FEATURE: Second Spin: Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

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WHILST I cannot claim to be the biggest…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Capitol Records

fan of Katy Perry, I do think that her third studio album, Teenage Dream, is stronger than critics gave it credit for. It is another album that got a mixed reception but fared much better in commercial terms. Whilst some have been a little negative regarding the 2010 release, the album did very well:

“The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 192,000 copies in its first week. It was later certified eight times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting 8 million album-equivalent copies. The album has gone onto sell 3.1 million copies in the United States, and charted within the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 year-end chart three years in a row. The album also sold 1.3 million copies in the United Kingdom, where it was certified four times platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). By July 2013, Teenage Dream had sold 6 million copies worldwide. The album and its singles earned Perry seven Grammy Award nominations including Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Record of the Year. It also won International Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2011”.

I will bring in a couple of reviews for Teenage Dream - one that is more mixed and a positive one. I think that a lot of people who were familiar with Perry’s music were probably fairer than those coming to it fresh. With big Pop singles like California Gurls, Teenage Dream and Firework, there are songs that instantly come to mind and that we are all familiar with!

Maybe people dislike the bombast of Katy Perry’s voice or the fact that the production is pretty polished. In terms of its sound, it is very similar to a lot of Pop albums. It is a very big record in terms of energy, but there is some emotion and softer moments. Most of the best songs are taken care of in the first half of Teenage Dream so, perhaps, there is a slight top-heavy feel to it. I like the more under-represented songs like Peacock and Who Am I Living For? In their review, this is what Rolling Stone observed:

“Teenage Dream is the kind of pool-party-pop gem that Gwen Stefani used to crank out on the regular, full of SoCal ambience and disco beats. It’s miles ahead of Perry’s breakthrough disc, One of the Boys, with her clever songwriting boosted by top-dollar pros: Dr. Luke, Max Martin, Tricky Stewart, Stargate. In the 2010 style, her vocals are processed staccato blips with lots of oh-oh-way-oh chants. The tracks go heavy on Eighties beats, light on melody, taking a long dip into the Daft Punk filter-disco house sound.

Major themes include: how awesome it is having sex with Russell Brand (“Hummingbird Heartbeat”), how it sucks having sex with guys who aren’t Russell Brand (“Pearl”), how true love rules (“Teenage Dream”), even though it’s not like the movies (“Not Like the Movies”). Perry likes her songs chatty; in the kegger romp “Last Friday Night,” she chirps, “Think I need a ginger ale/That was such an epic fail.” Stargate’s “Hollaback Girl” sequel “Peacock” bites a drum hook from Toni Basil’s “Mickey” as Perry demands some action, chanting, “I wanna see your peacock-cock-cock” — subtle!

Her Christian back story only comes up once, in “Who Am I Living For,” where Perry riffs on the biblical story of Esther, the Jewish orphan who married the Persian king and uncovered a plot to exterminate the Jews. It’s dark and compelling, especially since she sings it like Rihanna. “Circle the Drain” — which Perry presumably wrote about her ex, “Billionaire” singer Travie McCoy — is even darker, a kiss-off to a rocker hooked on pills. But she’s more at home with the mall romance of “The One That Got Away,” where she and the guy get matching tattoos on her 18th birthday. When Perry sings, “I was June, and you were Johnny Cash,” it’s understood that she’s thinking of the scrubbed-up Hollywood version of June and Johnny, from Walk the Line. But that’s just part of what makes her such a true California gurl”.

I really like Katy Perry’s voice. I think she is one of the most dexterous and accomplished Pop artists of her time. Maybe the songwriting is not exceptional throughout (aside from Perry, there are quite a few others in the mix) and the consistency falters a little towards the end of the album. That said, Teenage Dream is not an album to be seen as weak or a guilty pleasure. It is a solid Pop album that has some standout tracks and, generally, is an enjoyable listen.

Not everyone was mixed or down when it came to Katy Perry’s third studio album. AllMusic were more complimentary when they assessed the album:

“Nothing comes naturally for Katy Perry. Blessed with a cheerleader’s body, the face of a second-chair clarinetist and a drama club queen’s lust for the spotlight, Perry parlayed all these qualities into success via her 2008 pop debut One of the Boys, an album that worked overtime to titillate. Working hard is Katy Perry’s stock in trade: whether she’s cavorting in the Californian sun or heaving her cleavage, she always lets you see her sweat, an effect that undercuts her status as a curvy Teenage Dream, the ideal she puts forth on her 2010 sophomore set. All this labor produces fetching magazine covers -- sometimes accompanied by good copy within -- and grabbing videos but it undoes her records, since we always hear her fighting to be frivolous. And all Perry wants to do is have fun: all she wants is to frolic in the spotlight, and she’ll follow the path of others to get there, raising eyebrows a’la Alanis, strutting like Gwen Stefani and relying on Britney’s hitmaker Max Martin for her hooks. There’s no question Perry is smart enough to know every rule in pop but she’s not inspired enough to ignore them, almost seeming nervous to break away from the de rigeur lite club beats that easily transition from day to night or the chilly, stainless-steel ballads designed to lose none of their luster on repeat plays.

Perry acknowledges some shifting trends -- she salutes fellow attention-whore Ke$ha on “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” replicates Ryan Tedder’s glassy robotic alienation on “E.T.” but tellingly avoids ripping off Lady Gaga, who is just too meta for the blunt Katy -- but these are merely accents to her old One of the Boys palette. And, once again, the music feels familiar, so Perry distinguishes herself through desperate vulgarity, wooing a suitor with “you make me feel like I’m losing my virginity,” extolling the virtues of blackouts and an accidental ménage a trois, melting popsicles, pleading for a boy to show her his “Peacock” (chanting “cock cock cock” just in case we at home didn’t get the single entendre). All this stylized provocation is exhausting, and not just because there’s so much of it (none of it actually arousing). It’s tiring because, at her heart, Perry is old-fashioned and is invested in none of her aggressive teasing. Not for nothing did she give her best post-One of the Boys song, “I Do Not Hook Up,” to Kelly Clarkson; its pro-abstinence rally flies in the face of the masturbatory daydream she’s constructed. It's ironic that her best song finds her lurking behind the scenes, because Perry's greatest talent is to be a willing cog in the pop machine, delivering sleek singles like “Teenage Dream” and “Hummingbird Heartbeat” with efficiency. Isolated on the radio, the way “Hot N Cold” was in 2009, these singles will wind up obscuring the overheated and undercooked nature of Teenage Dream as a whole. Then again, the album itself is almost incidental to the self-styled fantasy that Katy Perry sells with this entire project”.

Katy Perry’s sixth studio album, Smile, was released last year. At thirty-six, she is perhaps not going to return to the sound and themes of her earlier albums; I think she has matured as an artist and we will see many more releases from her. I sort of dip in and out of her work, though I do like Teenage Dream and think that it has more to give than has been recognised. In spite of a few weaker numbers there is a lot of variety to be found. Perry definitely widened her scope and sonic reach on Teenage Dream. Maybe she was growing in confidence or felt that she needed to expand her reach. Whereas One of the Boys (2008) was more Pop and Rock in tone, Teenage Dream has Electronic asnd Disco elements in the brew. Rock is utilised more on Teenage Dream. From Soft Rock to Glam Metal, Perry manages to pull off a switch in sounds and textures. Go and listen to the album if you have not heard it before. I think that it is one of Perry’s strongest albums and, over a decade since its release, I don’t feel it has dated or comes across as ‘of its time’. One can easily listen to the album and look at modern Pop and see comparisons. Whilst it suffered from some critical disinterest, many publications placed Teenage Dream in its top-twenty/fifty albums of 2010. Billboard even ranked the album at fourteen in their greatest albums of the 2010s! Go and take a listen to a decent and interesting album from…

A modern Pop superstar.

 

FEATURE: My Home, My Joy: Kate Bush and the Familial Inspiration

FEATURE:

 

My Home, My Joy

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush standing outside of her family home at East Wickham Farm, Welling (in the London borough of Bexley)

Kate Bush and the Familial Inspiration

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I have written about…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Hannah, Paddy, Kate and John Carder Bush at East Wickham Farm (circa 1978)

Kate Bush and how music and family played an important role in her early life. I have been compelled by a few recent releases that have made me think about Bush’s attachment to family and home and how, on her best albums, these twin pillars played an important role. A recent article from My London discussed the home in which Bush wrote Wuthering Heights in 1977:

“It was a song inspired by the romantic novel of the same title by Emily Bronte and sung from the perspective of the character Catherine Earnshaw who is pleading to be let into Heathcliff's house and be with him.

Kate is believed to have penned the lyrics to the song in only a few hours and did so from her flat in South London.

The flat Kate lived in was the middle flat of a three flat building and her two brothers were believed to have lived above and below her.

Kate credits her brothers for getting her into music in the first place and through them had her first live performance at the since closed Rose of Lee pub in Lewisham, as well as the Royal Albert in New Cross Road”.

Although Kate Bush moved around London and she did relocate a bit through her young life, I think that the family home of East Wickham Farm, Welling, was most important (you can read an interesting article, where we learn more about Bush’s early family life). In 2015, LOUDER looked at a vital source of comfort for Bush:

“The large farmhouse where Kate Bush was raised is almost impossible to see through impenetrable undergrowth and is situated in a surprisingly built-up area on Wickham Street, Welling, on the fringes of South-East London.

East Wickham Farm was the family home where Kate lived with her doctor father, mother and two older brothers, John and Paddy. Her inbuilt wonder and love of music and outpouring of songs, written when a schoolgirl, all began here, surrounded by her family.

Famously ‘discovered’ and encouraged by Dave Gilmour and signed to EMI as a songwriting prodigy, the teenage Kate Bush also formed the KT Bush Band with brother Paddy and three friends, playing South London pubs. The family’s secluded 350-year-old farmhouse home offered a base for an idyllic childhood and subsequently a secure and private environment for her work. Kate, who shares a birthday with Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë, wrote her ‘version’ at East Wickham Farm”.

I am reading a new book by Laura Shenton, where she looks at Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, in detail. I am going to write about the book/album in more depth in a future feature. Apart from some great interview snippets and technical details, what struck me was how harmonious and inspiration East Wickham Farm/44 Wickham Road is (there is about seven miles between the family home and 44 Wickham Road, South East London).

I can imagine Bush finding comfort and safety at her family home writing these gorgeous and hugely impressive songs to life; those that would appear on The Kick Inside. Not to say the bustle of London or the strains of a studio are lacking in inspiration. To me, it was when Bush was writing and recording at home that her best moments were created. Though The Kick Inside was recorded at AIR Studios and she spent a lot of time in London through her career, my mind goes to East Wickham Farm as being this vessel of security and love. I will not rehash my feature about family and the music played during Bush’s early life – as her mother was Irish and there was a lot of traditional Folk played, there was this mix and fusion of sounds that influenced a curious young songwriter. The love Bush got from her family and the musical/cultural connection she had with her brothers, Paddy and John, can really be heard on her albums. I think that The Kick Inside’s songs were penned when Bush was enveloped in the support from her family (her father was especially encouraging) and the fact that she was supported in her aspirations. Although her parents, perhaps, would have preferred Bush went to university or followed a more traditional path, they were very supportive of her musical ambitions.  

After The Kick Inside was completed, there was this period where Bush moved around and she acquired more independence. Not to say she distanced herself from her family but, with a busy career and an itinerant schedule, she was spending less time in Welling. Living and recoding with her boyfriend, Del Palmer, I think that albums such as Never for Ever and The Dreaming and markedly different to The Kick Inside, Hounds of Love and Aerial. I do not think that it is a coincidence that Bush created her most successful album, 1985’s Hounds of Love, when there was this fortress and warmth at the family home. Over eight years since inspiration struck for Wuthering Heights, Bush built her own studio behind the family home. 1982’s The Dreaming was an important album where Bush produced alone and was at her experimental finest. It did take a lot out of her and, between moving around different studios and intensive recording sessions, she recognised changes needed to be made – she also changed her diet, reconnected with dance and departed London. The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia gives some information about Bush’s bespoke, incredible studio set-up:

“Following the disappointing performance of her fourth album The Dreaming and its singles, executives at Bush's label were concerned about sales largely due to the long time period it took to produce the album. In the summer of 1983 Bush built her own 48-track studio in the barn behind her family home which she could use to her advantage and at anytime she liked, without time constraints she had to deal with when hiring studios elsewhere.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985 

With the studio more or less completed, Bush began recording demos for the album in the summer of 1983. After five months, Bush began overdubbing and mixing the album in a process that took a full year. The recording sessions included use of the Fairlight CMI synthesiser, piano, traditional Irish instruments, and layered vocals”.

Not that Bush was retreating from a stressful life, though it is clear that home was calling. She was able to regain some of the peacefulness and love that she experienced prior to her debut album being released. Though not many of those outside of Bush’s circle knew about the recording of Hounds of Love, away from the toil of building a studio and perfecting the album, she enjoyed time to be with her family and boyfriend in a salubrious, idyllic location. Aside from having the family home close and being able to work at her own pace and record the album exactly as she wanted, I think having her parents and brothers nearby was important. In between The Kick Inside and Hounds of Love being record, Paddy especially was living close/with his sister and appeared on many songs. During recording Hounds of Love, her mother’s legendary hospitality would have kept Bush and her musicians topped up and lifted! Paddy would have been there to provide his musical expertise and assistance, in addition to a supportive love.

Although Bush shad started her own family by the time 2005’s Aerial was released, that is not to say that she every lost that solid connection with her family (her mother, Hannah, sadly died in 1992; her father, Robert, died in 2008). Her son, Bertie, was born in 1998, and she was living with her other half, Danny McIntosh (prior to Aerial, he played guitar on The Red Shoes (1993) tracks Rubberband Girl, The Red Shoes, Constellation of the Heart, Top of the City, The Song of Solomon, and Lily). I feel that Bush favoured home studios as opposed professional ones. Even though she spent time recording at Abbey Road Studios for albums after The Red Shoes, I feel having her own studio and set-up at home with her family gave her that comfort blanket. A lot of the magic and music came together in Bush’s home…and it is clear that the joy her new son gave her is a reason why Aerial is not only Bush’s favourite album (which she revealed in an interview from 2011) but is also one of her very best. 2011’s 50 Words for Snow was another album where parts were recorded at Abbey Road Studios but, as she told interviewers like BBC Radio 4’s John Wilson and BBC Radio 2’s Ken Bruce (when she released Director’s Cut in 2011), she has her own studio and could invite musicians in. Danny McIntosh was there to play guitar and help ferry musicians to and from the home; her long-time stead, Del Palmer, was there to engineer and record.

To me, Bush used outside studios more sparingly post-The Red Shoes. Abbey Road Studios provided a greater space for musicians during orchestrations - and where her home studio could not deliver the same dynamics and acoustics. Rather than Bush being reclusive or wanting to be completely autonomous, I think she was keener to balance family and work and not revert to the past – where she would be burning herself out recording so strenuously and endlessly. If her parents and brothers were vital lifeblood for albums like Hounds of Love, then her new home and family were key to Aerial, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow. I feel the relative lack of anxiety and fatigue helped elevate Bush’s songwriting and creativity. Having a home studio meant she could keep her own hours and record when she wanted (and at a much less expensive rate than she would have to pay at AIR Studios or Abbey Road Studios). I still think this is all true now. Her son, today, is in her twenties and the mood and pace of family is different to how it was years ago. Regardless, home and family are pivotal. Any future material we hear from Bush will be at her home studio – let’s hope that there is more to come from her at some point. From the child who was drinking in so much music and culture, to the teenager releasing her debut album, I think the sort of strength and influence only home and family can provide has guided her best moments. As I write this, I think of Bush at home, perhaps with a song in the back of her mind as she contemplates her lot and gives (silent) thanks. I will end things there but, in the next few weeks, I am going to write features around that book about The Kick Inside from Laura Shenton and a new article that has appeared in MOJO (they have published a ‘lost interview’ and discuss The Dreaming’s Sat in Your Lap, almost forty years since its release). With so many new publications and books, it means that the fascination and interest around Kate Bush…

NEVER ends.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: One-Album Wonders

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Lauryn Hill (her lone studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, was released in 1998) 

One-Album Wonders

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I don’t recall whether…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jeff Buckley released his stunning debut, Grace, in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Merri Cyr

I have covered this in some form before - if I have, it has been a long time. I am interesting in artists and bands that have only released one studio album. Whether that is because of a premature split/demise or there was there was no commercial demand for a second, the phenomenon of a one-album wonder is quite rare. It is exciting putting out a debut album. It must be strange to have your career left there! I have compiled songs together from artists who only ever put out the one studio album (that said, they are pretty awesome albums!). From The La’s, to Jeff Buckley, to Lauryn Hill to the Sex Pistols, one wonders what could have been if they…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The La’s released their eponymous debut in 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Clare Muller/Redferns

EVER put out a follow-up.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Genesis Owusu

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Genesis Owusu

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ONE of the problems with this Spotlight feature…

is that I am including hardly any male artists. It shows that there are so many terrific female artists, but it is time to introduce an artist who is among the finest around. Genesis Owusu (Kofi Owusu-Ansah) has released his phenomenal debut album, Smiling with No Teeth. I will finish with a couple of reviews for the album. First, it is worth sourcing from some interviews so that we can discover more about the Ghana-born rapper. Owusu spoke with The Guardian recently. We find out about his upbringing and a remarkable, accomplished debut:

“Now 22, Owusu was born Kofi Owusu-Ansah in Ghana, then moved to Canberra, Australia when he was two. Canberra, like much of Australia, is extremely white, and although there are tight-knit non-white communities to be found everywhere, institutions like schools often remain ignorant of the experiences of people of colour. Owusu-Ansah’s brother, the rapper Citizen Kay, was five years his elder, meaning that the pair only went to school together for a year before Owusu-Ansah was on his own.

“I had to figure this shit out myself, because all the Black people I knew were the people that came to the country with me,” Owusu-Ansah recalls from his new home base of Sydney. “There [were] no real role models to get advice from. It was definitely interesting being in a white space like that, but it kind of taught me, to the [most extreme] extent, how to be myself.”

This repeated iconography provides a through line for what is a remarkably varied debut, touching upon anthemic 80s rock (on Kirin J Callinan-featuring highlight Drown), synth-funk, out-and-out punk (Black Dogs) and everything in between. Owusu-Ansah achieved this frenetic, hard-to-pin-down style by bucking a more traditional producers-and-beats A&R method – which he had used in the past – and instead holing down with a band, made up of Callinan on guitar, house producer Touch Sensitive on bass, World Champion’s Julian Sudek on drums, and Andrew Klippel, founder of Owusu-Ansah’s label Ourness, on keys.

That truth is wilder and more thrilling than one could imagine. Inspired equally by Prince and Talking Heads – “But like if Prince were a rapper, in 2020, in Australia” – Smiling With No Teeth might freak some out, but feels more likely to win fans than lose them. Either way, Owusu-Ansah doesn’t really care: “I have no interest in being like some random pop star or rap star with a million random people who don’t really care about me as an artist,” he says. “I want to reach people who will really understand it”.

I think that Smiling with No Teeth is one of the most impressive albums of the year so far. I would urge people to investigate the album and discover an immense talent! I have been listening to the album a lot over the last few days and really digesting and absorbing the fifteen tracks.

I came across an interesting DIY interview from this month. Genesis Owusu talked about moving to Canberra, the characters that go into Smiling with No Teeth, in addition to looking ahead to live gigs:

“I don’t know what music does, but it pulls out something really different in me,” chuckles Kofi Owusu-Ansah, or Genesis to his increasing number of listeners. “I don’t know how to describe it but it imbues me with a lot of confidence. It’s like Clark Kent and Superman, you know? Genesis Owusu is the Superman, and day to day, I’m just in Clark Kent mode.”

Confidence is an idea that crops up a lot in conversation with the Canberra musician. Moving from Ghana to the Australian capital aged three, he speaks of acknowledging his difference among his new peers and leaning into it from a young age. “It was definitely a place where I was immediately the outlier and it had come to a point where it’s like, do you assimilate and try and fit in or do you go full-frontal with the outcast label? And I chose the latter,” he recalls. “I chose to try and embrace who I was completely.”

Genesis’ own personal hellfire, however, is one less indebted to the millenium bug. Across the record, against a backdrop of deceptively upbeat cuts, come repeated motifs of black dogs - one a familiar metaphor for depression, the other a more troubling reference to the fact that he'd “literally been called a black dog in my life as a racial slur”. “Throughout the album, I wanted to create these two black dogs as characters with their own personalities. The internal black dog of depression is very possessive and wants you to be its only one, kind of like a toxic relationship,” he continues. “Creating them as characters really helped identify all of the characteristics [and work through] how I was interacting with them.”

With his debut, Genesis is resisting the restriction and conformity of any boxes - be it social, stylistic or other. Already selling thousands of tickets in his home country (yep, they can go to gigs already - sob), it seems like a foregone conclusion that, by the time the rest of the world is able to open up its venues once more, Owusu should be stepping through them into crowds of hungrily-waiting fans.

“It’s exciting and it’s very cool to know I’m not just doing this for myself, even though that was the original intention,” he smiles (with teeth). “That means the most to me, these little weirdo Black kids like me growing up in spaces that they don’t necessarily belong. If instead of, like I did, not having many people to look up to, they feel like they have me, then that’s super meaningful and it warms my heart”.

I am keen to get to the reviews for Smiling with No Teeth as it is a fantastic album that has so many highlights. I don’t think one needs to be a fan of Rap or know about Genesis Owusu to appreciate and fall for such a stunning and compelling album. It is an album that you will listen to again and again and discover new elements and highlights revealed.

I want to bring in the final interview. NME. Alongside a look at Owusu’s visual aspect, he discussed racism and depression, in addition to the rise of artists in Australia from the African diaspora:

“Owusu-Ansah is a visual auteur as much as he is a musician. In the video for ‘The Other Black Dog’, he sprints down a road late at night, chased by a black car driven by his shadow self. The driver’s face is wrapped in bandages à la The Weeknd circa ‘After Hours’, with golden grills forcing gritted teeth into a grin – covering up suffering with “a little gold, or extravagance”, as he puts it.

The two weighty concepts that haunt ‘Smiling’ are depression and racism. They split the record into thematic halves, and are personified as two living, breathing black dogs. One is the external figure of Owusu-Ansah himself, who experiences the dehumanising brunt of racism, and the other an internal, depressive figure that he describes as “almost seductive, wanting to lure you in… almost like a toxic relationship, wanting to be your only one”. The title track articulates the relationship between the two black dogs as analogues of racism and mental health: “Society’s stray and the stray’s hound / Caressing and stabbing each other with a technician’s touch”.

“I’m trying to live comfortably but I’m pursuing a life [in the music industry] that is known to just be fucked up. To be full of vultures, creeps and people that drain. That line is just acknowledging the contradiction and the walking paradox I can be,” Owusu-Ansah says.

Australia is currently seeing a rising wave of artists from the African diaspora making varied music under the aesthetic umbrella of hip-hop: Sampa The Great (Owusu-Ansah’s favourite rapper out of Australia), Manu Crooks, BLESSED, and more. Genesis Owusu’s story could be read in this context, but does he feel part of this scene? The answer is yes and no.

“Whenever I see any of those people, it’s always love and you always feel that sense of community from an identity perspective. [But] from the outside looking in, in a lot of publications I don’t feel like I really get recognised in those circles or in hip-hop in Australia at all,” he explains”.

I am going to wrap things up shortly. I want to end by bringing together a couple of reviews that praised and heralded an amazing album and artist. Smiling with No Teeth is an album that has won huge kudos and focus. In their review, NME were eager to lend their positive thoughts:

“Genesis approaches ‘Smiling’ as a catharsis – and, especially with his figurative writing, it can be occasionally unclear whom his missives are aimed at. Songs like the assertive, stomping lead single, ‘Don’t Need You’ are conversational yet candid, Genesis delivering barbed observations on a toxic relationship: “I always saw yo ass as a hindrance and you saw me as a target.” On the title-track, with wry spoken word, he admits to politely concealing his anxiety and depression when probed, realising that people seek assurances, not truths.

Singing partly in a Pharrell-style falsetto, Genesis ponders the trade-offs of fame, and material trappings, on the low-key single ‘Gold Chains’. Thematically similar to both his own ‘Cardrive’ track ‘Drive Slow’ and Denzel Curry’s ‘CLOUT COBAIN’, it captures a rising star astute to exploitative music industry machinations. ‘Smiling’ consistently surprises: superficially, ‘A Song About Fishing’ is breezy folk balladry – but Genesis conjures a Nick Cave-esque parable, chronicling an exhausting quest to catch fish with no success, only hope. It’s a bleak commentary on perseverance – and Genesis at his most imaginative.

With ‘Smiling With No Teeth’, Genesis Owusu has delivered a riveting album that underscores the power of self-knowledge, perspective and art – one that should be cranked loud”.

In another really positive review, DIY raised some interesting points and made some good observations about a huge album from an artist who is going to go very far:

“If the gleeful monster-mash of ‘The Other Black Dog’ or the ’80s cruise of ‘Drown’ seem like frivolous costume, they are worn by a man who carries a much wider weight of depression, frustration and societal disrepair that only really reveals itself when you dig into the lyrics. ‘A Song About Fishing’ is a laid-back, relatable rap-folk mediation of the difficulties of motivating yourself when nothing seems to be going right, while on ‘I Don’t See Colour’, he ponders the nature of racial stereotyping over a slick beat (“‘Cuz somehow my actions represent a whole race, it’s hard to move different when your face is our face.”). There’s a whole abundance of themes at play, but all are dealt with a knowing creativity, a melodic choice tailored to fit the topic.

If Genesis is consistent with anything, it’s the reminder that life is often more fun when you allow yourself to explore the leftfield. At 15 tracks long, he occasionally falters under the weight of his own abundance, but there are so many great sweets in the pick’n’mix bag that you don’t really mind the odd underwhelming chew. In time, it’ll be a real joy to watch his ideas crystallise into something properly essential. Until then, there’s a lot already here to be grinning about”.

I will leave things there. I discovered Genesis Owusu a few months ago. It has been good reading about him and his start in life; how he has grown as an artist and what the scene is like in Canberra. If you have not heard Owusu, then go and check out his social media feeds and have a listen to Smiling with No Teeth. As soon as you hear the album, it will stay in your head and come to mind frequently. I am really excited to see where this amazing young artist…

HEADS next.

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Follow Genesis Owusu

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/genesisowusu/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/owusugenesis/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/genesisowusu

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1HvH97rzvCH6lfnLlgyfke

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYwSw3OIB_QwFy7tbC9-LsA  

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Macy Gray - On How Life Is

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Macy Gray - On How Life Is

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I did say that I would include…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Giuliano Bekor

an album this week that was affordable and easily obtainable. Next week, I am featuring an album that is available at Rough Trade and was released fairly recently. This week, I was eager to include Macy Gray’s debut album, On How Life Is. The albuim was released on 1st July , 1999 - it became Gray's best-selling album to date, selling 3.4 million copies in the United States and seven million copies worldwide. One can buy it on vinyl new or used. Go to Discogs too for a range of princes. Though it may be a bit pricey grabbing On How Life Is on vinyl, it is well worth it. The album is fantastic and, though Gray herself may not feel it is her best album (more on that later), it is a tremendous album that I have been hearing played on the radio a bit recently. I think that, sadly, some people have forgotten artists like Macy Gray. When On How Life Is was released in 1998, I know there was this buzz of excitement. Not only is Gray’s voice singular and powerful; the songs on her debut album are so soulful and confident. I am going to bring in a couple of articles around the album. First, I want to source from Albumism. They looked back on On How Life Is on its twentieth anniversary in 2018:

“Macy Gray was now standing on the world stage as the most prominent face of the neo-soul movement; her only rival at this time was Lauryn Hill who had achieved a similarly dizzying ascent to public renown with her first solo outing, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998).

This pathway to Gray’s stardom began unassumingly enough in Canton, Ohio where the vocalist and writer was born Natalie McIntyre in 1967; a childhood bicycle accident led a then-six-year old McIntyre to discover a neighbor’s mailbox inscribed with the name of “Macy Gray.” Unconsciously, she filed the appellation away, not knowing that later it would operate as the designation for the persona she’d employ in her recording career.

As a young woman, Gray departed the Midwest to pursue her higher education (through scriptwriting) at the University of Southern California in the mid-1980s; this, by chance, got her going as a songwriter, a medium she excelled in. At the start of the 1990s, Gray soon found herself moonlighting in several bands in Los Angeles. As the decade wore on, Gray fielded a plethora of opportunities and setbacks—personally and professionally—in quick succession until she finally acquired a deal with Epic Records in 1998. All her adventures became the thematic crux for On How Life Is when the sessions for that album began.

It is Gray’s voice that irrefutably fuels the lyrics and music of On How Life Is. Her scratchy, whiskey rich tones infuse “A Moment to Myself” with an esoteric edge and apply conventional melodic sheen to “Still,” two standout performances that highlight the unflinching honesty of a woman with tales to tell. Undoubtedly, Gray’s voice brought the lion’s share of attention to On How Life Is upon its reveal in 1999. It became a point of appeal for many who outnumbered those that dared to deride its uniqueness”.

Opening with the amazing tracks, Why Didn't You Call Me and Do Something, On How Life Is wastes no time in getting under the skin! At ten tracks, the album might sound quite brief and concise, though Gray allows some of the tracks to unwind and expand (seven of the ten tracks are four minutes or longer).

I am going to finish with an article where Macy Gray discussed On How Life Is and her feelings. Beforehand, I want to introduce a review. AllMusic wrote the following when they reviewed the album:

“Macy Gray is such an assured, original vocalist that it's hard to believe On How Life Is is her debut album. She recalls a number of other vocalists, particularly jazz singers like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but she is unquestionably from the post-hip-hop generation, which is evident not just from the sound of the record, but the style of her songwriting, which is adventurous and unpredictable. Thankfully, she's worked with a producer (Andrew Slater, who pulled a similar trick with Fiona Apple's debut, Tidal) that lets her run wild and helps her find sounds that match her ideas. That's not to say that On How Life Is is a perfect album -- at times, Gray attempts more than she can achieve -- but it's always captivating, even during its stumbles. And when it works, it soars higher than most contemporary R&B”.

It is surprising that there are not more reviews online for On How Life Is. I guess many are archived and, as they were in print in 1998, they have not been made available on the Internet. Regardless, On How Life Is won a lot of praise and is considered a fantastic album. It is definitely one I would advise people to seek out and spend time with – if you can find it on vinyl and enjoy it on that format then I think the sonic benefits will be evident.

In 2013, Macy Gray spoke with The Guardian about her debut. It is clear that she learned quite a lot whilst making the album:

“Making my first record, On How Life Is, was cool because I wasn't expecting anything from it. I'd made a record before on Atlantic [Records], and nothing happened with it – I ended up getting dropped from the label. So this time around, I was on a new label, with a whole bunch of new musicians, and I had no expectations at all. That's a really awesome place to be when you make a record: there's no disappointment, and everything you do feels like a surprise.

It's not the best record I've ever made, but it's really good. I'm a much better singer now – that's come with touring, and of course all the drinking and smoking has helped, too. But I wouldn't want to change the vocals – they suit that record, and where I was at that time. There's a great energy to them; you can hear that I'm new to this game. I learned so much in making it: how to use mics, how to make things sound right, how to work with other musicians. How to make records properly, basically.

The sound we were making was really something new and different – the idea was to take an R&B record and make it with live music, so you got R&B mixed with a rock'n'roll sensibility. In trying to make that sound work, I learned about the importance of always taking my music to another level – to keep pushing 'til your music moves you, 'til it really means something”.

Go and check out an amazing record that, to me, ranks alongside the best of the 1990s. There is no stopping the wonderful Gray. 2018’s Ruby ranks alongside her best albums. Ten studio albums in and she is not letting the quality drop! The more one listens to On How Life Is , the more you understand what…

A sensational debut it is.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Dreaming: The Enigmatic, the Underrated, the Influential

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Dreaming

COVER PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

The Enigmatic, the Underrated, the Influential

___________

THE reason to returning…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for The Dreaming in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

to the fertile and intriguing feet of The Dreaming is that, as I consider Kate Bush’s albums, I wonder whether critics who reviewed her music decades ago would welcome the chance to have another shot! I have discussed how I think The Kick Inside (her debut of 1978) is underrated. The same can be said for Never for Ever (1980). I tend to feel there is this wave of affection for Hounds of Love and albums after that, whereas the four studio albums prior to 1985 have mixed reviews. In terms of its tone and sound, there was this conscious and very physical sense of shifting and experimenting. Having completed The Tour of Life in 1979 and co-produced Never for Ever, Bush was definitely growing in her vision and ambition. Apologies if I repeat anything I have mentioned in other features, but I think The Dreaming remains this album that people either love or can’t get their head around. To be fair, Kate Bush herself was working tirelessly and throwing her everything into the album! She suffered because exhaustion of that toll. The period leading up to Hounds of Love meant transformation and personal change: her diet was improved (due to the slightly unhealthy nature of a lot of her intake then), dance was very much back at the fore (not a lot of time to commit to that with such an intense recording process) and, crucially, her happiness and wellbeing was imperative – she spent time with her family and moved from London to the more salubrious countryside (she built her own studio at her family home and almost returned to her roots).

There are a few reasons why I am reengaging a love of The Dreaming. For one, it is an album I have been listening to a lot is because that I can hear shades of it in albums (by other artists) released since then. I think Bush could have created an album similar to Never for Ever in terms of its themes and sonic palette. Having used the Fairlight CMI a bit on that album, she pushed it to the limits on The Dreaming. As such, the  album is broader and more layered then any before. I think the Fairlight CMI played a big part in Hounds of Love though, in my view, the production, vocals and songwriting makes a bigger impact. I think this incredible piece of kits rules The Dreaming and really defines the songs. As sole producer, Bush did not have to reign herself in or answer to anyone regarding experimentation and how she used her studio time – although I can imagine EMI did keep a close eye on how their young star was coming along during the recording! I am going to draw from a review soon. Before then, it is worth reflecting on how some have assessed a hugely important and underrated album:

“In a later review AllMusic called it "a theatrical and abstract piece of work", as well as "a brilliant predecessor to the charming beauty of 1985's Hounds of Love." The Quietus called it "a brave volte face from a mainstream artist" and "a startlingly modern record too", noting its "organic hybridization, the use of digital and analogue techniques, its use of modern wizadry to access atavistic states." In 2014, critic Simon Reynolds called The Dreaming a "wholly unfettered mistress-piece" and "a delirious, head-spinning experience". Bush herself has called The Dreaming her "I've gone mad album" and said it was not particularly commercial. On later revisiting the album she said she was surprised by the sound, saying that it was quite an angry record. Uncut has said that it was a "multi-layered, polyrhythmic and wildly experimental album [and] remains a landmark work".

I was watching a recent edition of My Classic Album where songwriter Steven Wilson was discussing The Dreaming and what it means to him. All of Kate Bush’s work has a fanbase and is important, yet I feel The Dreaming is an album that has impacted so many people and is still seen as a bit weird and inaccessible. Artists such as Björk and Big Boi rank The Dreaming among their favourite albums. As its lead single, Sat in Your Lap, was released on 21st June, 1981, its fortieth anniversary is not too far way. That song signalled a breakthrough and step forward for Bush in terms of her sound. More intense and propulsive than pretty much anything she had put out, one could hear similarly compelling songs throughout The Dreaming. I love the sound of the Fairlight CMI, Bush’s incredible vocals and the fact there are some bamboo sticks thrown into the mix! Not only is The Dreaming influential in terms of how it has influenced other artists; I think it, positively and negatively, changed Bush. She definitely showed she could produce on her own. For those who wrote her off by 1979, she showed that, by 1982, she was an incredible artist who could not be predicted and defined! I like the fact The Dreaming was a real departure from her earlier material, and we get all these weird and wonderful songs. There are some personal and direct tracks through The Dreaming (including All the Love), but I think quite a few tracks have this enigmatic and peculiar layer. I love the darkness of Pull Out the Pin and the rawness of Get Out of Your House.

I still think The Dreaming has not been fully understood and embraced. There have been more positive reviews in the years since its release (it was quite well-received in 1982); there have been mixed reviews and many have pushed it aside as being this rather odd record. This is what Pitchfork wrote in their review of 2019:

“In her borrowing further afield, her characters are less accurately rendered. This has been an unabashedly true part of Bush’s artistic imagination since The Kick Inside’s cover art, vaguely to downright problematic in its attempts to inhabit the worlds of Others. On “Pull Out the Pin” she uses the silver bullet as a totem of one’s protection against an enemy of supernatural evil. In this case, the hero is a Viet Cong fighter pausing before blowing up American soldiers who have no moral logic for their service. She’d watched a documentary that mentioned fighters put a silver Buddha into their mouths as they detonated a grenade, and in that she saw a dark mirror to key on the album cover. While the humanizing of such warriors in pop narrative is a brave act, it’s also possible to hear her thin arpeggiated synth percussion and outro cricket sounds as a part of an aural Orientalism that undermines that very attempt.

Then there’s “The Dreaming,” a parable of a real, historical, and contemporary group of Aboriginal people as timeless, noble savages in a tragically ruined Eden that lectures the center of empire about their (our) political and environmental violence. Bush narrates in a grotesquely exaggerated Australian accent over a thicket of exotic animal sounds, both holdovers from music hall and vaudeville’s racist “ethnic humor” tradition, a kind of distancing that suggests that settler Australians are somehow less civilized and thus more responsible for their white supremacist beliefs than the Empire that shipped them there in the first place. In telling this story in this way—without accurate depictions of people, and without credit, understanding, monetary remuneration, proper cultural context, or employment of indigenous musicians—she unfairly extracts cultural (and economic) value from Aboriginal suffering just as the characters in the song mine their land. As a rich text to meditate on colonial, racial, and sexual violence, it is actually quite useful—but not in the way Bush intended.

The closer “Get Out of My House” was inspired by two different maternal and isolation-madness horror texts: The Shining and Alien. In all three stories, a malevolent spirit wants to control a vessel. Bush does not let the spirit in, shouts “Get out!” and when it violates her demand, she becomes animal. Such shapeshifting is a master trope in Kate Bush’s songbook, an enduring way for her music and performance to blend elements of non-Western spirituality and European myth, turning mundane moments into Gothic horror. It’s also, unfortunately, the way that women without power can imagine escape. The mule who brays through the track’s end is a kind of female Houdini—a sorceress who can will her way out of violence not with language, but with real magic. At least it works in the world of her songs, a kingdom where queerly feminine excess is not policed, but nurtured into excellence”.

There are one or two tracks that not everyone is sold on. The single, There Goes a Tenner, is a song that some people dislike because of Bush’s cockney accent…or maybe it just does not grab them or linger in the mind. I really like everything on the album and, as it turns forty next year, I wondered whether there will be any new release of the album. I keep saying it, but I feel there has to be demos and various unheard takes in the archives that would provide a better understanding and impression of various albums.

I think the recording and production of The Dreaming is fascinating. It is such a varied and incredibly memorable album. Bush covers so much sonic and topical ground on her fourth album. In the past year, there have been several books published about Bush and her music. Magazine features have dug deep into various albums and aspects of her work. To my knowledge, there has not been a book or deep dive into The Dreaming. It is a terrific album that would benefit from a wonderful write-up or a deep study. Not just as a transformative and exciting album in Bush’s cannon; it is also a rich and huge work packed with wonderful sounds and thoughts. In hindsight, Bush saw the album as her going a bit mad! I wanted to revisit it, not just to compel people to buy it on vinyl, but also to discover an album that still does not quite get the full credit it deserves. This fascinating bridge between Bush’s early releases and a commercial peak with Hounds of Love, although many artists have D.N.A. of The Dreaming in their work,. Bush’s album sounds like nothing else. I would love to see more words written about the album. I guess, as we get closer to the anniversary of Sat in Your Lap, that will happen. A recent MOJO magazine featured Bush and discussed Sat in Your Lap. It is amazing that there is so much fascination with her work and an album like The Dreaming. Although some feel that The Dreaming has occasional flashes of genius and some misses, I would disagree and say that it is a phenomenal work from…

A masterful songwriter and producer.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Nasty Cherry

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for NME  

Nasty Cherry

___________

THE notion of a girl or boy band…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tsarina Merrin

forming for a reality T..V. show is normally something I would avoid! Nasty Cherry are, in my view, much more than a manufactured girl group. Rather than them being akin to a group formed on a show like The X Factor and then launched into the world with rather generic and soulless songs, Nasty Cherry are a genuinely exciting promise who promise stamina, growth and durability! I want to end by quoting from a review of their latest E.P., Season 2 (released last year). I want to start by bringing in a couple of older interviews; where we were being introduced to this intriguing band who many experienced for the first time on the Netflix show, I’m with the Band. DIY introduced the band in 2019:

“A four-piece girl band put together by pop legend Charli XCX, the group – comprised of singer Gabi Bechtel, guitarist Chloe Chaidez, bassist Georgia Somary and drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson – were puppet-mastered into existence a year ago, meeting for the first time the day they also started filming Netflix documentary ‘I’m With The Band’. Literally born to polarise, they’re either a very modern premise, designed to prove, as Charli says at the start of each episode, that these days there’s no clear roadmap to success, or they’re a group who’ve bypassed all the difficult bits and been given a spotlight because of their famous mate and a multi-billion dollar streaming platform.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY 

What's most intriguing about meeting Nasty Cherry is attempting to work out exactly what they want to be. Gabi insists that “none of [them] are here to be reality stars”, and yet the show is both inextricably linked to and, seemingly, as much of a driving force for the quartet as the music. At one point, Georgia tells us how the normal dynamics of a recording session would be interrupted by the practicalities of having a large crew with them at all times. “We were in tiny studios with these massive camera rigs and they'd literally [have to] clear instruments off shelves because they couldn't turn around.

Still in their formative stages, the band's current output – a sultry, synth-flavoured, Sky Ferreira-esque brand of pop-rock – is promising enough to prove Charli's suspicions correct: no matter what their background, the four members of Nasty Cherry clearly have chemistry, potential and a knack for penning earworms that’ll riddle themselves in your brain for days. Now it's a case of seeing whether, once the hype around their Netflix debut settles, they can continue the momentum and excite without all the behind-the-scenes extras.

How does it feel to be the most polarising new band on the block, we ask, as they head off for another day in their very abnormal new normal? “Haters make me famous,” grins Chloe, with a wink. “Bring the haters on! I want people to talk about it, and I think there's a lot to talk about. A lot of questions!” she chuckles. “A lot of Qs...” There might be a lot of contradictions to Nasty Cherry, but you certainly can't argue with that”.

I have watched bits of I’m with the Band, although I have heard so much of the music they have put out, so I sort of detach the group from the show – or any notion that they are only popular or notable because of the connection to the show and Charli XCX. As we can see in an NME interview from 2019, Nasty Cherry offer much more personality and pizzazz than a traditional reality T.V. show-formed band:

“With the Netflix show dropping next month, the band can expect a whole lot more attention. Given they were assembled by Charli and the process was filmed are Nasty Cherry worried that the band are going to seem like a Simon Cowell-style manufacturing experiment?

“No, and I think based off our first hello to the world as a band being a flute of champagne on Georgia’s ass, I think we started it off being completely ourselves,” says Gabbriette. “It’d be depressing otherwise.”

They pride themselves on their music feeling empowering and authentic. “It’s a natural thing that happens when you’re in a group of people that treat each other like sisters,” Georgia says, “There’s a level of honesty that’s there.”

While Charli has been on hand to offer advice, she’s encouraged the band to make their own choices. “She’ll [Charli] say, ‘You should really go with what you think on this, because you’ll regret it if you don’t voice your opinion’ It’s advising us to advise ourselves, which feels very empowering,” Debbie explains.

“I feel like I’ve learned encyclopaedic amounts from her, honestly,” Chloe adds”.

Not only is the music of Nasty Cherry fresh and not beholden to any formular or precedence; their images and characteristics, far from being honed or directed, is very much the sign that they have something about them. I want to bring in an interview from Harper’s Bazar from 2019. It underlines just how cool they are:

“Then Charli XCX first announced the band Nasty Cherry, she hailed them as a badass “girl gang,” which is true if you’ve ever seen them. They’re a group of four young women with ’70s shags who look tough in leather jackets and sing songs about getting it on with your dad. But beneath the rock ’n’ roll facade, the group is more a “sisterhood” than a motley quartet of musicians. “We definitely feel like a family at this point,” Nasty Cherry member Gabi Bechtel tells BAZAAR.com.

Yet, just more than a year ago, they were a mere group of strangers moving into a house in Los Angeles to make music together for the first time—a process chronicled in Netflix’s docuseries-meets-reality show I’m with the Band: Nasty Cherry. Charli XCX plucked four young talents and, like Simon Cowell did with One Direction and Fifth Harmony, created the girl group she wished she looked up to when she was a kid.

There’s lead singer Gabi, a former model and newcomer to the music world who previously worked with Charli on a music video; guitarist Chloe Chaidez, an energetic performer who’s also the lead singer of the rock band Kitten; drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson, who played drums on tour with Charli; and bassist Georgia Somary, one of Charli’s longtime friends who worked in film set design and started playing her instrument only a year before joining the band.

Nasty Cherry have been compared to groups like The Runaways and Spice Girls, but their musical influences stretch beyond that.

Gabi: Growing up, I didn’t really pay much attention to who I was listening to. It was like top 20. And then I started listening through the door of my sister’s bedroom, and it turned into Gwen Stefani, and then exploring that whole world. So it was very much like pop bands.

I think in high school, I started listening to The Runaways, definitely, and people like Suzi Quatro and even The Cramps. I’ve always loved Poison Ivy and just people, women, with really strong voices and visions in whatever band they’re in. Even actresses and everything like that. Nina Simone and people like that, where they just created their own world.

Their single, “Music with Your Dad,” started with the notion that there’s no such thing as “guilty pleasures.”

Debbie: We went to this restaurant in L.A., shout-out to Pergoletta, and we had way too much pasta and wine, then we came home and we had everything set up, but we just started jamming. It started on the idea that none of us believe in the expression “guilty pleasures” because actually, it’s really fucking good. So then everyone’s playing like Hilary Duff and Paris Hilton’s last album, and we’re all just screaming the lyrics at one another. And then got our instruments out and kind of started jamming on the idea.

Charli XCX isn’t just a mentor; she’s also a close friend.

Gabi: We’ve written with Charli a couple times. She does offer us advice, but it’s not like, “You’re going to do this, and you need to sound like this.” It’s like, “What do you think is going to be the best for you, and how are you going to be happiest with this in the end?” It’s really kind of crazy how there she is, how present she is. I can send her a picture of me having a shit day if I’m trying to write something, and she’s like, “Oh, you’ll be fine, just think about this,” or something. She’s perfect.

Debbie: She’s one of the first people to pop up on my phone with ideas, almost every day for the band. She’s so into it, and I remember when we were living together and some days it’d be super intense, she’d be the first person I’d text and say, “Something’s stressing me out.” She was just very, very present and, obviously, really wants the band to do well and believes in it, which has made us believe in it a lot as well.

I might be repeating what has come before and jumping about a bit, but there are a range of great interviews with the group. Last year, EUPHORIA. chatted with Nasty Cherry and asked them about their inspirations and how their music has evolved since the start:

“I’d like to start by sharing with our readers a little bit about Nasty Cherry. Why a name like “Nasty Cherry”?

Debbie: It felt fun. I guess we wanted to something that sounded a bit rude and feminine and fun. That feels like our vibe.

Who are your musical (and doctrinal) inspirations? When I listen to Nasty Cherry, I imagine that La Roux, The Cure, and Madonna had a beautiful sonic lovechild in the 70s that popped right out the womb with its middle finger in the air.

Debbie: We all listen to different music individually. There are some diehard Bob Dylan, Bryan Ferry, The Cocteau Twins, and Prince fans in this band (and Madonna for sure!). I think we all like to take inspiration from other things as well: Decor, heartbreak, partying…

How do you think your sound is evolving in comparison to your debut EP of bangers – Season 1?

Chloe: I think Season 2 is still an EP of bangers, but I feel like the sisterhood between us has grown even stronger, and you can hear that.

My favorite track on Season 2 is definitely “Better Run,” and it’s really refreshing to hear such a vulnerable, softer track from you guys, that still sounds really you. How did you go about honing the signature Nasty Cherry sound?

Chloe: Thank you! It’s really an emotion that leads a writing session… a female perspective that leads the room with ideas. That’s how “Better Run” happened!

What’s on the horizon for Nasty Cherry?

Chloe: More quar[antine] bangers”.

Before ending with a review of their recent E.P., there is a final interview that provides some good information and story. I am not sure what the rest of the year holds for the group. Their music is fantastic, and I know there will be demand for an album sometime soon – perhaps that is in the pipeline and coming this year. In a great interview with The Forty-Five, we discover more about the promotion and recording of Season 2:

“This internal conflict about promoting ‘Season 2’ in the middle of a pandemic currently lies at the centre of the group. To make matters even more difficult, Debbie is currently residing in an apartment in London, over 5000 miles away from her LA-based bandmates. “I’m in the wrong continent for the band!”, she exclaims. “We’d only be lying if we said the distance didn’t didn’t affect us as a group. We work on different time zones, and we have had to get into the swing of how we work, write, and communicate, and that process doesn’t necessarily always take place on a weekly 5pm Zoom call. We’re having to try and navigate it all.”

Instead, they have gotten into a “rewarding” routine of sending each other lyrics, demos, and song ideas via voice notes and the occasional call. Chloe is eager to point out that this “pretty collaborative” course of action has only further established their ability to work in the face of hardship, proving that “one of the real beauties of this band is that everyone has a voice in it”.

As a group, they have been working towards developing a stronger bond, and within ‘Season 2’’s succinct 15-minute running time, you will find songs that elevate the lived experiences of the band. Take the woozy, warm and gorgeously melodic ‘Better Run’, which grapples with depression, or closer ‘Cardamon December’, a spaced-out meditation on self-reflection that feels overwhelmingly human. Georgia is effusive when she describes how these songs “emotionally affect all four of [them]”, and explains that they were able to make sense of one another’s personal situations through songwriting together as a group.

Debbie also offers her view on how male artists, producers, engineers, promoters et cetera can be better allies to the cause: “Men have to be pushing for this change just as much as women are. If you care about equality not just in the music industry, but in any industry, you have to push for the change as much as the people that it directly affects.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY 

Empowering women and non-binary artists – both inside and out of pop’s star-making bubble – will always remain at the top of the agenda for Nasty Cherry, and this has been the momentum behind the group since the beginning. “Music shouldn’t be elitist, the industry shouldn’t be a club where people feel like they can’t get into it,” Debbie elaborates. “Music should just be about expressing yourself and working really hard at it. I think it’s really cool that people have been to watch the show or see us develop as a band and then say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to start a band too’.”

Nasty Cherry may be unsure where the future leads, but above all else, they are proud of how they have built their universe on their own terms. And as for the cynics? “At the end of the day, we have proven that you can just join a band. A lot of people won’t like that, but it’s true, you can just join a band,” deadpans Georgia as she relays Nasty Cherry’s hard-won mantra. She follows with a very pensive pause, before offering a conspiratorial smirk as she doubles down on the no-shit stance of the group. “No one joins a girlband for it to be miserable!”

If you have not listened to Season 2, then I have embedded the E.P. above and advise you to have a listen! I think that Nasty Cherry are going to go on to be one of the most successful girl groups/gangs in the country. I feel, once restrictions are lifted, they will be keen to showcase songs from the E.P. This is what NME had to offer:

“On Nasty Cherry’s debut EP ‘Season 1’ the Transatlantic pop band were still figuring things out. Before forming in 2018, they were relative newcomers to their craft – vocalist Gabi Bechtel had never really sang lead vocals and Georgia Somary was new to her role as bassist. The release’s accompanying Netflix show I’m With The Band gave fans an Access All Areas pass to the struggles, the in-fighting and the uncertainty as the group – curated and backed by Charli XCX – wrestled with hype and expectations. It was all a bit dramatic.

Fortunately they quickly found their feet on the five-track EP, but ‘Season 2’ sees the gang really start to play. Away from the glare of the public eye, the four-piece turn hype into something more permanent with a confident collection of tracks.

The driving anthem of ‘Better Run’ is full of sunshine escapism, all glittering 80’s synths as Haim meets Carly Rae Jepsen, but beneath the flickering streetlights, the band get vulnerable. “All my blood is turning blue, it’s depression. Are you ok?,” sings Gabi. “The more I confess, the more I get scared for you.” It’s a stark contrast to the unwavering strut of their earlier work, but a welcome one. The closing hammer of ‘Cardamon December’ is just as revealing; an atmospheric romp of bristling insecurity (“my confidence always leaves me”) and wistful bedroom regret.

Those moments of fear and self-loathing make tracks like ‘Just The Way You Like It’ that much more jubilant. A dreamy pop number that takes Little Mix’s ‘Black Magic’ to a sleazy dive bar. “Got you by the neck, just the way you like it,” smirks Gabi before knowingly referencing their oh-so-modern beginnings (“We’re so new, our birth was televised”)

On their first EP, they were just trying to survive but with ‘Season 2’, Nasty Cherry are thriving. It’s the perfect kaleidoscopic playground for them to wrestle with matters of the heart and head, while also chasing their stadium-sized dreams”.

On 19th March, the group announced their third E.P., The Movie. It will be exciting to have that in the world. The Line of Best Fit reported the news:

“The Movie will follow Nasty Cherry's 2020 EP Season 2. Nasty Cherry recorded the EP last summer after drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson was able to join the rest of the band in LA.

Tracklist:

Six Six Six

What’s The Deal

Her Body

All In My Head

Lucky

I only came across Nasty Cherry relatively recently. I am looking ahead to their E.P. release and seeing where their music takes. On the strength of what has come so far, what arrives next is likely to be fantastic! Follow and investigate Nasty Cherry as there are…

A hugely positive and memorable force.

______________

Follow Nasty Cherry

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for NME 

Official:

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FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Thirty-Seven: Rina Sawayama

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

PHOTO CREDIT: Jillian Freyer for Pitchfork

Part Thirty-Seven: Rina Sawayama

___________

IT is rare that I include…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Adama Jalloh for The Line of Best Fit

an artist in this feature who has one album under their belt. Rina Sawayama released one of the best and starling albums of last year with SAWAYAMA. It signalled her as a modern Pop icon and, to me, I feel Sawayama is going to be an icon of the future. That said, she is not exactly new to the music industry. She has been building her work and name through the years. I want to source from a Pitchfork interview from last year. We learn more about Sawayama’s upbringing. She was asked what it was like bringing her adolescent experiences into SAWAYAMA:

“Just a few years ago, sniffing one of the world’s most famous stars at an exclusive New York City soirée was most definitely not a part of Rina Sawayama’s life. After she graduated with a degree in politics, psychology, and sociology from the University of Cambridge—a school she hated “with every cell of my body”—she worked a number of part-time jobs: scooping ice cream, doing nails, selling iPhones, all while also toiling away on her music.

In 2017, she released RINA, an EP of sugary pop songs about technology’s stranglehold on society, which gained her a cult following. Her upcoming debut album, SAWAYAMA, due out next month, is a hard pivot. The record is stuffed with frenetic tracks that splinter into thrashing rock and slithering electro beats, threading Max Martin-style, capital-P Pop with guitar anthems built for arenas. It’s her first project for Dirty Hit Records, home to the 1975, and Rina says she wanted to chase that band’s freewheeling style, whiplashing from genre to genre, sometimes within the span of a single song.

Rina was born in Japan but moved to London at age 5 for her father’s job at Japan Airlines. A few years later, her parents went through an ugly separation, and Rina shared a single room with her mom until she was 15. (Rina only saw her father about three times a year throughout much of her adolescence; now, she sees him once or twice annually.) As a kid, she heard conflicting accounts from her parents about each other, and she was constantly trying to reconcile what was true. She says she spent her teens acting out—sneaking into parties, getting so drunk friends would routinely carry her home and drop her into bed—before getting her shit together enough to earn her way into Cambridge.

 Was it difficult to talk to your mom about that period as you were researching your personal history for the album?

It was really hard to hear about how she feels regretful about things. She said that when I was the most depressed, it was also when she was going through the divorce—it was really messy, and she was basically alone. She didn’t want to be responsible for anything that would stop me from going to Cambridge, so she kept it all to herself, but it just meant that her mental health wasn’t great. Now she’s like, “I really wish I was there for you when you were depressed, but I just couldn’t give you that.” It’s upsetting to hear that, because I used to be like, “You’re so fucking cold.” But now, being an adult, I can’t imagine a husband suing me and wanting all this shit when we had barely any money, it’s just mental.

It’s sometimes hard to accept that she lives a very different life than me and has very different values. But to me, a family isn’t beautiful because they present themselves that way. I think my family’s very beautiful because it’s fucking messy.

What was it like to revisit your adolescence while making the album?

It was awesome actually. It felt quite uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time, trying to find this spot for myself, in terms of the sound and what I want to talk about. It really tied a bow around my whole youth and family life. My mum’s heard a lot of the demos, but she’s not heard the final version. She actually closes the album—it’s her voice talking at the end. But I’m not going to show it to her until it comes out”.

I am going to end with a couple of big reviews for SAWAYAMA – as it is an exceptional album that marks its creator out as a phenomenal talent. Before that, there are interviews that have caught my eye. I think it is important and revealing to learn about Rina Sawayama’s earlier life and when music became a big part of her existence and drive. When she spoke with The Line of Best Fit late last year, we get some rather wonderful images of a younger music lover really bonding with different artists:

“For Rina, pop music became a way to connect with people at school. “I joke that I missed out on the whole of the Spice Girls and I really did,” she says. “I got the tail end of it and I loved it, but my thing was when Britney was coming out. And Kylie. I remember the first Number One that I really connected with was 'Kiss Kiss' by Holly Valance. And it was genuinely a way for me to connect with my friends. At that point, I had moved school about four times. I didn't have friends, basically. I remember assembling girls to make an S Club 7 tribute band. That was such an amazing way to get over that cultural barrier that was there.”

Pursuing a career in the creative industries had ever been encouraged, although Rina does have fond memories of car rides with her mum listening to Evanescence and trips to Woolworths to buy CD singles. Still, “I never thought I was a creative person or that [music] was something that I deserved to do,” she says. “I didn't grow up being encouraged to do creative jobs. I follow these Asian meme accounts and I saw a meme that really cracked me up: 'They make us do ballet, which is dance. And they make us do piano lessons, which is music. But if we tell them we want to become a dancer or a musician they say, "You're a failure."' Why make us do it then?”

There was some bumps and setbacks along the way but, more than anything, we get this vision of a determined and hungry artist who grew in terms of her confidence and vision on her debut album:

And keep going she did. After releasing a couple of loosie singles like “Cherry”, a song that explored Rina’s pansexuality and queerness, she got to work on writing and recording what would become her debut album, SAWAYAMA, with her manager, Will Frost, acting as A&R and Clarence on board as co-executive producer. It’s a process she documented in her two-part YouTube series, The Making of Sawayama.

Written in the wake of Donald Trump’s successful campaign for election as President of the United States, the album is broader politically than the RINA EP, and it packs a much sharper bite. “I was seeing all these things that are in place to keep power in check being completely ignored,” she says of Trump’s presidency and the inspiration for the record. “Whether it was the Paris agreement or anything where the environment was being ignored. I had never seen anything like that. There was such disrespect for systems that make sure that the world doesn't explode.”

At the same time, Rina was beginning to see threads forming between what was happening globally and politically and her own familial difficulties and cultural displacement. While songs like “10-20-40” and “Take Me As I Am” were based around or inspired by lived experiences, Rina had mostly shied away from integrating her own personal narrative into her music (she has still yet to write a stereotypical love song). But with SAWAYAMA’s album opener, the thrilling and anthemic “Dynasty”, she crawled into the crevices of her and her family’s trauma to try and make sense of the things that had happened”.

Apologies if I jump around a bit in terms of these interviews and chronology. I would encourage people to read as many interviews with Rina Sawayama as possible, as she is fascinating and a hugely influential artist and human. I have taken a few as an example; selecting a few passages that, I feel, give us a bigger and better impression of Sawayama and her life/career. In a Time Out interview, Rina Sawayama spoke with Zing Tsjeng about her earliest gigs:

“Scrawny white guys with guitars are a long way from the average Rina Sawayama show. Even at her earliest gigs – in sweaty venues not so different to the ones she grew up watching bands in – she had the spirit of a superstar: backing dancers, complicated costumes, bum-length wigs and a dramatic stage fan that Beyoncé would be proud of. What had her queueing up to make it to the front of a Bravery gig?

‘Being that close to an instrument and being that close to musicians,’ she explains. ‘I always joke that I was a stan and I’m always a stan. I understand what people feel when they are obsessed with an artist.’ The last time I saw Sawayama perform was at Brixton Academy, where she’d queued up all those years ago. She was opening for Charli XCX in nipple-swishing braids and silver assless chaps from Chinese designer Di Du, looking like a space-age Christina Aguilera in her ‘Dirrty’ phase. She came on stage to cheers so loud they almost knocked the pint of lukewarm Coke out of my hand. It was her last live gig before ‘Sawayama’ came out. ‘I had to do a filmed thing a couple of weeks ago’ – she lets out an incredulous laugh – ‘and I was like: Fuck, I’m so out of practice!’ I’m almost fooled into believing her.

A week after our chat, Sawayama makes her debut on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’, complete with custom dollar bills with her face on them. The performance trends on Twitter in the US, Brazil, the Philippines and Singapore; less than 24 hours later, there’s already fan art of her outfit. Going from rebellious stan to fully-fledged pop star during a pandemic – it’s one way of getting to the front of the queue. Now, barely a week after that, the UK is looking down the barrel of a second lockdown. It’s a heartbreaking moment for so many people in the music industry, for artists, fans and venues. For Sawayama, though, 2020, with its high highs and super-low lows will always have a special resonance”.

I am going to finish up the interviews section by bringing in a 2020 interview from DIY. Last year was a huge one for Rina Sawayama. She ascended and reached new corners of the world. Despite the pandemic, her music resonated and connected, despite the fact she could not get out there and gig. Sawayama reflected on her year, discussed the controversy regarding the Mercury Prize (SAWAYAMA was not eligible last year because Rina Sawayama was not seen as British enough; eligibility rules have recently been changed for the Mercury Prize and BRIT Awards):  

“2020 has been an incredible year for you - how’s the experience been?

It’s been a rollercoaster. Thinking all the way back to January, I was gearing up for a world tour, naively putting together concepts, styling, choreography and auditioning the band. That’s sad to think about, and I’m really hopeful for the new year to be able to tour this record and for all the people who rely on the touring industry to get their livelihoods back.

The album went amazing on SO many levels, and it changed my life completely for which I’m so grateful for. But the experience of 2020 has certainly been tough in lots of ways for me on a personal level. One of those things is not being able to see my family and celebrate the success of the album, which I think was theirs to celebrate also, given the topics I wrote about. It’s totally worth it when I get messages from my fans that the record has been a source of comfort against such a difficult global backdrop. Like a lot of people I’m looking ahead now and I hope people continue to give generously, be grateful and for lots of positive action in 2021.

You’ve been at the forefront of boundary-breaking pop this year - has your plan always been to shake things up?

The experience has been really mind-blowing because I thought people would find the record too weird. It was always my plan for my debut to be authentically me, and I can’t believe people loved it. Every week I see new reaction videos to my record on Youtube and it’s crazy that people are discovering it even eight months later. I’m just so grateful, that’s really all I can say. That, and I’m baffled.

You spoke openly about not being nominated for this year’s Mercury Music Prize. Do you think that the discussion around your album being exempt because you don't hold a UK passport will change things?

I hope so! I can’t say for sure, but I spoke with the chairman of the BPI and they are looking to change the rules for this year. With Brexit making the headlines again and that calling into question a lot of people’s statuses in this country in the coming years, the arts should be there to support everyone in the UK.

How else do you hope your album has changed things in the music game?

I hope Asian people who wanna make music feel like there’s a space being created for them. If that’s changing for the better, then I’m happy. And if songs like ‘Chosen Family’ have provided an auditory safe space for people who are going through difficult times in lockdown, then that’s all I can hope for.

What are you currently working on now? Can you tell us any goss about new music?

I am writing new music! Right now I’m taking a proper break and enjoying reading and collecting ideas ready for a writing trip in the new year, but I have demoed some stuff that I’m SO excited about. There’s not much more goss to say than that but I’ve been thanking the universe for giving me some creative juices finally.

I want to finish off by bringing together a couple of reviews for SAWAYAMA. It is a truly stunning album and, as I said, I think that Rina Sawayama is a modern phenomenon who is a definite idol – someone who is going to be revered and celebrated for many years to come. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to say:

“Bold and fearless, Japanese-British singer/songwriter Rina Sawayama made her full-length debut with the genre-bending statement Sawayama. Rooted in the sounds of the early 2000s, the set lovingly mines that era's mainstream mélange of teen pop, nu-metal, and beat-driven R&B, twisting the familiar with updated production and complex lyrical substance. At its core, Sawayama is about identity and finding oneself while navigating through minefields of culture, race, gender, and sexuality. Pulled between East and West ever since moving from her native Japan to northern London at a young age, Sawayama bridges both worlds and tackles issues common to those with cross-cultural backgrounds. On this journey, she addresses intergenerational conflict and the burden of family history with the dramatic "Dynasty" -- which sounds like her biggest inspiration, Utada Hikaru, fronting early-era Evanescence -- and "Akasaka Sad," an electro-trap time warp that sounds like something Aaliyah might have done. After symbolically breaking the chains of hereditary pain and filial pressure, she sets her sights on the dangers of losing oneself to capitalist excess with "XS," a throwback to early-era Destiny's Child and Christina Aguilera that's amplified with buzzing metal riffs.

 Those guitars subtly prepare listeners for the aggressive metallic uppercut "STFU!" On this standout track, she vents her anger and frustration, taking aim at fetishized Yellow Fever fantasies and the white male gaze with a force that would make Korn and Deftones proud. Once these demons are exorcized, she slides onto the dancefloor with the throwback club track "Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys)," cleverly employing the name of the iconic Japanese fashion brand and the original French phrase on this slick empowerment anthem dedicated to girl power and the queer community. Throughout, Sawayama deftly walks the line between confrontational force and wounded vulnerability, one minute fighting for acceptance on "Love Me 4 Me" and then struggling to find hope on "Fuck This World" and "Who's Gonna Save U Now?" When she's not lashing out against outside forces, she atones for past wrongs to family ("Paradisin'") and friends ("Bad Friend") and dedicates her affection and solidarity to the LGBTQ community ("Chosen Family"). With such lyrical and stylistic density to absorb, it's a wonder that she executes it so flawlessly. On this stunning debut, Sawayama captures Dua Lipa's future nostalgia and Poppy's metal-meets-pop savvy, rightfully making it her own with more depth, bigger thrills, and a limitless palette”.

I will put a playlist at the bottom of this feature; a selection of Rina Sawayama’s best tracks so far. It will be interesting to see how she follows up an amazing debut. This is how CLASH described the album when they sat down to listen:

“Pop has a new messiah in the form of Rina Sawayama and her debut album ‘Sawayama’.

This album has been a long time in the making and ‘Dynasty’ is the perfect first track, exploding into being with all its glam metal fury, demanding attention and setting the bar for the rest of the show.

There’s a nod to the early 2000s through much of the album. But rather than being nostalgic for the era, ‘Sawayama’ reworks and gives new life to the music Millennials and Gen Z’ers grew up to. It’s a fitting ode to that period: the album’s inspiration comes mostly from Rina’s experiences with growing up, family and identity.

Rina’s vocal presence is just as impressive as the album's genre span. Across the 13 track span of 'Sawayama' you’ll hear the powerful tones of a woman whose passion and fierceness is undeniable - never more than in uplifting tracks such as ‘Love Me 4 Me’ and ‘Chosen Family’.

The tracks ‘Akasaka Sad’ and ‘Paradisin’ specifically explore those memories of growing up between two places (for Rina, Japan and the UK) and the conflicting emotions that must come with that challenge, the first being about feeling displaced wherever in the world, and ‘Paradisin’ honing in on rebelling against authority, AKA… mum.

Although ‘Sawayama’ is a deeply personal album, the range of emotions portrayed throughout can be felt and personalised by anyone. The use of heavy metal, theatrics, synth and pop each have their hand in portraying so many varied emotions - from anger to guilt, confusion to elation. Each of these layers add to the melting pot, and these tough emotions have ultimately contributed to the creation of a flawless pop record.

Raw artistry paired with rich heritage makes for a magnificent, spine-tingling first album for Rina Sawayama”.

I will finish there, as I feel that I have put in quite a bit of information about Rina Sawayama and the reaction to her debut album. I know that she will continue to release music of the highest order. A truly amazing artist, do make sure that you keep your eyes out for her. It may seem rash declaring her a legend and ultimate icon of the future, though I do feel that there is some truth and substance in my claim. Having gone about ensuring that the Mercury Prize and BRIT Awards change their eligibility criteria, one has to salute one of Britain’s…

ABSOLUTE best artists.

FEATURE: Kindle for the Flames: Never for Ever: The Next Kate Bush Album That Warrants Fonder Investigation

FEATURE:

 

Kindle for the Flames

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the launch of Never for Ever in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Never for Ever: The Next Kate Bush Album That Warrants Fonder Investigation

___________

IT is a happy coincidence that…

I wrote about the need for more Kate Bush books and literature last year and, within a few months, there has been a few new books released! I recently published a feature that detailed the two books that have just come out. Having just ordered a book that looks at Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, in detail, I have been thinking about another album that deserves a forensic publication. If you are a Kate Bush fan and want to know more about her debut, then The Kick Inside: In-depth by Laura Shenton is worth some pennies. The Kate Bush News website provided details and gave their thoughts:

“The publishers were kind enough to send me on a review copy and the author sets out her approach in the preface – that no weighty personal opinions or analysis will be included from her, rather that “throughout this book you’re going to see lots of quotes from vintage articles.” And this 112 page book is indeed a rich smorgasbord of quotes; from interviews, articles, KBC fan club magazines, TV appearances and promotional materials – a resource writers and researchers now enjoy thanks to the vast archives of fan-curated info on the likes of Gaffaweb and the Kate Bush Encyclopedia site. All quotes are cited up front right there in the text.

In fact, the author relies so much on the quotes to do the heavy-lifting of narrating the story of Kate’s first album that perhaps she assumed they cover the whole album “in-depth”. This approach falls short of that; the songs L’Amour Looks Something Like You, Feel it and Room For The Life aren’t even discussed, which is a pity. There is a lot to be said for the tried and trusted track-by-track approach most other books take when considering albums. On the plus side, while I originally wondered why so much space was given to discussing Lionheart and that album’s singles, it actually feels very appropriate in the light of the later pages covering the Tour of Life – a big part in the story of The Kick Inside, after all. I only noticed a couple of factual errors in the text (not every song from The Kick Inside was performed in the 1979 shows – Oh To Be In Love wasn’t) and the 8-page photo section includes some nice photos of the various album cover and single cover variations from 1978/79. The book is published 12th March 2021 (priced at £14.99) and can be ordered direct from the publishers at the Wymer Publishing site here or on Amazon Kindle edition here”.

I am writing this on 7th March. I will have a copy of the book by the time that this feature is published. I think that every Kate Bush album deserves to be investigated and brought to life in a book - though many would argue that would be excessive. To the best of my knowledge, The Kick Inside is the first Bush album that has been discussed in this book series.

I know that others have written about Hounds of Love, but it would be fascinating to hear more of her albums opened up and dissected in such a way. I feel that the next album, if there was a series, should be Never for Ever. Like The Kick Inside, Never for Ever is underrated and it is an album full of treasures. It is an important release, as it was the first where Bush co-produced and got more of a say in her sound and direction. I still think there should be a book that looks at all of the albums and we get details, stats and background about these amazing works. I think that Bush underwent her first real transformation in 1980’s Never for Ever. After two albums in 1978 and a lot of promotional duties, one could have expected Bush to have a bit of time off and not launch into anything new. Perhaps in an effort to assume some more control of her music and career, she embarked on the international success that was The Tour of Life. With two albums under her belt, this was the first major live exposure for Bush. She was used to television appearances prior to 1979, though The Tour of Life was a different beast. A multimedia/facet event, it incorporated mine, stunning visuals and amazing concepts. I am going to write about the tour more in a few weeks as it really impresses me. Bush had a loyal and great team bringing things together, though she did make a lot of decisions and have a big input.

There must have been this mix of personal excitement and commercial pressure when Bush stepped into the studio in 1979 to record. 1978’s Lionheart was a less successful and acclaimed response to her debut. Never for Ever was the first time Bush had a real vote regarding her music. Producing with Jon Kelly, there is much more diversity on Never for Ever. A more personal album, I think there are talking points that could be explored in a book. Not only was this Bush entering a new creative phase and going straight from a successful tour to a new album; it is an album that, over forty years since its release, remains undervalued. The Fairlight CMI was introduced to Bush by Peter Gabriel. Whilst it doesn’t play a major role in Never for Ever, we do hear it on tracks like Babooshka and Army Dreamers. It would be used a lot more on the follow-up, The Dreaming (1982). Bush was producing on the album - she would go on to produce The Dreaming on her own. With more access to the studio and a new lease of life, I think Bush’s third album is fascinating. I admit that there are some flaws to the album. I love the political songs, Army Dreamers and Breathing, though the lyrics aren’t quite as startling and impactful as they were in 1980 – compare Bush’s songs to many Punk acts at the time were producing and there is a marked difference. There are one or two songs that, whilst not weak, have divided people (Blow Away (For Bill), Egypt and Violin are examples).

I will round up soon, but I want to source from a great feature from The Quietus. They marked forty years of Never for Ever last year. It goes to show that, in spite of the fact it is not as accomplished as an album like Hounds of Love (1985), it was hugely important and worthy of dissection and discussion:

“By late 1979, Bush was long used to battling EMI. If the label had gotten its way three years previously, her first release would have been the fun-yet-forgettable ‘James And The Cold Gun’; Bush pushed for ‘Wuthering Heights’ instead, and duly became the first woman to hit No 1 with a self-written single. Still, there were only so many fights a 19 year old could win in a sexist, stuffy industry. After the success of 1978’s The Kick Inside EMI demanded an instant follow-up, giving her only weeks to write new material and forcing her to mostly use years-old compositions. Worse, they then backed producer Andrew Powell’s decision to again replace her group, the KT Bush Band, with session musicians. The patchy Lionheart, released nine months after her debut, left her cold. “Though they were my songs and I was singing them, the finished product was not what I wanted,” she later told Keyboard.

Never For Ever would change all that. Draining as it was, Bush’s gruelling Tour Of Life gave her the chance to co-produce 1979’s On Stage EP with engineer Jon Kelly, convincing her they could handle a full album together. She ousted Powell and combined the session hands with her band members, swapping them in and out like rolling subs and making them record take after take. Another Bush biographer, Rob Jovanovic, estimates she spent an unprecedented five months writing and demoing at Abbey Road, honing new and old ideas alike, while keyboardist Max Middleton told Thomson the sessions were so exacting because of her obsession with finding “something nebulous that was hard to pinpoint”. For Bush the autonomy was worth savouring, no matter how painstaking the process. “It was the first step I’d really taken in controlling the sounds,” she said, “and being pleased with what was coming back.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

Listen now and you can still hear that fundamental shift Bush spoke of, the birth of some new, peculiar magic. It starts with ‘Babooshka’, in which a paranoid wife impersonates a younger woman to test her husband’s roving eye, and ends up destroying her marriage. It’s a wonderfully wicked premise: Bush based it on the cross-dressing, happy-ever-after hijinks of the traditional English folk ditty ‘Sovay’, but her revamp is less a cheeky romp than a surreal, bitter farce, pitched somewhere between Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Tales Of The Unexpected. Most startling, though, is the way it sounds, like unearthly Russian folk music: there’s something both archaic and futuristic about its echoey keys, eerie synths and the ethereal strings of her brother Paddy’s balalaika, as uncanny as a Cossack band playing on the Mir space station. Bush sings like two different people, flitting from coy trills to operatic shrieks, and eventually her world comes crashing down in a crescendo of squalling guitars and the Fairlight’s splintering glass.

Although Never For Ever was largely well-received, a few reviews were grossly sexist, and less egregious offenders nonetheless harped on tired, gendered criticisms. Speaking to ZigZag, Bush blamed the reservations of NME’s reviewer on old hangups regarding her supposed naivety. “He saw me as this chocolate-box-sweetie little thing who had no reality in there, no meaning of life,” she said. It was a common misconception. Naysayers called her twee, but she boldly centred female desire; they dismissed her as cloying, yet The Kick Inside’s title cut wrestled with incest and suicide; they insisted she was whimsical, as if her biggest hit wasn’t about horny teenagers as much as gothic ghosts. Yes, Bush was imaginative, inventive, fantastical. But she didn’t lack substance.

 Like ‘Wuthering Heights’, Never For Ever made history: the first No 1 album by a British female solo artist. Yet its significance transcends chart milestones. For the next decade Bush would build on its potential to become, as she joked to Q in 1989, the “shyest megalomaniac you’re ever likely to meet”. Whereas her first three albums were squeezed into two-and-a-half years, the subsequent three spanned nine. The next one, the bewildering, avant-garde masterpiece The Dreaming, was the first she produced entirely by herself; soon after, she built a studio-come-sanctuary near her family home and hunkered away to make the flawless Hounds Of Love. Each record introduced new inspirations, new instruments, new collaborators and new methods, all indebted to Never For Ever’s triumph of bloody-minded determination. It doesn’t belong in her imperial period, but that imperial period wouldn’t exist without it.

Whenever people told Bush they didn’t understand Never For Ever’s title, she patiently explained it encapsulated her belief that all things, good and bad, eventually passed. “We are all transient,” she declared in her fan newsletter, and it’s hard to think of a finer choice for an album that, even now, exists in a glorious state of flux. Never For Ever proved how great Bush could be when given the control and freedom she craved. More tantalisingly still, it promised the best was yet to come”.

I will be interested to see if there are any siblings of the new book, The Kick Inside: In-depth. Ann Powers did release a study of The Dreaming for the 33 1/3 series…but I think it is not in print anymore. It seems odd that even Hounds of Love has been omitted regarding deep study! Last year, I mused whether there would be any more Kate Bush books that take a very passionate approach to her albums. We have one this year and, over the past few months, two books have been published that look at all of her songs. I do feel that the amazing and hugely important Never for Ever…

IS worthy of its own book.

FEATURE: Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure: 4 Non Blondes – What’s Up?

FEATURE:

 

 

Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure

4 Non Blondes – What’s Up?

___________

HERE is a song…

that I have definitely see divide people. I don’t think there are songs that are guilty pleasures. Everything is valid, but there are tracks that split opinion. I am going to bring in some critical reception to 4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up? It was the second single (released in 1993) from their 1992 debut album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More! Led by the incredible Linda Perry (she left the band in 1994 and the remaining members disbanded shortly thereafter), 4 Non Blondes are one of these acts that only released a single studio album. I am surprised that we did not hear more from the Californian band, as their debut spent fifty-nine weeks on the Billboard 200 and sold 1.5 million copies between 1992 and 1994. What’s Up? is a song that I heard a lot when I was in middle school. It was one of those hits that was all over music television and, because of its singalong and instant chorus, we would all sing along at the important moment! I am not sure why some people have taken against What’s Up? or see it as a song that is a guilty pleasure. Maybe it is Perry’s quite raw and rough vocal that some struggle with. Perry herself has said she was unhappy with the production sounds of the song. I think that is sounds great, though maybe it is a bit polished. Some people I know dislike the song because it is overplayed and, in their mind, overrated - though I think that What’s Up? is one of those great songs from the 1990s that everyone should get behind.

In terms of critical reception, there has definitely been some praise and fondness for the sensational 4 Non Blondes hit:

“Bill Lamb from About.com said that the song "seemingly appeared out of nowhere, becoming a neo-folkie hit first on modern rock radio stations and then on the pop charts. Although it only reached number 11, it has been a radio fixture ever since.” AllMusic editor Tom Demalon described it as a "massive, neo-hippie anthem" in his review of the Bigger, Better, Faster, More! album. Rolf Edmund Lund from Norwegian newspaper Altaposten complimented Perry's voice as "incredibly good". Larry Flick from Billboard wrote that "gymnastic vocals, leaping from a breathy, high range, to gravelly, bar-rock blues in a single passage, front this straightforward, heartfelt rocker. Treads the line between album rock and modern rock, with the piano version favoring the former." Tom Sinclair from Entertainment Weekly described the song as "funky" and added that it "is only one of the goodies in the Blondes' musical grab bag". Music & Media stated that it is a "strong composition" where the lyrics "are done more than justice by Linda Perry's impressive vocal touch.” R.S. Murthi from New Straits Times called it "anthemic" and noted that it "is probably one of the simplest and catchiest pop songs to be produced in recent times."

Carmen von Rohr from Rome News-Tribune noted "the amazingly down-to earth common sense lyrics" of "What's Up?" and added that Linda Perry "sings in her rich, soulful voice about the frustrations she feels as she tries to adjust to her place in the universe." Sunday Life wrote in their review, that the song is "naggingly memorable". Ronny Johansen from Troms Folkeblad commented, "What a wonderful use of voice and what an irresistible song!"

Some critics disliked "What's Up?" Songwriters Carl Barât and Stuart Braithwaite named the song the worst ever Dean Ween said: "It's as bad as music gets…. Everything about the song is so awful that if I sat down and tried to write the worst song ever, I couldn't even make it 10 percent of the reality of how awful that song is." Tara Dublin in The Huffington Post wrote that it is "without question, the worst song of the 1990s".

"What's Up?" ranks number 94 on VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders,[19] and ranks 86 on the MuchMore The Top 100 One Hit Wonders”.

I want to bring in a feature from God Is in the TV. They rank it as a Pop classic and were keen to go in-depth regarding the formation of 4 Non Blondes and their most-famous song:

“4 Non Blondes was formed in San Francisco in 1989 by Perry and bassist Christa Hillhouse, guitarist Shaunna Hall, and drummer Wanda Day, although just prior to the release of their first album, Hall was replaced by Roger Rocha on guitar while Dawn Richardson replaced Day on drums. They only recorded one album, ‘Bigger, Better, Faster, More!’ (1992) as they broke up during the recording of the second, in 1994, which was never titled or released.

The album did well, going platinum in the U.S. and making #1 in the charts in six countries (#4 in the UK). In total they released seven singles but after ‘What’s Up?’ (1993) the highest chart position for any of them was #18 for ‘Spaceman’, in Sweden. In contrast, ‘What’s Up?’ was #1 in seven countries (#2 in the UK) and was particularly popular in Brazil (Linda Perry’s mother is Brazilian, her father Portuguese).

It is an outwardly political female emancipation song, from a band led by an overtly LGBT writer (or who would be called one now) – Linda Perry, to whom the song is credited solely. (In fact she wrote or co-wrote all but one of the album’s 11 songs). It was the first Top 40 hit by an openly lesbian group.

While political dissatisfaction and a call for revolution are often read into the lyrics (and the title was chosen to differentiate it from Marvin Gaye’s classic 1971 track ‘What’s going on?’ – words which remain in the lyrics -) there is no evidence that Perry was trying to replicate Gaye’s angst. Gaye’s song has a story to it as well of course; it was one of the first Motown songs which attempted to make a political statement, and which came from an album which was notable for (again, possibly the first time) tackling subjects such as the environment and poverty.

Indeed, Hillhouse recounts how she lived with Perry in a small flat in San Francisco and how Perry would just sit down and start singing what she was feeling, without any method. Perry was more concerned that the song came so easily to her that she must have heard it somewhere and was plagiarising another musician.

Hillhouse said. “I was having sex and stopped when I heard it, ran down the hallway and said, “Dude, what you are playing? I like that.” She adds, “I knew right when we played it, the song made the whole room feel this thing. It’s a connection to humanity. Certain simple songs, that’s what they do. There’s an honesty there that breaks through that people can relate to. Then of course they played the song to death and a lot of people are really sick of it.”

I love the powerful lyrics and how they rally against oppression: “25 years and my life is still/trying to get up that great big hill of hope/for a destination…./I try all the time in this institution …/I pray every single day for a revolution/And so I cry sometimes when I’m lying bed/just to get it all out, what’s in my head/And I, I’m feeling a little peculiar/And so I wake in the morning and I step outside/and I take a deep breath and I get real high/and I scream from the top of my lungs, ‘What’s going on?’”. Although the Bigger, Better, Faster, More! album has other great songs like Superfly, Spaceman and Dear Mr. President, I think that What’s Up? holds this special power and place in the heart. If some feel that What’s Up? suffers from a lack of restraint on the part of Linda Perry and her vocal performance, I reckon that is one of the strong points of the song – that she has this passionate voice that is so flexible. Nearly thirty years after its release, I hear What’s Up? played quite a bit. I have also seen it feature on one or two lists of guilty pleasure songs, so I wanted to try and argue in its favour and show how good it is. Linda Perry went on to write and produce some massive hits (including Beautiful by Christina Aguilera; What You Waiting For? by Gwen Stefani; and Get the Party Started by P!nk). The short-lived Linda Perry-led 4 Non Blondes are part of '90s history; I think they deserve to be seen as more than a one-hit wonder. That said, when you have a song as incredible as What’s Up? in your locker, then maybe there is no shame in that tag! What I do know is that What’s Up? is no mere guilty pleasure. It is a stone-cold classic that still sounds amazing…

AFTER all of these years.

FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Forty-Seven: Rufus Wainwright

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer’s Guide

Part Forty-Seven: Rufus Wainwright

___________

IN this A Buyer’s Guide…

 PHOTO CREDIT: V. Tony Hauser

I am recommending the finest work from Rufus Wainwright. His tenth studio album, Unfollow the Rules, came out last year. I think that it is one of his very best. If you are not familiar with Wainwright then here is some more information:

“Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright (born July 22, 1973) is an American-Canadian[6] singer, songwriter, and composer. He has recorded nine albums of original music and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also written two classical operas and set Shakespeare's sonnets to music for a theater piece by Robert Wilson.

Wainwright's self-titled debut album was released through DreamWorks Records in May 1998. His second album, Poses, was released in June 2001. Wainwright's third and fourth studio albums, Want One (2003) and Want Two (2004), were repackaged as the double album Want in 2005. In 2007, Wainwright released his fifth studio album Release the Stars and his first live album Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall. His second live album Milwaukee at Last!!! was released in 2009, followed by the studio albums All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (2010) and Out of the Game (2012). The double album Prima Donna (2015), was a recording of his opera of the same name. His ninth studio album Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets (2016), featured nine adaptions of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Wainwright is the son of musicians Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and the older brother of singer Martha Wainwright”.

To celebrate a fantastic singer and songwriter, this A Buyer’s Guide highlights the best four Rufus Wainwright albums, one that is underrated and deserves more focus, his latest album, plus a book that is a useful read. Have a look and listen to the essential work of…

THE incredible Rufus Wainwright.

____________

The Four Essential Albums

 

Rufus Wainwright

Release Date: 19th May, 1998

Label: DreamWorks

Producers: Jon Brion/Pierre Marchand

Standout Tracks: Foolish Love/In My Arms/Barcelona

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=102408&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/38BDbkp5RJII1ixnynG1ti?si=z-9GZclISw26uxZBRUi2og

Review:

“What separates Rufus Wainwright and the other second-generation singers who sprang up at the same time (Sean Lennon, Emma Townshend, and Chris Stills the most notable among them) is that Wainwright deserves to be heard regardless of his family tree; in fact, the issue of his parentage is ultimately as immaterial as that of his sexuality -- this self-titled debut cares little for the rock clichés of an earlier generation, instead heralding the arrival of a unique and compelling voice steeped most solidly in the traditions of cabaret. Like his folks, Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, he's a superb songwriter, with a knack for elegantly rolling piano melodies and poignantly romantic lyrics; while the appearance of Van Dyke Parks and his trademark orchestral arrangements hints at an affinity for the pop classicism of Brian Wilson or Randy Newman, the vocals come straight out of opera, and although Wainwright is unlikely to be starring in La Boheme anytime soon, he conveys the kind of honest emotion sorely lacking in the ironic posing of many of his contemporaries. Maybe the kids are alright after all” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: April Fools

Poses

Release Date: 5th June, 2001

Label: DreamWorks

Producers: Pierre Marchand/Greg Wells/Alex Gifford/Ethan Johns/Damian LeGassick

Standout Tracks: Poses/The Tower of Learning/Rebel Prince

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/rufus-wainwright/poses-72544e9b-51f6-49a3-ad6d-78af39cd89e8

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3RemoZn6fcabqoN5zmgEXx?si=V0VOXYYHQjqWhsycT_cbcQ

Review:

“Let's not overstate: Wainwright is not the second coming of Cole Porter. The consistency isn't there, and he's good enough to make you wish he wouldn't mangle grammar. ("There's never been such grave a matter/As comparing our new brand-name black sunglasses" is a great couplet, except that such is crying out to be so.) But the best of Poses transmits the impatient, careening, manic life of a pleasure-seeking New Yorker and still keeps a carefully calibrated lightweight focus, the way those old, literate pop songs did.

With its Broadway-ready melody, "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" enlarges little problems of indulgence, stanza by stanza, into a much sadder picture of a young striver whose unanswerable needs become the focus of the whole work. As this figure goes to California and to Europe (Wainwright is the kind of guy who'll sing snatches of French and reference Thomas Mann's Death in Venice), he confronts his own loneliness in all his lovers' faces and throws off some memorable lines: "I'm drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue"; "Ain't it a shame that at the top/Still those soft-skin boys can bruise you/Yes, I fell for a streaker"; "Life is the longest death in California." As well a lot of lines that aren't really meant to be understood, like "All the pearls in China/Fade astride a Volta."

Wainwright uses a greater singing range now; his maundering voice has become infinitely easier to listen to. Despite Poses' multiple producers, there are more clean, clever ideas of arrangement here than on Wainwright's cluttered debut. "Shadows," co-written with Alex Gifford of Propellerheads, keeps a dry funk drumbeat, a dab of piano chords, some low clarinet lines and, finally, a swarm of seraphic multitracked voices; it's one of the many songs on the album that build up to moments of cinematic perfection, in which your goose bumps are exactly the ones Wainwright intended” – Rolling Stone

Choice Cut: Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

Want Two

Release Date: 16th November, 2004

Label: Geffen

Producers: Marius de Vries/Rufus Wainwright

Standout Tracks: The One You Love/The Art Teacher/Memphis Skyline

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=102413&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4UWAaheQUmW6JD784j4gHz?si=g3-q52oySZqw2fZbXoqCsQ

Review:

“You can only hope it does. Another broadsheet rock critic waxing rhapsodic may be the last thing Wainwright needs, but here goes: Want Two is a stunning album. As it switches skilfully from Elliot Smith-influenced alt-rock to mock Baroque pop to faux French chanson, its something-for-everyone variety cancels out its excesses.

If the prospect of a six-minute, violin-laden setting of Agnus Dei worries readers of a nervous disposition (it does go on a bit), then they should be lured and lulled by The Art Teacher, a lovely piano ballad about a middle-aged woman remembering an unrequited schoolgirl crush. It's recorded live and unadorned - you can hear Wainwright gasping for breath between each line - which makes his eye for affecting lyrical detail all the more obvious: "Here I am, in this uniformish pantsuit sort of thing, thinking of the art teacher."

Whether remembering how the late Jeff Buckley's vocal histrionics sounded "like mad Ophelia" or depicting his relationship with his sister as a string of Dangerous Liaisons-style intrigues, Wainwright is never short of something to say. This makes him an anomaly amid current big singer-songwriters. They delight in a sort of wilful mundaneness best expressed by Toes, a Norah Jones song in which she spends five gripping verses debating whether to go paddling, before deciding against it. Meanwhile, Wainwright comes up with songs like Gay Messiah, which, with its images of a homosexual God reborn in the body of a 1970s pornstar and baptising believers in semen, is about the most imaginative and provocative riposte to US conservatism that rock music has produced.

Whether Want Two can find an audience for such heady, strong stuff beyond critics, other musicians and that sinister, homosexualism-promoting Hollywood cabal is a moot point. Whether it deserves to is anything but” – The Guardian

Choice Cut: Gay Messiah

Out of the Game

Release Date: 20th April, 2012

Labels: Decca/Polydor

Producer: Mark Ronson

Standout Tracks: Out of the Game/Jericho/Perfect Man

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=432115&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ASBTJsGYgxfPZiTgWTXqp?si=5MqmY2wKRkeV2uXm-NSQNw

Review:

“Still, it’s the austerity where Wainwright bewitches. The glistening “Montauk” features a piano figure with strings swirling, voice haunted and tone infused with the notion that what is in the distance will also be gone. Temporality informs everything.

“Sometimes You Need” embraces the same solitary truths, this time an acoustic guitar figure interlaced with a tremolo guitar that quivers with unspoken pining. The small things that get you by, the anonymous kindness, the isolated walk—and Wainwright’s fragility suggests these slight moments can provide the necessary buttressing.

If “Song for You” takes on an almost mantra-like take on a request from someone to write a song about them, the ‘50s stride rhythms that break the quiet tease a sense of dignity in the survival: head held high, tears not shed in public.

With a gentle accordion wheeze, Game concludes with the realization that churches run out of candles, banks won’t give you what you need and in the end, all there is is the echo of your own broken heart. World-weary, it makes failure holy and survival a refuge that sustains. In the end, if that’s all there is, he tenderly suggests that shall be plenty” – PASTE

Choice Cut: Montauk

The Underrated Gem

 

All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu

Release Date: 23rd March, 2010

Labels: Decca (U.S.)/Polydor (U.K.)

Producers: Rufus Wainwright/Pierre Marchand

Standout Tracks: Martha/Sonnet 43/What Would I Ever Do with a Rose?

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=265808&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1LlEyssXCpLTH1PAWfhknD?si=JRiPnB2bRpa28xqwjz-6iw

Review:

“All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu finds singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright stripping back the operatic flourishes of his 2007 album Release the Stars to deliver a stark and deeply personal collection of songs. Where Stars often featured large backing ensemble arrangements, here Wainwright simply accompanies himself on piano, allowing the lyrics of these poetic, introspective songs and his voice to take the spotlight. Never one to shirk away from cerebral and conceptual artistic endeavors, Wainwright has adapted three Shakespeare sonnets here that work quite well as ruminative, classically impressionistic-style pieces. Elsewhere, tracks like "Who Are You New York" and "Sad with What I Have" feature Wainwright's longstanding knack for clever and ironic turns of phrase. Obviously, the memory of Wainwright's mother, Kate McGarrigle, who died in 2010 after an extended illness, hangs heavy throughout the album. It is clear that Wainwright wrote and recorded much of All Days Are Nights during her illness, and themes of loss, depression, and sadness permeate these songs. Wainwright addresses this directly in "Martha," a yearning plea to his sister, singer/songwriter Martha Wainwright, to whom he also dedicates the album. Wainwright sings, "Martha it's your brother calling. Time to go up north and see mother. Things are harder for her now and neither of us is really that much older than each other anymore." The song, as with most of of All Days Are Nights, is a bold, absolutely emotionally naked statement that still retains Wainwright's devastating talent for artful, universally compelling songcraft” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Who Are You New York?

The Latest Album

 

Unfollow the Rules

Release Date: 10th July, 2020

Label: BMG

Producer: Mitchell Froom

Standout Tracks: Trouble in Paradise/Peaceful Afternoon/Only the People That Love

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/rufus-wainwright/unfollow-the-rules

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/07XUVGf2M6rXVsbdNqogTk?si=xUC8oHRfTpWvm73iD4b7DQ

Review:

“Producer Michael Froom (Randy Newman, Roy Orbison) understands when to let Wainwright indulge himself, and when to rein him in – this album is elaborate, but never cluttered. There are gorgeous, pared-back harmonies on opener “Trouble in Paradise” that nod to his fellow California residents, The Beach Boys, and a clarinet that wraps itself around a Sixties-sounding guitar line. On “Damsel in Distress”, inspired by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Wainwright jumps forward a decade with hand-claps and shimmers of percussion that pay homage to Joni Mitchell.

There are times when Wainwright extends his gaze beyond life at home. The buzzy space opera “Hatred” provides an ominous soundtrack for the forthcoming 2020 election; elsewhere he makes stark reference to temperatures rising. It doesn’t take long, though, before he feels the need for some “Alone Time”. Age has not dimmed his rich tenor; if anything, it’s given it more texture. You feel wholly reassured as he croons: “Don’t worry, I’ll be back, baby”. This is one of Wainwright’s finest albums” – The Independent

Choice Cut: Damsel in Distress

The Rufus Wainwright Book

 

Rufus Wainwright

Author: Katherine Williams

Publication Date: 1st July, 2016

Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd

Synopsis:

“Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright (b. 1973) is famous around the world for his multi-faceted musical style, shown through both his recorded output and his engaging live performances. In this book, Katherine Williams combines aspects of his life story with scholarly readings drawn from several methodologies. Popular music studies, opera, queer studies, music and geography, the sound-box: all combine to give a rich biographical and interpretative overview of Wainwright's life and music. Williams brings together close musical analysis with such varied disciplinary perspectives with a tone that is both in-depth and scholarly, and accessible. The book is a must-read for fans, students and scholars alike” – Amazon.co.uk

Order: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rufus-Wainwright-Popular-Music-History/dp/1781795193/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WGWLY5BXSU0R&dchild=1&keywords=rufus+wainwright&qid=1615274581&s=books&sprefix=rufus+wain%2Caps%2C153&sr=1-1

FEATURE: Music Technology Breakthroughs: Part Fourteen: The Cassette

FEATURE:

 

 

Music Technology Breakthroughs

PHOTO CREDIT: @schluditsch/Unsplash

Part Fourteen: The Cassette

___________

IN the penultimate edition of Music Technology Breakthroughs…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Dutch engineer, Lou Ottens, with his invention, the cassette, in 2013

I am looking at an important piece of music history that relates to the features I wrote about the Sony Walkman and the tape recorder. I have extolled the virtues and importance of the compact disc, but I have not investigated the cassette. In my final feature of this series, I am discussing the importance of the microphone. I wanted to look at the cassette because, a couple of weeks back, Lou Ottens died. He invented the cassette tape and, from the moment they became popular, I think they transformed the way we listen to and appreciate music. There is a hegemony and debate when it comes to whether cassettes can rank alongside the bliss of vinyl or even the greater reliability of the compact disc – in the sense that it less prone to damage and one tends to find more people listening to compact discs rather than cassettes. I will end with a feature that discusses how the cassette tape is still burning bright. So many artists now release their albums on cassette. Maybe it is a nostalgia thing or, more likely, a way to show how the compact and cool format has a place in the modern world. The sound quality of the cassette has also improved through the years.

Before then, I want to bring in a fascinating article from NPR, where we get a history of the cassette; how it was developed and how it impacted music fans for years and decades:

“Lou Ottens, who put music lovers around the world on a path toward playlists and mixtapes by leading the invention of the first cassette tape, has died at age 94, according to media reports in the Netherlands. Ottens was a talented and influential engineer at Philips, where he also helped develop consumer compact discs.

Ottens died last Saturday, according to the Dutch news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which lists his age as 94.

The cassette tape was Ottens' answer to the large reel-to-reel tapes that provided high-quality sound but were seen as too clunky and expensive. He took on the challenge of shrinking tape technology in the early 1960s, when he became the head of new product development in Hasselt, Belgium, for the Dutch-based Philips technology company.

"Lou wanted music to be portable and accessible," says documentary filmmaker Zack Taylor, who spent days with Ottens for his film Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape.

Ottens' goal was to make something simple and affordable for anyone to use. As Taylor says, "He advocated for Philips to license this new format to other manufacturers for free, paving the way for cassettes to become a worldwide standard."

But first, he had to invent it. Trying to envision something that didn't yet exist, Ottens used a wooden block that was small and thin enough to fit in his pocket as the target for what the future of tape recording and playback should be.

The result was unveiled to the world in 1963, and the "compact cassette" quickly took off: It was "a sensation" from the start, Ottens told Time in 2013, on the cassette's 50th anniversary

"Lou was an extraordinary man who loved technology, even as his inventions had humble beginnings," said Philips Museum Director Olga Coolen. She noted that Ottens' original wooden prototype for the cassette "was lost when Lou used it to prop up his jack while change a flat tire."

Born in 1926, Ottens went from building a radio for his family during World War II — it reportedly had a directional antenna so it could focus on radio signals despite Nazi jamming attempts — to developing technology that would democratize music.

"Cassettes taught us how to use our voice, even when the message came from someone else's songs, compiled painstakingly on a mixtape," Taylor said. Describing how little things have changed, he added, "So next time you make that perfect playlist on Spotify or send a link to share a song, you can thank Lou Ottens."

True to their do-it-yourself roots, cassette mixtapes have long been a favorite of punk and rock fans. But their legacy also looms large in hip-hop, where aspiring rappers and producers have used the approach to showcase their ability to chop up other music and create something new. The mixtape ethos has survived — and even thrived — despite the move from magnetic tapes to CDs and digital formats.

The resurgence is driven by a mix of nostalgia and an appreciation for tapes' unique status as a tangible but flexible format. For decades, music fans have used mixtapes to curate and share their favorite songs. Unsigned bands have also relied on them as a way to promote their music.

For many, cassettes have kept their cult status because they fulfill a dual promise of being both affordable and personal. They can hold anything from a carefully sequenced lineup of rare recordings to children putting on their own radio show”.

I used to buy a lot of cassettes when I was a child. Owning a Walkman, it was great to have these albums available that I could play easily and on the go! Vinyl is great, but I love the portability of cassettes and the fact you can move around whilst listening to them. I also made mixtapes and, like most children, I recorded hits of the day off of the radio. I never thought that, some thirty or so years later, the cassette would exist and find a new audience! It is testament to the durability and simplicity of the invention that it has a space in the modern world.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @loravisuals/Unsplash

It is funny that its inventor, perhaps, preferred the compact disc to the cassette. In this article from The Guardian, Ottens discussed his opinions regarding his legacy:

“More than 100bn cassette tapes and 200bn CDs have been sold. When asked about his regrets, Ottens lamented that Sony had brought out the first Walkman. “It still hurts that we didn’t have one,” he said.

Ottens, who died on Saturday, had little patience with the renewed popularity of the cassette tape – or even vinyl.

“Nothing can match the sound of the CD,” he had told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “It is absolutely noise and rumble-free. That never worked with tape … I have made a lot of record players and I know that the distortion with vinyl is much higher. I think people mainly hear what they want to hear”.

I suppose the revival and growth of cassette sales should be explained. I feel that many are buying cassettes because they are now trendy – in the way that many buy vinyl as art or that it is quite collectable. Also, when compared with vinyl sales, the ‘boom’ of cassette sales is quite minor. This BBC article of last year explains more:

“Cassette tape sales are estimated to have doubled this year compared to 2019.

The British Phonographic Industry, which represents record labels, projects 157,000 tapes will have been sold in the UK in 2020.

That's the highest number since 2003, when compilation Now 54 - featuring the likes of Busted, Girls Aloud and Oasis - was the biggest seller on tape.

IN THIS PHOTO: Yungblud 

Now, the top sellers are Lady Gaga, 5 Seconds of Summer and Yungblud.

Firstly, it's important to note that cassette tape sales represent a tiny fraction of music sales this year.

They're dwarfed by the 4.8m vinyl albums sold, which is the highest since the early 90s, according to the BPI.

Among the top 10 best-selling vinyl records of 2020 were classic albums from Fleetwood Mac, Amy Winehouse and Nirvana.

However, all the albums in the cassette top 10 were 2020 releases - from artists such as The 1975, Blackpink and Selena Gomez.

"I think cassettes are the way forward for DIY artists," the 23-year-old tells Newsbeat.

"It gives them something to put out physically, and it gives them a potential to make money."

Tallulah adds that with artists not able to gig this year, fans have taken to other ways to supporting their favourite artists.

"People's eyes open and realise they can't just stream their favourite artists… they need to contribute a bit more."

So why tape over other physical formats for some people?

Firstly, Tallulah says cassettes nowadays have much better sound quality than they used to.

She also works in a record store and thinks that the older people who come in still associate tapes with a hissy, lower-quality sound than vinyl or CDs.

But younger people don't remember when tapes didn't sound as good: "They're the ones buying, because they're the ones thinking it's really cool."

 The vinyl revolution of recent years was partly fuelled by people looking for something different to digital downloads and online streaming.

Now vinyl is pretty widespread again, are tapes the new hipster medium?

"There is a bit of that," says Tallulah.

"Some people are probably buying it to take pictures of it and put it on Instagram.

"But that's not really hurting anything, and it's still helping the cause”.

Regardless of whether you think that cassettes had their day in the 1980s and 1990s or they are genuinely relevant and have a future, one cannot deny the fact that they were a huge revelation. Alongside the Sony Walkman, cassettes meant that people could listen to music whilst exercising and walking. It was a real breakthrough and boon. Most of us have some experience of making mixtapes and compiling music on a cassette. I think that there is a long future for cassettes. I don’t think they will ever regain territory with vinyl and that side of the mark – that is not to say that the cassette, by comparison, is obsolete or vastly inferior. Because its inventor, Lou Ottens, died very recently, I wanted to nod to him and extoll the virtues of his contribution to music. It is a wonderful format that, in spite of detractors and criticism, remains important to many new artists. Whilst streaming dominates and more people are looking for physical music that we can buy, cassettes will have a place and find an audience. For that reason, I had not hesitation in including it in…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @jontyson/Unsplash

MY Music Technology Breakthroughs feature.

FEATURE: Where It All Began: Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside

FEATURE:

 

 

Where It All Began

Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside

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BECAUSE I recently purchased…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush doing the washing up at her family’s home in East Wickham, Welling, on 26th September, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Kate Bush The Kick Inside: In-depth, I have been compelled to re-explore Kate Bush’s debut album. In future features, I am going to look at topics such as Hounds of Love and The Tour of Life – as a new edition of MOJO covers these areas they are worth mentioning again. I know a lot about The Kick Inside, but I wanted to source a few sections of the book and things that add new perspective and angles. Before then, here is a synopsis about the new book:

“For Kate Bush, and indeed many in her strong fanbase, The Kick Inside is the album that started it all. Her 1978 debut was certainly attention grabbing; it propelled her to fame and got the ball rolling for a phenomenal career as a much appreciated musician and admired female talent. With the iconic 'Wuthering Heights', the young Kate had captured people's imagination with her original songwriting style and of course, her unique voice.

In this book, music author Laura Shenton MA LLCM DipRSL offers an in depth perspective on The Kick Inside from a range of angles including how the album came to be, how it was presented and received at the time (live as well as on record), and what it means in terms of Kate Bush's legacy today.

As the author explains: "Basically, the book covers how the album was made, what was going on with the music in terms of the artist's intentions, how it did musically and commercially and what happened next."

The narrative is essentially driven by contemporary interviews with the artists with small bits of music theory where relevant... in some cases they delve into the structure / key signatures / time signatures, based on the original sheet music without straying away from being an engaging read for non-musicians”.

One of the first things that caught my eye in the book was on page twelve, when we get an interview quote from the Reading Evening Post from April 1979. Bush said that she wants her music to make people shiver. Although it seemed that, from The Dreaming in 1982, Bush was looking to create something more physical, experimental and broad, beauty and tenderness was very much at the front of her mind on her debut. Perhaps that is something to do with age (she was a teenager when The Kick Inside came out), or it might be to do with the types of songs she was writing (and what she wanted to say through her music). I know the album is a very beautiful and feminine-sounding. There are multiple songs where one shivers and feels something sensational! Most songwriters were releasing similarly beautiful music by talking of love and romance; Bush was so much broader in her subject matter and bravery – making people shiver and also spiking their mind and making them think is a remarkable achievement on a debut album!

It is interesting Bush said (on the promotional record for The Kick Inside) that she writes songs so she can express herself. Maybe music and her debut was a way to be heard. Perhaps her natural shyness held her back from really being understood or being able to convey her emotions and thoughts. That idea of being heard and noticed does not result in bold and needlessly intense tracks. Quite the opposite. It is the intelligence of the lyrics and the nuance in Bush’s voice that means the songs resonate the first time that you hear them – though one comes back again and again because the tracks are so original, rich and accomplished! Although The Kick Inside arrived in 1978, Bush’s songwriting pre-dates the album by years. In 1972, a family friend, Ricky Hopper, presented some songs to a record company (who were not interested). He approached David Gilmour. Thinking about the fact Bush was still in school at that point, and it would have been easy just to ignore the music and say that she hadn’t matured as a songwriter. Hopper and Gilmour clearly saw and heard the talent and promise Bush had! Whilst Bush would assimilate new influences on futures albums, she did tell the New Zealand Listeners in December 1978 how “Folk was my first introduction when I was just a baby”. English and Irish (her mother was Irish) was prevalent in the household. I think she extrapolated from those songs she would have heard and brought in into her own music. I think Folk possesses a lot of beauty and personal exploration. I will move on to explore how The Kick Inside was received. Maybe, in 1978, there a shift and move where Folk and the sounds Bush presented on her debut were out of step or less popular.  

One of the most evocative and wonderful images regarding the making of The Kick inside happened just before Bush went into the studio to record the album (she already recorded The Man with the Child in His Eyes and The Saxophone Song in 1975 at AIR Studios under the guidance of David Gilmour). In March 1978, during a full moon at midnight, Bush was in her flat and looked out the window. It was, as she explained to the Kate Bush Magazine in 1979, the first song she had written for a while. She had been busy rehearsing with The KT Bush Band and didn’t have much writing time. Bush had not read Wuthering Heights before writing the song (she was inspired by a T.V. adaption where she caught the final ten minutes). Her brother, John, talked about the story. Bush looked at a few pages and, as she shared a name with Cathy (Catherine), it made it easy to relate to the heroine. Apologies to jump around in terms of themes and chronology but, as Laura Shenton’s book has revealed new things, I wanted to put them out there. It is a shame that the Brontë Society were against Wuthering Heights. I guess they felt that the purity of the text had been cheapened or turned into something mainstream and Pop). Bush revealed how a lot of people loved the song, however. The book appeared on the GCE syllabus and many students used Bush’s song to relate to the text! Bush was clearly struck by Wuthering Heights and Cathy (which she was called as a child). The fact that the author, Emily Brontë, share the same birthday (30th July) with Bush was another thing that intrigued her. Bush would eventually read Wuthering Heights in full a long time later.

It is angering to read some of the negative press Bush received. In February 1979 (on page twenty-five of the Shenton book), Superpop observed how she was “undeniably beautiful” and had her physical charms; the fact people bothered to write mail to her stunned them. The sexist and belittling tones bellied a talent who was a breath of fresh air on the music scene! Having to read remarks about her looks must have been hugely discouraging and upsetting for an artist who wanted to be taken seriously. Bush was not male, angry or working-class. A lot pf Punk and Rock was dominating in the late-Seventies where angrier young men ruled and were idolised. Bush was inspired by artists like Billie Holiday, Steely Dan, Roxy Music ad David Bowie. Although New Wave was coming through, I think that Punk was still very important; the feeling that, perhaps, Bush was an unknown quantity. In July 1978, Bush said the following when she spoke with Trouser Press: “Maybe it’s ironic, but I think punk has actually done a lot for me in England. People were waiting for something new to come out – something with feeling”. Although Bush liked Punk, she felt that it was a transition to something more interesting. News Wave was more about interesting lyrics and richness. I think a lot of the prejudice she received from press corners related to this transitioning period; some feeling that The Kick Inside was unappealing or was too soft. Bush did not want to fall into the trap of being seen as a sex symbol. Although some of the press were labelling her as such, she knew that if she accepted that then she would be seen as having made it because of this - and not because she is a great artist.

Recording engineer Jon Kelly (The Kick Inside was his first project) told Sound on Sound in 2004 how the calibre of the musicians who played on the album was remarkable. Rather than the musicians taking direction from producer Andrew Powell and not connecting with Bush, they were keen to sit down with her and have songs explained if they felt something was too heavy or unusual. Bush could explain her songs and, if parts needed to be redone, they were happy with that. The incredible musicianship and professionalism was reflected in the range of instrumentation on The Kick Inside. Whilst people assume that albums like The Dreaming and Hounds of Love were Bush progressing her music and moving on from a simple and limited sound, her debut was very broad and advanced. Thought had to go into how the microphones were positioned in the studio to capture these musicians and interesting sounds. Jon Kelly stayed true to the set-up Geoff Emerick used for the recordings of The Man with the Child in His Eyes and The Saxophone Song in 1975. It was clear that EMI wanted the album to do well and reach as many nations as possible. A total of seven different covers were used around the world – The Kick Inside is the only Bush album to have separate covers for the U.K., U.S., Canada, Japan , Yugoslavia (the cover that appears at the very top of this feature), and Uruguay. An interesting fact I wasn’t aware of was that Jay Myrdal – who did the photography for the U.K. cover - did not have much hope for the album doping well because of Bush’s shrill voice (his words)! He later admitted that he was a bit naïve in that respect. A kite was rigged up with ropes and bars against a black painted wall in a photography studio as Bush was hanged from the structured. The concept (which Bush worked on with art director Steve Ridgeway) had its roots in Pinocchio (where Jiminy Cricket glides past the whale’s eye using his umbrella as a parachute). Although there would be better album covers from Lionheart (her second album released in 1978), it is good to know Bush has input and some control when it came to her direction and visual elements!

One of the missed opportunities was having Them Heavy People released as a single in the U.K. (it was put out as a single in Japan). The label wanted it to be the second single. Bush was against this so, instead, The Man with the Child in His Eyes was released. Bush was used to signing Them Heavy People and felt it was like a hymn; something that meant a lot to her. She was not too happy with the album version, as she felt the song should have been looser (perhaps closer to the versions she performed during 1979’s The Tour of Life). Regardless, it is a highlight from The Kick Inside that would have been a successful single. A reason why it would have been good to see Them Heavy People arrive with an official video is because the videos were getting a lot of focus. Keith Macmillan directed those early videos. Bush and Macmillan would sit down and discuss concepts. She would send routines and he would work on camera angles/shots etc. They were very much on the same page and had this great working relationship. I think the videos for Wuthering Heights and The Man with the Child in His Eyes, whilst not as cinematic and advanced as future videos, were/are really impactful.

I will end by talking about some of the reaction The Kick Inside received. Sounds were not impressed. They thought the song were doom-laden and described Bush’s voice as being “the most irritating yelping voice since Robert Plant…”. They thought the album was contrived; that there was talent trying to get out. One of the observations in Kate Bush The Kick Inside: In-depth was that the trippy-ness of The Kick Inside could have fitted in the late-Sixties but, in 1978, maybe it was not what people were used to. Some said that Bush would go on to better things. Hot Press liked the album but did not feel it would rank alongside the best albums of 1978 – maybe it didn’t rank high in 1978 but, now, it is seen as one of the best of that year! I think critical opinion has improved through the years. As more people have listened to it and, looking back, the album has aged well and has inspired a lot of artists, there has been this fairer and deeper representation. Bush liked the album when it came out but, as she acquired ambitions to produce and her music changed, I think she sort of dismissed the album as being incomplete; not as she would have liked or a weaker work. She told Tune In in December 1978 that she could not remember when she was last alone and had any opportunity to breathe and focus on herself and new music.

The issue was getting songs written and having that space. Lionheart was released in November 1978 and, with no time to write many new songs, Bush was unable to sufficiently progress and create an album that she truly liked. Like The Kick Inside, Bush was positive about Lionheart when it was released but, looking back, she has sort of disengaged herself from that album. Maybe that is why she is also a bit cold towards her debut. If things were different and she had co-produced The Kick Inside or was undertaking less promotion, maybe she would feel more favourable towards the album. Bush spoke with Wireless in 1983 (a year after The Dreaming arrived) and could not believe how young she sounded on The Kick Inside. She was interviewed by Musician in 1985 (the year Hounds of Love was released) and was not happy with her first two albums – Bush rued “of all the things I’d have liked to have done”. Bush matured after The Kick Inside so, when interviewed, it is natural that she would feel estranged regarding those early sounds. When Kerrang! interviewed her in 1982, Bush said that she liked a lot of the songs on the first two albums but was not happy with the way they came across – again, if she had produced them then things might have been different. I sort of think artists are subjective when it comes to opinions on their own albums, so I sort of take Bush’s dissatisfaction (or indifference) with a pinch of salt! Bush would start producing solo from 1982’s The Dreaming. I think she learned a lot from The Kick Inside. Laura Shenton closes the book by offering positivity towards The Kick Inside: “…the fact remains that The Kick Inside is full of wonder and intrigue. With regards to music innovation and music history…”.

IT matters”.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Praying/Prayer-Related Songs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

Praying/Prayer-Related Songs

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THIS might seem like a slightly random…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

Lockdown Playlist. Madonna’s huge album, Like a Prayer, was released on 21st March, 1989 to huge acclaim. Whilst I think that 1998’s Ray of Light is a finer album, one has to concede that Like a Prayer is a masterful record! Alongside its title track are other fantastic songs like Express Yourself and Cherish. Because the album is thirty-two tomorrow, this Lockdown Playlist assorts songs that have the word ‘prayer’ or ‘pray’, or ‘prayers’ (or variations of) in the title. One would assume that the songs would be religious/Gospel in nature, though there are quite a few popular songs that contains those words. To mark the anniversary of a very special album, this Lockdown Playlist is inspired by…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @jacksharp_photography/Unsplash

THE epic Like a Prayer.

 

FEATURE: Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure: Roxette - Joyride

FEATURE:

 

 

Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure

Roxette - Joyride

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MANY of the songs that…

I have featured in this run have been from the 1990s. I will move things on in future features, but I wanted to mention Joyride as it is a song that I really love. From the brilliant Roxette, it turned thirty very recently. I will bring in an article that marked twenty-five years of Joyride back in 2016. Sadly, this is a song we will never hear performed live again with the incredible voice of Marie Fredriksson. She died in 2019 and, when I heard the news, I was very sad. I think she is one of the most underrated singers there has been. Rather than dwell on loss, I wanted to celebrate a gem from the Swedish duo. If you are not familiar with the track, Joyride, then here is some background:

“Joyride" is a song by the Swedish pop duo Roxette. Written by Per Gessle, it was released as the lead single from their third studio album, Joyride (1991), the follow-up to the duo's highly successful second studio album, Look Sharp! (1988). It became one of Roxette's biggest hits, and was one of the most successful singles of 1991, topping multiple record charts across Europe, as well as in Australia, Canada, and the United States”.

I have been listening to the song for thirty years now and, every time I hear it, it lifts my energy. I have seen people talk about Roxette as a guilty pleasures group; their songs are not ones that one should think as being cool or great. The duo released more than their fair share of classics! I think that Joyride should not be seen as a guilty pleasure – and I have seen the song appear on a couple of lists that suggest it it.

I am going to take a bit of a de tour in a second and bring in a review for the Joyride album. One of the strongest albums of the 1990s, Joyride celebrates its thirtieth anniversary on 28th March. With the superb and reliable songwriting strength of Roxette’s surviving member, Per Gessle, I like how Joyride nods to The Beatles and Magic Mystery Tour. The Joyride album contains a lot of variety and strength. AllMusic had this to say:

“The beauty of Roxette is that the duo of Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson can do practically anything in terms of Top 40 music. From the quiet desperation of "Spending My Time" to the chanting carnival of "Joyride" to the folky "Church of Your Heart," they bring a worldliness to their lyrics and melodies that most pop A-listers don't even have the imagination to dream of. This, the follow-up to their breakthrough disc, Look Sharp!, sees through on what that collection hinted at, meaning most of the songs sound like they were designed to be hit singles, not just filler between two or three good cuts. "The Big L," "Soul Deep," and "Hotblooded" all follow in the successful vein Gessle and Fredriksson mined with "The Look," while "Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)," an insistent rock ballad, and the accordion-driven "Perfect Day" take things down a notch. The low-key "Watercolours in the Rain" and the whining "(Do You Get) Excited?" are the only cuts that keep the album from being a total success. For the most part, though, this is two pop artists at the top of their game”.

Before I round off and give my thoughts, I will bring in that article from 2016 that nodded to a song that went to number-one around the world (although it reached number-four in the U.K.). I think Joyride still sounds so engaging, catchy and fresh after three decades! This is what Rhino wrote in their retrospective:

“25 years ago today, Roxette rose to the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the fourth time in their career, and while there hasn’t been a fifth time thus far, they just released a new single (“It Just Happens”), so we’re not counting them out quite yet.

“Joyride” was, as you may already know, the first single – and title track – from Roxette’s third studio album. Written by Per Gessle, a.k.a. the dude in the duo, the opening lines of the song were reportedly taken directly from a note that his then-girlfriend, now-wife left on his piano which read, “Hello, you fool, I love you.” You’ll also note a bit of a “Magical Mystery Tour” vibe at times, particularly when you hear Dave Edwards, a friend of the band (not to mention their former tour manager), saying, “Come on, join the joyride, get your tickets here, step right this way.” This is not coincidental: Gessle has said that took the title of the song straight from an interview with Paul McCartney in which the former Beatle described writing songs with John Lennon as a “long joyride.”

Over the years, “Joyride” has earned addition honors within the pop culture pantheon, serving as the intro anthem for the Vancouver Canucks during the 1994 Stanley Cup playoffs and, perhaps most importantly, it was also selected as one of the tracks covered by Alvin and the Chipmunks and The Chippettes for their album The Chipmunks Rock the House. Ultimately, though, the greatest sign of the song’s success was on the charts: it hit #1 in US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, not to mention on the European Hot 100 Singles chart. Not only that, but the single earned the band gold and even platinum sales in various countries, cementing their success for the long haul.

Well, everywhere in America, that is. But, hey, let’s just focus on the #1 single, shall we?”.

It is a shame that some people feel that one of Roxette’s biggest hits is a song that is a little lame and cheesy. There is a giddiness and appeal to the song that I think crosses age barriers and tastes. Anyone can listen to Joyride and be enriched and made to feel happier!

Despite some people not liking the song, it has gained some positive reception through the years. Maybe it sounds different to a lot of Pop and Rock today but, as so much music today is either boring or empty, artists could learn a lot from a song that has been praised and stands up to the test of time:

“AllMusic editor Bryan Buss described the song as a "chanting carnival" in his review of the Joyride album Larry Flick from Billboard described it as a "playful pop/rock ditty with a catchy chorus that is destined to make a quick sprint up the charts." Jim Farber from Entertainment Weekly noted that "they blithely toss a bit of whistling into "Joyride", next to some psychedelic Beatles-like flourishes." Dave Sholin from the Gavin Report wrote, "Plenty of reason for joy in Top 40 land as Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson deliver the first of a new batch of songs. Wisely, the Swedish duo retain "Look Sharp" producer Clarence Ofwerman, and, once again it's clear all three understand the way to a pop music fan's heart. Roxette has re-applied that happy, feelgood formula to making mass appeal records, and it's earned them instant recognition and remarkable chart success. This title track from their new album is certain to not only meet everyone's expectations, but surpass them." Music & Media stated that the song "is a perfect example of their pop sensibilities."

Brendon Veevers from Renowned for Sound commented, "There isn't a soul alive who cannot say they don’t love this track – Roxette fan or not. It's pop at its finest and the video is equally as memorable; the band speeding down a U.S highway, playing guitar on top of a red corvette." Rolling Stones J.D. Considine said that the song is "decked out in a glossy, Sgt. Pepper-style arrangement". Mark Frith from Smash Hits labeled it as a "over-the-top" pop song, "with catchy choruses that remind you slightly of those other musical Swedes, Abba." A writer for Cleveland.com ranked "Joyride" the 46th best Billboard Hot 100 number one of the 1990s, saying: "Even more so than the group's biggest hit, 'It Must Have Been Love,' 'Joyride' showed off Per Gessle's ability to craft fantastic pop-rock songs. The song's pop spirit and rock swagger mesh seamlessly".

I shall wrap up now. I wanted to almost defend a song that has got some bad press from people. Not that there is a guilty pleasure song; those who rank Joyride alongside some truly embarrassing tracks need to have a word with themselves! I think Joyride is one of those classic Pop songs that has a big chorus and an energy that carries you and lifts the heart! If you have not heard the song then get involved and let it feed into the bloodstream. Although some feel Joyride is a guilty pleasure listen, I think that it is…

SUCH a fine song

FEATURE: U Got the Look: The Legacy of Prince

FEATURE:

 

 

U Got the Look

PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

The Legacy of Prince

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I am going to do another one or two…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Katz/The Prince Estate

more general features about Prince before 21st April. That date marks five years since we lost the genius. I have already looked at his greatest albums and, looking ahead, I will investigate various sides of his work. Maybe it is not easy to distil Prince’s legacy and what he gave to the world. I have been looking at features writing about Prince following his death; people trying to explain how Prince Rogers Nelson changed the world. I think Prince is like Bowie in many respects (another artist we lost in 2016). Each album was different and we got to witness such a broad range of sounds through his career. If Bowie’s transformations and iconic looks were among his greatest gifts to the world, I think that Prince’s was his phenomenal voice and guitar skills; his exceptional songwriting and, above all, his tireless and peerless workrate – I think that it is said that his famous Vault (where unreleased material is stored) holds nearly a century’s worth of material. Whilst that may be exaggerated, it is beguiling to think about Prince releasing albums as regularly as he did and having all this other music left aside! I wonder whether Prince was planning on releasing this material himself or whether he intended there to be this wonderful music for the world when he died. We were all so shocked when his death was announced.

At only fifty-seven, we were looking ahead to years and decades more of his magic! Regardless, the tributes that flooded in when he died were moving. People from all around the world shared their memories and reasons why Prince meant so much to them. From his fashion, musicianship and sheer innovation, there are so many sides to Prince. I want to start off by sourcing from a VIBE article of 2018. Although there have been some album releases since then, they spoke with Susan Rogers, Prince’s legendary ‘80s studio engineer, about the possibility of 1980s-recorded material being released - in addition to how Prince should be remembered:  

“That seems like a natural progression for someone who was releasing music and performing live at a furious pace towards the end of his life, right?

Right. Prince used to say funny things when we were rehearsing like being envious of the Revolution’s Matt Fink and his piano abilities or Lisa [Coleman’s] musical training. I believe he would have studied jazz piano more deeply. I remember one time we were all talking about what we would be if we weren’t in the music business and Prince said he would have been a music teacher. He liked working with young people; he liked the innocence. I could see him mentoring as he did with younger artists, advising them and helping them to have a life in the arts.

PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Rasic/Rex Features 

Has The Prince Estate asked for your help in re-mastering any of the classic ‘80s albums set for future re-release?

I was asked during the early round of talks that included the Purple Rain deluxe reissue. They asked me if I would consider coming in to remix some stuff. I said yes, but with some trepidation. I have a full-time job as a professor. I haven’t worked in the studio since 2000. That work is better suited for people who are currently mixing today. Thankfully, I did not end up doing any mixing.

Prince was far ahead of his male peers in the music business in terms of working with women in positions not traditionally open to them, decades before the #MeToo movement. Looking back, how surprising was it that he championed female studio engineers and musicians when it wasn’t the norm back then?

It was a delightful surprise. I was in my 20s when I started working with Prince. Wendy, Lisa, Sheila E, Jill Jones, and Susannah [Melvoin] (Wendy’s sister, frequent background vocalist and member of the Prince-produced group The Family) were around that age as well. Being older now, I can see it as extraordinary, but when you are young and you are trying to break down barriers as a woman, at the time it made perfect sense. When you encounter a person like Prince, who doesn’t put up any barriers, you see him working with women in non-traditional roles as normal. I was grateful then and even more grateful now just how smart he was. He knew that looking for people that normally wouldn’t get a shot was the right thing to do. Prince liked outliers a lot.

How should we remember Prince?

In the history of important Americans, his name needs to be on the list. Because Prince was an important cultural export and he advanced music. He achieved the height of fame that Michael Jackson achieved, but Prince did it in the typical American way. Which is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do it all on your own. Michael, who was a great artist, was also the product of the Motown system. Prince was a self-made man.

Prince was also an important musical figure because he contributed to the advancement of American music. Miles Davis called him his generation’s Duke Ellington. He was an important cultural figure by the way he dressed and the way he looked. Prince was one of the figures that made it possible for androgyny to be accepted; for men to wear makeup and for women to be empowered. I want the young generation to see what a genius he was musically. Prince deserves to never be forgotten”.

I wonder if there are any plans to put out a Prince biopic. I think there have been plans and suggestions in the past; there may be something in the pipeline right now. It seems that, for a genius who left such a mark on the world, a cinematic release is an inevitable step. I am going to bring in a few more articles before rounding things off. I feel Prince’s legacy is so large that I need to divide this up and write another feature or two.

I mention a biopic because, not only is Prince’s legacy compelling; he also had this fascinating start and career progression. Digital Music News discussed that when they paid tribute to Prince in 2016:

“Prince wasn’t just a legend because he made great hits; he crossed barriers in the music industry that paved way for other artists to be more creative and original.

Prince made being different okay, he made being unique something artists now crave to be.  He didn’t define his music in one genre, he often combined genres of music.  He created a new sound and people all over the world fell in love with his inventiveness.

Prince, a household pop icon and one of the biggest artists in history, hailed from a musical family with both parents in the music industry.  His father was a pianist and songwriter, and Prince’s mother was a jazz singer.  He was born in Minneapolis on June 7th, 1958 and passed today (April 21st).

After cracking through in the 70s, Prince became known for melding pop, funk, R&B, rock, funk and other styles, with raunchy lyrics and ribald showmanship signature elements of his style.

Like most musical legends, Prince started at a very young age.  He developed an early interest in music, writing his first song called ‘Funk Machine’ on his father’s piano at age 7.  Before recording his first debut album, he made music with his cousin’s band ’94 East,’ writing the songs for the band and playing guitar.

In 1976, at age 17, he made a demo tape with Chris Moon, who took the tape to a Minneapolis businessman named Husney.  Husney then signed Prince, which led to a now-famous recording contract with Warner Bros. Records.

He then moved to Los Angeles and recorded his first debut album, titled For You in 1978.  But it was Prince’s second album, Prince, that hit it big, going platinum in 1979.  The two main songs that drove that album’s success were ‘Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’”.

Not to detour too much but, not only has Prince inspired so many other artists in his time – I will put a playlist out of artists who are inspired by him -; he drew from a lot of great musicians himself. As we read, Prince absorbed a lot of different sounds and channelled this into something gigantic and hugely accomplished:

“Prince's music synthesized a wide variety of influences, and drew inspiration from a range of musicians, including James Brown, George Clinton, Joni Mitchell, Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, David Bowie, Earth, Wind & Fire, Mick Jagger, Rick James, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Curtis Mayfield, Elvis Presley, Todd Rundgren, Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, Jackie Wilson, and Stevie Wonder. Prince has been compared with jazz great Miles Davis in regard to the artistic changes throughout his career. Davis said he regarded Prince as an otherworldly blend of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Little Richard, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Chaplin. Prince and Miles Davis performed together for a Charity Event at Paisley Park. This performance was viewed as the pinnacle of their on-again, off-again partnership.

Journalist Nik Cohn described him as "rock's greatest ever natural talent". Prince was a natural tenor, but had a wide vocal range from falsetto to baritone, and performed rapid, seemingly effortless shifts of register. Prince was also renowned as a multi-instrumentalist. He is considered a guitar virtuoso and a master of drums, percussion, bass, keyboards, and synthesizer. On his first five albums, he played nearly all the instruments, including 27 instruments on his debut album, among them various types of bass, keyboards and synthesizers. Prince was also quick to embrace technology in his music, making pioneering use of drum machines like the Linn LM-1 on his early '80s albums and employing a wide range of studio effects. The LA Times also noted his "harnessing [of] new-generation synthesizer sounds in service of the groove," laying the foundations for post-'70s funk music. Prince was also known for his prolific and virtuosic tendencies, which resulted in him recording large amounts of unreleased material”.

It will be sad, in April, remembering Prince five years after he left us. I don’t think we will ever see a musician like him! Someone who can do so much and is such a creativity machine! I haven’t even touched on his scintillating live performances or taken a dive into some of his key albums – again, something I may do in a week or two. When The Guardian wrote about Prince legacy in 2016, they named a few artists who were touched by The Purple One:

“Few artists cast a shadow over contemporary music quite like Prince. Disco, funk, pop, hip-hop, house, electro – nothing would sound the way it does today without him.

Musicians who defined an era in pop and hip-hop, such as superstar producers the Neptunes and Timbaland, took cues from him; listen to Pharrell William’s Frontin’ and the Prince influence is clear. Prince was Timbaland’s idol and like his hero he tried to operate in that colourful area between R&B’s sensuous sexuality and the unbridled machismo that hip-hop can exude.

Talking about the first time he heard I Wanna Be Your Lover, Timbaland said: “To this day, I don’t really know how he created this unique sound, and that’s why it’s so dope. He’s in his own world and nobody else can get there, although I’ve tried.” Another group to operate in this space were the otherworldly Atlanta residents Outkast, who played with sexuality, fashion and consistently pushed the boundaries of 00s hip-hop.

IN THIS PHOTO: Daft Punk/PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP/Shutterstock 

His uncompromising approach to the music industry set the blueprint for artists such as Daft Punk, who in a Princean move struck a deal with Virgin that gave them total control over their music and imagery, setting them on a path that made them cool, cult and commercially viable. And that’s before mentioning the debt that the group owe to him for the sound of Discovery, which has so many hat tips to Dirty Mind-era Prince it’s enough to give you neckache.

Then, take one look at the duelling R&B stars Miguel and Frank Ocean and you see two artists who play with the concepts of sexuality, blackness and style in a way that simply would not exist without Prince. Ocean wrote yesterday on Tumblr that “My assessment is that he learned early on how little value to assign to someone else’s opinion of you… An infectious sentiment that seemed soaked into his clothes, his hair, his walk, his guitar, and his primal scream,” this coming from a man who came out just before he released one of the most important R&B records of the last decade”.

I think one of the most rewarding things you can do is to spend time simply listening to Prince’s albums. They are so rich and important, one can learn so much from him. As I say, I am going to discuss artists who cite Prince as an influence at a later date. I wanted to do a general feature to explore the legacy of the Minnesota-born legend. Although it has been almost been five years since Prince’s death, it is clear that his light will…

SHINE forever.

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Two: Grace Jones

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

IN THIS PHOTO: Grace Jones, blue-black in black on brown, New York, 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Jean-Paul Goude

Part Two: Grace Jones

___________

THIS feature combines songs…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Simon

from artists who have either been inspired by a legendary musician sonically or some aspect of their career has been impactful. I started this feature last week with Prince. I united into the playlist artists who have either been influenced by Prince’s sound, fashion or his experimental nature. In this week’s Inspired By… is Grace Jones. Musically, there are plenty of artists who have been inspired by her, but there are many who have incorporated aspects of her aesthetic, pioneering nature or something else. Last year, Jones was to curate the annual Meltdown Festival – the pandemic put that on hold. The BBC ran a feature about the iconic Jones around the time:

“It’s difficult to describe Grace Jones without using words that have been dulled into cliché, but the revered Jamaican performer really is iconic, unique and visionary. It’s equally tricky to sum up succinctly what she does: since she began flexing her creative muscles in the late 1960s, Jones has been a stage actress, high-fashion model, disco singer, photographer’s muse, new wave musician, film star and perennial trend-setter. Clearly, Jones’s chameleon-like qualities are a key part of her appeal. “She takes you to higher vibrations through her presence alone – she frees you completely because she is free herself,” says Honey Dijon, an internationally renowned DJ-producer who counts Jones as a major inspiration.

At the same time, Jones’s incredible creative fluidity means her achievements in certain fields – especially music – are easy to underestimate. The dazzling, androgynous looks she’s created for photo shoots and album covers are rightly acclaimed – Vogue calls her “the ultimate fashion muse”, while Dazed has hailed her “revolutionary style moments” – but at the expense, perhaps, of her musical legacy. Warm Leatherette, the album that introduced Jones’s distinctive, reggae-flecked take on new wave, has just turned 40 years old, so it’s an apt time to reassess her contribution as a singer, songwriter and genre-blending innovator. Featuring punky covers of songs by artists as varied as Tom Petty, Smokey Robinson and Roxy Music, all sung in Jones’s majestically detached style, it’s a record as fearless and singular as Jones herself. And also like Jones, it’s strangely ageless, sounding almost as fresh today as it did in 1980.

Even with her Meltdown festival on hold, June 2020 is something of a milestone month for Jones because it marks the 40th anniversary of her first British hit. On 27 June 1980, around six weeks after Warm Leatherette was released, Jones dropped its third single: a thrillingly minimal cover of The Pretenders’ Private Life which cracked the UK top 20 and introduced her to a wider audience when she performed it, magnificently, on Top of the Pops. Zebra Katz says it’s his favourite song on Warm Leatherette – “Grace’s voice has such a relaxed and controlled attitude and the track itself is just so incredibly lush” – and The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde is also a big fan. “When I first heard Grace’s version I thought ‘Now that’s how it’s supposed to sound!’” she wrote in the liner notes for Jones’s 1998 compilation Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions”.

To celebrate the impact Grace Jones has had on other artists, I am ending with a playlist of tracks from those who have cited her as being important – whether her music has inspired them or the full force of her being has moved them. Enjoy tracks from artists who hold Grace Jones as...

INSPIRING to them.

 

FEATURE: Spotlight: Billy Nomates

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Billy Nomates

___________

I tend to mix slightly smaller artists with those…

that are rising or more established in this feature. Billy Nomates (Tor Maries) has been in the industry for a little while now but, as her eponymous album was released last year, I think her music reached a lot more people and audiences. I would encourage people to follow Billy Nomates, as her music and voice is among the most original and impressive around! I will bring in a positive reviews for her Billy Nomates album soon. Before, it is worth sourcing from a few interviews, just so that we can get a bigger picture and impression of a terrific young artist. Make sure you go and buy Billy Nomates. First, it is important to bring in some information. When she spoke with Sound Sniffer last year, we learn more about her start and lo-fi production style:

“How did Billy Nomates start? Have you always been doing music?

I’ve been in bands and done various bits and pieces since I was sixteen. I was in a band in Bristol in my early twenties for a few years. Before, I was always involved in projects or bands that weren’t mine and was just either fronting them or playing smaller roles. We were always on the fringes, never really took off. We had snippets of success but it always seemed to be ruined by someone getting married or breaking a leg.

I’ve always been involved in music but had a whole year away about two years ago. I found myself doing nothing musically, through no fault of my own really. Things just hadn’t worked and I had a year of a break. I moved down to the south coast and that’s where it started.

Your live performances and bedroom productions are wonderfully LoFi – Your debut single ‘No’ was quite polished in it’s sound. What can we expect from the album?

I did everything myself at home but I have really minimal equipment. The producer at invada was Geoff Barrow (of Portishead) and Stu Matthews. Working with invada was really intresting. I really respect the studio and the people that worked on it. We made minimal tweaks but they knew what they’re doing! I think it’s so unintentionally LoFi, that its got its own thing to it.

The album has a couple of songs in there that are a bit wildcard and a couple more polished like ‘No’. Invada were great, the producers just did that thing that only producers can do, where there’s a magic button they can press to make you go, ‘shit, that sounds good’. I don’t have that button in my bedroom”.

‘No’ has gotten a great reaction thus far. As debut singles go, it’s right up there. How have you felt about this positive publicity coming your way?

Yeah it’s been great; I’ve been getting some BBC Radio 6 play with it as well – which has been brilliant. It feels amazing to get something from my little bedroom work-station onto BBC 6 Music. Genuinely, when I hear it on the radio I feel like someone is going to come for me and rumble me”.

I really loved Billy Nomates’ music but I was not really aware of her (Maries’) background and her family life. Not that it is the most important thing, but I think that it has fed into her music and has affected how she approaches her career. In an in-depth interview with NME, we learn about her upbringing and the inception of the Billy Nomates project – we discover more about the themes and characters through her eponymous album:

““I’ve never really had money, but I was the poorest I’d been a couple of years ago after working a load of minimum wage jobs,” Maries explains. “I was miserable and poor and unfulfilled: I couldn’t write about fancying someone or anything nice. I thought: ‘If I’m going to write again, I have no option but to write about “ah, it’s all crap“.’”

Maries says that she considers herself to be on the edge of working class, but she does rue the absence of the full range of voices in music. “You don’t see a lot of working class people in any arts, you have to really look for it. You’ll instantly notice them, though, because there’s a tone of voice that’s allowed to come through that you haven’t heard for a long time.”

“I went through quite a bad depression stage,” Maries says, referring to the inception of the Billy Nomates project in early 2019. “I had a few months where a relationship had broken down, I was sleeping on my sister’s couch, I’d gone into a real funk and just didn’t want to leave the house or see anyone. I saw Sleaford Mods were coming to Southampton, so I just got a ticket by myself. I remember being in the crowd watching the warm-up band — Liines, a really good band — and some drunk guy shoved me on the shoulder and shouted: ‘It’s Billy no-mates!’ I’d just started recording at the time and I didn’t have a name. It’s genuinely one of those moments that I’ll never forget. That guy was a fucking genius.”

An entire rogues’ gallery of modern British character tropes are subjected to the Billy Nomates magnifying glass on the album: the posturing privileged, the Brexiteering nostalgists, the gig economy employers and, perhaps the most stomach-churning of all, the sleazy, lecherous types outlined on ‘Fat White Man’. Maries is firmly of the opinion that the music industry itself has some considerable work left to do when it comes to correcting its gender practices. “I can say that as a female in male bands growing up, I had some terrible experiences. But I think it’s changing at quite a rapid pace now, which is great.

Maries’ own experiences in bands made up the first “seven or eight years” of her time after moving to Bristol. “We were alternative folk that thought it was very arty — it was hideous stuff.” Eventually, everyone “got bored and got mortgages”, leaving her at a loose end, whereupon she eventually relocated to Bournemouth.

Life as a solo artist, however, has given Maries the control that satisfies her creative itch. “Now I just want to make stuff very selfishly. Eventually I just thought: ‘Why not?’ If I like it, maybe somebody else will like it”.

I will end with an interview from this year that captured my attention. First, I want to source from a review of. Billy Nomates. In terms of the best albums of 2020, this remarkable work was in many people’s end-of-year lists.

In their assessment of Billy Nomates, this is what Loud and Quiet had to say:

“Tor Maries only embraced self-prioritisation recently. Meaning: she’d spent a life not always putting herself first. The songwriter, who originates from the pork pie capital Melton Mowbray, spent years performing in groups around Bristol – there was some success, but little satisfaction.

It was only when Maries moved to Bournemouth, bought a ticket and flew solo to watch Sleaford Mods in 2019 – in a neat piece of circularity Jason Williamson pops up to rap about meat on ‘Supermarket Sweep’ – Maries decided to go it alone (she owes the moniker to a drunk man calling her “Billy Nomates” at that very show).

Billy Nomates is therefore what happens when you discard outside perceptions, pause people-pleasing and discover the power of self-expression. That’s why when observers question why Maries sometimes sings with a U.S. accent, she simply counters: it’s because I want to. Why not? Damn right.

These songs are Tor Maries’ experienced truth, then. ‘Modern Hart’ – a melancholic track that feels like a telegram to her old self – provides the opening. “Anyone can do it,” she sings over a grimy, Kim Deal-esque bassline.

It’s a subtle start, but things soon spice up with a string of acerbic and entertaining pot-shots. ‘Hippy Elite’ is about wanting to be more active in the climate emergency, but also needing to cover the household bills. ‘Happy Misery’ takes aim at anti-productive nostalgic mindsets (see also: Gazelle Twin’s ‘Better In My Day’) and ‘Supermarket Sweep’ a song about how the mundanity of financial survival chips away at aspirations. There’s the catchy centrepiece ‘No’ – about the empowering discovery of resistance.

Such everydayisms could come across as corny, but like her pals Sleaford Mods the songs are authentic, authoritative and frequently funny. They also pack a consistent and timely reminder: “Forgotten normal people are a force to remember”.

Just to round things off, I will bring in an interview from The Quietus from earlier this year. It is a fascinating interview. There was a particular section that really caught my eye – when Billy Nomates’ plans for 2020 were changed by the pandemic, she formed an unusual obsession:

“The plan for 2020 was to keep evolving Billy Nomates on the road, particularly around the record’s release, but then the pandemic hit. After recovering from the whiplash of an abrupt, undesired screech to a halt, just as momentum was really beginning to pick up, Maries was forced yet again to make the best of what she had. With lockdown shrinking her world considerably she started getting obsessed with the old payphones dotted around the Isle of Wight like monuments to a bygone era, some of which are no longer connected.

One booth on the bay for emergency calls stood out in particular. “You’d have to be so direct on a payphone, you’d have to really say you were in trouble. You couldn’t fuck about with it,” she says. “That fascinated me because it’s something we’ve kind of stopped doing. Maybe because we’re making sense of how we feel.” This fed into her new standalone EP, Emergency Telephone. “I got obsessed with this idea that it’s this dying line, that they’re all going to go soon. It’s like the last saloon for them. I got a bit obsessed and fascinated. I’m also very lonely! I just liked the idea, they’ve got their own weird appeal and their own strange stories to tell.” At the same time Maries was listening to some of her labelmates on Invada, a label which specialises in soundtracks. “I started to think, if I were to do narrative stuff, how would I go about it?”.

I will wrap up, but I was eager to highlight an artist who is among our very best. I know I have not included many bands in this feature through the months. I think it is because solo artists, to me, are producing more interesting and varied music – though there are some fantastic bands out there that warrant attention and big support. Billy Nomates is an exceptional talent that produced a remarkable album last year. I feel she will only grow in stature and continue to release such magnificent and unique work - and there is likely to be more new music this year. If you are new to her music and world, then make sure you investigate and…

GET involved.

_____________

Follow Billy Nomates

Official:

https://www.iambillynomates.com/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDuDc22uYlLOluGkvUrXuEA

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/iambillynomates/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/billynomatestor

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/_billy_nomates  

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0QJaBD8Piha8IEwKtNpBOB

FEATURE: Groovelines: Sade – The Sweetest Taboo

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Sade – The Sweetest Taboo  

___________

I am going to include a very special song…

into Groovelines this week. I will quote from an interesting and detailed article about the song’s origins and development. Before then, it is worth getting some chart statistics  regarding the mighty The Sweetest Taboo:

“The Sweetest Taboo" is a song by English band Sade from their second studio album, Promise (1985). It was released on 30 September 1985 as the album's lead single. While the song peaked at number 31 on the UK Singles Chart, it fared considerably better in the United States, where it reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1986, remaining in the top 40 for 13 weeks. It also became the band's second consecutive number-one single on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, following "Smooth Operator”.

Oner of Sade’s best-known songs, I think The Sweetest Taboo is a classic! With the sensuous and soulful voice of Sade Adu and her band sounding incredible throughout, everyone needs to listen to the song and get lost in it. The Sweetest Taboo is the biggest and finest song from Promise. That album came a year after the sensational Diamond Life – an album that possessed Your Love Is King and Smooth Operator in its arsenal. I love Sade as a band, though I think Adu is one of the greatest voices there has ever been. As this feature is called Groovelines, there is a forensic element regarding the songs featured. The title also suggests vinyl connection. Go and get Promise on vinyl if you can, as it is a truly magnificent album.

There might be debate as to which Sade track is the best. No matter what you reckon, one has to concede that The Sweetest Taboo needs to be in the top-three! I will bring in a great feature from Sound on Sound from 2004. I cannot quote everything from the article as it is very detailed and extensive. A few sections definitely caught my eye:

“Helen Folasade Adu helped redefine urban soul when, as Sade, the Nigerian-born Londoner burst onto the scene in the mid-'80s with her multi-platinum debut album Diamond Life. Her laid-back, near-emotionless vocal delivery served as a perfect counterpoint to the high-passion, heavily embellished singing of an Aretha Franklin or a Whitney Houston. Recorded by 'production engineer' Mike Pela and featuring the contributions of Sade bandmates Stuart Matthewman (guitar/sax), Paul Denman (bass) and Andrew Hale (keyboards), Diamond Life was produced with a slick, quasi-jazz feel by Robin Millar at his own Power Plant facility in North-West London. It spent 98 weeks on the UK charts, 81 weeks on the Billboard Top 200, and spawned the hit singles 'Your Love Is King', 'Hang On To Your Love' and 'Smooth Operator' while earning Sade a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Between February and August 1985 the same team then reassembled for Sade's even more successful follow-up Promise, which was co-produced by her, Robin Millar, Mike Pela and, in a less central role, Ben Rogan. The album contained such radio-friendly hits as 'Is It A Crime', 'Never As Good As The First Time' and 'The Sweetest Taboo', the artist's signature song which enjoyed a six-month run on the American pop charts.

Standing behind a corrugated metal screen at the back of the control room, Sade recorded her overdubbed vocals through a Neumann U87 treated with a delayed EMT 140 echo plate, Dbx 160X compressor and, for the middle section of 'The Sweetest Taboo', an AMS RMX reverb. "We almost always used either an 87, a 57 or a 58 for Sade," says Mike Pela, "and we'd always come back and try other things. In fact, on her most recent album we used a Neumann 49. She's pretty easy to record, although how she approaches the vocals depends on whether or not she's writing the song as she goes along. Although the band typically comes into the studio with some of the songs already written, others will be written on the spot, drawing on ideas that have already been knocking around. So, if Sade is piecing the words together, her vocal will be recorded in sections until she comes up with what she wants, including the right kind of melodic rise and fall. In the case of 'The Sweetest Taboo', on the other hand, her vocal went down in complete takes. And as I don't like too much piecing together, I usually try to keep the number of takes down.

In terms of the co-production roles, Robin Millar largely directed operations, saying "Let's do this next," or "Let's try that," while also overlapping with Mike Pela when deciding what sounded good, where a song should be heading and how to best achieve this. "I had a fair amount of input on the artistic side," Pela says, "and the band members were also pretty vocal and quite involved. For her part, Sade liked to be inspired by a song, so while she'd be particularly interested in building up her vocals, she would also comment if there was something she thought should be added or removed. She was right in the middle of everything."

"Generally, if Sade heard something that she liked and thought she could write to, she and the other musicians would keep going with it," Pela remarks. "You see, one interesting aspect to Sade's music is that it is a band effort, not just her, and the result is that there's always continuity and depth. It's not just about a solo artist. They'll come up with ideas, she'll find something she likes and then that will turn into a song. That's the way things have always developed, and that is one of her strengths. It isn't just her. I mean, she's obviously unique and instantly recognisable, which is great, but she also has this support behind her, and that, too, is great. That's the musical continuity. All of them have been together through thick and thin, and that is slightly unusual and, in terms of the public perspective, maybe a bit under-appreciated.

"'The Sweetest Taboo' has a middle section that comes back at the end, so the basis of the song is quite simple, and the original idea was that we were going to use this rhythm provided by the drum loop. Dave Early, however, wanted to play it, and it would have been a bit silly to do that with a sampled rim and snare going on at the same time, so he played it as part of the live band and then we dropped in on that drum track to enhance the live feel, sampling the rim, the snare and the kick to get a constant dynamic, a constant punch to the drums. At the time we were doing this sort of hybrid thing that was suddenly becoming available for people to try out”.

I think Sade is one of these artists who we all know and like, yet her music is not played as extensively as you’d imagine. Apart from big tracks like The Sweetest Taboo and Your Love Is King, she has created some amazing music through the years. Her sixth studio album, Soldier of Love, was released in 2010. I am not sure whether the band will return and there is going to be any more music, but we have so much great material from them to enjoy. Promise does not get the same kudos as Diamond Life, yet I think it is such a fine album without a weak moment. To me, The Sweetest Taboo is the finest gem from that record. An instant classic, it still sounds breath-taking after almost thirty-six years. I shall leave it there but, if you have not spun The Sweetest Taboo for a while, go and do so now as it will lodge in the head and heart for ages! A stunning song from a terrific band and a peerless singer, it has been on my mind a lot recently. One only needs to hear The Sweetest Taboo for a mere few seconds before it…

STOPS you in your tracks.

FEATURE: My Passion Always Wins: Re-Pitching the Need for an Authoritative Kate Bush Documentary Series

FEATURE:

 

 

My Passion Always Wins

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport 

Re-Pitching the Need for an Authoritative Kate Bush Documentary Series

___________

I am writing this…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Lichfield

feature on 6th March – a day after Kate Bush trended on Twitter. The reason was, I think, because there was a repeat of the documentary, The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill. Bush has trended a lot fairly recently. There is no real reason why she trends, other than the fact her music is being heard or there is a repeat of something like the BBC documentary of 2014. If you have not seen the documentary, then this feature explains more:

“Kate Bush’s return to live performance next week, after 35 years’ absence, has been one of the defining features of this musical year. Her announcement, in March, of the Hammersmith gigs left even David Bowie’s gifted coup in the shade, creating a simmering summer of speculation. It’s surprising, then, that it’s taken the media so long to create the inevitable previews and retrospectives.

Kate Bush’s return to live performance next week, after 35 years’ absence, has been one of the defining features of this musical year. Her announcement, in March, of the Hammersmith gigs left even David Bowie’s gifted coup in the shade, creating a simmering summer of speculation. It’s surprising, then, that it’s taken the media so long to create the inevitable previews and retrospectives. This BBC Four feature did a bit of both, though it ended with a sense that Bush’s reputation survived the hour despite, rather than because of, the programme’s organisation.

Though Bush was dismissed in the early part of her career as light and bland, lacking that macho edginess of her punk contemporaries, she was in fact strikingly ambitious and innovative, from her 1978 debut single “Wuthering Heights” onwards. She had the first number one performed and written by a woman, she experimented with sampling at a time when it was (still is?) dominated by men, and as several contributors noted with awe, even her earliest work displayed an unusual musical complexity.

Sir Elton John made a poor start, with a virtuoso performance of cliché bingo. His blinding insight that her songs are “not normal” will have left viewers scrabbling for a pair of dark glasses, though all was nearly forgiven when he revealed with authentic emotion that “Don’t Give Up”, her duet with Peter Gabriel, had helped him through some dark hours.

There was the obligatory comedian’s appearance, in this case from Jo Brand, who didn’t, much as I admire her comedy, appear to have anything of interest to say. Stephen Fry reminisced about his voiceover on the 2011 album 50 Words for Snow, though (undoubtedly without meaning to) turned the focus unhelpfully on himself. And for a singer who created such a diversity of original sounds, the ubiquitous Fry fruitiness seemed to mark something of a loss of nerve. Let’s hope it’s recovered by next week.

Steve Coogan wasn’t quite sure of his role. Was he still the satirist who’d made such exuberant whoopee imitating Bush in his nineties TV shows, or the friendly collaborator and sympathetic ear? His admiration for her music was irrepressible, though a degree of exasperation emerged when he discussed her reluctance to appear live, and it was perhaps unfortunate that the programme ended with a surname-related pun that certainly belonged to Alan Partridge.

Musicianship of Bush’s quality can, of course, survive much worse than some gentle smut and narcissistic banality. Somehow, through the rather babel-like confection of comments (a proper documentary with a crafted narrative would of course have been preferable), an authentic portrait emerged of a highly original singer, both homely and esoteric, shy and strangely bold, politically aware and sensitively, authentically feminine. Welcome back”.

I wanted to quote that feature/review as it raises some important points I have made. I found some benefits and positives of the documentary. The fact it got made at all was wonderful. The calibre of the contributors, for the most part, was superb. Important figures like David Gilmour, Del Palmer, St. Vincent and Big Boi got to tell their story and reflect on what Kate Bush means to them. There were a few great interview clips, and, at an hour, it was hardly taxing. The problem is that, for an artist whose career – even to that point – was so long and successful, it seemed to be short-changing her with an hour-long documentary. I was confused why there were contributors who had little to say and why people such as Steve Coogan got such a big role – seeing as his input and role in the Kate Bush story is a very small footnote. I wonder why very few musicians and people who worked with Bush through her career were approached. It would have been great to hear from producers, musicians and others who were in the studio with her. Similar, in terms of musicians and fans, there are so many artists indebted to Bush that could have been called. I was thinking about how her music has touched people across so many disciplines. It would have been interesting to hear from more musicians, directors, authors and creatives.

In terms of the tone, it was very straight and plain. There is so much interview footage and videos that could have been shown. As I have said before, the fact the documentary was made to coincide with Bush returning to the stage with Before the Dawn, why was there not more discussion about her live performances of 1979 and footage from that – and some chat with people involved in the Before the Dawn preparation? Having Bush ‘narrate’ her own story through interviews and songs would have provided a documentary more of the personal. I spoke with people around the time of the documentary arriving and it definitely split people. Many casual fans liked it because they learned new things. For those who know Bush’s music well and want more depth and passion on the screen, they were left quite disappointed. The documentary was labelled and touted as Kate Bush’s story; meaning it was going to be fulsome and career-spanning. I don’t think you can distil and cram an artist like her into an hour in terms of their story and influence. One could spend an hour alone on Wuthering Heights or Hounds of Love. In the seven years since that documentary came out, so many artists have cited Bush as an influence. I do think there has been a long enough gap since the documentary (seven years) then to embark on a new project.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during 1993’s musical short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve

In terms of other flaws with The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill, I was a bit confused about the title. It is one of her best-loved songs (taken from 1985’s Hounds of Love), but it seems to be a bit of a missed opportunity to pick a song/lyric that would fit better. Also, when people were interviewed, they played clips of her songs on their phones! I have gone over this before but, when you have an artist who prides sound quality and warmth over anything, why have people play her music in such a cold, tinny and quiet way!? Play the music on a record player and through good speakers! Apart from the lack of depth, I felt that The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill did not say anything most people already know. I have seen documentaries about David Bowie and other iconic artists where you get much investigation and more angles covered. Think about Kate Bush’s music alone and how much time could be spend discussing it. Each album warrants some time, as does the fact that Bush has broken more than one record in her time – like, as 1980’s Never for Ever reached number-one meant that it was the first album by a British female solo artist to top the U.K. album chart, as well as being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at the top spot; 1978’s Wuthering Heights meant that Bush was the first female artist to achieve a U.K. number-one with a self-written track.

Bush has inspired so many female artists and broken down boundaries. She has impacted the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community and she has influenced so many people to express themselves more freely. A multi-part documentary could discuss the albums and their creation. We could also have one regarding Bush’s fashion, videos and production. Maybe another one could explore her legacy and the artists she has impacted. The albums edition could be split into two so that you’d have four one-hour documentaries that did full justice to her music. I feel there are so many artists and people lining up to discuss Bush and what she means to them. There is nothing to say that people like Del Palmer and David Gilmour could not return. I think someone like Peter Gabriel influenced Bush quite a bit – he introduced her to the magic of the Fairlight CMI -, and he would really interesting. One cannot put out one documentary and say that this is ‘the whole story’. A new documentary series would expand on what the BBC did and, more than anything, leave no stone unturned regarding Kate Bush’s enormous impact and originality! Perhaps wheels are already in motion regarding a new documentary or project of some form. There are so many great interviews out there that could be included. I love the chats Bush had with BBC Radio 4’s and BBC Radio 6 Music/Radio 2’s Mark Radcliffe to promote 50 Words for Snow in 2011. There is a wealth of clips and videos that need to be seen and dissected. The BBC spent little time focusing on Bush’s love of cinema and literature. For that reason, a new documentary project should be…

AN epic work, rather than a mere novella.