FEATURE: Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me: Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours

FEATURE:

 

 

Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me

Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours

___________

IN this feature that…

collects together albums that were important to me during childhood, I am minded of Manic Street Preachers’ fifth studio album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours (1998). Similar to the massive predecessor, Everything Must Go, its follow-up was a huge success. I remember loving the 1996 album. That was one of my earliest experiences of the Manics. Some of the albums I have featured in this run are from earlier in childhood. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours contains some of the best songs from the legendary Welsh band. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and Tsunami are great singles that are among my favourite from the band. The one that really stuck in my mind was You Stole the Sun from My Heart. It is, in my view, the standout from the album. A reason why This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours resonated was because, by 1998, I was buying a lot more albums. I have included the album before in Vinyl Corner. At the age of fourteen, music was really speaking to me. Nearly every weekend, I would get a bus into town and buy the new singles and albums that took my fancy. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours was one I bought because I already had the first single, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (released in August 1998). I also went on to buy the single, You Stole the Sun from My Heart, as that came out in March 1999. I have so much love for This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. In 1998, I might have passed my Britpop phase and was getting more into other types of music.

I feel the catchiness of the songs and the power of the band drew me to the Manic Street Preachers and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. It is an album I can listen to fresh today and get a lot from it. I also revisit the album because it takes me back to 1998 and (a time) when I bought the album. One of the Manics’ most-successful albums, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours got some terrific reviews. I think it is worth bringing in a couple of them. Pitchfork were clearly impressed when they heard This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours:

“It's been a hard road for the Manic Street Preachers. When they formed back in 1991, the cheeky band from Blackwood, Gwent, Wales, had the gall to claim they would become the biggest band in the world and then break up. Well, time has proven them at least partly right. Now beloved throughout the U.K. as the "nation's band,"-- Oasis having lost the plot and forsaken that role with Be Here Now-- they are very much of the musical establishment, while remaining a potent force of artistic and political conscience. It's just that they've finally overcome their Clash obsession and turned inward with lyrics that aim more at the personal and mundane aspects of everyday life, as opposed to their earlier grand, political sloganeering.

Weathering the disappearance of original primary lyricist Richey Edwards, the band has not only thrived, but also grown in new directions. This is My Truth Tell Me Yours is the first set of Manics lyrics written solely by bassist Nicky Wire. Wire's self- professed domestic obsession, which takes its extreme form in his love of what the British call "hoovering" (or "vacuuming," for the less Anglophile among you), differs drastically from Edwards' grand neuroses. Essentially, Wire paints with much smaller brushes, focusing on self, relationships and family while penning the Manics' most emotional and personal set of lyrics ever. Yet the personal is still informed by the political. The record's anthem, "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next," is inspired by volunteers of the International Brigade who battled the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile, "S.Y.M.M." reflects Wire's feelings about the Hillsborough Disaster, where 96 people died at a British soccer game.

Supporting Wire's powerful lyrics, the Manic Street Preachers play with virtuosity and conviction. James Dean Bradfield's voice has never sounded better-- he's evolved into one of the best rock singers around. The band's music is also the most far- ranging of their career, incorporating a broader instrumentation that includes non- typical rock instruments like the sitar, melodica, omnichords, and organ. For example, "Ready For Drowning" possesses a moody, almost classical- sounding organ with some of the most intriguing harmonic shifts ever penned by a rock musician.

The Manic Street Preachers are also one of the few groups capable of integrating orchestral instruments in a way that still produces great rock music (check out the cello in "My Little Empire"), always avoiding the schmaltzy elevator music that can result when some rock musos get a hold of an orchestra. Meanwhile, they manage to infuse some quite dour lyrics with some of the most haunting melodies in rock this side of Radiohead. Bradfield and Moore seldom choose the obvious chords, arrangements and melodies, resulting in music that is heads- and- tails above almost any band on the planet. I'd say it's my album of the year so far, but I picked it number one last year. (It actually came out in the U.K. last fall)”.

I am going to round things off in a minute. I will finish with a review from AllMusic. If Everything Must Go was the band adapting to life without Richey Edwards – and the tragedy and pain of the time -, they were starting to look forward on This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours:

“If Everything Must Go found Manic Street Preachers coping with Richey James' sudden, unexplained disappearance, its follow-up, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, finds them putting the tragedy behind them and flourishing as a trio. Wisely, the group builds on the grand sound of Everything Must Go, creating a strangely effective fusion of string-drenched, sweeping arena rock and impassioned, brutally honest punk. Since the band never writes about anything less than major issues, whether it be political or personal, it's appropriate that their music sounds as majestic and overpowering as their pretensions. Given that the first single was titled "If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next," calling the Manics pretentious is fair game, but they make their pretensions work through a blend of intelligence, passion, and sheer musicality. This Is My Truth sports more musical variety than its predecessors, which means it can meander a bit, particularly toward the end. Nevertheless, these misgivings disappear with repeated listens, as each song logically flows into the next.

 If the album ultimately isn't as raw or shattering as The Holy Bible or emotionally wrenching as Everything Must Go, it's because the ghost of Richey has been put behind them. That doesn't mean that This Is My Truth is light, easygoing listening -- the portentous, murky closer "SYMM" guarantees that -- but it's not as torturous as its immediate predecessors. But what it shares with them is a searing passion and intelligence that is unmatched among their peers on either side of the ocean -- and, in doing so, it emphasizes the Manics' uniqueness as one of the few bands of the '90s that can deliver albums as bracing intellectually as they are sonically”.

Although my early childhood years were so important regarding discovery and music coming into my life, my teenage years were formative. So many albums I bought at that time are in my life now. Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours is one that I have very fond memories of. I remember buying the album and also picking up the singles. If you are not aware of This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, it is definitely worth some of your time. For me, it was part of a very important phase of my life. I only need to play a song like You Stole the Sun from My Heart for a few moments and I am transported back…

TO a golden time.

FEATURE: Second Spin: The Police - Reggatta de Blanc

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

The Police - Reggatta de Blanc

___________

THIS is a Second Spin…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Policer in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Schultz

where I am featuring an album that was well-received and excellent, yet it does not get talked about as much as it should now – and some of the non-singles have been overlooked. The Police released five albums in their lifetime. With Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland in the line-up, you were always guaranteed of excellence! Maybe not their best-known and celebrated album, Reggatta de Blanc was released in October 1979. Following their impressive 1978 debut, Outlandos d'Amour, their follow-up is bigger and better. Aside from both titles having foreign titles, there are not huge similarities between the two. That is impressive given the short period of time between releases. Most people know the big tracks from Reggatta de Blanc: Message in a Bottle and Walking on the Moon. Although the album is a classic and it helped make The Police one of the finest and most important Post-Punk bands, there were some reviews that were mixed or unsure. Reggatta de Blanc definitely ranks alongside the best albums of the late-1970s. On The Police’s official website, they provide some notes and comments from the band for Reggatta de Blanc:

“LINER NOTES

A brief three months after their debut album 'Outlandos d'Amour' was released, The Police were back in Surrey Sound Studios recording tracks for their second album. This time there was a distinct air of confidence about the sessions. Whereas the debut was recorded piecemeal over six months or so, 'Reggatta de Blanc' came together very quickly, with the band actually cancelling two weeks of studio time that they did not require. Stewart Copeland recalled, "This time the material wasn't rehearsed but the band was. We knew each other's styles because we'd been playing together constantly for eight months, which we hadn't been doing when we recorded the first album. 'Reggatta' took us three weeks to record. We just went into the studio and said 'right, who's got the first song!'"

Sting was equally positive about the recording, "That was where it all clicked. There was so much happening in my writing and singing, Stewart's and Andy's playing, and suddenly it all meshed together. We had reggae influences in our vocabulary and they became synthesised into our infrastructure until it was utterly part of our sound and you couldn't really call it reggae anymore. It was just the way we played. I think 'Reggatta' was that moment for us."

A mere week after starting the session, the band were filmed at a one-off show at Hatfield Polytechinc for the BBC series 'Rock Goes To College', and they debuted a new song they were working on, 'Message in a Bottle'. Interrupting the recording for another tour of the States and a short UK tour the Police returned to Surrey Sound in August 1979 to complete the album before headlining the Reading Festival. 'Reggatta' was released in early October and certainly lived up to the expectations raised by the release of 'Message In A Bottle' a month previously, and stayed at the number one spot for four weeks. The band set off once more for the States before returning to the UK for a sell-out tour of major venues - Police fever had struck, and they were THE band of 1979.

Apart from a further three classic songs in the shape of 'Message In A Bottle', 'Walking On The Moon' and 'The Bed's Too Big Without You', the album featured several other strong tracks such as 'Bring On The Night', 'Deathwish' and several of Stewart Copeland's catchy, quirky tunes.

ARTIST COMMENTS

"We recorded our second album in much the same way as our first, even though we'd had some chart success with 'Roxanne' and 'Can't Stand Losing You' and a successful tour of the US under our belts. We used the same studio, although by now we could afford the day rate and brand-new multitrack tapes. I suppose we were a little superstitious about our good fortune and didn't want to change things too much."

"Lyrics", 10/07

"That was where it all clicked. There was so much happening in my writing and singing, Stewart's and Andy's playing, and suddenly it all meshed together. We had reggae influences in our vocabulary and they became synthesised into our infrastructure until it was utterly part of our sound and you couldn't really call it reggae anymore. It was just the way we played. That's the great thing about rock'n'roll. It bastardises everything, and I much prefer mongrels over pure races. As a musician, you learn your craft and emulate and copy people, and suddenly there's a moment in your development when you grow up and finally become yourself. I think 'Reggatta' was that moment for us. Then we got caught up in the whole business of becoming a "successful rock group" and almost lost it. We calmed down after that, but we had to work hard to get back into that serendipitous state again."

Musician, 6/83

"'Reggatta de Blanc' was actually a stage jam from the middle of 'Can't Stand Losing You' that eventually solidified into a new piece."

Stewart Copeland: Revolver, 4/00”.

Although the band are incredible and the production from Nigel Gray (and The Police) is excellent, Sting’s songwriting stepped up a gear. As this article highlights, he was developing into a hugely important scribe:

“Most pertinently, though, Regatta De Blanc underlined Sting’s rapidly-evolving prowess as a songwriter of significance. The singer-bassist demonstrated that he could blend infectious pop and militant reggae to near-perfection on live favorites “Bring On The Night” and “The Bed’s Too Big Without You,” but it was on the album’s twin peaks, “Message In A Bottle” and “Walking On The Moon,” that he really hit pay dirt.

Widely recognized as a high-water mark in their career, “Message In A Bottle” rewarded The Police with their first UK No.1 and remains a personal favorite of the band’s, with Andy Summers later remarking, “It’s still the best song Sting ever came up with and the best Police track.” The three musicians all put their stamp on the song, with Sting’s Robinson Crusoe-esque tale of loneliness and isolation aided and abetted by one of Summers’ most distinctive, cyclical riffs and some of Copeland’s most dynamic drumming.

Released after Regatta De Blanc had already topped the UK Charts, “Walking On The Moon” made it three in a row for The Police when it rose to No. 1 in November 1979. Though initially envisaged as a rocker, the song was later given a radically sparse, reggae-pop makeover starring Sting’s prominent bassline and Copeland’s dextrous drumming, ensuring the sonics (fittingly promoted by a video filmed at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center) captured the track’s gravity-defying subject matter to a T.

With Regatta De Blanc eclipsing heavyweights such as The Clash’s London Calling and The Jam’s Setting Sons in the UK charts, The Police entered 1980 as one of rock’s fastest-rising groups. Their superstars-in-waiting status was confirmed when they embarked on their first world tour and performed to capacity crowds in far-flung territories such as Mexico, India, Egypt, and Taiwan. By the time they released their multi-platinum third album, Zenyatta Mondatta, in October 1980, they’d become one of the biggest bands on the planet”.

I feel that, despite some positive reviews and kudos (Reggatta de Blanc is a definite classic), many people are not aware of the album. Not that many of its tracks (beyond the obvious hits) are played. It is a shame, as Reggatta de Blanc is a masterful work from a band growing stronger, tighter and more energised. In their review, this is what the BBC had to say:

“‘Message…’’ is not the only commercial triumph on the album. ‘’Walking On The Moon’ blends reggae beats with the frank and understated lyrics that the Police excel at. It also made it to number one.

More dub beats follow in ‘’The Bed's Too Big Without You’’ but this time with a more soporific affect. It brings the mellowness back into the album (and was later covered by reggae singer Sheila Hilton in 1981). It reminds you what it's like to miss a partner.

But the boys do break out from their reggae influences at times. What you get when you listen to the title track is a blur of world music - an indefinable wordless frenzy which just sounds like the boys having a blast and ends far too soon.

As ever, Sting’s lyrics run much deeper than they appear. His strangulated voice and the echoing guitars on ‘’Bring On The Night’’, epitomise one man’s desire to come to the end of his time. The line ‘The evening spreads itself against the sky’ is self-consciously taken from TS Eliot’s ‘’The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock’’, a poem which itself deals with frustration and alienation.

Three Copeland tracks ‘’Does Everyone Stare’’, ‘’Contact’’‘ and ‘’On Any Other Day’’ stand out for their discordance and black humour. The first two focus on the space that exists between individuals while the drummer himself takes over the vocals on "On Any Other Day" a humorous take on mid-life crisis.

Regatta de Blanc could only have come after Outlandos D’Amour. The production values are higher, more intricate and some of the music more grown up – incorporating world music and jazz influences as well as reggae and roots”.

Whilst not necessarily underrated, it is true that Reggatta de Blanc is not as celebrated and widely played as it should be. Compare it to other albums from The Police such as 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta or 1983’s Synchronicity (their final album), and Reggatta de Blanc is not quite as revered and dissected. I think everyone should listen to Reggatta de Blanc and spend some serious time with it. If The Police made better albums, I don’t think any were as important…

AS Reggatta de Blanc.

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 1989: Phil Sutcliffe (Q)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

1989: Phil Sutcliffe (Q)

___________

AS it was Kate Bush’s…

yesterday, I am doing more features about her than usual. In the latest part of the interview series, I have found one from Q from 1989. Thanks to this essential site - they are brilliant when it comes to highlighting Bush’s incredible interviews through the years. In future parts, I am keen to go back to 1982. Now, I am in a year when Bush released her sixth studio album, The Sensual World. It is a tremendous album. There were some great interviews conducted around the time. I feel Phil Sutcliffe’s interview is among the best. It is a deep interview that sort of guides us through Bush’s career. I am not going to bring in the whole thing. It is worth selecting quite a few sections:  

“Although signed at the tender age of 18, Kate Bush stoutly refused to be "the record company's daughter." She's quietly become her own manager, producer, publisher, and video director, retreating to the strife-free sanctuary of a home studio to agonise over her complex recordings and cautiously contemplate trips to the outside world. Phil Sutcliffe encounters "the shyest megalomaniac you're ever likely to meet".

"It felt like a mission," says Kate Bush. "Even before I'd had a record out I had a tremendous sense of conviction that my instincts were right. You know, *This is it!* There could be no other way.

"I remember so well sitting in an office at EMI with some very important people who were saying that James And The Cold Gun should be the first single. For me this was just *totally* wrong. How could it possibly be anything other than Wuthering Heights? But they were going, Defintely not. Look, you don't understand the market. So we went on saying the same things to one another for a few more minutes -- I was being politely insistent, I usually am in an argument, I'm not good at expressing anger, that's still hard for me.

"Then a guy called Terry Walker, another executive, came in with some papers in his hands and put them on the desk. He looked around, saw me and said, Oh hi Kate, loved the album! Wuthering Heights *definitely* the first single, eh? And he walked out again. If he hadn't come in at that moment, well, I don't know what would have happened. It was so well-timed it was almost as if I'd paid the guy to do it. They obviously thought of me as just a strong-willed girl, but they trusted his opinion."

After Wuthering Heights had spent four weeks at Number 1, these same execs -- most of whom, a contemporary recalls, had groaned "What is *that*?" when they first heard it wailing round the corporate corridors -- began to view this stubborn kid (all five feet three and seven stone of her) with a mixture of guarded respect and superstitious awe. Kate Bush was on her way to taking control of her working life and, as she puts it, becoming "the shyest megalomaniac you're ever likely to meet".

Constantly putting in 15-hour days, she stood up to it because she was in Olympic shape from her dance training. But the shows, two-and-a-half hours long with 17 costume changes, took her to unforgettable depths of fatigue -- such that the 28 nights in Britain and Europe remain the entire concert career of Kate Bush, give or take a Secret Policeman's Ball. "The idea is so unattractive when I think about what the tour took out of me," she says. "I haven't wanted to commit myself since." And, being the overreacher she is, she simply can't contemplate the straightforward band set that suffices for other pop stars.

It was the same with TV. Later that year she conceived a half-hour special for BBC2 with more elaborate set-pieces including a dramatised version of Roy Harper's Another Day with Peter Gabriel. But that was the last time she tried it.

Which left video as her only active visual medium. "They're so cliched and narcissistic," she says. "Most of what I've done makes me cringe, though I liked Army Dreamers, because it was a complete little film, not too grand and not clouding the issue. And Cloudbusting too (featuring Donald Sutherland and the rain-making machine). That's probably the best I've ever done. But Experiment IV was the first one I directed myself. I was so keen to do that because I actually knew I would be making a video while I wrote the song, so I was thinking visually from the start. But then it nearly killed me, the hours it took, directing and acting in it. Two weeks non-stop. It was too much for me..."

Perhaps it's only in the sound studio that she can truly encompass what she strives for. Once Novercia was set up it was clear that, before long, she would be producing herself and, after co-producing her 1980 album Never For Ever with Jon Kelly, the engineer on her first two albums, she was ready. Setting out on The Dreaming, she remarked with tact and a touch of steel that, "Jon wanted to keep working with me, but we discussed it and he realised that it was for the best."

This time round, apart from dancing and running, the panacea was the garden at the house she and Del moved into three years ago in Eltham, Southeast London (brother Jay and family live next door; her parents' home still only half an hour away). "I sometimes I think I might as well just be a brain and a big pair of ears on legs, stuck in front of a mixing desk," she says. "But when I took that break from The Sensual World I really got into gardening. I mean, it's literally a very down-to-earth thing, isn't it? Real air. Away from the artificial light. Very therapeutic."

Another renewable source of inspiration has been exotic instrumentation, usually provided by a visit to Dublin and various members of the staunchly traditional folk troupe, The Chieftains, or by turning to brother Paddy (who specialised in making medieval instruments at the London College of Furniture and will knock out the odd koto or strumento de porco as and when). But for The Sensual World she's leavened the Celtic skirl with a bit of Balkan. She first heard the Trio Bulgarka in '86 and was suitably astonished. A year later it dawned on her that their full-throated harmonies might suit her songs. Connections were made through Joe Boyd of Hannibal Records, their UK label, and Kate flew out to Sofia for an entrancing experience of world music.

"They couldn't speak a word of English and I couldn't speak a word of Bulgarian," she says. "Everything went through translators and it didn't matter at all. Lovely working with women, and especially them, they're very affectionate. We tended to communicate through cuddles rather than words. In fact, we could get on perfectly well without the translators. At one point we were talking away in the studio when the translator walked in and we all shut up because she'd suddenly made us self-conscious about what we were doing." The Trio can be heard on three tracks, including the strikingly unlikely setting of Deeper Understanding, a very modern-world song about an alienated woman and her relationship with her computer.

"This is definitely my most personal, honest album," she says. "And I think it's my most *feminine* album, in that I feel maybe I'm not trying to prove something in terms of a woman in a man's world -- God, here we go!" She seems to be wary of provoking a heavy debate about feminism. "On The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, particularly from a production standpoint, I wanted to get a lot more weight and power, which I felt was a very male attitude. In some cases it worked very well, but.. . perhaps this time I felt braver as a woman, not trying to do the things that men do in music."

The Fog is a brave song. It co-stars Kate's dad on spoken vocals intoning with fatherly/doctorly reassurance, "Just put your feet down child/'Cos you're all grown-up now".

"I started with the idea of a relationship in deep water and thought I could parallel that with learning to swim, the moment of letting go," she says. "When my dad was teaching me to swim he'd hold both my hands, then say, Now, let go. So I would, then he'd take two paces back and say, Right, swim to me, and I'd be, Oo-er, blub, blub, blerb. But I though it was such a beautiful image of the father and child, all wrapped up in the idea of really loving someone, but letting them go, because that's a part of real love, don't you think, the letting go?"

So it's personal about Kate and her father then. It sounds as though it might be personal about her and Del too.

"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She laughs, really amused by her professionally evasive reply. "Have you ever watched Woody Allen being interviewed? Obviously his films are very personal and when the interviewer asks him the 'Has this happened to you then?' question, he's all.. ." She cowers back into her chair, crosses and uncrosses her legs, thrashes about like a speared fish. "Then he'll say, Uh, well, no, I'm just acting out a role. It's ironic, but it's much easier to speak about very personal things to lots of people through a song, a poem or a film than it is to confront the world with them through someone asking questions. Maybe you worry because it's going to be indirectly reported."

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

Kate Bush leads a quiet, fairly limited life so her options on subject matter my be relatively restricted. Although she has ventured into political issues with Breathing (nuclear war) and The Dreaming (Aborigine rights), she generally declares her own ignorance and refrains from writing songs that would only prove it. But she will often borrow a story and make it her own -- from books (Wuthering Heights, obviously, and Cloudbusting, from Peter Reich's memoir of his father called A Book Of Dreams), TV (Pull Out The Pin was inspired by a documentary about the Viet Cong), or films (the idea for Get Out Of My House came from The Shining).

The Sensual World is a song that translates the old ache to a different level -- with the invaluable help of James Joyce. "I had a rhythm idea with a synth line I took home to work on one night," she says. "While I was playing it this repeated *Yes* came to me and made me think of Molly Bloom's speech right at the end of Ulysses -- which I *have* actually read all through! I went downstairs and read it again, this unending sentence punctuated with 'yeses', fantastic stuff, and it was uncanny, it fitted the rhythm of my song." (The last lines of Molly Bloom's great stream of consciousness read: "then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.")

Although to Kate "it felt like it was meant to happen", when she applied through "official channels" (presumably the Joyce estate) for permission to use it, she was refused. But she wasn't to be deflected. "I tried to write it like Joyce," she says, smiling in self-mockery. "The rhythm at least I wanted to keep. Obviously I couldn't do his style. It became a song about Molly Bloom, the character, stepping out of the page -- black and white, two-dimensional, you see -- and into the real world, the sensual world. Touching things." She declaims exaggeratedly. "The grass underfoot! The mountain air! I know it sounds corny, but it's about the whole sensual experience, this wonderfully human thing. . ."

And lines like "his spark took life in my hand"?

"Yes, it is rather saucy. But not nearly as sexy as James Joyce." She looks concerned again. "I'd be really worried -- there's nothing I can do about it now because it's all part of the process -- but I would be worried if people felt this ambiguity between sensual and sexual.

"I definitely *became* a person when I left school and suddenly took control of my life," she says. "I felt like that was the first time I'd really been there. Do you.. .? It was the beginning of my life really. 

"Now I think I get a tremendous amount of security from my work, through being able to write songs. Though perhaps I'm very insecure except when I'm working. There again I work so much.. . I'll have to think about this. I'll be thinking about it all day now. What I'm looking out for is to let go of being so damned obesessive about work that I just get sucked into it. It's important for me now for there to be some kind of, er, *lightness* about it.

"You know, it's only an album. That is what I keep saying to myself”.

There is a lot to love about the interview. There are a few short interviews around the time of The Sensual World’s release. Q ad Phil Sutcliffe were pretty thorough! Of course, all these years later, she did get the permission from the Joyce estate to use his words on The Sensual World’s title track – Bush renamed it Flower of the Mountain and included it on her 2011 album, Director’s Cut. I will continue with the interview series for as long as I can. I was keen to feature one from 1989, as I don’t think I have spent too much time with The Sensual World and what was happening with Kate Bush around that time. Go and read the full Q interview from 1989. As you will read, it is one that contains…

PLENTY of revelation.

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Fifty-Nine: Courtney Barnett

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

PHOTO CREDIT: Mia Mala McDonald 

Part Fifty-Nine: Courtney Barnett

___________

BEFORE looking at her upcoming album…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Gem Harris for Loud and Quiet

and some news about that, I wanted to look back at a few interviews Courtney Barnett has conducted through the years. The Sydney-born artist’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was released in 2015 (her double-E.P., A Sea of Split Peas, arrived in 2013). It was met with huge acclaim. Barnett released Lotta Sea Lice, a collaborative album with Kurt Vile, in 2017. Her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, was released in 2018. We are going to get the much-anticipated Things Take Time, Take Time is November. I am really looking forward to the album. Barnett’s style and consistency is something to treasure. She is humorous and conversational; also striking and urgent. There is so much to love about her songwriting. I do feel that she will be a massive artist in the future. An icon. At the moment, she is definitely a popular and much-loved artist - though I think the best is yet to come. The first interview I want to bring in is from Loud and Quiet. They interviewed Barnett way back in 2013. It is an interesting early interview where we get a glimpse into the career and mindset of a hugely promising young artist:

“Though I can’t see her face, Courtney seems to speak with a perpetual crease at the corner of her lips. It’s no exaggeration to say that I can, quite audibly, hear her smile as she chats about her new life as a rising star. “I got back from overseas like three days ago and I’ve just been catching up on work. After this I’m going to a party. I’ve got a friend sitting out in my garden. It’s my birthday tomorrow. So I’m just ready to – you know – have some fun.”

Having dismissed the idea of a record deal early on, Barnett took things into her own hands by creating Milk! Records. “I didn’t really think about it, to be honest, when I started it. I had no idea of the music industry and I just assumed that getting a record deal, in inverted commas, was quite a far-out concept, so I didn’t even consider it.” By distilling the notion down to its simplest form, it became clear that she could take on a lot of the work herself. “I was like, ‘Well, what is a record label?’ A record label is just a middle man to get your music to people.” Not only that, but she feels that if the music is reaching the people who care the most then her job is a successful one. “I was playing a shitload of gigs at the time and I prefer my music to go to people who are nice and enjoy the music, who come to the shows and tell me that they’re interested and they want to buy the CDs. I’d prefer for those people to buy the records than a hundred other random people who probably don’t give a shit. I was kind of going for quality over quantity and I figured I could just do that myself. It just kind of grew from there. I thought, ‘I can just do this. I can do my own artwork and post CDs out to people.’”

While she admittedly stumbled into the business, the 25-year-old isn’t content with releasing only her own music through the imprint. “We’ve got a few other bands at the moment and I reckon we’re gonna branch out and get a distribution deal or something. Which is something that I never even knew about before. We’re gonna keep the same general idea in progress.” She’s pretty confident in her roster and one of Barnett’s lyrics goes, “My friends play in bands / they are better than everything on radio.” I have to ask: are they? “Yeah, I reckon! I’ve got heaps of friends who play music and they’re great. It’s a very broad statement, but there’s lots of shit on the radio and there’s lots of bands who get famous because they have a lot of money. There’s also a lot of really great bands on the radio so whatever. But it’s a bit of a tongue in cheek comment saying that my friends make cool music as well”.

If you have not spent a lot of time with Courtney Barnett’s music, then set aside some. You can find her on Twitter and keep abreast of what is happening. I am keenly looking ahead to see where Barnett goes and just how big her career gets. We have a very special and talented artist who releases such incredible music.

The next piece that I want to source from is The Guardian’s interview of 2018. She talked about Tell Me How You Really Feel. As a gay artist, I am sure Barnett has (unfortunately) had to deal with a lot of homophobia on social media. She faced some nasty comments when she covered INXS for an Australian iPhone X campaign:

“It’s hard to imagine a more stellar trajectory than Barnett’s, but she has always been fame’s accidental tourist. Her 2016 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was a string of worry beads – about social disconnection, overthinking and neighbourly relations – that was nominated for a Grammy and a Brit, and won the Australian Music Prize and four Aria awards in her home country. “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” she warned in Pedestrian at Best – but that warning fell on deaf ears.

Despite her guarded nature, Barnett’s skill is in making even her most specific lyrics relatable. It’s unlikely that the audiences who saw her perform Depreston on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Tonight Show were familiar with the Melbourne suburb of Preston, yet she has tapped into a generation literate in depression and anxiety, as well as an older crowd reared on the fine-tuned melancholy of Lou Barlow and Kurt Cobain.

Barnett still sings with the baffled shrug of her previous record, but Tell Me How You Really Feel is a more intense album: take the kettle whistle at the beginning of Hopefulessness, which turns a domestic scene into an existential scream. Then there’s the song Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence. By way of explanation, she says: “When I’ve done shows and interviews, I’ve noticed myself doing that female thing, of trying to please people even when they say rude things, not speaking up for myself. Small things, which add up and manifest as a bigger self-hatred.”

Not long after the release of Nameless, Faceless, Apple rolled out its Australian iPhone X campaign, which set a video of people celebrating the country’s legalisation of gay marriage to Barnett’s cover of INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart. The YouTube clip received so much negativity that comments were disabled. Barnett says: “I really ummed and ahhed about it, but I did that [advert] because it’s such a mainstream company, just to shove it in people’s faces, and then I saw the most fucking homophobic comments on it”.

“Different is definitely the word, though you get the sense that it’s done little to change Barnett’s outlook. The path from bedroom crooner to internationally-renowned rockstar Barnett has mapped is one characterised by her freewheeling approach to songwriting, paired with an evident clarity of vision.

She's got two tonally distinct, critically acclaimed albums under her belt, the second of which, Tell Me How You Really Feel, she's still touring. And just last week her DIY label Milk! Records put out the new single by alt rock cornerstones Sleater-Kinney, produced by none other than St. Vincent”.

 

I want to stick with Tell Me How You Really Feel for a bit. It is her latest album, and one that took her to the attention of a whole new audience. Songs like Charity and Nameless, Faceless are gems from an album that is stuffed with incredible tracks. Barnett spoke with Skiddle in 2019. In addition to discussing how her songs change over time, we learn more about Barnett’s friendship with Sleater-Kinney:

“Well I became friends with the band a couple of years ago. I don't really remember how just… somehow.” she says, talking with a tone of both self-effacement and genuine warmth about her connection with Sleater-Kinney. “And yeah. We hung out a couple of times, and then Janet [Weiss] played drums with me and Kurt Vile on our tour. They've just kind of become friends, and so it was a real honour to release their new song and then the album on my little label. It's amazing.”

When I ask if she grew up on Sleater-Kinney and their contemporaries she pauses before saying no. “To be honest I didn't actually grow up with them. I didn't even know what DIY was,” she says. “It wasn't until my early 20s that I discovered this whole other world. If you remember that doco… documentary we call them docos - but yeah, that documentary about Kathleen Hanna. I watched that and I was like oh wow: Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, and so I started researching what riot grrrl was and all that stuff. I mean I was probably actually in my mid-20s. So like five years ago.”

It’s telling of her attitude that Barnett was emulating the staunch do-it-yourself principles of her peers way before she was even aware of them. With a handful of tracks, a loan from her grandmother, and a sketch of a milk bottle in hand, she ran the first 1000 CD pressing of her debut EP I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris way back in 2012.

Seven years later and she’s managed to maintain those principles, even as her records are distributed internationally. Such a scale of interaction has clearly afforded Barnett some consideration on how perception and time affect meaning, especially a year on from the release of Tell Me How You Really Feel.

“It's funny how much songs change over time. From writing them and then even from the first time I show them to people. Like when I first showed them to my band suddenly they meant something different with someone else listening to them,” she tells me. In much the same way, Barnett’s own vocal delivery has shifted over time, from the rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness rhythm of her debut, to the more measured cadence of her follow-up.

If Barnett views reading other people’s innermost confessions as voyeuristic, we wonder aloud if she herself feels like the subject of voyeurism. “Yeah for sure. I think as a songwriter you’re projected onto, and you kind of can’t fight it - that's part of the whole package. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I'm reading this Zadie Smith book of essays and she writes this essay about Joni Mitchell and how much she loves the album Blue and how as music lovers we have an idea of the artists that we love and they're forever kind of captured in that time and moment.”

This unique blend of self awareness and humility, wherein Barnett recognises her status as a figure of interest, but doesn’t overstate her worth, can’t help but be charming. Earlier, when discussing the art installations pieced together from her fan’s contributions she chuckles slightly, then says “It's a funny thing cos I didn't really... do much, because it's just everyone else's words.” As said in her breezily-tempered Aussie accent it’s sincere, even as it elides the sweeping impact her own words have had in cultivating such a wide-spanning and open discourse”.

I am going to bring things up to date soon. It is worth sourcing a review of Tell Me How You Really Feel. When they sat down with the album, this is what NME had to say:

“No-one’s born to hate – we learn it somewhere along the way.” This is the sombre note on which Australian slacker-queen Courtney Barnett begins her second album, amid heavy-hearted, Nirvana-indebted guitar. It’s a typically astute observation from a singer-songwriter who is carving a career out of them: Barnett’s speciality is picking meat off the bones to expose the emotional skeletons of life’s seemingly mundane happenings. Both her 2013 double-EP ‘A Sea Of Split Peas’ and 2015 debut album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit’ established her as funny and candid – and a cracking storyteller.

In 2016, she told NME that her follow-up would be “darker and more melancholy” and immediately, opener ‘Hopelessness’ strikes a change in vibe. Whereas those previous releases felt like a chat over a cuppa between mates, ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ feels more personal, like opening a window into Barnett’s mind, exposing her vulnerabilities and fears in the process.

PHOTO CREDIT: Christo Herriot 

Barnett has been open about her struggles with mental health – recently explaining to NME: “I’ve always had a melancholic feeling since I was a kid; I guess it just crept in” – and several songs deal with the repercussions of having anxiety as a constant presence in her life. The reflective ‘Need A Little Time’ and breezy ‘City Looks Pretty’ tackle the challenges that come with fame, including isolation: “Friends treat you like a stranger and strangers treat you like their best friend.” Insecurity rears its head over slouchy guitars on ‘Crippling Self Doubt And A General Lack Of Self Confidence’, which features Kim Deal on backing vocals, Barnett sighing: “I never feel as stupid as when I’m around you”.

Later, ‘Nameless, Faceless’ rages at modern misogyny, quoting Margaret Atwood: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them; women are afraid that men will kill them.” But it also takes on Internet trolls, who add to the sniping in Barnett’s head: “He said I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and spit out better words than you. Are you kidding yourself?”

‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ is Courtney Barnett at her angriest and most vulnerable, but being a drinker of details means she can also blow the beauty of life’s little things up to full-size. Closer ‘Sunday Roast’ is wonderfully smeared slacker ballad and an ode to cherishing friendship that sees Barnett carve out her heart and leave it open on the kitchen table. It’s that candid charm that may just make her the voice of her generation”.

Courtney Barnett had definite plans for 2020. Things have had to change with the pandemic. Even so, she has recorded an album. So many people are curious to hear what Things Take Time, Take Time sounds like and whether it is going to be similar to Tell Me How You Really Feel. Rolling Stone caught up with Barnett recently to chat about her third solo studio album:

“At the start of 2020, Courtney Barnett was looking forward to a year of open-ended songwriting, with just one proviso. “It’s important to remember to live and to experience and to have something real to write about,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview that January. “Not just to sit in a room and write an album for the sake of making an album.”

Barnett laughs when she’s reminded of that conversation now. “That’s funny,” the Australian singer-songwriter, 33, says on a call from her home in Melbourne. “Very ironic … Whether I liked it or not, that’s what the world gave us. It’s probably the most quiet year I’ve ever had.”

The album that she spent most of 2020 sitting in a room and writing is called Things Take Time, Take Time, and it will arrive this November 12th on Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. For fans of Barnett’s distinctive songwriting, it’s a rich reward, full of the sly observations on the peaks and valleys of everyday life that have made her one of the past decade’s most beloved indie artists. There are surprises in store, too: The 10 songs on the album shine in a newly revealing light, mostly stripped of the crunching rock-band sound that filled her first two solo LPs, and presented instead in a form that feels closer to the radical honesty of a solo bedroom tape. It just might be the most personal record yet from an artist who’s already given the world plenty of emotional truth.

Barnett describes Things Take Time, Take Time as an album about finding “some sort of joy and gratitude, out of some sort of pain and sadness” — a new morning after a dark night. “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To,” a bright, jangly highlight of the new LP, is a good example of what she means.

She’d begun writing new songs shortly after the spring 2018 release of her second solo album, the turbulent Tell Me How You Really Feel, but ended up discarding most of them after a while. “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To” was one of the first songs she kept. It arrived toward the end of 2019, at a time when she was feeling deeply distraught for reasons that included a devastating bushfire season in Australia.

“I was just really sad,” she recalls. “I was in a really dark place, and a friend told me … They didn’t know how to help me. They said, ‘Why don’t you try to write a list of positive things in your life that you’re looking forward to?’ At the time, I was like, ‘Nothing. There’s nothing I’m looking forward to.’”

 Her friend kept pushing, and eventually Barnett came up with enough items to fill “like, 25 verses,” which she later pared down to the two-minute-plus mini-anthem that appears on Things Take Time, Take Time. “Sit beside me, watch the world burn,” she sings over upbeat chords. “I love that the song feels so fun,” Barnett says. “It sounds like you’re driving across a highway and it’s sunny. I love the juxtaposition of those things.”

She went on to play a pair of bushfire relief fundraisers in the early weeks of 2020, then flew to the U.S. for a short solo tour that ended with a benefit show in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day. By the time she got back to Melbourne, the new threat of Covid meant that she had to self-quarantine. Without anywhere of her own to stay, she crashed at a friend’s empty apartment. “I ended up staying there for the whole year,” she says. “It was this amazing little flat, and it had these beautiful big windows and big light. I was really lucky to get that place”.

I shall leave things there. After the release of her third solo album, I hope Barnett get chance to showcase the songs. Keep an eye on her social media channels for news regarding dates. A compelling and inspiring musician, Courtney Barnett is definitely someone who is going to influence many other artists. I think there are a lot of artists who take a lead from Barnett. She is one of the most interesting songwriters around. With Sydney’s Courtney Barnett, we have…

A seriously amazing musician.

FEATURE: Physical Attraction: The Continuing Popularity and Place of Vinyl

FEATURE:

 

 

Physical Attraction

PHOTO CREDIT: Sean Benesh/Unsplash

The Continuing Popularity and Place of Vinyl

___________

EVEN though I have…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @rocinante_11/Unsplash

covered this subject a fair few times through the years, it is worth coming back to. Whilst vinyl and physical sales are not as booming as would like – the pandemic has made that difficult -, sales are doing really well. Streaming is still what many of us are relying on in terms of our music - though there are signs to suggest that there will always be a place for vinyl and other physical formats. I am not sure whether one single reason can be given to the continued stability and popularity of vinyl. Maybe people feel that streaming services are not treating artists fairly. Many prefer the physical experience of vinyl – compact discs are also being bought still, though not as much as vinyl. Music Week reports how, despite some albums being held back and release schedules being disrupted, there is some good news:

“This time last year, the music business was still in uncertain territory as release plans were scrapped and campaigns had to be transformed.

But 16 months on from the onset of the pandemic, for the first time we now have the sales and streaming data to compare one Covid quarter with another. And the results suggest that UK record labels (and their retail partners) have successfully adapted to the uncertainty and restrictions”.

Let’s hope that, as things start to get more stable and record shops are welcoming more people in, we see a lot more vinyl sales! There was a time during the pandemic where many shops were struggling to survive and there was a feeling that they may go out of business. Many are still implementing social distancing, so things are not completely back to normal quite yet.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Nada Hanifah/Unsplash

I have heard positive news from articles relating to U.K. sales. Things have been doing well in the U.S. this year. DJ magazine told how sales are heading in the right direction, despite the pandemic being a big factor there:

“19.2 million vinyl albums were sold in the US in the first six months of 2021, a 108% increase on the same period of last year.

The figure is significantly higher than the 9.2 million vinyl LPs that were sold in the first six months of 2020, and part of an ongoing trend that has seen vinyl make a huge resurgence in recent years. 

Vinyl album sales also just outedged the sale of CD albums, which sat at 18.9 million for the first six months of 2021, according to MRC Data, an analytics firm that specialises in collecting data from the entertainment and music industries. It follows on from vinyl surpassing the annual revenue of CDs in the US last year for the first time in 34 years, which was the first time that had happened in 34 years.

The increase in music consumption isn't just limited to physical sales, with audio streaming up by 15% in the first half of this year.

The top-selling vinyl albums at the midpoint of the year are Taylor Swift’s 'Evermore', Harry Styles’ 'Fine Line', Kendrick Lamar’s 'Good Kid M.A.A.D. City' and Billie Eilish’s 'When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?'”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Karsten Winegeart/Unsplash

Here in the U.K., sales were pretty good earlier in the year. Shops reopening and welcoming people in has made a clear difference (online sales would have contributed):

“Vinyl sales were up 16.1% compared to the first three months of 2020, with a total of 1,080,653 records sold.

With the UK’s third national lockdown having started in early January, the increase in sales relates to a wider trend from 2020 that saw both new and second-hand vinyl sales increase during lockdowns. Discogs reported a strong jump in sales during the first lockdown in March 2020.

The numbers also reflect a more general increase of vinyl sales, with UK sales reaching a record high of 4.8 million records sold during 2020 — all of which bolsters the British Phonographic Industry prediction that record labels will earn more from the sales of vinyl than CDs in 2021 for the first time since 1987.

The re-opening of non-essential shops on the 12th April also seems likely to have an impact on this year’s vinyl sales, with HMV recording over twice the number of visitors on its re-opening weekend compared to the weekend after the lifting of the first lockdown in 2020, as The Guardian reports”.

Discovering that the upward trend has continued, and we are seeing people either order vinyl and physical music online, is giving energy and hope to the industry. Streaming will always be important…but many are not placing convenience and lower costs over the experience one can only get from physical music. If things improve in terms of the pandemic and stores can relax social distancing measures further – or customers feel safe doing so -, there will be another wave of sales. For someone like me who was raised on physical music, it is amazing and encouraging to see people sticking with it! From diehards and those who have always loved physical music, to younger buyers wanting to see more money go to artists (or simply feel like they are connected too the music being made), this latest positive news…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @guillaume_t/Unsplash

IS just what we need.

FEATURE: Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure: Ricky Martin - Livin' la Vida Loca

FEATURE:

 

 

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

Ricky Martin - Livin' la Vida Loca

___________

I am sticking with…

a similar themes and time period to recent outings of this feature. I am going to cover another genre and time period next week. I always say that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure song - though some feel that there is. I have seen Ricky Martin’s smash, Livin' la Vida Loca, appear on some lists of guilty pleasure songs (including this one). Released on 23rd March, 1999, the track was the first single from Ricky Martin’s eponymous album. Written and produced by Robi Rosa and Desmond Child, it is a song that was a big part of my school life. In 1999, I was taking my GCSEs and there were songs from that time that soundtracked the process and eventual results. Martin’s chart-topping mega-hit is one you cannot knock or be embarrassed for liking – such is its catchiness, infectiousness and power! Livin' la Vida Loca is a track that opened doors for Latin artists. He was one of the (if not the first) crossover star who could combine Latin elements with something more mainstream. For me, Livin' la Vida Loca is one of the catchiest and most compelling Latin-Pop songs ever. Music Tales looked at the song this year and asked why it is so catchy:

“Livin' la Vida Loca is likely one of the best-known tracks in the entire repertoire of the Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Ricky Martin. The song not only sparked his career but also predetermined the success of other Spanish-speaking Latin pop artists in their transition to the English-speaking market.

The song title can be translated from Spanish as living "the crazy life," while the unpretentious English lyrics briefly—and not without humor—describe a stormy romance against the backdrop of a vibrant nightlife. Neither a standard music video nor a completely ordinary arrangement can be the sole reason behind the overwhelming success of the track in the 2000s and its ubiquitous presence at dance parties around the globe. So what was exactly the reason behind such widespread popularity that elevated Livin 'la Vida Loca to its iconic status in the history of pop music.

A sufficient explanation for the high popularity of Livin' la Vida Loca can be found in its harmonic structure as well as its developed musical form, both of which sustain this signature pulsation so necessary for dance hits. The song was written by the leading Latin music producer Draco Rosa in collaboration with Desmond Child, a prolific songwriter who has penned a number of hits for artists like Kiss, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Cher, and Alice Cooper.

Structurally, Livin' la Vida Loca is composed of three sections, and its harmonic progressions follow the mold of classical theory, namely the C♯m natural minor mode. In the harmonic analysis of the song's chord chains, the scale degrees (denoted with Roman numerals) show the following progressions:

C♯m–G♯–C♯m–B–C♯m or i–V–i–VII–i for verses

C♯m–F♯m–G♯m–A–B–G♯ or i–iv–v–VI–VII–V for bridges

C♯m–B–C♯m or i–VII–i for choruses

The bridges highlight a very energetic movement of the chords showing a stepwise progression from the fourth to the seventh scale degrees and ending with the G♯ major dominant chord. This creates a powerful transition to the chorus which consists of just two triads, making it that much catchier. It is noteworthy that the G♯ major chord, appearing in the verses and bridges, does not belong to the natural minor mode but here it is a manifestation of the harmonic minor scale. This technique is often used in classical cadences to heighten the anticipation of a tonic chord”.

It is a pity that some people distance themselves from Ricky Martin or feel that Livin' la Vida Loca is a song that is not one to shout about. It is brilliant performed and insatiable! In terms of what it achieved in the 1990, it did create this Latin wave. Artists like Jennifer Lopez were following in Martin’s footsteps. Wikipedia collated the critical reaction to one of the biggest songs of the ‘90s:

“Livin' la Vida Loca" has been met with widely positive reviews from music critics. Chuck Taylor from Billboard applauded the song, saying it is "so electrifying, so terrifically filled with life, that even folks at the retirement home down the street could get their groove on with couple spins", and described the song as a "frantically-paced, dance-ready track." Also from Billboard, Leila Cobo ranked it as the best track of Ricky Martin (1999), calling it "Awesome". She questions, "Was there a person alive in 1999 whose jaw literally did not drop when they saw Ricky Martin strut and swivel in the video to the song whose title would come to exemplify an era and a lifestyle?" In another article, she labeled it "an irresistible invitation to dance". Also from the same magazine, Harley Brown wrote, "No matter what language it was in, 'La Vida Loca' was a bona fide hit." In addition, Billboard staff praised the single, saying: "The big horns, the seductive bass, the debauchery in the lyrics, and Ricky Martin shaking his bon-bon: how could anyone resist this late '90s anthem penned by Robi Draco Rosa and Desmond Child?" Multiple sources have named "Livin' la Vida Loca" a "mega-hit", including The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Entertainment Tonight. Liz Calvario‍ from Entertainment Tonight complimented the track, saying it is "part of pop culture history".

Martin was featured on the cover of Interview magazine in June 1999 because of the popularity of the song. In the featured article, he was interviewed by his friend Gloria Estefan about the rising wave of Latin music. Agustin Gurza from Los Angeles Times celebrated the song, labeling it "a sensual smash hit that came to symbolize the frenzied cultural breakthrough of a long-marginalized minority". Writing for LiveAbout, Bill Lamb gave the song a positive review, saying: "It's irresistibly sexy and nearly impossible to listen to without moving the body." In her review for O, The Oprah Magazine, Amanda Mitchell ranked the track as Martin's second-best song on her 2019 list, and Aishwarya Rai from Republic TV named it Martin's greatest hit. Brittany Berkowitz and Elisa Tang from Good Morning America described "Livin' la Vida Loca" as an "epic dance song", and Katrina Rees from CelebMix described it as infinitely infectious. Metro Weekly's Randy Shulman complimented the track, labeling it "a song with an infectious hook and a sexy, growling delivery". Alejandra Torres from ¡Hola! named its chorus "the greatest chorus of all time". Rafly G. from TheThings called the song "an iconic piece of art". Greg Kot from Chicago Tribune described it as "the year's most ubiquitous hit single" and wrote: "It's the kind of tune that defines the word 'pop': a jolt of instant caffeine, with its fizzy combination of surf guitar, Latin percussion and strutting horns." He also acclaimed its "canny, genre-leaping arrangement, eye-popping production, and Latin-lover lyrics".

I wanted to highlight a song that is certainly not a guilty pleasure! One can play the song and feel lifted and hooked. It was like nothing I had heard. Coming into the world like an explosion in 1999, it certainly ended the decade with a real kick! One of the key releases from the history of Latin Pop, Livin' la Vida Loca is a track that helped create opportunities for a lot of other artists. For that reason alone (and many others) Livin' la Vida Loca deserves…

A lot of respect.

FEATURE: The July Playlist: Vol. 5: Then Life Was Beautiful When I Started Getting Older

FEATURE:

 

 

The July Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish/PHOTO CREDIT: Yana Yatsuk for Rolling Stone 

Vol. 5: Then Life Was Beautiful When I Started Getting Older

__________

THIS weekly Playlist…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Amyl and The Sniffers

is fronted and starring new music from Billie Eilish. She released her second studio album, Happier Than Ever, today. Alongside new music from her are tracks from Nao, Amyl and The Sniffers, Bruno Mars/Anderson .Paak/Silk Sonic, L Devine, Angel Olsen, Poppy, LUMP, Natasha Bedingfield, Yola, Saint Etienne, Sleigh Bells, and Jungle. It is a busy and exciting playlist that should give you the energy and kick to get you into the weekend! Make sure that you check out the songs below. There is some good variation in the mix. If you require a boost to get you up and ready, then the tracks here should do the trick. These crackers should definitely…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Angel Olsen/PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe

GET you moving! 

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

__________

PHOTO CREDIT: Yana Yatsuk for Rolling Stone 

Billie Eilish – Getting Older

Nao - And Then Life Was Beautiful 

Amyl and The Sniffers – Security 

Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic – Skate

PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe

Angel Olsen - Safety Dance 

Dermot Kennedy – Better Days

Banoffee – Idiot 

L Devine – Priorities 

Poppy – Flux

Jungle – Truth 

Dry Cleaning - Bug Eggs 

Saint Etienne - Pond House 

Steps – Take Me for a Ride

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins

LUMP - Gamma Ray 

Anna Prior - Thank You for Nothing

Sleigh Bells - Locust Laced

PHOTO CREDIT: Rahim Fortune for Vogue

Yola – Dancing Away in Tears

Mark Ronson – Show Me

Natasha Bedingfield - Adorable

PHOTO CREDIT: Owen Harvey/The Observer

Porridge Radio – New Slang

Lauran Hibberd - You Never Looked So Cool

Ada Lea – damn 

Zuzu – My Old Life

Hot Milk – I Think I Hate Myself

NEDA – Good Intentions

The Family Rain – Head in a Hornet’s Rain

Olivia Dean – Cross My Mind

Tyga – Mrs. Bubblegum

Matilda Mann – February

Amber Run – I’m Tired

TOKiMONSTA, Channel Tres - Naked

Lauren Faith – Falls Right Down

Au/ra – Screw Feelings

Stella Mwangi – Naughty

Leith – Love Vibes

PHOTO CREDIT: Fryd Frydendahl

MØ - Kindness

 

Emilia Tarrant – If Love Is a Gun

PHOTO CREDIT: Elizaveta Porodina

Zella Day – Golden

PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Rose

Skepta (ft. J Balvin) - Nirvana

Katelyn Tarver - Shit Happens

19. King of the Mountain

Released: 24th October, 2005

B-Side: Sexual Healing

Chart Position: 4

From the Album: Aerial (2005)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on 24 October 2005 as the first and only single from her eighth studio album Aerial. The song was first played on 21 September 2005 on BBC Radio 2. The song was written ten years prior to most songs on the album.

Formats

'King Of The Mountain' was released as a CD-single, a picture disc 7" single and digital download. All formats came with an extra track: Sexual Healing.

Versions

There is only one official version of 'King Of The Mountain': the album version, which was also released as a single. However, there are a few unofficial remixes of the track, all issued in 2005 on bootleg 12" singles.

A live version appears on the album Before The Dawn.

Music video

The music video was first aired on UK's Channel 4 on 15 October 2005. It was directed by Jimmy Murakami, produced by Michael Algar, edited at The Farm (Dublin) by Hugh Chaloner with flame and 3D effects by Niall O hOisin, Arron Inglis, Brian O'Durnin and Mark from Australia” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

18. Moments of Pleasure

Released: 15th November, 1993

B-Sides: Moments of Pleasure (Instrumental)/Home for Christmas/Show a Little Devotion/December Will Be Magic Again/Experiment IV

Chart Position: 26

From the Album: The Red Shoes (1993)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“I think the problem is that during [the recording of] that album there were a lot of unhappy things going on in my life, but when the songs were written none of that had really happened yet. I think a lot of people presume that particularly that song was written after my mother had died for instance, which wasn't so at all. There's a line in there that mentions a phrase that she used to say, 'every old sock meets an old shoe', and when I recorded it and played it to her she just thought it was hilarious! She couldn't stop laughing, she just thought it was so funny that I'd put it into this song. So I don't see it as a sad song. I think there's a sort of reflective quality, but I guess I think of it more as a celebration of life. (Interview with Ken Bruce, BBC Radio 2, 9 May 2011)

 I wasn't really quite sure how "Moments of Pleasure" was going to come together, so I just sat down and tried to play it again-- I hadn't played it for about 20 years. I immediately wanted to get a sense of the fact that it was more of a narrative now than the original version; getting rid of the chorus sections somehow made it more of a narrative than a straightforward song. (Ryan Dombai, 'Kate Bush: The elusive art-rock originator on her time-travelling new LP, Director's Cut'. Pitchfork, May 16, 2011)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

17. The Sensual World

Released: 18th September, 1989

B-Sides: Walk Straight Down the Middle/The Sensual World (instrumental)

Chart Position: 12

From the Album: The Sensual World (1989)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Because I couldn't get permission to use a piece of Joyce it gradually turned into the song about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the impressions of sensuality. Rather than being in this two-dimensional world, she's free, let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is. (...) In the original piece, it's just 'Yes' - a very interesting way of leading you in. It pulls you into the piece by the continual acceptance of all these sensual things: 'Ooh wonderful!' I was thinking I'd never write anything as obviously sensual as the original piece, but when I had to rewrite the words, I was trapped. How could you recreate that mood without going into that level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before I'd said I'd never write. I have to think of it in terms of pastiche, and not that it's me so much. (Len Brown, 'In The Realm Of The Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)

 The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world - the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual - you know... the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand - the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that's an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I'm sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (...) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary - such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the book Ulysses by James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn't get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time - probably about a year - and they wouldn't let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that's why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us. (Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

16. Rocket Man

Released: 2nd December, 1991

B-Side: Candle in the Wind

Chart Position: 12

From the Album: Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin (1991)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“From the age of 11, Elton John was my biggest hero. I loved his music, had all his albums and I hoped one day I'd play the piano like him (I still do). When I asked to be involved in this project and was given the choice of a track it was like being asked 'would you like to fulfill a dream? would you like to be Rocket Man?'... yes, I would. (Two Rooms liner notes, 1991)

I was really knocked out to be asked to be involved with this project, because I was such a big fan of Elton's when I was little. I really loved his stuff. It's like he's my biggest hero, really. And when I was just starting to write songs, he was the only songwriter I knew of that played the piano and sang and wrote songs. So he was very much my idol, and one of my favourite songs of his was 'Rocket Man'. Now, if I had known then that I would have been asked to be involved in this project, I would have just died… They basically said, 'Would we like to be involved?' I could choose which track I wanted… 'Rocket Man' was my favourite. And I hoped it hadn't gone, actually – I hoped no one else was going to do it… I actually haven't heard the original for a very long time. 'A long, long time' (laughs). It was just that I wanted to do it differently. I do think that if you cover records, you should try and make them different. It's like remaking movies: you've got to try and give it something that makes it worth re-releasing. And the reggae treatment just seemed to happen, really. I just tried to put the chords together on the piano, and it just seemed to want to take off in the choruses. So we gave it the reggae treatment. It's even more extraordinary (that the song was a hit) because we actually recorded the track over two years ago. Probably just after my last telly appearance. We were quite astounded when they wanted to release it as a single just recently. (BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 December 1991)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

15. December Will Be Magic Again

Released: 17th November, 1980

B-Side: Warm and Soothing

Chart Position: 29

From the Album: Non-Album Single

Producers: Jon Kelly/Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Song written by Kate Bush. The song was originally recorded in 1979 and premiered during the Christmas Special in December 1979, but it was not officially released until 17 November 1980, when 'December Will Be Magic Again' was issued as the follow-up to Army Dreamers.

Versions

In addition to the studio version on the single release, another very different cut exists with bongos and slide whistles on the rhythm track. This version has only been released on Christmas compilation CD's” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

14. Rubberband Girl

Released: 6th September, 1993

B-Side: Big Stripey Lie

Chart Position: 12

From the Album: The Red Shoes (1993)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released as a single by EMI Records in the UK on 6 September 1993. Also released on her seventh album The Red Shoes. The song was subsequently also released as a single in the USA, on 7 December 1993.

Formats

'Rubberband Girl' was released in the UK as a 7" single, a 12" single picture disc, a cassette single and a CD-single. In the USA, the single appeared on CD only. A cassette single was also released in Canada.

All formats feature the lead track and the B-side Big Stripey Lie. On the 12" single and some CD-singles, an extended mix of Rubberband Girl appeared. in the USA, the B-side was Show A Little Devotion instead of Big Stripey Lie” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

13. This Woman’s Work

Released: 20th November, 1989

B-Sides: Be Kind to My Mistakes/I'm Still Waiting

Chart Position: 25

From the Album: The Sensual World (1989)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“John Hughes, the American film director, had just made this film called 'She's Having A Baby', and he had a scene in the film that he wanted a song to go with. And the film's very light: it's a lovely comedy. His films are very human, and it's just about this young guy - falls in love with a girl, marries her. He's still very much a kid. She gets pregnant, and it's all still very light and child-like until she's just about to have the baby and the nurse comes up to him and says it's a in a breech position and they don't know what the situation will be. So, while she's in the operating room, he has so sit and wait in the waiting room and it's a very powerful piece of film where he's just sitting, thinking; and this is actually the moment in the film where he has to grow up. He has no choice. There he is, he's not a kid any more; you can see he's in a very grown-up situation. And he starts, in his head, going back to the times they were together. There are clips of film of them laughing together and doing up their flat and all this kind of thing. And it was such a powerful visual: it's one of the quickest songs I've ever written. It was so easy to write. We had the piece of footage on video, so we plugged it up so that I could actually watch the monitor while I was sitting at the piano and I just wrote the song to these visuals. It was almost a matter of telling the story, and it was a lovely thing to do: I really enjoyed doing it. (Roger Scott Interview, BBC Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)

 That's the sequence I had to write the song about, and it's really very moving, him in the waiting room, having flashbacks of his wife and him going for walks, decorating... It's exploring his sadness and guilt: suddenly it's the point where he has to grow up. He'd been such a wally up to this point. (Len Brown, 'In The Realm Of The Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

12. Experiment IV

Released: 27th October, 1986

B-Sides: Wuthering Heights (New Vocal)/December Will Be Magic Again

Chart Position: 23

From the Album: The Whole Story (1986)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“This was written as an extra track for the compilation album The Whole Story and was released as the single. I was excited at the opportunity of directing the video and not having to appear in it other than in a minor role, especially as this song told a story that could be challenging to tell visually. I chose to film it in a very handsome old military hospital that was derelict at the time. It was a huge, labyrinthine hospital with incredibly long corridors, which was one reason for choosing it. Florence Nightingale had been involved in the design of the hospital. Not something she is well known for but she actually had a huge impact on hospital design that was pioneering and changed the way hospitals were designed from then on.

The video was an intense project and not a comfortable shoot, as you can imagine - a giant of a building, damp and full of shadows with no lighting or heating but it was like a dream to work with such a talented crew and cast with Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughn and Richard Vernon in the starring roles. It was a strange and eerie feeling bringing parts of the hospital to life again. Not long after our work there it was converted into luxury apartments. I can imagine that some of those glamorous rooms have uninvited soldiers and nurses dropping by for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

We had to create a recording studio for the video, so tape machines and outboard gear were recruited from my recording studio and the mixing console was very kindly lent to us by Abbey Road Studios. It was the desk the Beatles had used - me too, when we’d made the album Never For Ever in Studio Two. It was such a characterful desk that would’ve looked right at home in any vintage aircraft. Although it was a tough shoot it was a lot of fun and everyone worked so hard for such long hours. I was really pleased with the result. (KateBush.com, February 2019)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

11. Wow

Released: 9th March, 1979

B-Side: Full House

Chart Position: 14

From the Album: Lionheart (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell (assisted by Kate Bush)

Song Info:

“I've really enjoyed recording 'Wow'. I'm very, very pleased with my vocal performance on that, because we did it a few times, and although it was all in tune and it was okay, there was just something missing. And we went back and did it again and it just happened, and I've really pleased with that, it was very satisfying. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)

 'Wow' is a song about the music business, not just rock music but show business in general, including acting and theatre. People say that the music business is about ripoffs, the rat race, competition, strain, people trying to cut you down, and so on, and though that's all there, there's also the magic. It was sparked off when I sat down to try and write a Pink Floyd song, something spacey; Though I'm not surprised no-one has picked that up, it's not really recognisable as that, in the same way as people haven't noticed that 'Kite' is a Bob Marley song, and 'Don't Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake' is a Patti Smith song. When I wrote it I didn't envisage performing it - the performance when it happened was an interpretation of the words I'd already written. I first made up the visuals in a hotel room in New Zealand, when I had half an hour to make up a routine and prepare for a TV show. I sat down and listened to the song through once, and the whirling seemed to fit the music. Those who were at the last concert of the tour at Hammersmith must have noticed a frogman appear through the dry ice it was one of the crew's many last night 'pranks' and was really amazing. I'd have liked to have had it in every show. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Summer 1979)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

10. Breathing

Released: 14th April, 1980

B-Side: The Empty Bullring

Chart Position: 16

From the Album: Never for Ever (1980)

Producers: Jon Kelly/Kate Bush

Song Info:

“It's about a baby still in the mother's womb at the time of a nuclear fallout, but it's more of a spiritual being. It has all its senses: sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing, and it knows what is going on outside the mother's womb, and yet it wants desperately to carry on living, as we all do of course. Nuclear fallout is something we're all aware of, and worried about happening in our lives, and it's something we should all take time to think about. We're all innocent, none of us deserve to be blown up. (Deanne Pearson, 'The Me Inside'. Smash Hits (UK), May 1980)

 When I wrote the song, it was from such a personal viewpoint. It was just through having heard a thing for years without it ever having got through to me. 'Til the moment it hit me, I hadn't really been moved. Then I suddenly realised the whole devastation and disgusting arrogance of it all. Trying to destroy something that we've not created - the earth. The only thing we are is a breathing mechanism: everything is breathing. Without it we're just nothing. All we've got is our lives, and I was worried that when people heard it they were going to think, 'She's exploiting commercially this terribly real thing.' I was very worried that people weren't going to take me from my emotional standpoint rather than the commercial one. But they did, which is great. I was worried that people wouldn't want to worry about it because it's so real. I was also worried that it was too negative, but I do feel that there is hope in the whole thing, just for the fact that it's a message from the future. It's not from now, it's from a spirit that may exist in the future, a non-existent spiritual embryo who sees all and who's been round time and time again so they know what the world's all about. This time they don't want to come out, because they know they're not going to live. It's almost like the mother's stomach is a big window that's like a cinema screen, and they're seeing all this terrible chaos. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), 1980)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

9. Cloudbusting

Released: 14th October, 1985

B-Sides: Burning Bridge/My Lagan Love/The Man with the Child in His Eyes/Sat in Your Lap

Chart Position: 20

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“This was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a 'cloudbuster'; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy - as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then - and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn't allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It's a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo - how special it was - and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there's nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it's very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child's eyes, but told by a sad adult. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

8. Army Dreamers

Released: 22nd September, 1980

B-Sides: Delius/Passing Through Air

Chart Position: 16

From the Album: Never for Ever (1980)

Producers: Jon Kelly/Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Army Dreamers' is about a grieving mother who through the death of her soldier boy, questions her motherhood. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

 It's the first song I've ever written in the studio. It's not specifically about Ireland, it's just putting the case of a mother in these circumstances, how incredibly sad it is for her. How she feels she should have been able to prevent it. If she'd bought him a guitar when he asked for one. (Colin Irwin, 'Paranoia And Passion Of The Kate Inside'. Melody Maker (UK), 10 October 1980)

 The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action - it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream. (Week-long diary, Flexipop, 1980)

 No, it's not personal. It's just a mother grieving and observing the waste. A boy with no O-levels, say, who might have [??? Line missing!] whatever. But he's nothing to do, no way to express himself. So he joins the army. He's trapped. So many die, often in accidents. I'm not slagging off the army, because it's good for certain people. But there are a lot of people in it who shouldn't be. (Derek Jewell, 'How To Write Songs And Influence People'. Sunday Times (UK), 5 October 1980)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

7. Hounds of Love

Released: 24th February, 1986

B-Sides: The Handsome Cabin Boy/Jig of Life/Burning Bridge/My Lagan Love

Chart Position: 18

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“The ideas for 'Hounds Of Love', the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it's very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you've got to run away from it or you won't survive. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985)

 When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought 'Hounds Of Love' and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna... when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of... being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)

 In the song 'Hounds Of Love', what do you mean by the line 'I'll be two steps on the water', other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why 'two' steps?

Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think "two steps" suggests that you intend to go forward.

But why not "three steps"?

It could have been three steps - it could have been ten, but "two steps" sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

6. Sat in Your Lap

Released: 22nd June, 1981

B-Side: Lord of the Reedy River

Chart Position: 11

From the Album: The Dreaming (1982)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“I already had the piano patterns, but they didn't turn into a song until the night after I'd been to see a Stevie Wonder gig. Inspired by the feeling of his music, I set a rhythm on the Roland and worked in the piano riff to the high-hat and snare. I now had a verse and a tune to go over it but only a few lyrics like "I see the people working", "I want to be a lawyer,'' and "I want to be a scholar,'' so the rest of the lyrics became "na-na-na"' or words that happened to come into my head. I had some chords for the chorus with the idea of a vocal being ad-libbed later. The rhythm box and piano were put down, and then we recorded the backing vocals. "Some say that knowledge is...'' Next we put down the lead vocal in the verses and spent a few minutes getting some lines worked out before recording the chorus voice. I saw this vocal being sung from high on a hill on a windy day. The fool on the hill, the king of the castle... "I must admit, just when I think I'm king."

The idea of the demos was to try and put everything down as quickly as possible. Next came the brass. The CS80 is still my favourite synthesizer next to the Fairlight, and as it was all that was available at the time, I started to find a brass sound. In minutes I found a brass section starting to happen, and I worked out an arrangement. We put the brass down and we were ready to mix the demo.

I was never to get that CS80 brass to sound the same again - it's always the way. At The Townhouse the same approach was taken to record the master of the track. We put down a track of the rhythm box to be replaced by drums, recording the piano at the same time. As I was producing, I would ask the engineer to put the piano sound on tape so I could refer to that for required changes. This was the quickest of all the tracks to be completed, and was also one of the few songs to remain contained on one twenty-four track tape instead of two! (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

5. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)

Released: 5th August, 1985

B-Side: Under the Ivy

Chart Position: 3

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“This song is very much about two people who are in love, and how the power of love is almost too big for them. It leaves them very insecure and in fear of losing each other. It's also perhaps talking about some fundamental differences between men and women. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)

 It is very much about the power of love, and the strength that is created between two people when they're very much in love, but the strength can also be threatening, violent, dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving. And it's saying that if these two people could swap places - if the man could become the woman and the woman the man, that perhaps they could understand the feelings of that other person in a truer way, understanding them from that gender's point of view, and that perhaps there are very subtle differences between the sexes that can cause problems in a relationship, especially when people really do care about each other. (The Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)

 'Running Up That Hill' was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album. It was very nice for me that it was the first single released, I'd always hoped that would be the way. It's very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they're so concerned that things could go wrong - they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself. It's really saying if there's a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they'd understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren't meant to hurt, that they weren't meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood. In some ways, I suppose the basic difference between men and women, where if we could swap places in a relationship, we'd understand each other better, but this, of course, is all theoretical anyway. (Open Interview, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

4. Babooshka

Released: 27th June, 1980

B-Side: Ran Tan Waltz

Chart Position: 5

From the Album: Never for Ever (1980)

Producers: Jon Kelly/Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Babooshka' is about futile situations. The way in which we often ruin things for ourselves. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

 Apparently it is grandmother, it's also a headdress that people wear. But when I wrote the song it was just a name that literally came into my mind, I've presumed I've got it from a fairy story I'd read when I was a child. And after having written the song a series of incredible coincidences happened where I'd turned on the television and there was Donald Swan singing about Babooshka. So I thought, "Well, there's got to be someone who's actually called Babooshka." So I was looking through Radio Times and there, another coincidence, there was an opera called Babooshka. Apparently she was the lady that the three kings went to see because the star stopped over her house and they thought "Jesus is in there".' So they went in and he wasn't. And they wouldn't let her come with them to find the baby and she spent the rest of her life looking for him and she never found him. And also a friend of mine had a cat called Babooshka. So these really extraordinary things that kept coming up when in fact it was just a name that came into my head at the time purely because it fitted. (Peter Powell interview, Radio 1 (UK), 11 October 1980)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

3. The Man with the Child in His Eyes

Released: 28th May, 1978

B-Side: Moving

Chart Position: 6

From the Album: The Kick Inside (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell

Song Info:

“The inspiration for 'The Man With the Child in His Eyes' was really just a particular thing that happened when I went to the piano. The piano just started speaking to me. It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic. I, myself, am attracted to older men, I guess, but I think that's the same with every female. I think it's a very natural, basic instinct that you look continually for your father for the rest of your life, as do men continually look for their mother in the women that they meet. I don't think we're all aware of it, but I think it is basically true. You look for that security that the opposite sex in your parenthood gave you as a child. (Self Portrait, 1978)

 I just noticed that men retain a capacity to enjoy childish games throughout their lives, and women don't seem to be able to do that. ('Bird In The Bush', Ritz (UK), September 1978)

 Oh, well it's something that I feel about men generally. [Looks around at cameramen] Sorry about this folks. [Cameramen laugh] That a lot of men have got a child inside them, you know I think they are more or less just grown up kids. And that it's a... [Cameramen laugh] No, no, it's a very good quality, it's really good, because a lot of women go out and get far too responsible. And it's really nice to keep that delight in wonderful things that children have. And that's what I was trying to say. That this man could communicate with a younger girl, because he's on the same level. (Swap Shop, 1979)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

2. The Big Sky

Released: 28th April, 1986

B-Sides: Not This Time/The Morning Fog (12" only)

Chart Position: 37

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Producer: Kate Bush

Song Info:

“Someone sitting looking at the sky, watching the clouds change. I used to do this a lot as a child, just watching the clouds go into different shapes. I think we forget these pleasures as adults. We don't get as much time to enjoy those kinds of things, or think about them; we feel silly about what we used to do naturally. The song is also suggesting the coming of the next flood - how perhaps the "fools on the hills" will be the wise ones. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)

 'The Big Sky' was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I'm writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

1. Wuthering Heights

Released: 20th January, 1978 (leaked on 4th November 1977)

B-Side: Kite

Chart Position: 1

From the Album: The Kick Inside (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell

Song Info:

“I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn't seem to get out of the chorus - it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn't link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I'd been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.

I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn't relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.

It's funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn't know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with 'Wuthering Heights': I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.

I've never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it's supposed to be.

One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I've had from the song, though I've heard that the Bronte Society think it's a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn't know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I'm really happy about that.

There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV - it was about one in the morning - because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that's all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence. Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

FEATURE: Spotlight: Ayra Starr

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Ayra Starr

___________

THIS is an exciting feature…

as I get to Spotlight the amazing Ayra Starr. If you have not heard of her music, then I hope that this piece will guide you her way. Her eponymous E.P. came out earlier in the year; it grabbed a lot of attention. She is definitely someone with a long and bright future in music! The first interview that I want to bring in is from NME. Among other things, we get a sense of what it was like for Starr growing up and how she got into music:

“Manifesting notoriety in her aptly-chosen moniker, Ayra Starr’s lyricism isn’t cloaked in confusing metaphors or peppered with clichés; it’s a collection of her raw, unfiltered thoughts. In her recently-released debut self-titled EP, Ayra contemplates power, freedom and pain, placing her vocals over a dynamic sound that bolsters a soulful pulse. By deploring polyrhythmic beats and Yoruba vernacular in tracks like ‘Sare’, Ayra revives West African music tradition without a nostalgic relapse.

Growing up between Nigeria and the Benin Republic, Ayra always loved music and came from “a very musical home; music brought everybody together.” But unlike many West-African teens, Ayra wasn’t forced to play it safe when it came to choosing a career but was pushed to follow her dreams. It was her mother’s words of encouragement that motivated Ayra: “My mum would always call me asking me to follow through with music”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Danielle Mbonu for Hyperbae

After initially avoiding to take music seriously, she finally caved aged 17, gleaming knowledge of her craft from the internet. “I never went for any formal training; I would just go on YouTube. It would take months to learn things, it was very challenging”. Giggling, she continues, “but I like a challenge!” Once she felt skilled enough, she started covering songs by artists like Andra Day and 2Face Idibia on her Instagram – but putting herself out there was hard at first. “I would be too scared to post my videos. I wouldn’t check it for three hours after I posted because I’d always be so scared”.

In December 2019, she posted the original song ‘Damage’ onto her page, which caught the attention of Mavin Records, the iconic Nigerian record label that has fostered the careers of Tiwa Savage, Rema and Wande Coal. It was through Don Jazzy [Mavin Records boss], who first introduced Ayra to music production. In a matter of months, Ayra went from producing covers in her bedroom to sitting in a music studio and has produced her first body of work.

Not only is Ayra grateful for the support, but she’s also glad to be a rising star during Nigeria’s era of global dominance, where artists like Burna Boy, WizKid and Davido continue to smash the international music charts. “Thank God, at last! Witnessing this motivates me to make more music because I know that not just Nigerians are listening to me now. I’m reaching people in countries I never even knew would like my music”.

There is a lot to love about Ayra Starr. She is this amazingly eclectic artist who is releasing really fantastic music! I feel that she is a role model; someone providing a lot of strength and inspiration to other women in the industry. Her eponymous E.P. is a phenomenal work that signals a rare talent. In this interview, Ayra Starr discusses the themes of the E.P. I didn’t know that she wrote songs with her brother:

“Ayra Starr –  is there a meaning behind your name?

[It’s] an Arabic name that means “somebody that is highly respected.” It means woke and eye-opening and that’s what I stand for. My music is very eye-opening.

What themes and moods were you going for with your debut EP?

I tried to talk about women and people taking their power back. The last track on the EP just talks about life from a teenage point of view. [I understand teenagers] go through a phase [where] you’re partying all the time and following the wrong crowd. It’s just me explaining everything will be better. It’s just peer pressure. It’s just ageing. We can always grow from that.

Do you often write songs with your brother and are any of these songs on the EP?

Like four songs from the EP were written by me and my brother. He helps me with my words and feelings, how I want it to sound. He just generally understands. He plays the guitar and Piano [so] expect amazing songs from me and him”.

I am going to wrap up soon enough. Before then, there are a few other interviews that are of interest. DJ Booth spoke with Ayra Starr recently. The E.P. has done amazingly well. Not only has it helped bring this great artist to wider attention. Let’s hope that it helps bring more Nigerian voices to the forefront:

“The Ayra Starr EP is a bite-sized exhibition of the 19-year-old singer’s vocal and lyrical range. It explores themes of romance, self-care, nostalgia, and coming of age from the perspective of a Gen Z Nigerian woman with shrewd lyricism and unbridled expression of emotion.

Ayra wields a necessary conviction to recount phenomena from personal and adjacent experiences. “Most of the things I’ve learned are basically from watching other people experience them because I’m 18, and I’ve not really gotten to experience most of these things, but I’ve been around enough to see them happen to people around me,” she explains to Audiomack.

Your Ayra Starr EP went No. 1 in five countries and officially brought you into the limelight. A few months later, what’s been its biggest impact, in your opinion?

When I [have] people message me like, “Your EP saved my life,” that’s just the most important thing to me. I don’t know if that would feel like a great impact to other people, but to me, it is. Going No. 1 in five countries is amazing; I’m grateful for that, but are people listening to the music? Are they listening to the message? Not just dancing to it, not just feeling the vibe. And for me to know that people love the music and also understand the message, that’s amazing.

“DITR” has a message that resonates with Nigerians across generations who’ve experienced coming of age in a stifling environment. What were you thinking about when you made that song?

The normal Nigerian stereotypes and normal life; going to school and just… In other parts of the world, when people go to Uni and leave their parents’ homes, they’re allowed to be wild and explore. But in Nigeria, when people do that, it tends to spiral because there's a lot of stress in the country from the schools. People become addicted to drugs; people leave the path of where they were supposed to go and all of that. So I took that and put it into the song.

Do you think young Nigerian voices are heard enough today?

I think they’re starting to be heard, but not enough. Younger people are becoming more confident with their crafts and what they have to say. Before, it used to be, “What do you know you’re talking about? You’re too young to know,” but now everybody has something to say, and they are becoming confident enough to say it. Either through music, poetry, or how they live their lives. Younger people are becoming freer. They can color their hair the way they want because people are becoming more confident in themselves and how they want to live.

In a conservative Nigerian society infamous for policing women’s bodies, your style portrays a woman owning and confident in her sexuality. When did you decide to disregard patriarchal social constructs around appearance?

That’s where we have it wrong, ‘cause not everything is about sexuality. Sometimes I want to wear something because I feel hot and not because I want to show off my body. Not everything about women is sexual; women in this country are just over-sexualized. You breathe and it’s too sexy; you don’t breathe [and] it’s not sexy enough. I just dress the way I want to dress, the way I feel comfortable. Nobody’s mindset is going to stop me from having an independent mind and just doing what I want to do, what genuinely makes me happy as a person”.

It has been a tough last year or so for all artists. For those new hoping to gig and get out there, only now is there a bit of light and possibility. Releasing her Ayra Starr E.P. when she could not gig. That must have been pretty tough. In this interview, Starr was asked about the E.P. and its success. We also learn that she enrolled at university at a very young age:

“Amazing! It’s been a year since you started recording your EP and Ayra Starr, the project, dropped on the 21st January 2021. How is it been received so far?

It’s been amazing. I’m so grateful. Like people are going nuts. Before I came out, I would just imagine that “Oh! People might not like it”. I would just like…try to process my mind for the haters. “People are going to hate it. That’s fine. That’s fine.” But I’ve not been getting that at all. I’ve just even been seeing it. People are like, “okay, at least they like one song”. People are like, “Oh, they love the EP”, so it’s like, it’s been crazy and I’m so grateful.

Now when it comes to the lead single from the project, Away, I hear it was a freestyle you wrote when you were feeling down, you said it felt like therapy to you. You’ve also touched on the fact that you write with your younger brother, Milar. Talk us through your creation process.

I write what I feel, so sometimes I don’t have a beat to go with the melodies in my head. I can write a full song without a beat. I just have a song and I have melodies, and I’m writing lyrics and melodies. Most of the time I also write with my brother. He plays the guitar and the piano so we write together; he’s an amazing songwriter. He just knows what to say! He knows words. He knows how to articulate his feelings. So when we get to the studio [with] my producer, Loudaa, we all just vibe. Everybody does their own work. So I come up with the melodies, my brother comes up with the words, and Loudaa makes the beats. It’s like we’re just in sync with each other. There’s no like specific process, it just depends on what we are feeling.

PHOTO CREDIT: Danielle Mbonu for Hyperbae 

You’re also a smarty pants! Is it true you went to university at 14 years?

[Laughs] People in Nigeria usually get to uni when they’re like 15 or 16. I just did it like, a year younger! Everyone is always like, “Oh, wow. You’re so intellectual…” [laughs] Guys. Don’t ask me. Don’t think I’m Albert Einstein or something but like I wrote my YX in SS2 – that’s like the year before my senior year. I tried it and I passed so my mum encouraged me to go to uni. I did uni. I got in at, you know, 14. I turned 15 the next week! So it’s kinda like 14-15, I just use 14 to brag a little [laughs]. So yeah, that was it sha! I was a teenager all through school. Most people in my school was like 18 like 17, and I was 14. I would never tell anyone I was 14 because they would pick on me because of my mouth. I would get into fights all the time. So just imagine [if] they knew I was 14, I would get beat up [laughs].

[Laughs] Brains and beauty. Love to see it. Now, you studied International Relations and Political Science. Do you feel like having a degree has kind of prepared you for this life in music?

Definitely. Definitely. It has really helped me. Like I said, I met lot of people in uni. So mentally I feel like I’m aware and mature in a lot of things. I’ve seen things. I’ve seen people’s experiences. And just reading, a lot of things internationally has definitely opened my eyes. I can sing about a country’s political problems and all that because I know all that. I’ve learnt and I’ve read. I’ve met a lot of people from different countries that I just know, experiences, and it really helps me.

 Amen and Amen. You’ve started strong. Do you feel like there is any pressure to overperform or outperform others especially as a young female in the industry?

At all! I’m just living my life. I’m just going to do me all day and every single time, I’m going to do me because me being me got myself here. I did what I wanted to do. I sang the same music I’ve always wanted to sing so I’m just going to be me all through. I’m going to what I want to do on stage. I’m going to do me all through

In one word, can you describe want your listeners to walk away with once they listened to your music?

I want them to feel like they’ve just came out of a therapy session. When you come out of the therapy session, you feel at peace and feel more in control of yourself and you feel powerful. So, I definitely want by my listeners to feel at peace and powerful; so it’s P + P. That’s good! I’m gonna write that down [laughs] You know, I want people to feel like words that they couldn’t saym things that they couldn’t express, I’m expressing it for them. So when they listen to me, they’re like, “Oh, yes!” So I definitely want that”.

There is one more interview that I want to put in. Hyperbae spoke with Ayra Starr earlier this year. She has been bullied herself. She wants to make music to empower those who have gone through the same thing. She wants to give strength to so many different people:

“Outside of music, what other things do you love doing?

It’s between just binge-watching shows and reading books for me. I’m really a binge-watcher. I just watched a whole K-drama called Lovestruck in the City yesterday. I watched it from last night at 7 p.m. and now I’m done with it. The last book I read was The Husband’s Secret. That book was so… oh my God! (Laughs) It’s a mystery kind of… I don’t even know how to explain. It’s just such a nice book that just shocked everybody that has ever read the book.

In one word, how would you describe Ayra Starr?

I hate that number because I’m so indecisive. “One” is so annoying. I’d say “happy” is the word. I think I’m happy all the time. It annoys a lot of people, but I’m always happy. I’m just a free spirit. I think I’m that way now because when I was younger, I used to be really anxious about life and I used to be depressed and all that. Then just one day I was like, “Why? Why am I angry, why am I depressed, why am I not happy?” When I was 14, I was still trying to understand myself and the world and at that age, I was in university already. I didn’t even understand what was happening.

Their feminist views were quite prominent in their music. Do you see yourself toeing that line in terms of the messaging in your music?

When I make music, I just really like to empower people however I can. People that need empowering. If you’ve been bullied before, you’d love “Away.” If you’ve been heartbroken, you’d love “Away.” If you’re a feminist, you’d love “Away.” I just really like to empower people. The people that are not added to the equation. I just like to make everybody feel like they are one. The Lijadu Sister — what they did was so powerful, and I want to be able to do that too, not only in terms of feminism but in different aspects of life. I want people to feel like they are listening to somebody that is speaking their mind”.

If you are new to Ayra Starr, then check out her music and get behind her. I discovered her relatively recently. It has been interesting reading about her and listening to the music. I know that she will go onto great things. After her eponymous E.P. blew up and grabbed so many people, there is this demand and expectation. There is a debut album, 19 & Dangerous, on the way. I am really looking forward to that! It is going to be fantastic. Here is a salute to a young artist who…

IS going to go very far indeed.

______________

Follow Ayra Starr

Official:

https://www.ayrastarr.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/starrayra/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/ayrastarr

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ayrastarr/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ZpEKRjHaHANcpk10u6Ntq

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK7oVw_ftuBIwiipiBf7ogA

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Twenty-One: Whitney Houston

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

Part Twenty-One: Whitney Houston

___________

I should have included…

Whitney Houston earlier in this feature. She is one of the most influential artists ever. 9th August marks what would have been her fifty-eighth birthday. We sadly lost the icon on 11th February, 2012. It is strange to think that she is not around anymore. One wonders how she would have followed her final studio album, 2009’s I Look to You. To mark the importance and legacy of Whitney Houston, I am ending with a playlist of songs from artists who are either inspired by her or have cited Houston as important. Before then, and as I do with these features, AllMusic provide some biography:

“Whitney Houston was inarguably one of the biggest female pop stars of all time. Her accomplishments as a hitmaker were extraordinary; just to scratch the surface, she became the first artist ever to have seven consecutive singles hit number one, and her 1993 Dolly Parton cover "I Will Always Love You" became nothing less than the biggest hit single in rock history. Houston was able to handle big adult contemporary ballads, effervescent, stylish dance-pop, and slick urban contemporary soul with equal dexterity; the result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by scant few artists of her era, and helped her become one of the first Black artists to find success on MTV in Michael Jackson's wake. Like many of the original soul singers, Houston was trained in gospel before moving into secular music; over time, she developed a virtuosic singing style given over to swooping, flashy melodic embellishments. The shadow of Houston's prodigious technique still looms large over nearly every pop diva and smooth urban soul singer who has followed, and spawned a legion of imitators.

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 9, 1963; her mother was gospel/R&B singer Cissy Houston, and her cousin was Dionne Warwick. By age 11, Houston was performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at her Baptist church; as a teenager, she began accompanying her mother in concert (as well as on the 1978 album Think It Over), and went on to back artists like Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan. Houston also pursued modeling and acting, appearing on the sitcoms Gimme a Break and Silver Spoons. Somewhat bizarrely, Houston's first recording as a featured vocalist was with Bill Laswell's experimental jazz-funk ensemble Material; the ballad "Memories," from the group's 1982 album One Down, placed Houston alongside Archie Shepp. The following year, Arista president Clive Davis heard Houston singing at a nightclub and offered her a recording contract. Her first single appearance was a duet with Teddy Pendergrass, "Hold Me," which missed the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 -- but reached number five on the R&B chart -- in 1984.

Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston, was released in February 1985. Its first single, "Someone for Me," was a flop, but the second try, "You Give Good Love," became Houston's first hit, topping the R&B chart and hitting number three on the Hot 100. Houston's next three singles -- the Grammy-winning romantic ballad "Saving All My Love for You," the brightly danceable "How Will I Know," and the inspirational "The Greatest Love of All" -- all topped the Hot 100, and a year to the month after its release, Whitney Houston hit number one on the Billboard 200. It eventually sold over 13 million copies in the U.S., making it the best-selling debut ever by a female artist. Houston cemented her superstar status on her next album, Whitney; it became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one, and sold over nine million copies in the U.S. Its first four singles -- "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" (another Grammy winner), "Didn't We Almost Have It All," "So Emotional," and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" -- all hit number one, an amazing, record-setting run of seven straight. In late 1988, Houston scored a Top Five hit with the non-LP single "One Moment in Time," recorded for an Olympics-themed compilation album.

Houston returned with her third album, I'm Your Baby Tonight, in 1990. A more R&B-oriented record, it immediately spun off two number one hits in the title track and "All the Man That I Need." But the quality of the material was generally viewed as, overall, much weaker than her previous efforts, and following those two hits, sales of the album tapered off quickly, halting at around four million copies. Nevertheless, Houston remained so popular that she could even take a recording of "The Star Spangled Banner" (performed at the Super Bowl) into the Top 20 -- though, of course, the Gulf War had something to do with that. In retrospect, the erratic quality of I'm Your Baby Tonight seemed to signal Houston's declining interest in making fully fleshed-out albums. Instead, she began to focus on an acting career, which she hadn't pursued since her teenage years; she also married singer Bobby Brown in the summer of 1992. Her first feature film, a romance with Kevin Costner called The Bodyguard, was released in late 1992; it performed well at the box office, helped by an ad campaign that seemingly centered around the climactic key change in Houston's soundtrack recording of the Dolly Parton-penned "I Will Always Love You." In fact, the ad campaign undoubtedly helped "I Will Always Love You" become the biggest singles in pop music history. It set new records for sales (nearly five million copies) and weeks at number one (14), although those were later broken by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day," respectively. Meanwhile, the soundtrack eventually sold an astounding 16 million copies, and also won a Grammy for Album of the Year.

Once Houston had stopped raking in awards and touring the world, she prepared her next theatrical release, the female ensemble drama Waiting to Exhale. A few months before its release at the end of 1995, it was announced that she and Brown had split up; however, they called off the split just a couple months later, and rumors about their tempestuous relationship filled the tabloids for years to come. Waiting to Exhale was released toward the end of the year, and the first single from the soundtrack, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)," topped the charts; the album sold over seven million copies. For her next project, Houston decided to return to her gospel roots; the soundtrack to the 1996 film The Preacher's Wife, which naturally featured Houston in the title role, was loaded with traditional and contemporary gospel songs, plus guest appearances by Houston's mother, as well as Shirley Caesar and the Georgia Mass Choir. Houston also began making headlines for what appeared to be increasing unreliability, canceling several TV and concert appearances due to illness.

In 1998, Houston finally issued a new full-length album, My Love Is Your Love, her first in eight years. Houston worked with pop/smooth soul mainstays like Babyface and David Foster, but also recruited hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott, Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and Q-Tip. The album sold even fewer copies than I'm Your Baby Tonight, but it received Houston's most enthusiastic reviews in quite some time. Moreover, it produced one of her biggest R&B chart hits (seven weeks at number one) in the trio number "Heartbreak Hotel," done with Faith Evans and Kelly Price. She also duetted with Mariah Carey on "When You Believe," a song from the animated film The Prince of Egypt.

Unfortunately, Houston was also back in the tabloids in early 2000. Speculation about her personal life only grew when she was dropped from the Academy Awards telecast that March, officially because of a sore throat, but reputedly due to poor rehearsals and a generally out-of-it air. Later in the year, Arista released the two-disc compilation Greatest Hits, which actually featured one disc of hits and one of remixes and included new duets with Enrique Iglesias, George Michael, and Deborah Cox. It was also announced that Houston had signed a new deal with Arista worth $100 million, requiring six albums from the singer. The self-styled comeback album Just Whitney arrived in 2002, followed by One Wish: The Holiday Album in November of the following year. Two years later, however, her personal issues became even more public through the 2005 reality television series Being Bobby Brown. She eventually divorced her husband and went into intense rehabilitation.

An album of new material was initially set for release by the end of 2007, but delays pushed it -- titled I Look to You, featuring collaborations with Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, R. Kelly, Akon, and Diane Warren -- back to September 2009. It became her first number one album since the Bodyguard soundtrack. She toured the world in 2010, and talked about beginning recording for her next album, but entered outpatient rehab in the summer of 2011 for continuing drug and alcohol problems. That fall, Houston filmed a role in a remake of the 1976 musical film Sparkle, starring alongside Jordin Sparks. In early 2012, rumors began to swirl that Simon Cowell was courting Houston for a mentor spot on The X Factor, but before anything came of it, tragedy occurred. On February 11, the day before the 2012 Grammys, Houston was found dead in her bathroom at the Beverly Hills Hilton. The cause of death was found to be accidental drowning caused by heart disease and cocaine use. The Grammy ceremony paid tribute to her life with a Jennifer Hudson performance of "I Will Always Love You”.

I am a big fan of Whitney Houston. She truly was one of a kind. Go and seek out as much of her music as you can. The playlist below is an assortment of the many artists who count Houston as a source of inspiration. Her legacy and influence will continue…

FOR decades to come.

FEATURE: Ready to Go: Republica at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Ready to Go

Republica at Twenty-Five

___________

I have missed a couple…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Natkin/Getty Image

of big album anniversaries recently. It is hard to keep on top of them all and remember which albums are coming up that require celebration! One album that is celebrating a big anniversary this week is Republica’s self-titled debut. Friday (30th) is the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the best debuts of the 1990s. With the amazing and electric Saffron (Samantha Marie Sprackling) leading the band, I was hooked on the album when I heard it. With the majority of the tracks written by Saffron, Tim Dorney, Andy Todd and Johnny Male, Republica is a phenomenal album with so multiple highlights. Many associate the album with two of its huge singles: Ready to Go and Drop Dead Gorgeous. These are anthemic songs that still sound fresh and bouncy after all of these years. A Deluxe Edition of the album was released on 28th February, 2020. There has been talk of a third album from Republica. Their second album, Speed Ballads, was released in 1998. It would be interesting to hear Republica put out new material. I remember female-led bands of the 1990s like Republica, Garbage (who are still releasing music), Elastica, Sleeper (who are still going today), and Hole. I think they offered something that male-fronted bands didn’t. Maybe it is a diversity or a vocal sound that gave the songs more emotional depth. The combination of edginess and accessibility on Republica is one reason why it was so popular.

It is tough and physical, yet the songs are digestible and stand up to repeated listens. Combining Alternative Rock, Pop, Electronic Rock and Trip Hop, Republica is a wonderful listen that is broad and contains incredible music. It is not only Saffron’s vocals that make the album pop and resonate. The band are kinetic, tight and powerful throughout. The track order is great too. I think the songs are in the right order. Ready to Go kicks off the album is perfectly confident fashion. Bloke, the lead single from the album, follows that; the third single, Drop Dead Gorgeous, is track six. At eleven tracks running in at just over forty-eight minutes, Republica is quite a long listen – though it never feels bloated or in need of a trim. There are a couple of reviews that I want to bring in for Republica. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to say:

“Republica essentially sound like they're stuck in 1990, when house and rave were just beginning to make their presence felt in dance-pop -- which, to more critical ears, will mean they sound dated for the mid-'90s, when jungle, drum'n'bass, ambient, and all other forms of techno were finally edging their way into the mainstream. And that argument would be relevant if Republica were attempting to work in that genre, but as their eponymous debut indicated, they had no interest in hardcore techno -- they just wanted to dance. Working with strong, accessible Hi-NRG beats and catchy choruses, the trio has a bright, energetic sound that is quite infectious when tied with the right melodies, such as on the hit singles "Ready to Go" and "Drop Dead Gorgeous." If they had more than one sound, however, Republica would be even more entertaining, but as it stands, the record is a stretch of pleasantly numbing dance-pop punctuated by two terrific singles”.

On its twenty-fifth anniversary this Friday, go and listen to Republica if you are new to it. Maybe the album was more impactful in the context of 1996. It was a time when Britpop was raging. There was so much happening away from that centre; so many interesting bands coming through. Last year, We Are Craft gave their thoughts regarding the Deluxe Edition of Republica:

“One of those ‘all killer, no filler’ albums with every track a dancefloor-enhancing banger of a tune, Republica starts strongly with the anthemic Ready to Go which has since been used extensively in every media imaginable worldwide including advertising, film and TV.  The album continues with the same unapologetic vibe with Bloke which is gently mocking what it meant to be ‘a man’ in the ‘New Lad’ era.  Bloke was originally released as a single in 1995 to test the waters, but only reached the lower echelons of the Top 100 pop charts, at number 85.

Following Bloke quite aptly is the track Bitch which is unashamedly ‘I want, I want, I want!’ Get Off and Picture Me lead very nicely into midway through the album.  Drop Dead Gorgeous chronicles the dubious morals of an ex but justifying it by the fact that he is ‘drop dead gorgeous’.  It was a massive hit for the band, reaching Number 7 in the UK Charts.  I remember, that at the time it was being played EVERYWHERE and it hit the Top 40 in Europe most notably in Germany, Ireland, Holland, Sweden and Switzerland as well as chart positions in New Zealand and America.  It is interesting that the track got nowhere in Australia, bombing at Number 131 of their charts.  There’s no accounting for taste as, in my opinion, it’s a brilliant track full of life, joy and attitude.

The album progresses with Out of the Darkness, which is a trancy-vibed track with balls. This song was Republica’s debut single originally entitled Out of this World, which was later re-worked into the album track Into the Darkness.  In its original form, this track received its first radio airplay courtesy of the much-missed legend of the alternative music scene at Radio 1, namely the inimitable John Peel.

The angst continues with Wrapp and Don’t You Ever, then ends on a high with Holly which could have easily been another single for Republica. The rest of CD1 includes some bonus tracks and radio edits.  CD2 offers some extended remixes and alternative mixes of sings from the album and CD3 contains more ‘club based’ remixes from the likes of The Chemical Brothers.  Across the three CDs there are in fact 32 bonus tracks”.

I shall finish off there. Republica is one of my favourite albums of the 1990s. Twenty-five years on from its release, I can put the album on and pick up something new. The singles still have plenty of life and appeal, though it is the deeper cuts that come to the surface – Picture Me and Out of Darkness are a couple of songs that do not get a lot of radio focus. Happy twenty-fifth anniversary to the mighty debut from the Berkshire-formed band. I do hope that we have not heard the last from them. Reaching number four in the U.K. album chart and possessing the top-ten single, Drop Dead Gorgeous, the amazing Republica introduced a band…

WITH real intent.

FEATURE: Constellations of My Heart: Kate Bush: My Ten Favourite Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

Constellations of My Heart

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an on-set photo from The Line, the Cross and the Curve (1993) film whilst performing And So Is Love

Kate Bush: My Ten Favourite Tracks

___________

ALTHOUGH I have sort of…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional still for Army Dreamers (from Never for Ever, 1980)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

compiled the ‘best’ Kate Bush tracks in features that looked ahead to the thirty-fifth anniversary (in November) of her greatest hits album, The Whole Story, I wanted to list my ten favourite Bush tracks. I am not sure whether I have done this for a while. Because it is her birthday on 30th July, I am doing more features about Bush this month than I normally would. Whilst my four-favourite Kate Bush songs are pretty solid, there might be a couple of new ones in the top-ten now. I am only taking from nine of her studio albums and B-sides – I am not including Director’s Cut (as it was reworkings of songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes) and cover versions/collaborations with other artists. Here are the ten Kate Bush tracks that I…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989 for The Sensual World

LOVE the most.

______________

1. Houdini

From the Album: The Dreaming (1982)

Producer: Kate Bush

Standout Lyrics:

“Through the glass/I'd watch you breathe/("Not even eternity")/Bound and drowned/And paler than you've ever been/("will hold Houdini!")”.

Song Info:

“The side most people know of Houdini is that of the escapologist, but he spent many years of his life exposing mediums and seances as frauds. His mother had died, and in trying to make contact through such spiritual people, he realized how much pain was being inflicted on people already in sorrow, people who would part with money just for the chance of a few words from a past loved one. I feel he must have believed in the possibility of contact after death, and perhaps in his own way, by weeding out the frauds, he hoped to find just one that could not be proven to be a fake. He and his wife made a decision that if one of them should die and try to make contact, the other would know it was truly them through a code that only the two of them knew.

His wife would often help him with his escapes. Before he was bound up and sealed away inside a tank or some dark box, she would give him a parting kiss, and as their lips met, she would pass him the key which he would later use to unlock the padlocks that chained him. After he died, Mrs. Houdini did visit many mediums, and tried to make contact for years, with no luck - until one day a medium called Mr. Ford informed her that Houdini had come through. She visited him and he told her that he had a message for her from Houdini, and he spoke the only words that meant for her the proof of her husband's presence. She was so convinced that she released an official statement to the fact that he had made contact with her through the medium, Ford.

It is such a beautiful and strange story that I thought I had very little to do, other than tell it like it was. But in fact it proved to be the most difficult lyric of all the songs and the most emotionally demanding. I was so aware of trying to do justice to the beauty of the subject, and trying to understand what it must have been like to have been in love with such an extraordinary man, and to have been loved by him. I worked for two or three nights just to find one line that was right. There were so many alternatives, but only a few were right for the song. Gradually it grew and began to piece together, and I found myself wrapped up in the feelings of the song - almost pining for Houdini. Singing the lead vocal was a matter of conjuring up that feeling again and as the clock whirrs and the song flashes back in time to when she watched him through the glass, he's on the other side under water, and she hangs on to his every breath. We both wait. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

2. Wuthering Heights

From the Album: The Kick Inside (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell

Standout Lyrics:

“Ooh, let me have it/Let me grab your soul away/Ooh, let me have it/Let me grab your soul away/You know it's me, Cathy”.

Song Info:

“I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn't seem to get out of the chorus - it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn't link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I'd been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.

I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn't relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.

It's funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn't know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with 'Wuthering Heights': I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.

I've never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it's supposed to be.

One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I've had from the song, though I've heard that the Bronte Society think it's a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn't know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I'm really happy about that.

There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV - it was about one in the morning - because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that's all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence. Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

3. Them Heavy People

From the Album: The Kick Inside (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell

Standout Lyrics:

“They open doorways that I thought were shut for good/They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu/They build up my body, break me emotionally/It's nearly killing me, but what a lovely feeling”.

Song Info:

“The idea for 'Heavy People' came when I was just sitting one day in my parents' house. I heard the phrase "Rolling the ball" in my head, and I thought that it would be a good way to start a song, so I ran in to the piano and played it and got the chords down. I then worked on it from there. It has lots of different people and ideas and things like that in it, and they came to me amazingly easily - it was a bit like 'Oh England', because in a way so much of it was what was happening at home at the time. My brother and my father were very much involved in talking about Gurdjieff and whirling Dervishes, and I was really getting into it, too. It was just like plucking out a bit of that and putting it into something that rhymed. And it happened so easily - in a way, too easily. I say that because normally it's difficult to get it all to happen at once, but sometimes it does, and that can seem sort of wrong. Usually you have to work hard for things to happen, but it seems that the better you get at them the more likely you are to do something that is good without any effort. And because of that it's always a surprise when something comes easily. I thought it was important not to be narrow-minded just because we talked about Gurdjieff. I knew that I didn't mean his system was the only way, and that was why it was important to include whirling Dervishes and Jesus, because they are strong, too. Anyway, in the long run, although somebody might be into all of them, it's really you that does it - they're just the vehicle to get you there.

I always felt that 'Heavy People' should be a single, but I just had a feeling that it shouldn't be a second single, although a lot of people wanted that. Maybe that's why I had the feeling - because it was to happen a little later, and in fact I never really liked the album version much because it should be quite loose, you know: it's a very human song. And I think, in fact, every time I do it, it gets even looser. I've danced and sung that song so many times now, but it's still like a hymn to me when I sing it. I do sometimes get bored with the actual words I'm singing, but the meaning I put into them is still a comfort. It's like a prayer, and it reminds me of direction. And it can't help but help me when I'm singing those words. Subconsciously they must go in. (Kate Bush Club newsletter number 3, November 1979)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

4. The Big Sky

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Producer: Kate Bush

Standout Lyrics:

“That cloud, that cloud/Looks like Ireland/C'mon and blow it a kiss now/But quick…”.

Song Info:

“The Big Sky' was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I'm writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)

 'The Big Sky' gave me terrible trouble, really, just as a song. I mean, you definitely do have relationships with some songs, and we had a lot of trouble getting on together and it was just one of those songs that kept changing - at one point every week - and, um...It was just a matter of trying to pin it down. Because it's not often that I've written a song like that: when you come up with something that can literally take you to so many different tangents, so many different forms of the same song, that you just end up not knowing where you are with it. And, um...I just had to pin it down eventually, and that was a very strange beast. (Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

5. Symphony in Blue

From the Album: Lionheart (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell (Assisted by Kate Bush)

Standout Lyrics:

“The more I think about sex, the better it gets/Here we have a purpose in life: Good for the blood circulation/Good for releasing the tension/The root of our reincarnations”.

Song Info:

“Song written by Kate Bush in 1978, released on her second album Lionheart. It was one of three newly written songs for the album, along with Coffee Homeground and Full House. It is believed that the lyric of the song is an attempt at describing Kate's own belief system. The descriptions of God, sex and the colour blue seem to be inspired by reading about Wilhelm Reich's theory in A Book Of Dreams.

Formats

'Symphony In Blue' was released as a single in Canada and Japan. In Canada, the B-side was Hammer Horror; in Japan it was Fullhouse.

Performances

Kate performed 'Symphony In Blue' during the live shows of the Tour of Life. The song also appeared in the 1979 Christmas special” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

6. Moving

From the Album: The Kick Inside (1978)

Producer: Andrew Powell

Standout Lyrics:

“How I'm moved, how you move me/With your beauty's potency/You give me life, please don't let me go/You crush the lily in my soul”.

Song Info:

“Song written by Kate Bush, included on her debut album The Kick Inside. The song is a tribute to Lindsay Kemp, who was her mime teacher in the mid-Seventies. She explained in an interview, "He needed a song written to him. He opened up my eyes to the meanings of movement. He makes you feel so good. If you've got two left feet it's 'you dance like an angel darling.' He fills people up, you're an empty glass and glug, glug, glug, he's filled you with champagne."

'Moving' opens with a whale song sampled from 'Songs of the Humpback Whale', an LP including recordings of whale vocalizations made by Dr. Roger S. Payne.

Formats

On 6 February 1978, 'Moving' was released as a 7" single in Japan only, featuring Wuthering Heights on the B-side.

Versions

There are two officially released versions of 'Kite': the album version and the live version from Hammersmith Odeon. However, a demo version from 1977 has also surfaced and was released on various bootleg cd's” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

7. Babooshka

From the Album: Never for Ever (1980)

Producers: Kate Bush/Jon Kelly

Standout Lyrics:

“All yours/Babooshka, babooshka, babooshka ja, ja/All yours/Babooshka, babooshka, babooshka ja, ja”.

Song Info:

“It was really a theme that has fascinated me for some time. It's based on a theme that is often used in folk songs, which is where the wife of the husband begins to feel that perhaps he's not faithful. And there's no real strength in her feelings, it's just more or less paranoia suspicions, and so she starts thinking that she's going to test him, just to see if he's faithful. So what she does is she gets herself a pseudonym, which happens to be Babooshka, and she sends him a letter. And he responds very well to the letter, because as he reads it, he recognises the wife that he had a couple of years ago, who was happy, in the letter. And so he likes it, and she decides to take it even further and get a meeting together to see how he reacts to this Babooshka lady instead of her. When he meets her, again because she is so similar to his wife, the one that he loves, he's very attracted to her. Of course she is very annoyed and the break in the song is just throwing the restaurant at him...  (...) The whole idea of the song is really the futility and the stupidness of humans and how by our own thinking, spinning around in our own ideas we come up with completely paranoid facts. So in her situation she was in fact suspicious of a man who was doing nothing wrong, he loved her very much indeed. Through her own suspicions and evil thoughts she's really ruining the relationship. (Countdown Australia, 1980)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

8. The Wedding List

From the Album: Never for Ever (1980)

Producers: Kate Bush/Jon Kelly

Standout Lyrics:

“And when it's all over you'll roll over/The butt of my gun: One in your belly, and one for Rudi/You got what you gave by the heel of my bootie/Bang-bang--Out! like an old cherootie/I'm coming for you”.

Song Info:

“The Wedding List' is about the powerful force of revenge. An unhealthy energy which in this song proves to be a "killer". (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

 Revenge is so powerful and futile in the situation in the song. Instead of just one person being killed, it's three: her husband, the guy who did it - who was right on top of the wedding list with the silver plates - and her, because when she's done it, there's nothing left. All her ambition and purpose has all gone into that one guy. She's dead, there's nothing there. (Kris Needs, 'Fire in the Bush'. Zigzag, 1980)

 Revenge is a terrible power, and the idea is to show that it's so strong that even at such a tragic time it's all she can think about. I find the whole aggression of human beings fascinating - how we are suddenly whipped up to such an extent that we can't see anything except that. Did you see the film Deathwish, and the way the audience reacted every time a mugger got shot? Terrible - though I cheered, myself. (Mike Nicholls, 'Among The Bushes'. Record Mirror, 1980)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

9. Under the Ivy

From the Album: The B-side of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) (Hounds of Love, 1985)

Producer: Kate Bush

Standout Lyrics:

“Go into the garden/Go under the ivy/Under the leaves/Away from the party/Go right to the rose/Go right to the white rose/(For me)”.

Song Info:

“It's very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it's secret, and it's something they used to do and that they won't be able to do again. It's about a nostalgic, revisited moment. (...) I think it's sad because it's about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it's something that they're having to sneak away to do privately now as adults. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)

 I needed a track to put on the B-Side of the single Running Up That Hill so I wrote this song really quickly. As it was just a simple piano/vocal, it was easy to record. I performed a version of the song that was filmed at Abbey Road Studios for a TV show which was popular at the time, called The Tube. It was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. I find Paula’s introduction to the song very touching.

It was filmed in Studio One at Abbey Rd. An enormous room used for recording large orchestras, choirs, film scores, etc. It has a vertiginously high ceiling and sometimes when I was working in Studio Two,  a technician, who was a good friend, would take me up above the ceiling of Studio One. We had to climb through a hatch onto the catwalk where we would then crawl across and watch the orchestras working away, completely unaware of the couple of devils hovering in the clouds, way above their heads!  I used to love doing this - the acoustics were heavenly at that scary height.  We used to toy with the idea of bungee jumping from the hatch. (KateBush.com, February 2019)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

10. This Woman’s Work

From the Album: The Sensual World (1989)

Producer: Kate Bush

Standout Lyrics:

“Of all the things I should've said/That I never said/All the things we should've done/That we never did/All the things I should've given/But I didn't/Oh, darling, make it go/Make it go away”.

Song Info:

“John Hughes, the American film director, had just made this film called 'She's Having A Baby', and he had a scene in the film that he wanted a song to go with. And the film's very light: it's a lovely comedy. His films are very human, and it's just about this young guy - falls in love with a girl, marries her. He's still very much a kid. She gets pregnant, and it's all still very light and child-like until she's just about to have the baby and the nurse comes up to him and says it's a in a breech position and they don't know what the situation will be. So, while she's in the operating room, he has so sit and wait in the waiting room and it's a very powerful piece of film where he's just sitting, thinking; and this is actually the moment in the film where he has to grow up. He has no choice. There he is, he's not a kid any more; you can see he's in a very grown-up situation. And he starts, in his head, going back to the times they were together. There are clips of film of them laughing together and doing up their flat and all this kind of thing. And it was such a powerful visual: it's one of the quickest songs I've ever written. It was so easy to write. We had the piece of footage on video, so we plugged it up so that I could actually watch the monitor while I was sitting at the piano and I just wrote the song to these visuals. It was almost a matter of telling the story, and it was a lovely thing to do: I really enjoyed doing it. (Roger Scott Interview, BBC Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

FEATURE: The Modern Age: The Strokes’ Phenomenal Debut Album, Is This It, at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Modern Age

The Strokes’ Phenomenal Debut Album, Is This It, at Twenty

___________

IT is annoying that…

there is not a definitive database where we get the release dates of albums. There are so many different dates listed for different albums. The Strokes’ incredible debut, Is This It, was released on 30th July, 2001 in Australia (those some sites say it was 31st July). The New York band released the album in the U.S. on 9th October; the U.K. got the album on 27th August. Following from their 2001 E.P., The Modern Age, the band members formed compositions largely through live takes during recording sessions. Songwriter/lead singer Julian Casablancas continued to detail the lives and relationships of urban youth. Listed alongside some of the best albums ever, Is This It reignited guitar music. There was this period at the end of the 1990s when guitar music and bands were not widespread and huge. The Strokes’ fresh and invigorating album led a revival – in October 2002, our very own The Libertines released their debut album, Up the Bracket (they have been compared with The Strokes). I am going to put in a couple of reviews for Is This It. Not long before going to university, I remember the album coming out. It was a real revelation! Even in the 1990s, I had not heard anything like Is This It. I was instantly intrigued by The Strokes. I wonder why the album was released in Australia first?! It is a bit odd that this vital debut album celebrates its twentieth anniversary at various different dates – the U.S. has to wait a few months. That said, the fact it was released first on 30th July, 2001 means the whole world can mark its twentieth at the same time.

Even though The White Stripes came before Is This It – and they were definitely doing something new with guitar music -, the energy, style and tone of the album rejuvenated the scene and set a template for future bands. Back in 2016, NME listed twenty things that we probably didn’t know about Is This It. I have chosen a few points:

“The initial sessions for the record were done with producer Gil Norton (Pixies – ‘Doolittle’) but were scrapped by the band as they felt that the output sounded “too pretentious”. The group then teamed up with Gordon Raphael who they met at one of their live shows six months earlier.

During work on the album, Julian Casablancas and guitarist Nick Valensi received lessons from guitar teacher JP Bowersock, who also helped craft some of the album’s immortal solos.

The entire album was recorded from March to April 2001 in only six weeks, at Raphael’s Transporterraum studios in their native New York City.

During recording, a member of the band’s US label, RCA, heard an early cut of the record and claimed the recordings sounded “unprofessional” and that Raphael was “ruining Julian’s voice and killing any chance the band had of a career”.

The album was released across a three-month span in various locations around the globe. Australia got the album first on July 31, 2001, with the UK following on August 27 and October 9 in the US.

The album reached Number Two in the UK Albums Chart upon release, with first week sales of 48,393 copies. The uplift in sales was attributed to the Reading & Leeds sets that they had played the weekend prior.

As well as admitting they modelled ‘Last Nite’ on Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’, they also “ripped off” bass parts from English band The Cure. “There are some bass lines on our first album that were 100% ripped off from The Cure. We were worried about putting out the album, because we thought we’d get busted” said Nikolai Fraiture years later”.

Earlier this year, NME ran a feature asking whether The Strokes would celebrate and acknowledge the twentieth anniversary of their debut album. Is This It’s producer, Gordon Raphael, revealed whether the band would get involved:

“Gordon Raphael, the producer of The Strokes’ legendary debut ‘Is This It’, has shared his thoughts on the chances of the band marking the album’s 20th anniversary this year – as well as revealing details of a book he’s written about the era.

The game-changing debut was released on July 30 in the summer of 2001, with a new wave of garage rock and indie following in its wake.

The record’s producer, Gordon Raphael, has now downplayed the chances of the band embarking on an anniversary tour or celebrating two decades of the album in any large-scale way.

“I haven’t heard of any plans, and from what I know about The Strokes – I could be very wrong – but I think the last thing on their mind is a record they made 20 years ago,” Raphael told NME. “For me, it was a real high point of my career and I’ll never forget that moment. I still get calls from bands all over the world that love that album, but The Strokes probably feel like, ‘Come on, man – we’ve made a ton of albums, we have our own solo projects, and we’re writing brand new music. Don’t talk to me about that thing we did when we were 20-years-old’.”

He continued: “I don’t think that they have the same, ‘Oh my God! ‘Is This It’! Woah!’ kinda feeling. That’s just not their personalities, but I could be wrong. Let’s see what happens.”

Commenting on the album’s enduring legacy, Raphael said that was “a complete joy that 20 years later people are still listening to it and they love it”.

“Really well-crafted songs never go out of fashion – no matter what era they’re from,” he said. “A great song just really speaks. Aside from their style, how cool they were and the sound that I might have helped develop, it’s the songs that matter”.

There will be features this week that mark the legacy of Is This It. I am going to finish with a couple of positive reviews for one of the most important albums released. One can have a look around today to see which bands and artists have been influenced by Is This It. Kings of Leon, The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys definitely were. I feel even a more modern band like Wolf Alice have elements of The Strokes about them. I don’t know. If one were to do some digging and took a closer look, you could see and feel D.N.A. of The Strokes in a lot of today’s sounds. I want to bring in AllMusic’s review of Is This It:

“Blessed and cursed with an enormous amount of hype from the British press, the Strokes prove to be one of the few groups deserving of their glowing reviews. Granted, their high-fashion appeal and faultless influences -- Television, the Stooges, and especially Lou Reed and the Velvets -- have "critics' darlings" written all over them. But like the similarly lauded Elastica and Supergrass before them, the Strokes don't rehash the sounds that inspire them -- they remake them in their own image. On the Modern Age EP, singles like Hard to Explain, and their full-length debut, Is This It, the N.Y.C. group presents a pop-inflected, second-generation take on late-'70s New York punk, complete with raw, world-weary vocals, spiky guitars, and an insistently chugging backbeat.

However, their songs also reflected their own early-twenties lust for life; singer/songwriter/guitarist Julian Casablancas and the rest of the band mix swaggering self-assurance with barely concealed insecurity on "The Modern Age" and reveal something akin to earnestness on "Barely Legal" -- a phrase that could apply to the Strokes themselves -- in the song's soaring choruses. The group revamps "Lust for Life" on "New York City Cops" and combines their raw power and infectious melodies on "Hard to Explain," arguably the finest song they've written in their career. Nearly half of Is This It consists of their previously released material, but that's not really a disappointment since those songs are so strong. What makes their debut impressive, however, is that the new material more than holds its own with the tried-and-true songs. "Is This It" sets the joys of being young, jaded, and yearning to a wonderfully bouncy bassline; "Alone Together" and "Trying Your Luck" develop the group's brooding, coming-down side, while "Soma," "Someday," and "Take It or Leave It" capture the Strokes at their most sneeringly exuberant. Able to make the timeworn themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and the basic guitars-drum-bass lineup seem new and vital again, the Strokes may or may not be completely arty and calculated, but that doesn't prevent Is This It from being an exciting, compulsively listenable debut. [In light of the World Trade Center disaster, the track "New York City Cops" was pulled from the U.S. release]”.

To finish off, I will quote from Pitchfork’s assessment of a truly remarkable album. To me, the way The Strokes talk about the everyday and routine with such gravitas is at the heart of the album. So many people could relate to the songs and how they spoke to them. Of course, many associate the album with the standout single, Last Nite. The Modern Age, Hard to Explain, New York City Cops and Someday are classics. At eleven tracks, the album is quite sleek and focused. Julian Casablancas marked himself out as one of the most important and relevant songwriters of his generation. This is what Pitchfork said:

“Frontman Julian Casablancas' vocals bear more than a passing resemblance to early Lou Reed, but where Reed seemed to accidentally dispense life-changing lyrics through a drugged drawl, Julian sings about the simple trivialities of big-city life with stark lucidity. These songs revolve around frustrated relationships, never coming near to approaching anything that might resemble insight. Yet, with Casablancas' self-assured, conversational delivery, and the almost primal energy of the four guys backing him, attention shifts from the simply present lyrics to the raging wall of melody these guys bang out like it's their lifeblood.

There's a hint of Britain's post-punk 70s in the Strokes' frenetic furor. Bands like the Buzzcocks and Wire subscribed to a similar less-is-more production aesthetic, and seemed naturally adept at scribbling out instantly approachable melodies. And like Singles Going Steady (and, to a lesser extent, Pink Flag), there's something in the Strokes' melodies that few other bands possess: they're immediate without pandering, relying on the instant gratification of solid, driving rhythms while maintaining strong but simple hooks that seem somehow familiar, yet wholly original.

Their production is stripped raw, and not terribly divergent from that of their band-of-the-moment contemporaries, the White Stripes. But the difference between the two bands lies in their degrees of skill: the Stripes have an air of amateurishness that belies songwriter Jack White's obvious talents; the Strokes, even on their debut album, sound like experienced professionals for whom mastering the form seems only an album away.

"The Modern Age" stomps like a renegade elephant with bashed kickdrums and turbulent guitar riffs while Casablancas passionately reels off, "Work hard and say it's easy/ Do it just to please me/ Tomorrow will be different/ So this is why I'm leaving," in an unsteady sing-speak that invokes all the right elements of a great rock leadman. "Last Nite" quakes with growled vocals and bluesy, blustery distortion. "Hard to Explain" eerily recalls the blissful pop of the Wrens' Secaucus with an unforgettable hook, distorted drumkits and fuzzed-out ride cymbals”.

Happy twentieth anniversary to Is This It. A lot of wonderful albums were released in 2001 – including The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells and Daft Punk’s Discovery -, though very few had the same explosion and popularity as Is This It. Listen to it now if you have not done in a while. The Strokes are still making music today. Their sixth studio album, The New Abnormal, was released last year to largely positive reviews. I think they were at their very best right out of the gate. Is This It is…

AN undeniable classic.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears

___________

I wanted to feature…

This Mortal Coil’s first album, It’ll End in Tears, in Vinyl Corner. If you have not experienxed This Mortal Coil or know much about them, Wikipedia provide some more details:

“This Mortal Coil were a British music collective led by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the British record label 4AD.[2] Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were the only two official members, the band's recorded output featured a large rotating cast of supporting artists, many of whom were otherwise associated with 4AD, including members of Cocteau Twins, Pixies, and Dead Can Dance”.

With Elizabeth Fraser on vocals, Robin Guthrie on guitar and Simon Raymonde on guitar, bass and synthesizer, there is so much to love about It’ll End in Tears. Released in October, 1984, the album consists of a mixture of original songs and cover versions – the rendition of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren is probably the album’s/group’s best-known song. If you can get it on vinyl, it provides a magnificent and rewarding listening experience. I say that about a lot of albums I cover on this feature. I mean it with It’ll End in Tears. This is what Rough Trade say in their description of the Deluxe Vinyl edition of the album:

“The first This Mortal Coil release from 1984 and what a classic. Summing up 4AD at that point, created by label head Ivo Watts-Russell and engineer John Fryer this soundtracked many a sun dappled bedsit deftly mixing soundscapes, original music and classic covers (Tim Buckley, Alex Chilton, Roy Harper, Rema Rema etc) but it's the guest musicians who make the album such a seminal slice of wonder - the hugely undervalued Gordon Sharp (Cindytalk), Dead Can Dance, Howard Devoto, Colourbox, Modern English and of course the Cocteau Twins with Elizabeth Fraser taking top honours with readings of Harper's Another Day and Buckley's Song to the Siren.

LP - Deluxe Vinyl which is different from the original release with the artwork reimagined by Ivo Watts-Russell and Vaughan Oliver (4AD’s long-time visual partner). Presented in a beautiful, hand finished and high-gloss gatefold sleeve. Remastered audio made from the original analogue studio tapes by the late, great John Dent”.

I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for a tremendous album. Before getting there, I want to bring in what TREBLE noted in 2018:

“This is music performed by people who’ve seen some shit, or are real good at faking it. That’s my description that most immediately comes to mind, yet that obviously doesn’t scratch the surface. Under the loose stewardship of 4AD label founder Ivo Watts-Russell, various artists from that massively influential imprint collaborated to turn tunes already expressing lament—by singer-songwriters at the fringes of popular appeal, like Buckley, Roy Harper and Big Star’s Alex Chilton—into some of the purest distillations of despair ever committed to tape. Chilton’s “Holocaust” finally becomes a horror worthy of its name, performed by Buzzcocks/Magazine frontman Howard Devoto like a man playing one last piano number in an apocalyptic rain-swept wasteland, bottle of whiskey and handgun at the ready for the only possible response to such suffering. Opening track “Kangaroo” is less dark but weirder, with a reverby bassline and forlorn major-key synth melody under the theatrical vocals of Scottish post-punk session man and eventual Cindytalk frontman Gordon Sharp. Its conjuring of the titular animal amid a tale of missed romantic connection lets you know exactly what strange place you entered the moment you pressed play.

In case it isn’t already abundantly clear, It’ll End in Tears is the essence of goth not because of volume, shock value or even its haunting cover photo (featuring model Pallas Citroen, as all releases by This Mortal Coil do). Only one song sounds like anything resembling traditional post-punk—naturally, it’s the band’s interpretation of Wire’s “Not Me,” and industrial accents only surface on the instrumental “FYT” and “The Last Ray.” Most of the music is low-key piano and synthesizer, arpeggiated clean guitar, extraordinarily expressive bass playing, basic drum machine programming and about 16 tons of dark atmosphere. The album simply radiates the feeling of slow emotional collapse. You can call the sound “dream pop,” as many have, but that phrase more accurately applies to Cocteau Twins and Julee Cruise or their many modern-indie disciples (ranging from Lykke Li and Lorde to the xx and Beach House) than it does This Mortal Coil. 4AD labelmates Dead Can Dance come close, but their music is guarded by its bombastic arrangements and frequent allusions to mysticism.

Speaking of which: As much praise as Fraser justly gets for “Siren” (and a string-accented cover of Roy Harper’s “Another Day”), Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance deserves nearly as much praise for her two contributions to It’ll End in Tears. Both are original tracks, unlike a lot of the album, and they showcase a powerhouse artist at her peak: “Waves Become Wings” is a foreboding, drumless plea of longing driven by synthesizer and Gerrard’s multi-tracked voice, while “Dreams Made Flesh” features Gerrard playing yangqin (a Chinese dulcimer-esque instrument) at blazing speed and chanting like she’s desperate to repel—or perhaps summon—malevolent spirits. Neither song is dissimilar to work Gerrard did with Dead Can Dance, especially Spleen and Ideal and Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (talk about goth, amirite), but it’s beautiful to hear her knock these out of the park alone.

The album concludes with its most beautiful and perhaps most devastating song, “A Single Wish,” another original by Sharp, Cocteau Twins multi-instrumentalist Simon Raymonde and Colourbox’s Steven Young, the latter delivering a spirited piano performance. Its lyric is brief: nothing more than “You and I, alone here, you and I/It’ll end in tears,” and you realize sometimes feelings of loss, romantic or otherwise, don’t feel any more adorned than that naked, almost skin-stripped feeling. Specific lyrics aren’t particularly relevant when discussing This Mortal Coil and It’ll End in Tears anyway, because the project is more about an ineffable bleak mood than anything else.

It’s interesting to consider This Mortal Coil’s construction—a label getting everyone in the lab to throw their styles together and see what comes up. These can create supergroups as godawful as Damn Yankees or overrated as The Traveling Wilburys (fight me; that album is boring as shit). More recently, it’s led to rap-collective showcases: We Are Young Money, Rick Ross’s MMG compilations and, arguably most successfully, Kendrick Lamar and Black Hippy’s stewardship of the Black Panther soundtrack. Such a thing isn’t really sustainable when artists all return to their regular bands or gigs. This Mortal Coil released two more albums, Filigree & Shadow and Blood, both of which are well worth your time if more uneven than their predecessor. But five years passed between the second and third, and 4AD as a label would eventually move beyond the ethereal goth stereotype it’d picked up and embrace a truly diverse stable of artists across multiple genres. Chaos is inherently unsustainable, and despite approaching it in an oft-nuanced way, This Mortal Coil is all about chaos. It is sui generis beautiful pain, and no one can (or probably should) produce something this intense day in and day out. But remastered reissues of all three albums (along with an odds-and-sods release, Dust and Guitars) ensure that a new generation of listeners will come to It’ll End in Tears when they’re ready for it. Here it is. Let it enfold you”.

I am not overly-versed in the work of This Mortal Coil. Their three studio albums are essential listens. I particularly love and respect It’ll End in Tears. The first all-out review that I will source from is from AllMusic. They are among many who have hugely praised one of the best albums of the 1980s:  

“The first of 4AD owner Ivo Watts-Russell's multi-artist studio sessions under the This Mortal Coil name, 1984's It'll End in Tears was a surprisingly influential album in many circles, key in the reawakening of interest in artists like Alex Chilton and the late Tim Buckley by a younger generation of listeners. (Two songs from Big Star's Third are included, a version of "Kangaroo" featuring Cindytalk vocalist Gordon Sharp that sounds even druggier and more disorienting than the original, and a chilling piano and strings version of "Holocaust" with haunted vocals by Howard Devoto; the simple but ravishing version of Buckley's "Song to the Siren" by Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie was cited by David Lynch as the direct inspiration for Julee Cruise's first two albums and has since been used several times in commercials and films.) The covers are the most memorable part of the album -- a Robbie Grey-sung version of Colin Newman's "Not Me," cleverly incorporating a hypnotic riff from another Newman song, "B," is the most conventionally hooky song on the album, to the point that folks who haven't listened to the album for a while tend to forget that half of the songs are "band" originals. These six songs mark 4AD's definitive break from its origins as an artsy post-punk imprint (Bauhaus, Modern English's first few records, etc.) to the development of "the 4AD sound," a heavily reverbed wash of treated guitars and atmospheric keyboards with vocals treated as another instrument in an amorphous wash of sound. The problem is that these largely instrumental tracks sound more like half-baked studio doodles than fully formed songs; a three-song stretch on side two featuring Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard is particularly tiresome. As a whole, It'll End in Tears is a lovely, often exquisite record; taken individually, the power of some of the songs is lost”.

I think that It’ll End in Tears is a glorious Dream Pop album that anyone can enjoy! Go and seek it out if you have not listened before. I guarantee you will get something from it. In their review, this is what Sputnikmusic had to say:

“After Song to the Siren, Tears unleashes a more subtle and challenging set of covers, which (with the exception of Collin Newman’s Not Me) dominate the rest of the record. Holocaust stays within the original piano melody of Big Star’s original. But this time the song starts off surrounded in tense and droning strings. There is something not quite right, and in a good way, slivering beneath the surface. Vocalist Howard Devoto comes off sounding like a weepy Brian Eno circa Here Come The Warm Jets. Yet somehow his often nervous and at times off key delivery is perfect for the songs sickly melody. Holocausts cryptic yet obviously depressing message is cemented in the songs shivering final lines “you’re a wasted face, a sad eyed lie, you’re a holocaust”.

Both Kanga-Roo and Holocaust originate from Big Stars final album “Third” the masterpiece of their small, but influential discography. Third is also the groups most ragged and distressed recording, highlighting the groups disbandment. This Mortal Coil should be given credit here for establishing structure to the originals purposely broken arrangements, which Chilton used to destroy his own groups claim to fame and fortune. As mentioned before, the super group make their versions of the songs their own whilst staying in touch with the tearful emotions of the originals.

The next two songs are relatively similar in tone. Both are much more intimate than the previous set of covers. Lyrically, Fond Affections and Another Day are also the highlights of the album. Combining just enough metaphors with straightforward confessions, these songs are both easier to relate to and resonate with thoughtfulness. Sung by an almost feminine Gordon Sharp making a reappearance, Fond Affections is almost an A cappella. What refuses it the title is a strange whipping noise which resonates through the songs complete running length. A strange yet compelling choice of instrumentation. Another Day once again starring the excellent Elizabeth Fraser on vocals updates Roy Harpers arrangement by adding a fuller string section and abandoning the originals guitar chord structure.

At this point in time it should be advised for me to tell you about the groups own material. Yes, despite This Mortal Coil being known as a covers band for the most part, half of It’ll End in Tears contains the groups own copyrighted material. These tracks are all instrumentals to an extent. Composed mostly by Watts and Fryer with them applying their usual studio trickery. Sadly most of these instrumentals become the albums weak spots. With the exception of The Last Ray, Dreams Made Flesh and A Single Wish, which features vocals from Gordon Sharp, the group would have to wait till their sophomore effort “Filigree and Shadow” to gain a better footing with instrumental sequencing. And it's sequencing which damages the albums third act. Because the group suddenly puts greater emphasis on their own inconsistent material (written here by the usually much better Lisa Gerrard) , it suddenly means the listener has to hold their breath to get to Dreams Made Flesh and the excellent Newman cover, Not Me.

This is not to say the weaker instrumentals are terrible. If you have the patience to look upon them as ambiance they do their job fine enough, but they are ultimately put to use as filler. Waves Become Wings and Barramundi occupy 8 minutes of the albums middle end. Once the waiting is over the final two songs fortunately redeem the albums brief stumble. Robby Grey's vocal cover of Not Me is easily the most instant and freewheeling of the set. It feels like pure sunlight as the band smartly incorporate a ringing melody from another Newman song, B. Robbie Grey sings here and sounds like he’s having a better time than everyone else despite Newman’s cynical lyrics. Whilst Not Me is the albums only outdated track in terms of production, it is ultimately redeemed by its refreshing pace and B’s melody. A Single Wish finally concludes the album as an epitaph. Gordon Sharp makes his final appearance delivering unintelligible lyrics except from his final line “It’ll all end in tears” echoing the name of the albums title. As the music blissfully fades out, one is left with a sense of poignancy and nostalgia.

These moods sum up the albums thematic qualities and its strengths perfectly. Though imperfect, It’ll End in Tears is an undoubtedly powerful recording, even if it at times feels less rousing with many of its songs taken individually. If you are a fan of any of the bands and artists mentioned above this may be a mandatory release. At least do yourself a favor and look this up, you will be pleasantly surprised about this relatively unknown but talented super group”.

I will end it there. I have not really covered This Mortal Coil in my features before. I thought it was high time that I spotlighted their incredible debut release. It’ll End in Tears is an album that you are sure to love and appreciate. For those who are new to its wonders, go and get a copy…

WHEN you can.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential August Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Lorde 

Essential August Releases

___________

AS we are ending the month of July…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Maisie Peters

it is worth looking ahead to August and albums due then. I am writing this on 17th July - so there might be some albums I am listing that are pushed back; others might be announced or have escaped my radar. In any case, below are the August-due albums that you should investigate and save some money for. I am writing this on Record Store Day. It is the second day…so record stores around the country are seeing people come in their drove to buy special releases and browse for great records! Things start to hot up towards the middle of August. I will start with one album from 6th August that is worth pre-ordering. It is IDER’s shame. There are not a load of details available regarding the album. The London duo are incredible. I loved their 2019 album, Emotional Education. When the lead single, Cross Yourself, was released, DORK published an article. We discover a little bit about that track:  

“News of ‘shame’ – which follows on from 2019 debut ‘Emotional Education’, and is due out later this year – arrives alongside lead single ‘Cross Yourself’. The record saw the duo move to Berlin for writing sessions.

“We got there, and we got COVID four weeks later,” they explain. “We had three weeks of heaven where we wrote so much new music and it was everything we dreamed of, living that chaotic, no-routine lifestyle. We Thelma and Louised it back, because the messaging at the time was “if you don’t come back to London now, you never will.”

Of the track, they add: “‘Cross Yourself’ is a reflection on how we search for purpose – how we often attach meaning to things or like the idea of something external to believe in, in exchange for believing in ourselves”.

I will move on to albums due on 13th August. You will want to get a copy of Jungle’s Loving In Stereo. This article from March gives up some details regarding a highly-anticipated album:

“Jungle has unveiled a new album Loving In Stereo, which will be released in August on AWAL. To push the LP, they have released the first single “Keep Moving” along with a music video. The album is about positivity and reflecting that, they have announced an extensive run of worldwide tour dates starting in September, running through the winter.

The video for “Keep Moving” was inspired by West Side Story and the “idea of two groups working together and in opposition at times,” explains Josh Lloyd-Watson, one half of Jungle.

The album’s themes are about new beginnings, new love and fighting back against the odds. “When we write music there’s hope,” adds Lloyd-Watson. “Maybe today we’ll create something that influences people and changes the way they feel. If you can make something that lifts people, that’s an amazing feeling”.

Do ensure that you pre-order a copy. I am excited to see what Jungle come up with. They deliver something exciting, multi-layered and full of life! This is what Rough Trade have to say about an album that many people will be adding to their collection:

“Jungle’s new album Loving In Stereo is the soundtrack for a summer quite unlike any other. The British producer duo have created a huge disco record for the post-social distancing age, with a life-affirming, dancefloor-igniting, sun-kissed celebration of all the things that make music irresistibly joyful. Both their Mercury Prize-nominated, Gold-certified debut and 2018’s follow-up For Ever landed in the UK Top 10 and charted globally”.

An album due on 13th August is Jade Bird’s Different Kinds of Light. It follows her eponymous 2019 debut. She is one of the U.K.’s brightest young songwriters. Go and pre-order her album. I want to bring in an interview from earlier in the year. So soon after the release of her previous album, Bird was looking ahead to her sophomore release:

“WERE THE TRACKS IN THE NEW ALBUM RECORDED THROUGHOUT THE PANDEMIC? HOW DID THE SITUATION AFFECT THE PROCESS?

Jade Bird: They were recorded in the summer in Nashville. It changed the process as I had to quarantine in Mexico for 2 weeks and ended up writing half the album in that time there, like some crazy last minute inspiration hit.

“HOUDINI” IS BUILT AROUND A METAPHOR BASED ON THE FAMOUS MAGICIAN. COULD YOU EXPAND ON THIS CONCEPT?

Jade Bird: It focuses on the male figures in my life doing a ‘disappearing act’, I thought Houdini was the perfect metaphor for this.

YOU EXPLORE THE IDEA OF ABANDONMENT IN “HOUDINI.” WHAT PROMPTED YOUR INTEREST IN THAT THEME?

Jade Bird: I think I needed closure on my past, it was the first song I wrote for this album and it felt cyclical to end the monologue of my childhood with this song.

THIS YEAR WILL SEE YOU RELEASING YOUR SOPHOMORE ALBUM. HOW HAS YOUR SONGWRITING PROCESS EVOLVED SINCE YOU STARTED RELEASING MUSIC?

Jade Bird: Leaps and bounds. I think my songs are more concise and clearer, whilst retaining the imagination. I love things to be direct without being entirely obvious – song titles really help me guide that.

YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST TO WATCH IN THE AMERICANA SPACE. WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES AND HOW DID YOU DISCOVER THEM?

Jade Bird: I think Gillian Welch, Dolly Parton and Sheryl Crow have all been huge influences in that space, all discovered on my own I think… or maybe my grandma…

WHAT CONCEPTS AND SOUNDS WILL YOU EXPLORE IN YOUR UPCOMING ALBUM, AND HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT FROM THOSE TOUCHED UPON IN THE FIRST ALBUM?

Jade Bird: They are very ‘90s British influences. The electric guitar tones have been huge, drawing from Blur to Cocteau Twins to Iggy Pop. It’s a bit more powerful in that aspect; that’s what I wanted to achieve”.

There are a few albums out on 20th August that are worth some money. One album that I am looking ahead to is Deafheaven’s Infinite Granite. Aside from having a great title, there are going to be some seriously great songs in the mix. The American post-Metal band are one that you need to check out. Go and pre-order your copy. It is shaping up to be a tremendous release:

“Over the course of their first ten years, Deafheaven’s music vacillated between tormented beauty and harmonic rage, a hybrid of black metal’s malice and shoegaze’s sublime wall-of-sound. On their fifth album, Infinite Granite, Deafheaven are no longer toying with the juxtaposition of pitting metallic abrasion against swirling grandeur. Quite the opposite: Infinite Granite is a bold and brave leap forward, a gorgeous and invigorating album brimming with style and splendor. In the context of their catalog, it takes on a whole other layer of defiant beauty.

Across Infinite Granite, vocalist George Clarke showcases a startling vocal range; falsettos, whispers, multi-part harmonies, and other adventurous vocal treatments, with his trademark black metal-inspired howls mostly absent. Guitarists Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra expand their sonic palette to include synth textures using them to enrich their astral guitar work rather than outright replace it. Drummer Daniel Tracy has always been a force to reckon with behind the kit, but where he used to floor audiences with his speed and stamina, he’s now free to broaden his approach and lay down authoritative drum patterns that together with bassist Christopher Johnson’s punchy bass lines anchor the band’s lofty arrangements. The refinement of their sound was further encouraged by producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (M83, Paramore, Wolf Alice, Metric), who lent a pop ear to the record. Jack Shirley, who helped produce every previous Deafheaven album, remained on board to engineer the album at his Atomic Garden East studio in Oakland, CA along with additional engineering and mixing from nine-time Grammy Award winner Darrell Thorp (Foo Fighters, Radiohead, Beck). Ultimately, Infinite Granite is Deafheaven’s most goosebump-inducing album to date”.

Jumping in terms of genre, the legendary Kool & The Gang are readying their latest album, Perfect Union, for 20th August. Whilst you can order it as this U.S. site, I am not sure whether you can get it from a U.K. site (you will be able to buy it on Apple Music):

“25th studio release from Kool & The Gang, featuring the singles “Pursuit Of Happiness” and “Sexy (Where’d You Get Yours).”

Formed in 1964, The Jazziacs would play with McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Saunders, and other jazz greats. They would change their name to Kool & The Gang in 1969, sign with De-Lite Records and release their self-titled debut the following year. 1973’s Wild And Peaceful featured the Gold singles “Jungle Boogie” and “Hollywood Swinging.” The end of that decade and beginning of the next saw them collaborating with producer Eumir Deodato for a string of Platinum albums—Ladies Night, Celebrate!, and Something Special. They continued through the 80s with more Platinum albums, including Emergency, which featured four Top 20 singles.

The use of “Jungle Boogie” in 1994’s Pulp Fiction brought a new generation of fans to the group, and David Lee Roth invited them to open for Van Halen’s A Different Kind Of Truth tour in 2012, after catching their set at Glastonbury. 2016’s Kool & The Gang And Friends! had them collaborating with artists including Sean Paul, Angie Stone, Redman, Jamiroquai, Lisa Stansfield, and more. Kool & The Gang have won multiple Grammy® and American Music Awards, have been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and have sold over 70 million records worldwide!

Over five decades since their formation, Kool & The Gang returns with their 25th studio album—Perfect Union. Produced by Ronald Khalis Bell (a founding member of the group who passed away in 2020), this CD / Digital release contains 10 tracks including the new single “Pursuit Of Happiness” and “Sexy (Where’d You Get Yours),” which hit #16 on the Adult R&B charts and a rap version of “Pursuit Of Happiness.”

To make things even more special, the release is the first on Omnivore’s reactivated Ru-Jac Records label!

So, celebrate Kool & The Gang’s sixth decade of hit making with Perfect Union”.

Perhaps the album that most people are looking ahead to in August is Lorde’s (Ella Yelich-O'Connor) Solar Power. The third studio album from the New Zealand-born artist, it is going to be a staggering album! Following 2017’s Melodrama, you definitely need to pre-order a copy of Solar Power:

“Of the album Lorde says, “The album is a celebration of the natural world, an attempt at immortalizing the deep, transcendent feelings I have when I’m outdoors. In times of heartache, grief, deep love, or confusion, I look to the natural world for answers. I’ve learned to breathe out, and tune in. This is what came through.”

Of the single she adds, “The first song, also called Solar Power and written and produced by myself and Jack, is the first of the rays. It’s about that infectious, flirtatious summer energy that takes hold of us all, come June…”

To honor the natural world the artist is presenting the album in a first-of-its kind, discless format. An eco-conscious Music Box will be available for purchase as an alternative to a CD. This innovative offering will contain extra visual content, handwritten notes, exclusive photos, and a download card. The card will give purchasers a high-quality download of the music, two exclusive bonus tracks, and access to some special surprises along the way”.

In the same week, Martha Wainwright’s Love Will Be Reborn is out. The Canadian-American Folk-Rock singer-songwriter is one of my favourites. I love her songwriting and incredible voice. 2016’s Goodnight City was her previous album. I wonder how she will follow it with Love Will Be Reborn. I would encourage people to pre-order this must-hear album:  

“Martha Wainwright is beginning again. The beguiling performer and songwriter makes a most welcome return with Love Will Be Reborn, her first new album in five years. It’s her first album since 2016’s Goodnight City, and the first since 2012’s acclaimed Come Home To Mama to feature so much original material. All eleven songs on Love Will Be Reborn are written by Martha. She wrote the first song, and what would become the title track, a few years ago in what was a very dark time for her personally. The title track hints at the ache of recent years while capturing a sense of optimism for the future. She wraps her wondrous, trademark vocals around the heartbreak to dizzying effect. “I wrote the song in its entirety within ten or fifteen minutes,” she admits.” I was bawling,”

Martha began to play the song live before she recorded the album and it became something of an anthem, giving her hope when it was most needed. The song, and the entire album, was produced by Pierre Marchand, best known for his work with Rufus Wainwright on Poses, the McGarrigle’s on Heartbeats Accelerating and much of Sarah McLaughlin’s 90’s catalogue. Recorded in Martha’s Montreal hometown, the album was made in the basement of café Ursa which also served as a studio and at PM Studios. Martha plays guitar and piano and enlisted the help of Toronto musicians Thom Gill (guitars, keys, back-ups) Phil Melanson (drums, percussion) and Josh Cole (bass). Pierre Marchand plays keyboards on Love Will Be Reborn plus two other tracks while Morgan Moore plays bass on several songs”.

There are a few albums due on 27th August that I want to point your way. The final one due on 20th August is Villagers’ Fever Dreams. Fronted by Conor J. O'Brien, the Dublin band are always incredible! Their fourth studio album, The Art of Pretending to Swim, was among the very best of 2017. Four years later, they are offering up an album that might be even stronger. Go and pre-order a copy of Fever Dreams when you can:

“Villagers' release their fifth studio album Fever Dreams via Domino. Escapism is a very necessary pursuit right now, and Fever Dreams follows it to mesmerising effect. It works like all the best records - it becomes a mode of transport; it picks you up from where you are and sets you down elsewhere.

These are songs with the strange, melted shapes and the magical ambivalence of dreams. The intent of the songs is both mysterious and as clear as a bell. With Fever Dreams, there is a sense of a deepening mastery and an expanding reach by O’Brien. Inspiration for the album was found in many places and came in from all angles, from night swimming on a Dutch island to Flann O’Brien, Audre Lorde, David Lynch, L. S. Lowry via the library music of Piero Umiliani and Alessandro Alessandroni and jazz from Duke Ellington and Alice Coltrane”.

I am intrigued to hear what Chubby and the Gang’s The Mutt’s Nuts will sound like. The London quintet are definitely out on their own and purveyors of arresting and uplifting music. I love the dichotomy of their music. They cover some quite bleak topics - though they also toss in witty lines and rousing compositions. Rough Trade talk about this a little bit:

“West London five-piece Chubby and the Gang are balanced by two energies on The Mutt's Nuts 'a casual 'fuckit' on one side, an active 'fuck off' on the other. For every moment of punk imperfection, there's an intricate flurry of detail. For every enraged statement about modern life as war, there's a lyric like 'Hello heartbreak, my old friend' that catches you off guard. Made up of musicians from across the consistently thriving and criminally overlooked UK hardcore scene (ft. The Chisel, Big Cheese and more), Chubby and the Gang marinate its characteristic speed and sick-of-it-all energy in a mixture of 50s pop sounds. The result is a prickly take on the older, more melodic genres that punk derives from, chewing them up and spitting them out into something mangled but revitalized”.

Go and get the album. It is going to be a treasure trove that will offer up rewards every time you listen. There is definitely a lot to recommend when it comes to Chubby and the Gang. I am a fan of the band and am looking forward to see where they head next and how far they can go!

 IN THIS PHOTO: CHVRCHES

Another huge album that you will want to save some money for is CHVRCHES’ Screen Violence. Go and pre-order a copy now. The Glasgow band formed in September 2011 – their tenth anniversary is coming very soon. Their fourth studio album is among this year’s most-anticipated. I want to bring in a bit of an interview from NME. The band’s lead, Lauren Mayberry, revealed some inspirations behind Screen Violence’s first single:   

“Some of Mayberry’s online interactions can be felt in certain songs on the record. Over the years, she’s had multiple perceptions placed on her by people that have never – and likely will never – meet her in the flesh.

She’s been criticised for wearing clothes on stage that are “too revealing”, but also had complaints coming her way when she retreated to baggier clothes – a reversal of the arc of criticism Billie Eilish recently experienced when she ditched the oversized outfits for her British Vogue cover. She has been labelled an “angry feminist”, “bitch” and “slut” for speaking out about things she believes are right or wrong has, and chastised for mixing politics and music. If she had stayed silent, you imagine she would have been scolded for not using her platform to talk about important issues too.

Although Mayberry may face more extreme reactions – and from a lot more people – it’s far from a unique experience. Women have to deal with these impossible and often contradictory standards in everyday life, and in trying to adhere to the patriarchy’s rules you can incur psychological whiplash.

“You could have offered me a collaboration with anyone and I would still choose Robert Smith” – Martin Doherty

It’s a feeling that takes centre stage on ‘Screen Violence’’s gigantic first single ‘He Said She Said’. “Get drunk, don’t be a mess,” Mayberry sings at one point, later following it up with more inconsistent commandments: “He said you need to be fed, but keep an eye on your waistline / Look good, but don’t be obsessed.” No wonder the chorus is her voice engaged in a disorienting call-and-response with a digitised echo of herself crying: “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“I’ve always been, for the most part, the only girl in a band, or the only girl on a lineup, or the only girl working in a venue,” she says. “I spent a lot of time trying so hard to be one of the boys because it’s just easier. When I was younger, it was like, ‘OK, well you need to be better, faster, smarter, tougher, quicker to make the dirty joke, because then that makes you less of an outlier”.

One huge album that is very much on my radar is Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. It is a great title from the hugely popular U.S. artist. If you have not heard Halsey’s music, go and check it out and ready yourself for the new album. You will want to pre-order what is going to be one of this year’s best:

“Capitol Records release Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. She recorded the career-defining album with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, known for their work in Nine Inch Nails and as Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy®-winning film/television composers. She continues to push creative boundaries, expanding her influence and impact beyond music. Named as one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2020, she has won over 20 awards, including an AMA, MTV VMA, GLAAD Award, the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s Hal David Starlight Award and a CMT Music Award. Halsey recently introduced about-face, a multi-dimensional makeup line for made for everyone. Halsey continues to use her voice to speak up for causes she passionately believes in, including disenfranchised youth, women’s rights, mental health and the LGBTQ community”.

Halsey is an incredible artist who seems to get better and more astonishing with every album. I am really looking forward to seeing what she produces on this forthcoming album. It is going to be an album that you will not want to miss out on.

There are actually a couple of other albums out on 27th August that slipped my mind! Before that, I want to stick with Halsey. She spoke with Byrdie earlier in the year. We get a sense of what the new album might provide – in addition to how she has been raising awareness of terrific Black creatives:

“While About-Face and Manic are entirely separate creative projects, it’s easy to see a parallel between the makeup emphasizing one’s honest appearance and the album’s candid portrayal of Halsey’s thoughts. I Would Leave Me If I Could fits neatly into this picture as well, letting her express herself without the pressure of preconceived notions. “Everything changes when you're Halsey and saying it, instead of a writer,” she explains, “because then people are projecting years of every slutty outfit I've ever worn, or every guy I've ever dated, or every tweet I've ever tweeted, every song of mine they've ever heard.” The experience of writing and curating the poems, some of which are older works that inspired some of her lyrics, was freeing: “It made me feel like what I look like doesn't bastardize what I have to say. That made me feel confident, and I really loved doing that.”

 Halsey once joked on Twitter that God made her and declared, “lmao and then she’ll create a new persona every 6 months.” However, this recurring theme of stripping back the layers behind which she hides—be they makeup, metaphors, or a stage name—feels less like the backstory of a temporary character and more like the makings of an entirely new era, in which Halsey takes the backseat. Her goal in her current projects isn’t to promote herself, but to amplify “lesser celebrated members of our community,” she says between bites of a salad that she can’t resist any longer. One such project is the Black Creators Fund, through which Halsey provides Black creatives with a platform and financial support.

It was an idea she had been toying with, but after participating in peaceful Black Lives Matter protests last summer at which police tear-gassed and shot rubber bullets at the crowd, she was spurred to do even more. “I wanted an opportunity for people to look at a database of amazing Black creatives, and see art that people of color had made in a time where you couldn't log on without seeing bodies on the internet,” she says. “That was the first thing. The second thing goes back to the amount of times that I'd been trying to hire a Black stylist, or a Black director, or a Black photographer and had been told that they can't find anyone, and me being like, ‘You're full of s–t”.

Maisie Peters’ You Signed Up For This is an album I am looking ahead to. Go and pre-order it if you can. She is an artist that many might not know. Her songwriting is so personal and impactful. I love what she puts out. You Signed Up for This is one you will not want to miss out on:

“Revered for her songwriting, Maisie has spent the past three years honing her craft in sessions across London, LA and Nashville, creating songs for You Signed Up For This alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran, Steve Mac, Fred again.., Johnny McDaid, Miranda Cooper, and producers Joe Rubel (Tom Grennan, Benjamin Francis Leftwich), Afterhrs (Niall Horan, GRACEY), Rob Milton (Easy Life, Holly Humberstone) and Brad Ellis (Jorja Smith, Little Mix).

With her knack for transforming everyday experiences in to vividly written diary-style songs, You Signed Up For This is both Maisie’s coming of age story and a love letter to girlhood; penned with the wit, charm and quiet confidence that has seen her ascend from busking on the streets of Brighton, to recently making her US TV debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden. Transporting us directly in to her world as she navigates from small town teenager to adulthood, there’s a universal sense of familiarity and nostalgia as she shares memories of blossoming relationships (‘Outdoor Pool’, ‘My Elvis Song’), being played (‘Boys’, ‘Volcano’), heartbreak (‘Tough Act’, ‘Villain’), and first holidays with her twin sister (‘Brooklyn’)”.

The last album from August (unless I have missed anything obvious) that you should save some pennies for is a reissue of Supergrass’ magnificent second studio album, In It for the Money (originally released in 1997). Even if you have a passing interest in Supergrass, you should definitely pre-order the new-look In It for the Money:

“Remastered version from original tapes of In It For The Money. From the vein-busting opener "In It For The Money" to the stoopid, human-beatbox closer of "Sometimes I Make You Sad", Supergrass's second album fairly defines the term "classic". "Going Out" swivels on an outrageous, 14-bar passage of Memphis brass and buzzes like the Beatles on the roof at Apple, while "Sun Hits The Sky" has all the furious bass-runs of the Who's "I Can See For Miles". And "Late In The Day" breaks into a guitar solo of such unindulgent homesick beauty it could cause pavements to weep. God would have to buy a Gibson and crib off John Lennon to top half of the songs on Money.

3CD - 43 extra tracks over two CDs of B-Sides, Rarities, Outtakes and Live Tracks.

2LP and 2LP+ -With bonus 12" featuring ‘Sun Hits The Sky (Bentley Rhythm Ace Remix)’ and ‘The Animal’”.

Those are the albums out next month that you will want to add to your collection As I said, some dates may change and there may be the odd album that comes out of nowhere. It looks like it is a strong and varied month for new releases. If you were curious which albums you should buy, then I hope that my recommendations above…

PROVIDE some answers.

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 1985: Hot Press

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of the video for The Big Sky in 1986

1985: Hot Press

___________

I am not surprised that…

there are a lot of print interviews available from 1985 concerning Kate Bush. It was the year Hounds of Love arrived; there was a lot of interest in her. That had been the case since Wuthering Heights was released in 1978, although Hounds of Love was her most accomplished album to that point. Whilst there are a lot of great interviews from that time, there are some slightly awkward ones – especially when it came to the U.S. press and one or two interviewers being misinformed and lacking any research! The interview I want to source from today was published in Hot Press in November 1985. Thanks to Reaching Out for providing this invaluable resource. The interviewer’s name does not appear (an anonymous journalist), but the questions are a mixture of slightly ‘tabloid’ and those centred around her work. Bush had to deal with the press all of the time. Some interviews are really good; many more are a little painful to read and see – in the sense that Bush was having to field some ridiculous questions and those not really related to her work at all. I selected the Hot Press interview, as there are some great answers from Bush. She kept composed and dignified throughout the exchange. There are a few sections of the interview that I wanted to highlight:

“Kate Bush is notoriously wary of press scrutiny. She last spoke to Hot Press back in 1978 around the time of the release of Wuthering Heights, her first single, which subsequently raced all the way to the number one spot.

A megastar ever since, she's the kind of artist who gives Press Officers nervous breakdowns. We've sought another audience on numerous occasions in the intervening period, but the idea remained interminably in the pending file, awaiting what La Bush might deem the most appropriate moment. During the three years since the release of her superb fourth album, The Dreaming, we've kept in almost constant contact (Jesus, the phone bills!)...

With the impending launch of the next meisterwerk, Hounds of Love, by the summer of 1985, the logic seemed inescapable. We made the case as often as possible and (sweet relief) Kate was convinced. Not that everything is necessarily hunky dory once the interview has been agreed to in principle: that was August, this is November. No wonder the press office remain nervous and apprehensive until the writer is safely dispatched in a taxi to the artist's Elsham rehearsal hideaway...

It all seems so out of context when you finally confront Kate Bush herself. She's warm and wonderfully friendly. And you can see right away why people have fallen in love with those two huge dimples on her left cheek: the beauty is in the blemishes. She's admirably unaffected, too, making a quick cup of tea herself, and downing two chocolate eclairs without batting an eyelid.

When the tea is finished, we settle down to chew some tape up. This is what we find.

I am sure you are fed up answering this question, but the obvious thing people want to know first is why there was such a long gap between your last album and this one.

"Yeah, it really is the question! I wanted to sort out my environment. I was living in the city, and I wasn't happy working in London studios--so we moved to the country and built and equipped our own studio, which we then recorded everything in. Also, I was taking time to go dancing again, to get back into training. Whenever I make an album I just stop completely, and it's those gaps in between when I can throw myself back into it. And things like learning to drive, going to see a few movies--actually I wanted to go to see people. Just to do those things that you don't get time to do when you are so busy. And I think it was all really beneficial. It really was."

The second side of your new album has been described as a "concept" piece. Was there any resistance on EMI's part to releasing a record with that aspect to it?

"I think if they'd heard demos, if they'd heard about the idea of it being a concept before they actually heard the finished thing, I might have had that problem, yes. But because they were presented with the final thing, with all the songs completed and linked together, and it was finished, I think they were accepting it as music rather than having any preconception of 'concept'--of everyone going 'Ooh, no! That's really Sixties!' It did frighten me a lot, just that word, 'concept'. 'Ooh!' You could feel people shuddering just as you said it. But it is what it is, you can't get away from it.

Obviously on one level The Ninth Wave is about somebody nearly drowning. But I was struck by images which suggested that there could be drugs involved. There's the line in And Dream of Sleep [sic]: "I can't be left to my imagination/Let me be weak..." And then there's the mention of poppies.

"Definitely there is the connection, with the poppies. That imagery wasn't really meant to be drug-orientated, but when you think of poppies you automatically get that sense of terrible drowsiness, and I suppose you do connect it to opium."

As somebody who is involved in making records, you are also involved in creating a product and to an extent, Kate Bush becomes a commodity. How do you feel about that?

"Yes, that is something that does scare me. If you want to make records, videos, you have got to have money, and to get that money you have to have albums that are relatively successful. You have to promote them. And that's where I feel the commodity side comes in, because as soon as the personality seeps into it rather than the work, you're making that person vulnerable to the public. I don't like that. I'd much rather work on albums, videos, and explore films and that, without having to promote them. I find it difficult, I feel false. It's very against what I feel is right.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush directing the video for Hounds of Love in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

"I think sometimes the work speaks much better than the person does. I certainly feel mine does. Because I can spend a lot of time trying to say something, and I don't feel that I am good enough at what I am doing now to really warrant doing it, other than for selling my work. And I think sometimes it can go against the work: the personality can almost taint it."

Can you give an example of that?

"Preconceptions can cause problems, and I think, say some of the press I got a while ago was very flippant. And I felt that that, to a certain extent, did work against what I was trying to do. It created an impression of me that wasn't really what I was, and perhaps gave that impression to people who could have seen me in a different way."

You can't escape the fact that this is the century of mass communication, and the whole way in which the media work is through creating resonances off one another. To me, it's part of the excitement.

"I suppose if we start talking about someone else, I can automatically relate to what you are saying. I am curious about what made Sting write Message in a Bottle. But at the same time I can see things that have happened to other people, where it would have been better if that area of their personality hadn't been aired."

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of the video for The Big Sky in 1986

The initial poster promoting your first album was a close-up shot of you in a leotard. That caused quite a bit of controversy at the time. What's your view, retrospectively, of that?

"I didn't really see it objectively at that time, and I think now, when I see it, it's quite embarassing--but I suppose that's because I'm a long way away from it. I don't think it had too many sexual connotations--I thought it was rather nice at the time."

Is there a very conscious root in English culture in your writing? For example, the Tennyson quote you used to introduce The Ninth Wave. And then there was Oh! England, My Lionheart on the second album.

"My patriotic number! Yes, I think there probably was, moreso than there is now. The Tennyson thing is a bit misleading because rather than that inspiring the b-side, I needed a title for all the pieces and there wasn't any line in the songs that really was right. It needed a title that said something, so I was looking through some books, and I found this quote from Tennyson that I though was perfect, so that was it."

Is most of your reading concentrated on nineteenth-century literature?

"I read very little. I'm really terribly ignorant, just like my politics. As a child, I used to read lots and lots, but I just feel guilty now when I pick up books. I think I should be doing something else. It's really an incredible experience--it's so intimate, just you and the book. And you create so much of it. That's what's so nice about it. You are involved with the effort. And I suppose that's why I don't do it much!"

I suppose I got that impression starting off with "Wuthering Heights".

"Right, well it always affects me. Every book I've read has really affected me. It's that special, you do create a relationship, really. And that was such a huge story...Oscar Wilde was one of my earliest influences--his fairy stories. I could still read one of them-- definitely--and cry. Terribly tragic stuff."

So what about the Irish flavour in your music?

"I feel that strongly, being torn between the Irish and the English blood in me, really. And the Irish influence is definitely very strong. My mother was always playing Irish music, and again, I think when you are really young, things get in and get in deeper because you haven't got as many walls up. I just--it's the same as my mother--I watch her, and when the pipes start playing, 'Yahoo!', you know, everything just lights up and it can be so inspiring. It's just emotional stuff. I think I was really lucky to be given that kind of stimulus. It's really heavy, emotionally--the pipes, they really tear it out of your heart."

But do you listen to Irish traditional music at the moment?

"Yeah, I do. It's great. I love it."

What's your reaction to Ireland?

"It's beautiful, totally beautiful. There are so many different kinds of landscapes and beauty. It's so wonderful just hanging around the coast and watching it change. It's always dramatic, stepping back into the last century. It has a real sense of magic. And the people are so fantastic, so warm, so wistful. I really do like Ireland a lot. It's one of the few places apart from England where I'd ever think of living."

Were you ever north of the border?

"No, never."

Would you like to go?

"Yes, I would."

You've no reservations about it?

"I think everybody that's English has hesitations. You can't help but be conditioned. It happens everywhere, and I would very much like to go over, and certainly without having experienced--to understand the reality of it and not the illusion that's created by people”.

I would encourage people to read the whole interview. 1985 was a year when Bush released the masterpiece of Hounds of Love. She was getting new interest from the U.S. This Hot Press interview would have reached U.S. fans and those that were new to her music. I am not sure what impression they would have got reading the interview! Bush comes across really well. I’m not so sure that the interviewer was asking all of the right questions and keeping it all about Hounds of Love – I suppose that he was attempting to do a sweep of her career and present a broad viewpoint of Bush in terms of her work and personal life. I suppose people do want to know about her loves and personal details, though it always makes for slightly uncomfortable reading. There is a section when she is asked about her long-term relationship with Del Palmer (who has worked with her since the start of her career and still does today). They were pictured together when she promoted Hounds of Love at the London Planetarium . Not that it was the cat being let out of the bag. There were people outside of her circle that knew about the relationship. It was Bush being accompanied by Palmer and not wanting to make a big deal of it. Some in the press were too intrusive about the relationship. Regardless, there is a lot from the Hot Press interview to appreciate – that is why I have spotlighted it. At the peak of her creative and commercial powers, Bush was one of the most in-demand artists in the world (although, with the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson around and storming the charts, she was not the biggest artist around). One can only imagine the sort of exhaustion Bush felt promoting Hounds of Love! As I always say, she always delivered these wonderful and interesting interviews. The one with Hot Press is another example of…

HOW fascinating and professional she is.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Mariah Carey - Emotions

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Mariah Carey - Emotions

___________

I am going to talk about…

the album in addition to the single. Both are called Emotions. They are, of course, from Mariah Carey. I think both are classics that remain underrated. On 13th August, the single turns thirty. It seems amazing to think that it was released that long ago! I remember it coming out and being hooked by it. Carey’s second studio album was released in September 1991. The title track opens proceedings with real energy and memorability. Maybe Carey started to really hit her stride (in terms of her vocals and songwriting) on her fifth studio album, Daydream (1995). I really like Emotions and feel that it is a fantastic album that warrants reinvestigation. Before coming to an article regarding the album, here is some information about one of Carey’s biggest singles:

“Emotions" is a song by American singer Mariah Carey from her second studio album Emotions (1991). It was written and produced by Carey, Robert Clivillés, and David Cole of C+C Music Factory and released as the album's lead single on August 13, 1991. The song's lyrics has its protagonist going through a variety of emotions from high to low, up to the point where she declares, "You got me feeling emotions." Musically, it is a Gospel and R&B heavily influenced by 1970s disco music and showcases Carey's upper range and extensive use of the whistle register.

"Emotions" received positive reviews from critics.

About.com's Bill Lamb called the high notes as the pros of the album itself and that it stands with Mariah's best.

AllMusic editor Ashley S. Battel highlighted this song and he wrote that this song is upbeat and it serves to send the listener on a musical journey filled with varying emotions.

Billboard editor Larry Flick said, "Although the heat generated by her multiplatinum debut album has barely cooled, Carey previews her sophomore set with a dance /pop ditty that will remind some of the Emotions' "Best Of My Love". Expect instant multiformat attention.

Cashbox described it as "a happy, perky soul/pop number bearing a resemblance to the music the group The Emotions embraced during the 1970s".

Chicago Tribune editor Jan DeKnock wrote "just listen to those incredibly high notes on the title cut and current single 'Emotions.'"

Los Angeles Times wrote that this song's producers somewhat perk up this song but he noted that the song can't match the quality of any C+C material.

Music & Media said it "is a good display of Carey's impressive vocal gymnastics. A fashionable co-production by Cole and Clivilles (C&C Music Factory) is paired to a gospel-tinged pop groove."

Music Week called it a "dynamic gospel/R&B-inflected house track" in their review.

Rolling Stone writer Rob Tannenbaum also said, "they (producers) back Carey with pumping house keyboards and shamelessly recycle the chords of Cheryl Lynn's 'Got to Be Real' and the Emotions' 'Best of My Love' to construct the bubbly new-disco 'Emotions.'"

Sun Sentinel magazine editor Deborah Wiler wrote that "the unimaginative first single, Emotions, sounds suspiciously like the `77 hit Best of My Love (by the Emotions)."

"Emotions" was nominated for the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, losing to "Something to Talk About" by Bonnie Raitt. It won a BMI R&B Award, continuing Carey's unbroken streak of wins for this award. Carey was also nominated for Producer of the Year (non-classical), becoming the second woman to achieve this honor”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Mariah Carey won the Best New Artist award at the GRAMMYs in 1991

The chorus has an incredible hook. Carey’s whistle register, whilst it can put some of, works really well and highlights her amazing range. Many people have placed Emotions in the top-ten singles from the superstar. Nearly three decades after its release, Emotions is still being spun and celebrated. Mariah Carey has influenced legions of new singers. One can tell that songs like Emotions are important and have fed into other tracks. If you need to be uplifted and have some energy put into he veins, then I would recommend you listen to Emotions. My second-favourite song of Carey’s (behind Fantasy from Daydream), there is something about Emotions that draws me in. Before finishing with an article that asks us to reassess the album, Emotions, here are some facts about the album’s lead single:

“In this song, Mariah Carey is over the moon for a guy who makes her feel alive and in love. The emotions he makes her feel are deeper than she's ever dreamed of.

Carey wrote the lyric, but the track came courtesy of David Cole and Robert Clivillés, who were the C+C of C+C Music Factory. They were red-hot producers at the time with a hit of their own in 1991 with "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)."

This song bears resemblance to the 1977 #1 disco hit "Best Of My Love," by... The Emotions. Producers would often conjure up tracks in the style of hits from the past, and would label them accordingly. So, it's entirely possible that when Carey got the track (which would have come in a box), it said "Emotions" on it, perhaps triggering her lyric.

Carl Sturken, who as a member of Rythm Syndicate toured with C+C Music Factory around this time, is convinced this is the case. "I am absolutely one thousand percent certain that when they wrote that groove, they labeled it 'Emotions' because it's The Emotions' groove," he told Songfacts. "Then when Mariah Carey comes in to write over it, she sees 'Emotions' written as the name of the groove, so she writes a song called 'You've Got Me Feeling Emotions.'"

The "Best Of My Love" songwriters are not credited on "Emotions," but one of them - Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire - took legal action and received a settlement.

Speaking to Fred Bronson, author of The Billboard Book Of #1 Hits, David Cole weighed in on the connection to "Best Of My Love": "What was funny was both Robert and Mariah came up with the 'Emotions' groove separately. She had an idea for it and so did Robert. They both mentioned doing something similar to the (group) Emotions. I mean, the Emotions were an inspiration for the song 'Emotions,' there's no way to deny that or get around it. It definitely has the feeling from the Emotions, but we're not dumb enough to go and steal the damn record."

According to Cole, Tommy Mottola, the head of Sony Music and Mariah's soon-to-be husband, suggested the collaboration. Mariah was a big fan of the producer and the pair hit it off right away. "Working with Mariah was, first of all, fun," Cole recalled. "Robert and I bounced off ideas. We came up with a whole bunch of grooves. If this worked, cool, this doesn't work, next. And that's how we did the whole project. We would all come together and decide on what worked and what didn't.

Even though she was already a perfectionist in the studio, Mariah credits Cole with pushing her to even further heights. "He was one of the only people I used to have in the studio when I would sing because I respected him as a singer," she recalled in a 2018 Pitchfork interview. "He would push me in different areas where he could actually sing it to me and I would be like, 'Oh, this is cool. I like that.' If you listen to the song 'Emotions,' that was him going, 'You can do that. Try this.' Half the time, I would lose my voice afterwards because he would just push me."

In a 2015 retrospective interview for her greatest hits album #1 To Infinity, Mariah said she enjoyed making the music video because the director, Jeff Preiss, was more artistic than her previous directors. The playful clip shows her cruising in the back of a convertible and hanging out with a group of friends in New York City”.

To wrap up, SLANT wrote about Emotions five years ago. They marked twenty-five years of an album that is underrated. Few speak about Emotions as highly as albums like Daydream and Butterfly. They make some interesting observations:

“At the time of its release, Mariah Carey’s sophomore effort, Emotions, was considered a commercial disappointment, failing to reach the top of the charts and selling just half of what the singer’s blockbuster self-titled debut did. In his review of the album, Rolling Stone’s Rob Tannenbaum deemed Mariah’s singing “far more impressive than expressive,” a criticism ostensibly borne out by the album’s titular lead single, on which she proclaims that she’s been “feeling emotions.” Not to put too blunt a point on it, she then tells us, rather than shows us: “I feel good, I feel nice!”

Critics like Tannenbaum routinely griped about Mariah’s reliance on vocal acrobatics, which, they claimed, kept audiences at a remove from her actual songs. Like that of Whitney Houston, to whom she was often compared (and much to both women’s irritation), Mariah’s voice was indeed almost supernatural, a thing to marvel at from a distance. But the assertion that her music lacked expression, even at this early date in her career, is one that the songs themselves simply don’t bear out. The deliriously joyous “Emotions,” however broad its lyrics may seem, all but mandates a performance of the magnitude that Mariah delivers: Her object of desire has her feeling “intoxicated, flying high,” and though hers might be a literal vocal interpretation, it’s certainly an expressive one.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Loengard 

Mariah and her label, however, obviously got the very public memo, as the arguably gratuitous sustained whistle note at the end of “Can’t Let Go,” the album’s second single, was removed from the radio edit of the song, and her upper range was employed sparingly, and often only as background textures, throughout much of the remainder of the decade. Luckily, Emotions still exists as it was conceived, complete with Mariah’s unapologetic deployment of her powerful instrument, and free of the reproach of the same people who would, in just a few years’ time, lament its inevitable deterioration.

Beginning with a rumbling piano tremolo followed by what might be the lowest note Mariah has committed to tape, the bombastic “You’re So Cold” is a lesson in fabulous excess, a showcase for four of Mariah’s infamous five octaves. The first 60 seconds of the song make for a deceptive introduction, with the singer’s portentous, protracted opening invocation (“Lord only knows…why I love you so…”) giving way to a bouncy, horn-filled kiss-off to a cruel devil in disguise. Of course, whistled at a pitch where articulation is rendered secondary, the word “disguise” becomes as unintelligible as Mariah’s euphoric squeals throughout the title track.

There are, believe it or not, moments of subtlety and nuance on Emotions, the fact of which is perhaps key to understanding the frustrations some have regarding Mariah’s myriad vocal tics. “Can’t Let Go” is, in hindsight, one of her most understated hits, her downcast verses floating ephemerally atop the song’s pointillistic percussion, while the album’s penultimate track, “Till the End of Time,” finds Mariah taking her sweet time building from a barely audible whisper to a thundering belt over the span of five minutes.

Mariah’s albums hadn’t yet become venues for her karaoke-style covers of ‘80s power ballads, but Emotions was an early indicator of her penchant for musical quotation. Mimi’s fascination with appropriating hits from her youth manifested itself on “Can’t Let Go,” which swipes its opening keyboard riff from Keith Sweat’s “Make It Last Forever” (she would go on to more directly sample the 1987 R&B hit on a remix for 1999’s “Thank God I Found You”). More than on any other Mariah Carey album, though, disco is a clear influence here, thanks in part to her collaborations with Robert Clivillés and David Cole of C+C Music Factory. House music, the duo’s genre of choice, was still gloriously and inextricably bound to hip-hop in the early ‘90s, as both were built almost entirely on pastiche: “Emotions” is a shameless homage to “Best of My Love” (by none other than the Emotions), while “Make It Happen” makes a less overt nod to Alicia Myers’s 1981 single “I Want to Thank You.”

If Mariah’s struggle to locate her musical identity at this point in her career often resulted in her cribbing from the past, she was already exerting a sense of agency in her lyrics. Songs like the autographical “Make It Happen” and “The Wind,” the latter of which is the story of the death of a friend set to Russ Freeman’s instrumental jazz composition of the same name, hint at the inspirational anthems and confessional manifestos, respectively, that would come to be fixtures on Mariah’s future albums. “No proper shoes upon my feet/Sometimes I couldn’t even eat,” she sing-raps on “Make It Happen,” recounting her struggle from Long Island backup singer to multiplatinum superstar by the age of 20. Though her “struggle” ended before most people’s usually begin (“It just didn’t take that long for the girl with one shoe to acquire many,” Rich Juzwiak quipped in our 2005 retrospective of Mariah’s work), her performance is galvanizing and soulful”.

Mariah wouldn’t completely liberate herself from the fetters of everything she believed was holding her back until 1997’s Butterfly, and has since strained to maintain an equilibrium in terms of both her music and image, often slipping into caricature. But on Emotions, at least musically, she managed to strike a balance of soul and pop that’s not just technically impressive, but filled with undeniable, honest-to-god feeling”.

A stunning song that is infectious and sounds fresh today, Emotions is one of the very best from the iconic Mariah Carey. If anything, Emotions has received more love and investigation this long after its release than it did when it was released in 1991. Perhaps Carey was seen as a new commodity and few knew what to make of her music. Despite the Emotions album having a few weaker moments, one cannot deny the strength and importance of its title track. It is a jam that has this incredible force and positivity. If you have not heard the song or have not spin it for a while, put it on now and spend some time with it. In my opinion, it is…

A real gem.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Porij

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Oliver Pringle

Porij

___________

ONE of the most promising bands…

of the moment come in the form of Manchester’s Porij. There are a few features that I want to bring in - so that we can be introduced to the band. Their six-track mixtape (as opposed to an E.P.), Breakfast – it had to called that, right?! -, was released last year. It was a collection of awesome songs from a group that are turning heads right now. I think that, despite a rather terrible 2020 and 2021 (so far), the group have done well to get their music out there and grow their fanbase. They are going to be keen to get out there and gig more later in the year. The first article, an interview that NME conducted last year, introduces us to Porij. The group - Eggy (vocals and keys), Tommy (vocals and guitar), Jammo (bass) and Tom (drums) – have been friends for a while now:  

“When you form a band, the first live show is normally the last stage of the process. After initial rehearsals you might start to write some of your own songs, and once those have been perfected and you’ve spent hours coming up with a name, you’ll take the tentative steps to performing in front of an audience. But Porij (pronounced like the breakfast oats), did everything backwards.

After living in the same block of halls at uni in Manchester, the foursome – who are all studying popular music at The Royal Northern College of Music – became pals. Although they’d messed around recording bits and pieces, they hadn’t properly considered becoming a band until a friend was forced to pull out of a live show in Leeds.

“It was literally going through Tommy’s computer [listening to recordings] being like ‘yeah we’ll play that… we’ll just need to make it five minutes longer!’” drummer Tom laughs. Thankfully, the gig went well, despite missing bassist James, who wasn’t actually in the same country when it happened, and thus, Porij (the Ready Brek-themed name has “no meaning” and was picked at random) was formed.

As for their other influences, the band sing the praises of Swedish electro-poppers Little Dragon and jazzy left-field multi-instrumentalist Louis Cole, before dissolving into a heated discussion about UK garage don MJ Cole’s back catalogue – which results in the band booing Tom when he says some of it “isn’t good”.

Whilst there are not many (if any) reviews for Breakfast, there are some interviews where we discover more about Porij’s tastes and what they have planned for the future. In October last year, Rebecca Mason spoke with Porij. They discussed their then-latest single, Dirty Love - in addition to how their songs come together:

“Talk us through your new single ‘Dirty Love’, where did it come from and what does it mean to you as a band?

Eggy: I had to write a song for a deadline at uni and somehow this came out. I was pretty stressed at the time so I wanted to distract from my real life. This led to me imagining this weird toxic cult reigned by a freaky Queen. She rules over her people by weaponising her love. I wanted to write something captivating but unsettling and I think Dirty Love is the epitome of that sensation.

Band: It’s probably the fattest, filthiest version of our sound yet. We like it.

How do the majority of your songs come together? Are your influences often similar or are they constantly changing?

It’s changing all the time. We all produce, so we make beats, bring them into rehearsals and try and play them live. It’s super fun, but every single song seems to be a completely different process so we can’t really tell you.

We all listen to different stuff, but here’s what we’re collectively into at the moment: Kano (Hoodies All Summer is incredible), Disclosure (new tune with Slowthai slaps), and Little Dragon (always).

Is there anything you’ve learned about yourselves through making music?

We’re all massively insecure but sometimes when we make music we forget that we are.

What is something you wish you’d known when you first got into the music industry?

Don’t do pay to play gigs. You can record in your bedroom and get it played on the radio. Don’t master your own music.

What’s it like being involved in the Manchester scene at the moment? Any favourite upcoming artists we should be listening to?

Manchester’s sick. There’s such a huge history of dance music here, so it feels amazing to be able to be a part of it.

There are too many good upcoming bands to pick so we’re gonna take one each:

Jamo: See Thru Hands. Massive through rig.

Tom: KSR’s voice gets me every time.

Tommy: Codex. They slap, the most lush electronic music I’ve seen live!

Eggy: Paige Kennedy. If you’re looking for engaging songwriting than look no further. Can usually be found in a studio or on the hockey pitch”.

The music scene has always been vibrant in Manchester. At the moment, there are some seriously good acts coming from there. If you have not checked out Porij, then make sure that you do as soon as possible. They are making some seriously good music!

 PHOTO CREDIT: Oliver Pringle

Before moving on, there are a couple of other interviews that I want to draw in. Earlier this year, DORK looked back on the year and asked Porij how – for a hungry and talented young band – it has been not hitting the road:  

“2020’s been a bit much, hasn’t it, are you guys all okay? What have you been up to this year?

We’re getting by alright! Chaotic good energy. It has all been a bit much, although Biden won, so that’s a relief. All our gigs got cancelled, so we’ve been focussing on writing and recording instead.

Must be weird trying to get a new band going while unable to play gigs, is that impacting you much? Are you able to get shows “in the diary”?

It’s sad not being able to perform together because it had become a big part of what we do and we miss interacting with everyone that came to our shows. We had to find different ways to do that the past six months by getting progressively sillier on social media. We’ve been offered a few gigs recently, but it’s all so up in the air at the moment that we don’t know what’s going to happen.

Is there a particular vibe you like to go for with your music? Any lyrical themes you’re particularly drawn to?

Anything and everything is allowed. We like to be open. Just as ‘Dirty Love’ was complete fantasy, songs like ‘Closer’ are completely personal.

What do you lot do for fun when you’re not doing band business?

Eggy likes supermarkets, in particular the mystery aisles in Lidl and/or Aldi. Tommy likes making drum’n’bass loud. Tom bought a skateboard a couple months ago and can take a hefty slam. Jammo eats”.

The final interview comes from DIY. Some of the biggest tastemakers in the country have been saluting and highlighting one of Manchester’s finest. They highlighted the single, Nobody Scared (the interview was published in May this year):

“Following the release of last year’s ‘Breakfast’ mixtape, the group returned with plucky and poignant new alt-pop single ‘Nobody Scared’ last month. Speaking about the track, vocalist Eggy explains, “I wrote the lyrics for ‘Nobody Scared’ after watching a documentary on Netflix about the Yorkshire Ripper. It focused on the Reclaim the Night marches and it made me remember the feeling of fear when I used to walk home alone at night. The song is about recognising those feelings but addressing the fact that women and girls shouldn’t have to live their lives afraid. The line ‘nobody scared’ is meant to be empowering and embody the Reclaim the Night Movement. It’s crazy that people force the narrative that women aren’t being careful when in reality they shouldn’t be in danger just because of their gender and no matter how many precautions they take it doesn’t seem to matter. Gender-based violence affects women from all countries, backgrounds and social statuses. The fact that 97% of women say they had been sexually harassed is astounding but sadly not a surprising statistic to those who have been through it.

“We originally wrote this song back in December and it felt like an important topic then but it feels even more important now. When I was watching the documentary, the original Reclaim the Night march first happened in 1977 but the fact that we’re still having to protest over the same issues of femicide is shocking, especially as the advice is still the same. We shouldn’t have to take preventative measures in order to be safe, why is no-one tackling the issue instead of blaming the victims? Women shouldn’t have to stay out of public spaces after dark and have a curfew inflicted upon them. Hopefully this song can help empower the women that deserve so much more.”

Are there any other artists breaking through at the same time that you take inspiration from?

Jamo: Petsematary, completely different from us but slaps on a gig.
Tommy: Coco Bryce. No two breaks will ever be the same.
Eggy: Paige Kennedy - wild'n'wonderful. Hold on to your hats.
Tom: I am in love with Enny's music at the minute, she's a sick storyteller.

Who would be your dream collaborator?

porij x Hot Wheels 🔥

Musically or otherwise, what are you most looking forward to this year?

A big rig in a field please. And gigs! And more new tunes! And some new suits...

If people could take away one thing from your music, what would it be?

The world is ending but we're having a great time x”.

Let’s finish up here. If you require further information about Porij, then do some digging and check out their amazing music. I feel that they will make up for lost time regarding gigs. Check out their social media pages to see where you can catch them live. They are an incredible force that are going to be around for years. Original, instantly appealing and memorable, the band deserve as many followers as possible. I shall leave it there. Go and investigate…

ONE of the country’s best new bands.

___________

Follow Porij

PHOTO CREDIT: MEN UGC 

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/porij_/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/porijmusic/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/porij_

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Ph4BCHTBnS7CJctvtUDkp?si=RiVFsYVTSc6i5YUQppk1-Q&dl_branch=1

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa6Oj3uL5oEoI5kS0pjcDow

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 2005: Tom Doyle (MOJO)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IMAGE CREDIT: MOJO

2005: Tom Doyle (MOJO)

___________

I am not going to include the whole interview…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

in this feature but, in this series, I am highlighting great interview through the years. I have not included any from the mid-1980s or later in the decade. I shall rectify that in the next couple of features in this series. Today. I want to spotlight an interview from Tom Doyle. It appeared on The Guardian’s website - though it was an abridged version of an exclusive sixteen-page interview with Bush that appeared in MOJO (which went on sale on 3rd  November, 2005). Even though the original interview was published in MOJO, I am taking from the abridged version that The Guardian ran. It was not the only interview conducted around Aerial, although it is one of the best and most illuminating! This was a fascinating period, as Bush released the double album, Aerial. That came twelve years after her previous studio album, The Red Shoes. There was speculation years before as to whether she had retired or was a recluse. Neither was true! Instead, she was looking after her new son (Bertie was born in 1998; there is an Aerial track, Bertie, that is about him). The interview is really interesting to read:

“Yet here, in Kate Bush's home, there is a 47-year-old mother of one, the antithesis of the mysterious recluse, dressed in a workday uniform of brown shirt, jeans and trainers, hair clipped up in practical busy-busy fashion, all wary smiles and nervous laughter. We shake hands, tentatively. She seems tiny (five foot three-and-a-half inches) and more curvaceous than the waif-like dancer of popular memory.

Famously, Kate Bush hates interviews - the last was four years ago, the previous one seven years before that. So the prospect of this interrogation, the only one she has agreed to endure in support of Aerial, must fill her with dread. Around us there is evidence of a very regular, family-shaped existence - toys and kiddie books scattered everywhere, a Sony widescreen with a DVD of Shackleton sitting below it. Atop the fireplace hangs a painting called Fishermen by James Southall, a tableau of weather-beaten seadogs wrestling with a rowing boat; it is soon to be familiar as part of the inner artwork of Aerial. Balanced against a wall in the office next door is a replica of the Rosebud sledge burned at the dramatic conclusion of Citizen Kane, as commissioned for the video of Bush's comeback single, King of the Mountain, and brought home as a gift for her seven-year-old son Bertie.

Can she understand why people build these myths around her?

"No," she begins, apprehensively. "No, I can't. Pffff. I can't really."

You once said: "There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me."

There is silence. A stare. You did say it ...

"Well supposedly I said that. But in what context did I say it?"

Just talking about fans building up this image of you as some kind of goddess.

"Yes, but I'm not, am I?"

So, do the rumours bug you? That you're some fragile being who's hidden herself away?

"No," she replies. "A lot of the time it doesn't bother me. I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world." Her voice notches up in volume. "Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'."

If the outside world was wondering whether Kate Bush would ever finish her long-awaited album, then it was a feeling shared by its creator. "Oh yeah," she sighs. "I mean, there were so many times I thought, I'll have the album finished this year, definitely, we'll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I'm never gonna do this. If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time ... evaporates."

There was a story that some EMI execs had come down to see you and you'd said something like: "Here's what I've been working on," and then produced some cakes from your oven. True? "No! I don't know where that came from. I thought that was quite funny actually. It presents me as this homely creature, which is all right, isn't it?"

The shiver-inducing stand-out track on Aerial, however, comes at the end of the first disc. A Coral Room is a piano-and-vocal ballad that Bush admits she first considered to be too personal for release, dealing as it does with the death of her mother, a matter that she didn't address at the time in any of the songs on The Red Shoes.

"No, no I didn't," she says. "I mean, how would you address it? I think it's a long time before you can go anywhere near it because it hurts too much. I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time."

Kate Bush begins to tidy up the plates and cups and get ready for Bertie's arrival home from school with his dad. Before I go, however, there is one last Bush myth to bust. Apparently, when she attended a music industry reception at Buckingham Palace this year, she asked the Queen for her autograph. Is that true? Instantly a grin spreads across the face of the Most Elusive Woman in Rock. "Yes, I did!" she exclaims, only half-embarrassedly. "I made a complete arsehole of myself. I'm ashamed to say that when I told Bertie that I was going to meet the Queen, he said, 'Mummy, no, you're not, you've got it wrong' and I said, 'But I am!' So rather stupidly I thought I'd get her to sign my programme. She was very sweet.

"The thing is I would do anything for Bertie and making an arsehole of myself in front of a whole roomful of people and the Queen, I mean ... But I don't have a very good track record with royalty. My dress fell off in front of Prince Charles at the Prince's Trust, so I'm just living up to my reputation”.

The Tom Doyle interview is a rare print interview (as I associate the promotion for Aerial with being largely radio interviews). I will go and get that copy of MOJO, as the full interview is captivating and it is a must-read. I was keen to include bits of it here, as 2005 was when Bush sort of returned for a long spell out of music. Alongside raising a young son, she was taking time out from a rather stressful time in 1993/1994. This was a time when I feel like she was taking on a lot. Her album, The Red Shoes, did not receive that many glowing reviews. The short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve (which was shown at the London Film Festival on 13th November 1993) was also not that well received. It must have been disappointing and upsetting for Bush. It is not a surprise that she needed some space and time to settle. Aerial might have taken a while to come to us, but one only needs to listen to it to realise that it is one of her greatest works – Bush herself has said it is her favourite album, as she associates it with a happy period. One can hear this iconic artist with a whole new lease and sense of purpose.! This new mother brings the domestic and new-found bliss into the album – though one cannot define Aerial by being about motherhood and the home. There are shades of nature and the natural world through the second disc, A Sky of Honey. I would encourage any Kate Bush fan to seek out print/online interviews from 2005. There are a few radio interviews on YouTube that are well worth some time. The interview with Tom Doyle, to me, is among…

THE very best of 2005.