people in. Before then, here is that report:

“The government has committed to reducing business rates for small and medium-sized music venues in England and Wales for the first time. The 50% reduction available to smaller retailers will be extended to 230 small and medium-sized music venues with a rateable value below £51,000. Independent cinemas will also benefit from the reduction.

The Music Venue Trust estimates that the move will save each site an average of £7,500 a year, and release more than £1.7m back into the grassroots live music sector. Music Venue Trust strategic director Beverley Whitrick said it was a “much needed and long overdue boost”.

Nathan Clark of the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds said he was overjoyed by the news. “This reduction of business rates supports an ability to reinvest, helping new and emerging artists, create accessible events, and further support a vibrant, but financially strained environment for the wider community.”

The last decade has seen 35% of grassroots music venues across England and Wales close. The UK’s first live music census, published in February 2018, found that a third of British venues outside London were fighting to survive in the face of high business rates and noise restrictions.

Of almost 200 small music venues (with a capacity of up to 350 people) surveyed, 33% reported that increases in business rates had an “extreme, strong or moderate” impact on their existence in the past 12 months. One medium-sized venue (351–650 capacity) reported their rateable value quadrupling from £17,500 to £72,000.

PHOTO CREDIT: @johnmarkarnold/Unsplash

Business rates are by no means the only challenge facing the UK’s music venues. In March 2019, the British music industry body that collects royalty payments for musicians said it planned to more than double the rates paid by pubs, bars and nightclubs to play recorded music. Changing drinking habits have also been blamed for the closure of small venues”.

It is good that so many venues will benefit from these measures. I wonder, as we are just finishing Independent Venue Week (it ends on 2nd February), whether more money can be earmarked for venues. There is that issue of noise pollution and, whilst I have mentioned this in a feature before, I do think venues that are especially afflicted by noise concerns – and receive complains – could benefit from capital. I know there is not an endless kitty for music but, when we consider the money injected into film, theatre and other areas of the arts, I think music is equally valuable. Any support that can be provided to venues is great and, with the reduction of business rates, a lot of money will go to grassroots venues. Past this, what about prevention, growth, and the existence of new sites? I think noise complaints are important to consider and, whilst people who move near venues should know better, venues threatened with penalties because of noise pollution could benefit from funding. Similarly, so many of us are not eating and drinking out, but I wonder how venues (that are not making a lot from food and drink) could benefit from extra money available.

PHOTO CREDIT: @jmuniz/Unsplash

I guess it is hard to reverse current trends but, as a lot of venues are struggling to make profits, the £1.7m being poured back into small and medium-sized venues could help out. I think more awareness and promotion of the great venues around the U.K. could bring more people in. Independent Venue Week is a great way to shine a spotlight on venues, but government campaigns and more spending promoting venues through the media would be a big help. It might be a stretch to think new venues could form but, as we are hearing positive news, who would bet against it? There has been much celebration on social media; people relieved that so many venues will benefit and, with a lot of new money going into the industry, how it will benefit the industry as a whole – and all the great artists who rely on venues. I am still worried many close and rent prices are so steep – especially if you are in a major city like London. Of course, the fact fewer people are going out contributes, but preservation of existing venues and making people conscious of the fantastic music available near them could well help. Those who argue that venues are less relevant in an age of social media need to realise that, without venues, artists struggle to perform, hone their craft, and have the confidence to release music. The experience of watching an artist play and being in that space is electric. This BBC article is interesting to read:

“It was at Barfly where Bombay Bicycle Club met producer Jim Abbiss, who worked with them on their debut album and throughout their career.

Jack says the venues provide a lifeline.

"Playing live has kind of become the main source of sustenance for bands... bands aren't going to be able to rely on income from royalties. 

PHOTO CREDIT: @ben_neale/Unsplash

"I know there's lots of smaller venues struggling but we all need to try our hardest to keep them open."

"There's so many people in and around the venues in their local communities who are willing to come down, paint walls, make repairs, give their time for free - because they're so appreciative of having these spaces," Chloe Ward, director of UK for Independent Venue Week, tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.

"They open their doors to audiences to come in and be inspired to become managers or artists themselves or to get into the music industry."

Chloe says current "astronomical business rates" are the "main struggle" for lots of the small venues who take part in their event.

"You recognise how passionate and innovative the owners are. They are nurturing talent who goodness knows where they're going to be in five years - they could be headlining Glastonbury or arenas.

"They'll probably start out on the bottom of the bill playing to 10 of their mates... it's where they get noticed".

It is great that there is positive news coming out, just as we throw love towards out vital venues. With so many great artists entering the industry, all hungry to perform and get their music heard, I think our Government should think more about allotting money to music’s live scene so, in generations to come, we have a healthy and diverse live scene. That, obviously, is for the good…

PHOTO CREDIT: @kylewongs/Unsplash

OF all music fans.

FEATURE: Master Hunter: The Magnificent Laura Marling: The Playlist

FEATURE:

Master Hunter

The Magnificent Laura Marling: The Playlist

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I do quite a few playlists and, whilst I did…

not want to put it in large print at the top of this article, I am marking Laura Marling’s thirtieth birthday (she turns thirty on 1st February). I feel more comfortable mentioning men’s ages, but I wasn’t sure if it was that tactful, despite the fact she is still in her twenties! I wanted to put a playlist together, as Marling is an artist who has not put a foot wrong! I mentioned on Twitter how, in spite of the fact she has a few albums under her solo belt (and one as part of LUMP), Laura Marling has not received a bad review. That is a feat for any artists but, look at each of her albums, and there is so much imagination, poetic brilliance and emotion throughout. Listening to a Laura Marling album is almost like reading a novel or watching a film, so immersive and stunning is the music. Her sixth studio album, Semper Femina, was released in 2017 – to, of course, critical acclaim! -, and she released the eponymous LUMP album with Mike Lindsay in 2018. I wonder whether there are any plans for this year and whether we might see a seventh solo album. Although Marling has been on this unbroken streak of excellence, there is no pressure on her shoulders to keep up this quality because, unless she goes completely off-tangent or changes musical direction, she will continue to produce the same startling and memorable music she has since Alas, I Cannot Swim in 2008 – she was barely eighteen (her birthday was a few days before) when that debut came into the world. Rather than share my opinions on Laura Marling, I felt it best to put together a selection of her very best songs to mark her thirtieth birthday. Here is an artist who has not put a creative foot wrong and, to be I honest, I don’t think…

SHE ever will.